Ah, hush now child. Think, why was In The Year2525 the only hit for Zager and Evans?
Because they brilliantly followed it with the far worse Mr Turnkey, an ode to a convicted rapist. Surprisingly not many women rushed out to buy a single with lyrics like:
*Mr Turnkey, it’s 10 pm in Wichita Falls
August 16, 1969 and I’m in some bar
Mr Turnkey, I need a woman and I ain’t getting far
I never was the kind of man a woman looked for.
But Mr Turnkey, she looked at me with flirting eyes
Mr Turnkey, she was lovelier than oil lights
Mr Turnkey, she led me on, she led me on,
She knew she wasn’t going to let me love her.*
Sniff, beautiful isn’t it? Certainly a challenge to their previous release.
I have almost all of these on my iPod back at the house and enjoy them all. Especially the 70s ones. I spent WAY too much time in my Mom’s Nova driving from Redondo to USC during her grad school days listening to KHJ (“KHJ plays all the hits!”) to not be in love with early 70s songwriter pop. Woot!
'Twas a football player, not a baseball player. And to think that I had mostly purged that song from my memory. Back to liberal applications of vodka and the occasional Q-Tip shoved into my ear canal until the lights go all pretty.
These songs deserve to be mentioned (if they have to be brought up at all) along with Seasons In The Sun, which was a hit at about the same time. I’m surprised that anyone ever listened to the radio again.
C.W. actually had at least a marginal hit before this, with a “song” derived from a bread commercial, “The Old Home Filler-Up And Keep On A’Truckin’ Cafe”.
As long as someone had to bring up “Ballad of the Green Berets”, let us not forget the other big popular song from the Vietnam War*, C Company’s “The Battle Hymn of Lieutenant Calley” (of My Lai massacre fame). It reportedly sold 200,000 copies within days of Calley’s conviction, and included these immortal lines (sung to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic):
“While we’re fighting in the jungles
They were marching in the street,
While we’re dying in the rice fields
They were helping our defeat.
While we’re facing VC bullets
They were sounding a retreat,
As we go marching on…”
I was fortunate enough to secure a copy years later and it is one of my most valued 45 RPM records. :dubious:
*The only other Vietnam-inspired pop song I can think of, Country Joe and the Fish’s Feel Like I’m A-Fixin To Die Rag is, unlike the other two, a genuine classic.
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Not as militant as those others, but there’s “To Susan on the West Coast Waiting” by Donovan, which was probably the first chart song to even mention Vietnam. (Trivia: The B-side of this single was “Atlantis.” “To Susan” was a moderate hit before the DJs flipped the record over to discover the much bigger hit.)
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How about that execrable “Girl, you’ll be a woman soon” song by whoever it’s by? I’ve always hated that song - sounded like it’s sung by a lecherous old rapist who’s scoping out his next target. Seems to me he’s saying she’ll be a woman soon because he’s going to make her one.
Ew. I feel like I should go take a shower now. As I always do after hearing even a snippit of that song.
The original was Neil Diamond. Way, way, WAY far away from being a one-hit-wonder. (Not to say it’s not creepi-fying, just that it doesn’t qualify.) It was later redone by Urge Overkill and used in Pulp Fiction. They, too, had another popular song, Sister Havana.
Biz markie’s "Just a Friend was an absolute travesty. The only thing worse than the song was the video, which enhances the utter awfulness of the song.
Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini
They areComing to Take Me Away
There was a one hit wonder a few years ago that the singer changed his name to the song title. I am drawing a blank though.
I actually like most of these. Most were popular when I was young and they bring back good memories.