Funny, for me it’s just the opposite. The only Doobie Brothers song with McDonald on lead I know is “What A Fool Believes” and I only ever heard that song long after I knew all the classic Steely Dan albums, and every time I hear him on a Steely Dan song, I think “Hey. Michael McDonald again, what a great and song-serving background vocal!” For me he rather is THE Steely Dan background singer than the singer for the Doobies or a solo singer. “Peg” might be his best moment. He has a strange, but exceptional voice that sounds like three singers at once.
Take the Money and Run by Steve Miller. Solely for its awful attempts at rhyming and not using the right forms of words because they wouldn’t rhyme at all if he used the right ones. Sure, poets might be able to do that occasionally, but this is hardly poetry and it just sounds terribly stunted. And the content of the lyrics isn’t much better, with one verse talking about a detective that doesn’t do anything related to the rest of the lyrics. Just awful.
May I have a do-over?
I choose Neil Diamond’s “I Am, I Said.”
My excuse is that it is bad, bad, bad, but in an unmemorable way. Either that, or I just suppress any memories of it even existing.
If I had to choose a Neil Diamond song as an example of bad songwriting, I would choose “Play Me,” based on this line: “Songs she sang to me, songs she brang to me…”
Brang? That’s about as lazy as you can get!
Blink 182s version of “another girl another planet” is so exquisitely mediocre and leaden and pedestrian and pointless one wonders if its actually incerdibe performance art.
Oh shit
I just remembered the existence of brokencyde
Since you brought up Steve Miller, how about Abracadabra? Awful lyrics with awful music makes it doubly awful.
I think a point is missed, I think that what many are missing is like when right wingers play “Born in the USA” at political rallies.
From A Distance by Bette Midler - Songfacts
. In our interview with Julie Gold, she said, “I only set out to write a decent song about the difference between the way things seem and the way things are.”
Really, the song is about how horrible things like war are missed from a distance, that from far away, things look peaceful. And then we are told repeatedly that God is watching us from a distance… IOW: don’t expect god to get involved because everything looks peachy from very high above, it is a gently subversive song to the really defeatist attitude that we should expect god to do everything for us. .
Don’t gimme no lies and keep your hands to yourself.
Abra abracadabra
I wanna reach out and grab ya
Why, it’s practically Shakespeare 
!
Oh my god, yes. I like Steve Miller in general, but Abracadabra is a terrible song, both lyrically and musically. And it was one of his biggest hits, go figure.
Been musing on this, what really prings to mind is anything involving David Coverdale, especially Whitesnake.
What, no hug-ee? No kiss-ee? 
That was my take on it, but the saccharine way it is sung is what my acquaintances loved about it. And they weren’t getting the same thing out of the song. That same drippy sweetness sets my teeth on edge. I was wrong, they said. I wasn’t going to argue. I just wanted to get away. The same acquaintances kept trying to get me to join their perfect Christian worship so my life could be wonderful too. Nothing like sharing a 3-hour car ride listening to their music over and over, including this song to make me hate it.
Fin.
Steve Miller is just OK, some of his stuff is pretty good - some not. But to address your “lyrically” point, There have been thousands of number one records with way worse lyrics than Abracababra. I mean, come on, it has panties in it! ha ha
IMHO, his best album was Living In The The 20th Century.
Fun fact, Les Paul was his godfather and taught him how to play guitar.
I have a new most hated song, which came up on iPod shuffle yesterday - “I Shall Be Released” as performed by The Police on the Amnesty International benefit album The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball.
It’s a fairly dreadful dirge-like version of the song in which Sting goes maundering on and on and on endlessly. Finally the song drones to its muttered conclusion.
But it’s not over! Following subdued cheers and applause from the audience, the band starts up and begins plodding through the song again.
I couldn’t hit the “forward” button fast enough.
I always heard that as “no hugg-ing, no kiss-ing” where he just sounds like he’s dropped the “g” due to his accent and singing style.
FWIW, I consulted a lyric site, because I wasn’t sure what he was saying, and that’s what they had. I know, big deal, right? Ten lyric sites will get you twelve answers.
Heheh, I still own my copy of that record, I believe. It’s a good record.
Me too! It was back when I still hadn’t a CD player, so it’s a vinyl copy. I also have his following album which was a cover album of Jazz standards (don’t remember the title). I didn’t like that very much.