Kayleigh worst song ever

Marillion has been (and still is) my favourite for 7 years by now and although I discovered them by means of the song Kayleigh, I nowadays don't have the song in high regard

Kayleigh surely isn't their best song, but it doesn't bother me.  I think it has serious emotion in there.

eddietrooper wrote: I really enjoy listening to Marillion, specially Fish era. But there's one song I can't stand: "Kayleigh". When I discovered that this was their biggest hit I couldn't believe it.  I really like Misplaced Childhood, but I usually skip this track. For me it's their worst song. My favourite album is "Fugazi". Any comments?

Flip_Stone wrote: It's not a bad song in and of itself, but it is poor and poppy when you stick it next to other Marillion songs from that time period.  It's always sounded out of place on Misplaced Childhood, and a sad compromise by the band to appease the record company's demand for a hit single.

Another purist?? Man, KAYLEIGH is a great song... popish but totally enjoyable specially the lyrics... Sometimes the simplicity takes us to the perfection...

What a negative thread title! Kayleigh is a great song and certainly brought MARILLION more to the attention of the listening public, than any other of their songs.

sleeper wrote: Actualy I think it fits in perfectly on Misplaced Childhood

I completely agree. That album is an absolute stinker.

I remember buying the vinyl when I was Interrailing in England (when I ended up staying with IQ, but that's another story) and not being able to listen to it for days. I was so excited. Here was a band I had been following from their very first single, that I had queued a week for tickets to see, that I had traveled to Denmark to see again. A band whose two first albums (and singles and 12-inchers and picture disks and bootlegs) I had loved deeply and evangelized for madly (I had turned pretty much half of my 10th grade boarding school into Marillion heads over the course of the previous fall), and now they'd turned in an epic to rival their own Grendel (a song we dug so much that we named our Prog fanzine for it).

Maybe it was because my expectations were so high, or maybe it was because it really was a load of fairly pedestrian Pop-Rock songs sellotaped together to make a fake epic (when I said that to Fish in an interview later that fall, he raised his hand as if to strike me - no joke). But I was not alone in thinking so, most of my Proghead friends were equally underwhelmed and/or appalled. That Kayleigh later became a hit single only proved what we'd been saying all along.

Misplaced Childhood ("Misplaced Brain, more like" quipped IQ's roadie) retoractively runied Marillion for me. It was as if in seeing through that album, I saw the many flaws in the earlier works that I had ignored. I would occasionally listen to Script and Fugazi and even bought the remasters, but the magic was gone. Fish solo - eh. Hogarth Marillion - eh. Yet I keep trying. I check out each new release from both branches because maybe, just maybe something there will spark that magic again.

Well, once it has. On the Fugazi remaster; Cinderella Search. I had completely forgotten about that song, and it really hit home (lisetning to it now, actually - it's not bad).

Maybe I'll give MC one more shot. It's been at least half a decade since I last did.

Welcome back to the circus. Nevertheless...

Wow...most of you bag on it.  It's not TOTAL sh*t.  I downloaded it yesterday, along with BEAUTIFUL, HARD AS LOVE and WHO WE ARE.  I happen to (really) enjoy what I've heard thus far.  IMO, Kayleigh is a (pardon the pun) beautiful ballad.  Face it, kiddies...having a ballad or two on your records does NOT a bad record make.  It's only when you begin to water down your records with poor writing and production that the records begin to suck.  My opinion; nothing more or less.

Flip_Stone wrote: I agree somewhat, though I wouldn't call that song the worst ever.  There are plenty of songs in existence that are worst.  But yeah, when listening to Misplaced Childhood, I've always cringed at the song (and even Lavender) as being very pop and out of place compare to the songs before and after them on the album. Kayleigh just screams out "Yeah, we put this on the album because the record company demanded that we have a hit single.  Sorry chaps, we know it's overtly pop, but we hope you like it anyway".  And many people do, as shown here on this site.  I'm sure even the band came to liking it, especially when the video got them attention and exposure on America's MTV video channel, and put more money in their pockets...

Kayleigh was never contrived to be a hit single, nor was any of the album for that matter. In fact it was written as a screw you to their record company, they just decided to do a continuous 45 minutes epic, with no breaks (hence the original track titles of Misplaced Childhood Part 1 and Misplaced Childhood Part 2). When EMI heard the record they didn't think any of it was single worthy (they were more interested in Lady Nina as a single) but they went ahead with it anyway and the rest is history.

Kayleigh is the track that really grabbed my attention when I first listened to Misplaced Childhood (though the rest is great too) and so it will always be special (eevn though it's overplayed). It's certainly not worse than 3 of the tracks from side 2, Waterhole (Expresso Bongo), Lords of the Backstage or White Feather.

uhhh.. if you think its the worst song ever, you can't have heard very many songs