Billy Don’t be A Hero
Afternoon Delight
Escape (The Pina Colada Song)
The only three songs on Hell’s jukebox.
“Little Green Apples” has caused more riots than any racial or religious reasons.
“I Am Woman” - you are suck.
Last Kiss is one of those songs that will make me leave the room, no matter what. I don’t care which version. Also, it makes the assumption that she went to heaven. What if she went to Hell?
Practically all of the songs listed already qualify, too. The only exception being “I Will Survive”. I don’t really think it’s all that sappy.
This far into the thread and no mention of the horror that is Bryan Adams? His love songs literally make me nauseous, especially “Everything I do” and “Have you ever really loved a woman”.
Open Arms by Journey. Mainly because it was playing when my then-fifteen-year-old sister fell in love with some dweeb. She ran out and bought the album, and proceeded to play it on the family record player, over and over and over and over and over and over…
I can’t believe people are picking on Eric Clapton’s Tears In Heaven. The man wrote the song to cope with his 4 year old son having fallen to his death out of an unsecured hotel window… And you think it’s “sappy”?
Sappy is overwrought, unwarranted, and can’t possibly be sincere emotion, with torturous lyrics… like the aforementioned You Light Up My Life, or REO Speedwagon’s I Can’t Fight This Feeling (no doubt the inspiration for the The Simpsons’ Kirk Van Houten’s ballad, Can I Borrow A Feeling?). Yeesh.
I actually find the “teen tragedy” songs from the 50s and early 60s rather funny. They’re so over the top sincere that they become (to me) ironic. Even better than Last Kiss is Tell Laura I Love Her, about a guy who enters a car race to try to win a cash prize to buy a wedding ring for his girlfriend, With Tragic Results.
No one knows what happened that day
How his car overturned in flames
And as they pulled him from the twisted wreck
With his dying breath they could hear him say:
Tell Laura I love her…
Tell Laura I need her…
Tell Laura not to cry, my love for her will never die!
sniff sob howl
Let’s play Name That Sappy Tune!
*Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again!
*
At her wedding this summer, my aunt played some recent country tune… Oh, I found it.
She stood there and sang it with her husband at the end of the service, with the music playing over the tinny speakers. I just wanted to yell, “Look, this is your moment, not ours. Let’s move on, shall we?”
How could I have forgotten Tell Laura I Love Her? I was 15 or so when that song came out, and I cried and cried. 
How about teen suicide? Poor Patches, came from the wrong side of the tracks.
“Patches oh what can I do
I swear I’ll always love you
It may not be right But I’ll join you tonight
Patches I’m coming to you”
And angels watching their sons play football?
And when the game was over, the coach asked him to tell
What was it he was thinkin’ of that made him play so well
“You know my dad was blind,” he said, “Tonight he passed Away”
“It’s the first time that my father has seen me play.”
More ill-fated love:
Runnin’ Bear dove in the water
Little White Dove did the same
And they swam out to each other
Through the swirling stream they came
As their hands touched and their lips met
The ragin’ river pulled them down
Now they’ll always be together
In that happy hunting ground
I’m embarrassed to know this, but…
Seasons In The Sun is about a man who is about to be executed. He had killed his old friend (since the age of 9 or 10) after the friend had an affair with his wife. Or maybe it was the wife he killed.
It was based on a French song, allegedly less sappy, though I’ve never heard it myself.
Bobby Goldsboro wrote “Honey” and “Watching Scotty Grow” along with some other sap. I think he’s the reincarnation of a maple tree.
See post #30!
And I like Can’t Fight This Feeling–it’s mine and DH’s song, and it always brings back those wonderful times. Especially now, less than a week before our 20th anniversary!
Shouldn’t this thread mention The Carpenters?
“The singer doesn’t mention why his girlfriend has to be pulled out of a car that’s merely stalled, but perhaps she was one of the unusually large teenagers who tend to wedged against the dashboard.” Dave Barry
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Free Bird: Worst song in the history of the world, and I have promised myself I will never allow it to enter the portals of my ears in its entirety ever, ever again, even if it should mean that I must jump off a tall building before the end of the song in order to protect myself from that unthinkable fate.
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From a Distance: A glurgey pile of crap that I successfully avoided for years. One day, due to circumstances beyond my control, I heard the whole thing and realized it was kind of a pretty song, and now I listen to it because it’s kind of fun to feel the tears well up in my eyes when Bette sings “From a distance/ you look like my friend/ even though we are at war.” snif
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I’ve Never Been to Me: Comedy gold. Any song as unintentionally hilarious as that is okay by me.
Not that it will remotely enrich anyone’s life to have this cleared up --and I shudder to think it was actually first-hand knowledge on my part-- but Lou, I believe that’s Tim McGraw.
Excellent call, though. The song is an aberrant creation that makes “Seasons in the Sun” look nuanced.
Playground In My Mind: I’ve heard actual toddlers’ songs that were infinitely more mature and intelligent than that insipid namby-pamby sing-song drivel. That’s one that shoulda stayed in your mind, pal. Heeuuurrrrghhhh!
I once saw McGraw play part of that “Kill Myself” song on some late-night show. Every time he finished the chorus (“Because I love you/I’m gonna kill myself”), the young girls in the crowd would cheer like crazy! It seems they thought this was the most romantic thing they’d ever heard. I kind of approved of the cheering, but for a very different reason. It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen on TV.
It is Tim McGraw. My ignorance is fought. There is no justice: the man can marry Faith Hill, while subjecting the rest of the world to songs like “Live Life Like You Were Dying.”
Can’t believe noone’s mentioned James Taylor yet. Every time I hear one of his songs come on the radio, not only do I want to take his guitar and smash it against the wall, I want to take him and smash him against the wall.