I was going to say this.
When the song came out, I was chastised for laughing because the song is about Jesus, Christmas, and dying.
I came in to cite “MacArthur Park,” the obvious winner. The song is meant to be sung absolutely straight, and it’s just ridiculous. And it went quite high in the charts and is very well known.
I really can’t think of a more ridiculous song that was actually written and recorded by professionals and meant to be taken seriously. And it was COVERED by an even more famous artist, Donna Summer, and was a ht again. Weird Al’s parody of it is more serious than the original, and the parody’s hilarious. The song’s composer, Jimmy Webb, has spent the last 45 years insisting he wasn’t totally high when he wrote it.
Years ago Dave Barry held an open contest for his readers to name the Worst Song Ever, with two categories; Worst Overall Song, and Worst Lyrics. MacArthur Park was the runaway winner in both categories.* And the people were right. Barry wrote about how his son didn’t know the song, so he sang it for him, and his kid refused to believe it was a real song because there’s just no way anyone would write those lyrics, But they did.
- = I would have voted for “In The Year 2525,” but while it may be worse, MacArthur Park is definitely funnier.
A few years back, this little ditty by Rebecca Black earned a reputation as one of the worst songs ever. However, it made me laugh so hard it hurt. Getting a good old belly laugh out of me is pretty hard to do, so here ya go…
Threadjack: I saw a televised talent show winner which was 4 teenage boys wearing 1950s-style bowling shirts with slicked-back hair and shades, and they sang this a cappella as a barbership quartet. It was actually pretty good. :eek:
Morgoth “Graceland”
Contrast the ominous industrial sound with the comically sophomoric sounding vocals and lyrics. It’s possible English wasn’t this band’s native tongue; I think the vocals from this particular album are pretty egregious in any event.
“Lack thereof” is also an Alice In Chains lyric, from the spoken portion of “Sludge Factory.”
From what I understand Elvis Costello was a huge influence on Eve 6’s debut album, so Costello probably has a lot of egghead sounding lyrics like that.
Some of the worst and funniest lyrics ever, from the movie The Desert Song (1929):
Ho! So we sing as we are riding,
Ho! It’s the time you’d best be hiding low!
It means the Riffs are abroad.
Go, before you’ve bitten the sword! [sic]
*Ho! That’s the sound that comes to warn you, so
In the night or early morn you know
If you’re the Red Shadow’s foe
The Riffs will strike with a blow
That brings you woe!
*
A low quality video, but it gives you the idea:
Years ago we were having a picnic outside and it started raining. My mother said “Oh, no, I left the cake out in the rain!” This caused Pepper Mill and I to laugh hysterically and start quoting (not singing) the lyrics to “MacArthur Park”. My mother had no idea what we were laughing about, or getting this poem that we obviously both knew.
PS – we got the cake out of the rain.
In my opinion "MacArthur Park really came into its own when Weird Al Yankovic reworked it as “Jurassic Park”
I laugh every time I listen to this Poussette Dart Band song:
*If you’re going to fall, fall on me.
And if you’re going down…
*
They complete the line with “if you’re going down, hold on to me.” Yeah, right.