# Songs to take oversized mallets to **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** music\ **Created:** [February 19, 2020, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183 "2020-02-19T17:30:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrickBat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@BrickBat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrickBat)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2020, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/21 "2020-02-20T16:41:17Z")
The ‘Chicago’ song ‘You’re the inspiration’. Other than prime rib, it seemed to be a requirement at every wedding reception in the 80s, with spill-over to the 90s. S-A-P-P-Y. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2020, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/22 "2020-02-20T16:50:29Z")
Wondering if printing press rollers could take care of the Grass Roots, and [(tra, la, la-la-la-la) Live For Today](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySjxZDT_5SA) ---
**Author:** ![K364](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k364/32/5_2.png) [@K364](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/K364)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2020, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/23 "2020-02-20T17:35:26Z")
> [@typoink](#): > > “Big Yellow Taxi.” Any and all versions. Aside from how much I hate the phrase “tree museum,” it’s a song that always feels like it’s about to end but just keeps going. Kind of whimsical and ok for the most part. The giggle at the end is not ok. And someone should have told Joni early on that her high register is awful. ---
**Author:** ![Biggirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biggirl/32/3294_2.png) [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2020, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/24 "2020-02-20T18:24:37Z")
Nothing is Everything from some goddamned drug commercial that gets played every third slot on every Discovery owned channel–meet flaming meteor. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2020, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/25 "2020-02-20T18:54:49Z")
> [@Guest-starring\_Id](#): > > Wondering if printing press rollers could take care of the Grass Roots, and [(tra, la, la-la-la-la) Live For Today](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySjxZDT_5SA) I’d managed to blot that from my memory. Thanks. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2020, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/26 "2020-02-20T18:56:14Z")
> [@Guest-starring\_Id](#): > > Wondering if printing press rollers could take care of the Grass Roots, and [(tra, la, la-la-la-la) Live For Today](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySjxZDT_5SA) I managed to blot that from my memory. Thanks. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2020, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/27 "2020-02-20T19:07:09Z")
> [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](#): > > Morris Albert’s Feelings: > > Feelings, who-o-oah, feelings, crash! > Feelings I never… explosion > Again in my… Whomp!!! Anecdote about 1920s jazz violin great and infamous prankster Joe Venuti, who was still going strong into the 1970s and doing a gig in Seattle. “Folks, we hardly ever do this, but we’re gonna take requests. Whaddaya wanna hear? Requests! Go ahead and shout em out!” A woman in the back tentatively raises her hand and says “How about ‘Feelings?’” Venuti: “Feelings? FEELINGS? That’s the worst fucking song ever made!!! FUCK YOU — no more requests!!!” And the combo swings into “Sweet Georgia Brown.” (Disclaimer: Some people say that Venuti set this whole situation up, as one of his practical jokes) ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/28 "2020-02-21T03:17:29Z")
Mr. Mister’s (god even their name sucks) [Broken Wings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKhN1t_7PEY) could use some earnest [crossbow](https://www.google.com/search?q=crossbow&rlz=1C1CHBD_enCA835CA835&sxsrf=ALeKk014E41k1RrB2gKQwK-e_z_Brz7mZg:1582254402398&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiijuX81OHnAhUHqp4KHS3VB7kQ_AUoAXoECA4QAw&biw=978&bih=718) practice. (Yes, I do realise that most people know what a crossbow is - and those oversized mallet IMPlements - but an overly didactic overkill presentation is an imperative to hammer shit home, here. As it were.) ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2021, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/29 "2021-08-02T02:03:20Z")
For the first time in decades just heard _Feelin Groovy_, and had to power-bump this. Sure, S + G did a lot of great stuff, but man… ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@salinqmind1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind1)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2021, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/30 "2021-08-02T16:28:38Z")
😢 Feelin’ Groovy is bad? OK, go ahead, trash one of my most loved songs, that conjures up past visions of a better time, when life stretched ahead, full of possibilities. And walking through a green park with your friends, and kicking down the cobblestones in the sun. Peace and joy, man. (god, if we had known what a horrorshow the world would become, back then…) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2021, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/31 "2021-08-02T17:55:32Z")
[Good King Yakko’s mania…](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rMuw4I9dS4) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2021, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/32 "2021-08-02T18:12:33Z")
Terry Jacks’ _Seasons in the Sun_ (1974). A massively depressing song by a guy about to kill himself (to paraphrase Dave Barry about another song “It’s about a guy dying, but not fast enough.”). But that’s not the worst part. The song has a weird way with tempo. It sounds as if they recorded it, pressed a disc of the song, then drilled a hole off-center , put it on the spindle through that hole, played the record, and recorded THAT take and turned it into the commercial release. According to the Wikipedia page, it’s based on a Jacquel Brel song that had “a marching tempo”, so it at least would have that weird sound. Rod McKuen (!) wrote English lyrics for it, and the Kingston Trio recorded it. Jacks rewrote the lyrics for his own version because he found McKuen’s too depressing and macabre. This makes me curious how downbeat those lyrics were, but not enough to actually find out. Here’s a wonderful Slate article on the song, which calls it “an unsurpassed nadir of pop music” > **[A song about death that refuses to die.](https://slate.com/culture/2005/03/a-song-about-death-that-refuses-to-die.html)** > > Kurt sings about death With its outtakes, rarities, and B sides, the long-awaited Nirvana boxed set turned out to be the table scraps of a... ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2021, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/33 "2021-08-02T18:41:30Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > According to the Wikipedia page, it’s based on a Jacquel Brel song that had “a marching tempo”, so it at least would have that weird sound. Rod McKuen (!) wrote English lyrics for it, and the Kingston Trio recorded it. Jacks rewrote the lyrics for his own version because he found McKuen’s too depressing and macabre. This makes me curious how downbeat those lyrics were, but not enough to actually find out. I took one for the team and I can now say I hate that song with a greater passion and depth of feeling. It’s mostly the same, but the third verse pretty much says: _Goodbye my dear wife, you cheating slut, I’m going to haunt you forever._ Why this dreck got recorded and covered repeatedly will always be a mystery. [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GLfRtK0oxYE/hqdefault.jpg "KINGSTON TRIO - Seasons in the Sun (Best Version Ever!) 1964") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLfRtK0oxYE) ---
**Author:** ![BrickBat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@BrickBat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrickBat)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2021, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/34 "2021-08-02T18:41:36Z")
Another example of mid 70s glurge was the song ‘_Billy Don’t Be a Hero_’. Even though I did my best to dodge listening to it, through being a captured audience I could make out that it was ballad about a girl whose soldier boyfriend was off to combat ( Vietnam? ) who implored him not to take risks, but was nonetheless smoked as he tried to defend his position. I remember how teen and preteen girls went apeshit over it. About 10 years ago, a girlfriend, whose tastes in music/film/culture were permanently set as it was at age 12, would go nuts whenever BDBAH came on over her favorite 70s station on satellite radio. Bad enough I had to listen to it, but as it played she alternated between narrating to me what it was about, and then singing along in a very dramatic and emotive way. It was brutal. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2021, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/35 "2021-08-02T18:53:44Z")
Gustav Mahler’s 6th Symphony? ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2021, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/36 "2021-08-02T19:01:21Z")
For some reason I always get Billy Don’t Be A Hero conflated with another pop tune from about the same period. The girl in the song is in love with some dude that her dad hates, and he’s about to shoot the boyfriend but she jumps in front and takes the bullet. Was it “Run Joey Run”? Anyway, please Hulk Smash them both. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2021, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/37 "2021-08-02T19:20:41Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Didn’t we use to have an oversized mallet smiley a long time ago? That was at the temporary home during the Winter of Missed Content. The smiley was affectionately called “Smashie”. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2021, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/38 "2021-08-02T19:20:48Z")
Mallet-worthy to me are the songs that have the lines: “Our house… in the middle of the…”, and “Hey now, you’re a rock star”. I know the first was from a sit-com and, like the second, shows up in way too many commercials. ---
**Author:** ![BrickBat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@BrickBat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrickBat)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2021, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/39 "2021-08-02T19:24:50Z")
Yeah, ‘_Run Joey Run_’ is the one. The schmaltzy trading of sung narration lines by both a male and female teen singer is cringe-y. Said girlfriend tears would well in her eyes as she clutched her chest when hearing this. She couldn’t for the life of her get why I was not at all moved by the lyrics. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2021, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183/40 "2021-08-02T19:28:40Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > Mallet-worthy to me are the songs that have the lines: “Our house… in the middle of the…”, > **[Our House (Madness song)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_House_(Madness_song))** > > "Our House" is a song by the English ska and pop band Madness and was written by second lead vocalist Chas Smash and guitarist Chris Foreman. It was released as the lead single from their fourth studio album, The Rise & Fall, on 12 November 1982. The song charted within the top ten in several countries, and it was the band's biggest hit on the Billboard Hot 100. It won the category Best Pop Song at the May 1983 Ivor Novello Awards. > Released in November 1982, it peaked at No. 5 on the UK Singl... > [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > and “Hey now, you’re a rock star”. > **[All Star (song)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Star_(song))** > > "All Star" is a song by the American rock band Smash Mouth from their second studio album, Astro Lounge (1999). Written by Greg Camp and produced by Eric Valentine, the song was released on May 4, 1999, as the first single from Astro Lounge. The song was one of the last tracks to be written for Astro Lounge, after the band's record label Interscope requested more songs that could be released as singles. In writing it, Camp drew musical influence from contemporary music by artists like Sugar R... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-to-take-oversized-mallets-to/848183.md?page=3)