Music to your ears? Patti Smith performs live on stage. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
It's that time of year again. The time of year when I partake of the annual ritual of listening to Patti Smith's Horses to see if I'm going to like it this time round. In truth, I don't hold out much hope: I've been trying to like it for 15 years and failing every time. No sooner does Patti intone "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine," than I think of John Lydon's remark from the stage of the 100 Club in London in 1976, a couple of days after Smith's first London show: "Did anyone go to the Roundhouse to see the 'ippy bangin' 'er tambourine? 'Orses! 'Orses!" Quite.
Horses is one of those classic albums that leaves me cold. Can't hear it at all. Just sounds like a rambling mess of pretension to me. It's in decent company: I've bought plenty of albums on the back of Greatest Ever lists that, on actually hearing, have bored me rigid. While I love Van Morrison's Caledonian Soul period, for example, Astral Weeks leaves me completely cold. Never Mind the Bollocks? Let's be honest: the singles aside, all you can hear is Bollocks. What's Going On? Not a lot, that's what. And the pleasures of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures are largely unknown to me.
We've all got these blindspots, though we tend not to admit to them (much better to proclaim your intimate understanding of the classics). So let's tear down that cultural barrier and cheerfully confess our ignorance and philistinism. In this week's Film&Music we asked a bunch of musicians to name the classics they can't stand, and the results are revealing. Wayne Coyne reckons Nevermind would sound to someone hearing it for the first time like Nickelback played by drug addicts. Billy Childish says Sgt Pepper is worse than Live at the Star Club, the famously shoddy document of the Beatles' Hamburg era. And Peter Hook is baffled by the postpunk bands who were inspired by Trout Mask Replica, arguing that all those bands were "shit" anyway.
So what are the albums that don't do it for you? Which classics have you bought, only to see them remain on your shelf, prompting a feeling of guilt because you can't understand why everyone else says they're life-changing masterpieces? Tell us ...
