Rosecrans Boulevard. by Johnny Rivers
Written by Jim Webb, the same guy who gave us MacArthur Park. At least MacArthur Park rhymed. Typical lyric:
“Then there was that time you drove that little car at 90 miles an hour in a 30 mile zone and blamed me when you got that ticket.”
The Johnny Rivers version was also ineptly scored (it sounded like the orchestra was asleep at their instruments).
Nixon’s the One
An attempt at a campaign song in 1972:
Nixon’s the one
Nixon’s the one
Nixon’s the only one
We believe in Nixon
N-I-X-O-N
Nixon’s the only one
Too bad they stopped singing it when Watergate was revealed.
Coward of the County by Kenny (blech) Rogers.
Kenny Rogers at his absolute worst (which says a lot). Makes (ugh) The Gambler seem like an OK song. With the inspiring lyric “Sometimes you have to fight to be a man.”
It’s a man who refuses to fight until a bunch of people rape his wife, so he punches them out. One critic said that it was a country song by someone who had a completely cliched conception about country songs and people.
Neanderthal Man by Hotlegs
Don’t hear this one on the oldies stations. Entire lyrics:
I’m a Neanderthal Man
You’re a Neanderthal Girl
Let’s make Neanderthal love
In our Neanderthal world.
Repeat for three minutes. The group who recorded this – Hotlegs – changed their name immediately (it may have just been a nom de studio) and reemerged much improved as 10cc.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
The funniest part of “Coward of the County” is that the “Gatlin Boys” are the bad guys, and it’s specifically mentioned in the song that there are three of them.
The song came out at roughly the same time that the three Gatlin Brothers were starting to become as or more popular than Kenny Rogers was. He claims it was an unfortunate coincidence, and maybe it was, but it’s funny anyway.
The story/theme of the song is truly awful, though.
Oh, and “Wildfire” is the name of the horse, not the name of the girl/woman. Another awful story, though I kind of liked the music before I bothered to listen to the words.
R&H tended toward pretentiousness and this is them at their worst. An overlong “reflection” on how you feel when you find out you’re going to be a father. Manages to hit every cliche without showing the slightest bit of insight. The tune stinks, too.
Free Bird Lynryd Skynyrd
OK first half, but the second part is by far the worst guitar solo ever recorded. Playing a lot of notes fast is not good guitar playing – you have to DO something with the notes other than repeat them over and over again.
The top purveyors of lousy songs:
Kenny Rogers (see “Coward of the County”) The Gambler should also be added to this list – totally stupid, yet pretending to be profound (the “philosophy” is merely meaningless comments that have no relevance to anything).
Steve Miller Band. Their early stuff (“Space Cowboy,” “Living in the USA,” “Your Saving Grace”) was OK, but then Miller started putting out a string of semimediocre hit singles that for some reason get heavy airplay. The recycled songs (“Some call me the Space Cowboy”) and plagiarized riffs (“Jet Airliner” comes directly from Free’s “All Right Now”) automatically make me switch the radio. Others have put out worse single songs, but few have made such a career of it.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
You’re talking about the song “Pass the Dutchie” by Musical Youth. I remember hearing the song, but I don’t know or remember what the hell it was about.
If you want to get me to shut off a radio real fast, just try playing something from the Carpenters, Gloria Estefan, Jewel, Matchbox 20, or Dave Matthews. I think the lead singer from Matchbox 20 sounds kind of like Mr. Haney from “Green Acres”, and Dave Matthews sounds an awful lot like Squiggy from “Laverne and Shirley”. It’s almost like strange characters from TV Land are being migrated into our current “music universe”.
Oh, and how about John Popper from Blues Traveler? You could pretty much wreck his singing career by reducing his jowls so that he can’t use them to help quiver his voice while singing. Come to think of it, remove his lips while you’re at it so he can quit playing those lame ass harmonica riffs and solos.
Gee, no one’s mentioned “Ebony and Ivory,” another nightmare project from Jackson & McCartney yet. Maybe it’s been blessedly forgotten.
Of course, the pop song I hate most in all the world is John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which I think is pretentious, cynical, shallow and all-around misanthropic and nasty. An opinion in which I am virtually alone, I guess.
If Sir Paul didn’t buy himself a one-way express ticket to hell with that song, he certainly did with “Deliverance”. Give us hope of deliverance from another month in that man’s career.
Everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but where do you get “misanthropic” from? “A brotherhood of man”? “All the people living life in peace”? “I hope some day you’ll join us and the world will be as one”?
“Money” by Pink Floyd. Didn’t like it the first time I heard it, and it just got worse with subsequent listenings. Unfortunately it’s one of the most oft-played songs on the radio around here.
It’s a long way to heaven, but only three short steps to hell.