“Mockingbird” by Carly Simon & James Taylor (1974, #5)

One person’s view:  “The music’s crap, the lyrics make no sense, and the message is terrible.” – Valeyard’s Music Corner

The public’s view:  2.51 / 5.00

I had always thought that James Taylor and his music were universally praised.  I never expected to encounter him in the course of documenting “bad” top ten hits, but here he is.  And now that I look into his body of work in more detail, I realize that there are really two James Taylors.  The first is a beloved singer-songwriter who brilliantly channeled his personal experiences and his substance abuse struggles into classics like “Fire and Rain” and “Sweet Baby James”.  The second James Taylor is not really a songwriter.  He specializes in radio-friendly remakes of songs that were done more soulfully by their original artists.  This latter guy has more in common with Pat Boone than he does with the other James Taylor.

The James Taylor dichotomy is evident among his fan base.  Back when there were newspapers, and newspapers printed letters from readers about matters of public concern, I once read an angry letter from a woman who had attended one of Taylor’s shows.  The correspondent was there to experience a nice relaxing evening with the second James Taylor, but she and her husband were surrounded by admirers of the first James Taylor.  These other individuals were not from the sophisticated demographic who enjoyed mailing letters to newspapers.  They expressed themselves via heavy drinking, profound displays of public vomiting, and perhaps an occasional human sacrifice.  “All this at a James Taylor concert!” the exasperated letter writer complained.  But I know what would have salvaged the messy evening for this puked-upon fan:  an encore consisting of an extended 15-minute rendition of “Mockingbird”.

Taylor and this then-wife Carly Simon had each built a substantial reservoir of goodwill with audiences and critics by 1974.  “Mockingbird” was a way for them to light it all on fire so that they could both move firmly into the world of lightweight pop without the burden of high expectations.  It was a remake of an R&B song by the sister and brother Inez and Charlie Foxx in 1963, which in turn had been based on the children’s lullaby “Hush, Little Baby”.  Right away, you can detect two of the signs of a Bad Top Ten Hit:  white people appropriating black music and adults appropriating kids’ music.  “Mockingbird” is also a duet, though this was not seen as troubling at the time.  It wasn’t until much later that the surgeon general began requiring warning labels to be affixed to duets, as part of the Reagan Administration’s response to the Willie Nelson & Julio Iglesias Crisis of 1984.

“Hush, Little Baby” concerns a phenomenon that the insurance industry calls “moral hazard”.  It is about a parent buying gifts for a child and guaranteeing that each one will be replaced with a different item if it ceases to function.  In this way, the spoiled brat is incentivized to carelessly break her things until she gets exactly what she wants.  The Foxx siblings abandoned this unique lyrical concept in “Mockingbird”, however, and reworked the lullaby into a love song.  They made it a little repetitive in the process, forcing James Taylor to add some new lyrics in his and Carly’s remake.  His changes take “Mockingbird” even further afield from its “Hush, Little Baby” roots.  The cryptic new lines about finding a “better way” sound like something out of a New Age religion.  I would have preferred to hear more couplets about stuff getting ruined:  “And if that comic book gets wet / I’m gonna buy you a private jet.”

Some listeners claim that “Mockingbird” is the low point of James Taylor’s career and also the low point of Carly Simon’s.  From that perspective, the silly record also wasted the talents of great session players such as Bobby Keys, Jim Keltner, Dr. John, Robbie Robertson, and Michael Brecker.  I have a more positive opinion of “Mockingbird”, but part of that stems from how the song has been used in the years following its release.  Carly and James sang it together at a “No Nukes” concert in 1979, and this energetic live performance blasts the earlier studio version out of the birdbath.  It was for the good cause of preserving our environmentally sound coal-fired electricity plants against the escalating threat of atoms and quarks and neutrons – all of which should be banned.

Nuclear power had one of its roughest years in 1979.  First it was blamed for the Three Mile Island peccadillo, then it had to endure a big blazing dose of “Mockingbird”.  Nevertheless, the industry has continued to limp along and so Taylor needs to do more to put the final nail in the coffin.  He should write some more new lyrics for his next performance of the song:  “Hush, little baby, don’t you snore / Mama’s gonna buy you a reactor core / And if that reactor core melts down / We’ll have to move to a different town.”  And then he should play a free show near a nuke plant and encourage his drunken fans to vomit on the precious uranium stockpile.  All this at a James Taylor concert!

My rating:  6 / 10  (The “No Nukes” live version is an 8 / 10.  Harry & Lloyd’s version in Dumb and Dumber is a 10 / 10.)

“Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose” by Dawn featuring Tony Orlando (1973, #3)

One writer’s view:  “Both ‘Sweet Gypsy Rose’ and ‘[Who’s in the Strawberry Patch with Sally]’ are performed in such hammy vaudeville fashion that it’s impossible to care about the protagonist in either one.  The arrangements are stuffed with cheesy effects – everything but slide whistles and rimshots.  The net effect of both is to make you want to pull your arm off and use it to beat yourself to death.” – J.A. Bartlett @ Pop Dose

The public’s view:  2.20 / 5.00

Tony Orlando and Dawn embarked on quite a project in 1973.  They decided to singlehandedly resurrect the vaudeville phase of the early 20th century with their album Dawn’s New Ragtime Follies.  Many Americans enthusiastically threw themselves into this fad.  Sales of cornets and straw boater hats rebounded to levels not seen since 1926, and some folks burned their Samsonite luggage and began transporting their belongings in oversized trunks.  Alas, the craze was over in a few months.  At least it was more durable than the Swing Music Revival of 1998, which ended after just 13 days when a mob of angry citizens forced the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies back into the speakeasy from which they had hatched.

The highlight of Dawn’s New Ragtime Follies was “Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose”.  It is a story song, much like others that Orlando and his group have recorded.  However, it’s a more believable tale than “Knock Three Times” or “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree”.  It describes a woman deserting her husband and children to become a stripper in New Orleans.  She adopts the alias of Gypsy Rose, because most striptease artists of the vaudeville era were named Gypsy Rose.  (It’s like how whales always used to be named Shamu.)  The husband eventually tracks her down despite having to wade through hundreds of Gypsy Roses in the Burlesque Entertainers section of the Yellow Pages, right between the listings for Burial Implements and Burro Meat.  It’s a shame that burro meat never made an appearance in a Tony Orlando story song.

This Gypsy Rose can be distinguished from other Louisiana strippers by the bells on her toes.  You may remember that toe bells were also worn by Fatima in Ray Stevens’s “Ahab, the Arab”, but they are otherwise a rare and unconventional accessory.  I can think of only one reason why someone might want to wear toe bells:  they are a deterrent to athlete’s foot germs.  No one – not even a tinea spore – wants to live in a noisy neighborhood.  Unfortunately, hit songs such as these only hint at the topic of disgusting podiatric ailments without ever diving into the meat of the matter.  We will never know whether Nancy Sinatra had to put antifungal powder in her walking boots, or whether cutting footloose and kicking off the Sunday shoes has been clinically proven to prevent painful bunions.  But at least we can assume that those bells bestowed good health upon Gypsy Rose’s feet.

Gypsy Rose’s husband suggests that people will soon tire of seeing her yawn-inducing naked body, so she might as well come home to her old life of domestic servitude.  The song leaves us to guess whether this is a winning argument, much as “Knock Three Times” never answers whether dangling an unsettling note outside a female neighbor’s window will result in a sexual encounter.  All I can say is that any man who takes relationship advice from Tony Orlando will probably wind up getting kicked in a sensitive region of his body.  Watch out, those toe bells can have some sharp edges.

I can remember “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” dominating the AM car radio for several years when I was a young ‘un.  “Sweet Gypsy Rose” did not have similar staying power.  My view is that it was not a terrible effort, but other performers have also given us musical rehashes of the 1920s.  Consider Leon Redbone, for example.  Redbone is most famous for his classic “This Bud’s for You” commercial.  Let’s compare him to Tony Orlando:

Leon Redbone	Tony Orlando
Made a song about beer	Made a song about telling a woman to put her clothes back on
Song has no boring slow-paced intro	Song has boring slow-paced intro that consumes the first 34 seconds
Awesome mustache	Pretty good mustache
Awesome Panama hat	$300 hairstyle where Panama hat should be
Performed at 0 Republican conventions	Performed at 1 Republican convention
Appeared in 0 movies with Vanilla Ice	Appeared in 1 movie with Vanilla Ice
Dead; will not do anything embarrassing	Alive; probably did something embarrassing while you were reading this post

Not only does Redbone win the coolness competition, his Budweiser ad is better than Orlando’s hit record too.  Sorry, Tony.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Playground in My Mind” by Clint Holmes (1973, #2)

One writer’s view:  “Is there anything more lovely than the voices of little children in song?  Most things, actually.” – J.A. Bartlett @ Pop Dose

The public’s view:  1.22 / 5.00

Nostalgia is a valuable defense mechanism that can protect you from the stress of existing.  Whenever life gets too tough, simply close your eyes and daydream about those childhood days when you didn’t have a care in the world.  Let someone else restock the potato chip aisle, reboot the web server, or drive Ladder Truck 66 to the scene of a working structure fire.  You cannot be bothered right now.  This is the message of Clint Holmes’s “Playground in My Mind”.

Of course, nostalgia always involves remembering events as being better than they really were.  Holmes’s narrator recalls happily taunting other kids about having a nickel and planning to buy candy with it.  This is something that no sensible child would ever do on a playground, because children learn very quickly not to flaunt their wealth.  Aside from the obvious risk of another kid knocking you down and taking your nickel, there is a chance that some adult do-gooder will intervene at the sound of your boasting.  Soon you will be taught a lesson about “sharing” and how a nickel is just five pennies that can be redistributed more equitably among you and your playmates and siblings.  It’s funny how a grown-up can vote Republican in every election but then morph into Bernie Sanders the moment a child has a financial windfall.

Holmes also reminisces about telling a girl on the playground that they will get married someday and then he will knock her up.  Again, this is not something that the narrator would have said or thought as a small child.  Kids may know how to guard a nickel properly, but they do not have conventional notions of matrimony such as those expressed in this song.  I can recall my erstwhile young friends discussing what their eventual marriages would be like, and their plans consisted mostly of bigamy, incest, and unlikely arrangements with the cast of Charlie’s Angels.  A more true-to-life chorus of “Playground” would feature the boy expressing these sorts of unrealistic and taboo nuptial ambitions.  For example, he might declare that he will marry Edith Bunker because she reminds him of his grandmother – whom he also intends to marry.

Otherwise, “Playground” consists of elements that do not belong together, starting with Clint Holmes’s lounge singer act.  He is a little too serious for a near-novelty record such as this, and comes across like a less self-aware version of Tom Jones.  He teams up with songwriter Paul Vance’s 7-year-old son on the choruses, and Holmes’s voice pretty much knocks poor little Philip Vance out of the studio.  Then comes the instrumental bridge, which sounds like an ice cream truck having a nervous breakdown.  Somehow the combination of all of these indecorous musical ideas actually yields a catchy little song.  It isn’t a masterpiece by any stretch, but it’s tolerable for about two or three listens.  I find that it helps if you make up your own words as you sing along.  (“My girl is Edith / She is a dingbat / She will divorce old Archie for me...”)

Holmes’s single languished for months after its release in June 1972, but then a radio station in Kansas started playing it as a Christmas song.  Because, of course, “Playground in My Mind” is almost as Christmasy as palm trees, Buddha, and the 4th of July.  The song got some requests, other stations picked it up, and soon Holmes was rushed into the studio to record an even more childish follow-up:  “Shiddle-Ee-Dee”.  This latter tune would prove to be a career-making record.  Not for Clint Holmes, but for Barry Manilow, because it ensured that Manilow would never have to worry about competition from Clint on the radio.

This doesn’t mean that Holmes just faded away into nothingness.  He has entertained tourists in Vegas and Atlantic City, and he wrote, produced, and starred in an autobiographical musical play that made its debut in 1996.  Can you imagine two and a half hours of watching Clint Holmes act out such personal milestones as his childhood spelling bee win, his ruined prom night, and his wedding?  There aren’t many better excuses for retreating to the playground in your mind.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Sing” by the Carpenters (1973, #3)

One person’s view:  “I don’t know what I dislike more, the slushy-pups lyric, gormlessly simple tune, the godawful children’s chorus but mostly I think it’s the utter waste of Karen Carpenter’s voice on such an undeserving song.” – Lejink @ Rate Your Music 

The public’s view:  2.88 / 5.00

When we examine the Bad Top Ten Hits of the early 1970s, we find the germ-laden fingerprints of children all over them.  Children were the subjects of questionable hit songs such as “Clair” and “Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast”.  Youngsters, usually those with names like “Donny” or “Marie”, sang on some of the era’s most reviled records.  And as if that wasn’t enough, several of the critically disparaged top tens first appeared on kids’ TV shows.  This is the lasting legacy of Little Big Time (“Gimme Dat Ding”) and Groovie Goolies (“Chick-A-Boom”), but those two obscure programs must now yield the floor.  We’re about to hear from the 800-pound gorilla of children’s television – or, more accurately, the 800-pound yellow ostrich.  “Sing” emanated from the land where everything’s A-OK, clouds are swept away like last week’s toenail clippings, and Mr. Hooper has been forced by one deranged blue-furred individual to keep all of his store’s cookies locked up behind the counter with the cigarettes and the condoms.  I am of course talking about Sesame Street, which was beamed into billions of kids’ eyeballs every day on PBS.

The debut performance of “Sing” by the Sesame Street cast must have been a fine spectacle, but I can’t find any footage of it to share with you.  You’ll just have to imagine Big Bird’s beak opening to its full extent as the notes pour out of it.  However, the tune did not go directly from Sesame Street to the pop charts.  It first made a stop on an ABC variety special emceed by Marcus Welby, M.D. actor Robert Young and featuring several celebrity guests.  The network decided that the show’s subject matter should be based on the host’s name, so they titled it “Robert Young and the Young” and built the entire program around the theme of youth.  (Good thing the host wasn’t Dick Butkus.)  To drive home the point, they assembled a generic group of children as co-stars.

ABC knew very little about people under the age of 20 who weren’t part of the Partridge Family, and they struggled with how to utilize the kids on Young’s special.  They snuck a peek at archrival PBS’s programming for ideas, but overlooked the obvious approach:  hiring the host of PBS’s Firing Line, William F. Buckley Jr., to engage the children in a lively discussion of the failures of Keynesian economics.  It is unclear why they didn’t do this.  Perhaps Buckley demanded that a working model of the Federal Reserve be built for the set, and the network couldn’t afford it.  Instead, ABC did the next best thing.  They borrowed “Sing” from Sesame Street and asked Laugh-In regular Arte Johnson to lead the little tykes in a sing-along of the tune.

Another of the show’s guests – the Carpenters – was impressed by the song.  The duo enthusiastically volunteered to take it into the studio and record a version for all of the people who never watched ABC or PBS.  There was a whole demographic who didn’t know how to get to Sesame Street and still hadn’t been subjected to “Sing”.  Many of these same individuals didn’t realize that there was a difference between Marcus Welby and Marcus Garvey, at least not until they tried to see the doctor for a sore throat and wound up on a ship to Liberia.

Karen and Richard Carpenter didn’t just believe in “Sing”’s potential to be a hit; they wanted it to be the lead single from their new album.  Richard has since remarked that their label wasn’t happy about this, and that “most of our associates thought we were nuts.”  He and his sister were correct that their rendition would sell some copies, but it did so by undercutting the song’s premise.  The message of “Sing” is that you are supposed to sing even if you stink at it and no one wants to hear you.  It’s a simplistic tune that works best in a lackadaisical TV skit with a group of untrained children, a Laugh-In comedian, or a guy in a giant bird suit.  Sesame Street proved that “Sing” can even be babbled in Spanish or signed to the deaf, and the lyrics will have just as little significance as they do in English.  The only thing that “Sing” isn’t intended for is a slick production featuring one of the best soft rock vocalists of all time.  And thus it became perhaps the least admired gold record in the Carpenters’ catalog.

You may think that we’ve hit the nadir of childish hit music of the 1970s.  Nothing could be more juvenile than a song from Sesame Street, right?  Wrong.  Stay tuned.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Clair” by Gilbert O’Sullivan (1972, #2)

One person’s view:  “Come on, you think he didn't know [the lyrics] sounded perverted?  Of course, he did.  Why he or his manager, Clair's dad, or her mom allowed this I do not know except to say that greed rules.” – Glinda47 @ Songfacts

The public’s view:  3.17 / 5.00

Gilbert O’Sullivan was bursting with a happy feeling of naïveté during his brief moment in the spotlight, having blissfully failed to anticipate the inappropriate meanings people might ascribe to his lyrics.  To use his terminology, he was cheerful, bright, and gay.  When he wrote a tune about a man who was unlucky with women, and called it “Underneath the Blanket Go”, he was genuinely surprised that everyone incorrectly assumed the title referred to masturbation.  “Clair” was even more misunderstood.  It was a tribute to his manager’s three-year-old daughter, with whom O’Sullivan had developed a close friendship.  Certainly, Gilbert thought, no one would misconstrue this beautiful song about the bond between a babysitter and a babysat?  As it turns out, he thought wrong.

The controversy might have been avoided if the lyrics were more direct.  The first verse of “Clair” lulls the listener into the belief that Clair is the singer’s girlfriend, and we don’t learn until later in the song that she’s actually a small child.  It’s an uncomfortable twist, but not an inherently disgusting one like in Billy J. Kramer’s infamous “Little Children”.  “Little Children” deliberately leads us to believe that the narrator is a pervert, and the surprise at the end is that he’s a different kind of pervert.  “Clair” is pure sugary sweetness, by contrast, except for the part where O’Sullivan complains about the girl becoming a monstrous terror in the evenings when told to go to bed.  If you hear anything untoward in it, it means you have a problem on your end.

Although I disagree with those who say “Clair” is obscene, I have to acknowledge that it’s pretty weird.  The song never explains why a man in his 20s has formed such an instant attachment to someone else’s toddler who he has been told to supervise.  It would be less bizarre if he had grown fond of his manager’s pet snake and had written lyrics praising Fluffy the Burmese python.  At least snakes are interesting and you can put them down people’s pants as an amusing prank.  You can’t use three-year-old children in this manner and instead have to intentionally lose games to them to prevent them from throwing tantrums.  The brats can’t even play Stratego at a competent level, and yet we are all expected to massage their fragile egos.

Gilbert O’Sullivan hasn’t had a hit in many decades, but his brand of oblivious innocence might be refreshing to today’s beleaguered citizenry.  Here are a few song premises that he can try out if he wants:

“Epstein Was My Friend (R.I.P.)” – an ode to the late actor Robert Hegyes, who played the beloved character of Juan Epstein on Welcome Back, Kotter

“Now I’ve Joined the Clan” – about the day that O’Sullivan’s in-laws finally accepted him as a member of their extended family

“She’s Gonna Find My Big Snake in Her Pants” – a musical guide to harmless practical jokes with a pet reptile

“Keep Our Dark Secret Forever (Clair Pt. 2)” – a reminder to Clair never to tell anyone about the time O’Sullivan dozed off while he was supposed to be watching her and she ate a cigarette butt

I promise not to sue O’Sullivan if he uses any of the above ideas.  I probably wouldn’t win anyway, as he has a pretty good track record in court.  He sued his manager, Clair’s father, and was awarded millions of pounds for unpaid royalties.  (I don’t know whether he also won back wages for babysitting.)  He later sued Biz Markie for an unauthorized sample and forced an entire album to be recalled from stores in December 1991, resulting in lots of disappointed rap fans who had expected to find some Biz under the Christmas tree.  You can call him Gilbert O’Scrooge if you like, but when it comes to any interpretations of “Clair” that aren’t cheerful, bright, and gay – don’t go there.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Convention ‘72” by the Delegates (1972, #8)

One writer’s view:  “Although to the record’s credit it does sample (a term that was not in use in 1972) a couple of good songs by groups such as the Bee Gees, Three Dog Night, and the O’Jays, most of the sampled music is [as] bad as the premise behind the song itself...” – Dr. Rick Simmons @ REBEAT

The public’s view:  2.61 / 5.00

Welcome to the great American shitshow known as a presidential election.  While all elections are painful ordeals for the citizenry, 1972 was one of the worst because voters that year didn’t really have a choice.  The Democratic candidate George McGovern was known for lunatic left-wing positions such as opposing the Vietnam War, favoring the decriminalization of marijuana, and supporting a woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions (as long as she doesn’t defy the whims of her state legislators).  Due to McGovern’s extreme views, the Republican ticket of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew was the only viable option.  The lopsided outcome was evident well in advance, and most Americans tuned out by September.  But just a few weeks before Election Day, the Delegates’ “Convention ‘72” hit the airwaves and everyone was forced to pay attention again.  A weary people emitted a tremendous national groan.

“Convention ‘72” is a political version of the comedic “break-in” records that had been pioneered by Dickie Goodman and Bill Buchanan in the 1950s.  As an amateur humor writer, I am sympathetic to the difficulties that the Delegates faced when trying to produce a funny novelty song.  I’ve spent dozens of hours meticulously crafting jokes that I later discarded after realizing that they were never as hilarious as I first thought.  (You’ve seen the material that I’ve kept, so you can imagine how awful the throw-away stuff was.)  Plus, some of my best ideas can’t be made to work in the places where I need them.  For my post about Bobby Vinton’s Bad Top Ten Hit, I wrote an extended joke involving the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.  It was witty and brilliant, and you would have loved reading it, but after I had finished three paragraphs it dawned on me that it had nothing to do with Bobby Vinton and I couldn’t use any of it.  I probably should have also stopped myself before referencing the Ayatollah Khomeini in last week’s entry on Wayne Newton.

The creators of “Convention ‘72” understood that it’s the introspection and self-editing that makes comedy writing so tedious, so they decided to skip that step.  They kept all of their material whether it was funny or not, and dwelled on some of it for far too long.  One bit, in particular, was driven into the ground:  the running joke about a horny Henry Kissinger galloping around the convention site while muttering “gotta find a woman, gotta find a woman.”  We all know that Mr. Kissinger was quite a ladies’ man.  He was a lot more popular with Hollywood starlets than he was with, say, Cambodian villagers.  But this snippet of the Jimmy Castor Bunch’s “Troglodyte (Cave Man)” wasn’t especially amusing the first time it appeared in “Convention ‘72”, and it didn’t need to resurface twice more – along with three other samples from the same godforsaken song.  The “gotta find a woman” line would have worked much better if used ironically by a political figure who no one expects to be chasing women.  However, I don’t know who the 1972 equivalent of Lindsey Graham might have been.

Incidentally, all of the “Troglodyte” samples were used without obtaining prior consent from Jimmy Castor.  Shortly after “Convention ‘72” was released, the members of the Delegates were heard muttering “gotta find a lawyer, gotta find a lawyer.”

Much of the rest of the material focuses on the choice of vice presidential running mates.  This is like someone releasing a similar record in 2016 and devoting 60% of it to those two bland slabs of Oreo filling known as Mike Pence and Tim Kaine.  Meanwhile, “Convention ‘72” leaves other potentially humorous topics untouched.  There are no lines about Ted Kennedy’s amphibious driving habits, the strange burglary at the Democrats’ headquarters in the Watergate complex, or Nixon’s fondness of pouring ketchup on his cottage cheese.  And McGovern’s wacko proposals, which were dictating the entire course of the election, go unaddressed by the Delegates like the proverbial elephant (or donkey) in the room.  This record should have concluded with the liberal hippie senator offering Nixon a joint, and the two of them smoking it together while singing “One Toke Over the Line”.

The “break-in” format serves as a handicap to novelty music writers, as it limits them to jokes based on recent hit songs.  It’s as if I committed to writing this post without using the letter “a”, or insisted on making each sentence a palindrome.  The Delegates were unable to tease McGovern for his love of abortion because there were no major singles from 1971 or 1972 with lyrics that were relevant to this topic.  It had been way too many years since the Drifters were on the charts with “There Goes My Baby”.

There is only one moment in this song that gives me a snicker:  when one of the reporters is introduced as “David Stinkley”.  But maybe the other jokes were funny to people in 1972.  This generation was taught to laugh upon hearing “Ahab, the Arab” and the phrase “Sock it to me.”  The standards for humor were pretty low.

My rating:  2 / 10

“Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast” by Wayne Newton (1972, #4)

One person’s view:  “I don’t think Sinatra could have saved this turkey.” – hanspostcard @ slicethelife

The public’s view:  2.05 / 5.00

There are few things that can boost a city’s civic pride and tourism appeal like an association with an amazing musician.  San Antonio was once known mainly for a tired old fort, but today’s visitors are more interested in seeing the high school that Christopher Cross attended.  Columbia, South Carolina will someday honor its hometown heroes Hootie & the Blowfish in the way that South Carolina honors everything:  by erecting a statue of a Confederate general at the spot where the band formed.  And can you imagine what Las Vegas would be like if Wayne Newton had never existed?  It would be little more than an I-15 truck stop with twenty gas pumps, a couple of slot machines, and one bedraggled hooker.

The 83-year-old Newton has done over 30,000 concerts in Vegas, and continues his residency at the Flamingo even as he mysteriously morphs into a wax mannequin.  This is an impressive streak, but I should mention that Vegas shows aren’t always known for their tight quality control.  If you’re going to screw up as a performer you should always try to do it in front of tired drunks who are thinking more about how to recoup their gambling losses than they are about your inadequacies.  I recall seeing a well-known magician on the Strip in the 1990s.  The show began badly, with dancers tripping on a coat hanger that had accidentally been left on the stage.  Then, having neglected to load up on alcohol beforehand, I could easily discern how several of the illusions were accomplished.  Imperfectly aligned mirrors were used to conceal parts of the set, objects “levitated” with the aid of wires that glinted in the light, and the star employed a body double who looked more like a step-cousin than an identical twin.  It was the most unconvincing magic act I’ve witnessed – and I’ve seen cruise ship magicians.

Wayne Newton’s Vegas shows are still widely praised, but recent reviews suggest that his voice might no longer pass quality control.  As a young man he was capable of an oddly high pitch, leading many listeners to erroneously assume that tunes such as “Danke Schoen” were performed by a schoolmarm.  Eventually he grew a wisp of a mustache, and this caused his voice to deepen to match his more masculine appearance.  He was no longer as distinctive of a singer, but was still a hard-working and highly talented lounge act.  Today he is in the third and possibly final phase of his career, and his concerts rely more heavily on crowd interactions and storytelling than on his legendary pipes.  I suppose we can forgive Newton if his larynx is showing signs of wear and tear after 30,000 shows.  A man’s vocal abilities might also suffer if he were to inject his facial muscles with enough Botox to take the wrinkles out of a shar-pei.  There is absolutely no proof that Newton has undergone cosmetic procedures, however, and I refuse to entertain any scurrilous rumors of that nature.

“Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast” came along as Newton was turning 30 and his voice was in the latter stages of adolescence.  The song is about a guy attempting to flee his wife, who is evidently an unmitigated horror to live with.  His escape is thwarted when his manipulative young daughter guilts him into staying in the oppressive marriage for her own selfish reasons.  And yet, some folks inexplicably describe this as a heart-warming ditty with a happy ending.  These people also think that “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” depicts a pleasant and relaxing day of boating.

Despite the maudlin subject matter and the morose lyrics, the singing and musicianship is so proficient that it’s impossible for me to thoroughly hate this record.  The piano accompaniment is nice, and I especially like the second chorus when Newton does his own thing and wanders away from the orchestra for a moment.  Good for him.  The Mafia, however, was apparently not a fan of Newton’s performance and later threatened to kill him.  That seems like a bit of an overreaction.  I would have loved to hear how the mobsters reached that decision:

Mr. Gravano:  This meeting of the Italian-American Nontraditional Commerce Society shall come to order.  Thank you for your attendance here at the Hoboken Hilton.  First on the agenda is a proposal to purchase asphalt footwear for Wayne Newton as a token of our appreciation for “Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast”.

Mr. Gotti:  So I guess we’re music critics now?  Maybe we should sell our high-interest loan venture and start a stupid blog about top ten hits.

Mr. Khomeini:  Speaking of music, I’d like to put a fatwa on Donny Osmond.  “Go Away Little Girl” offends Allah, as well as everyone else.

Mr. Gotti:  You’re in the wrong place, pal.  Ayatollahs Anonymous is in Conference Room D.

Mr. Gravano:  Hey, wait a minute.  Beardy-face here is the one who took all the bacon at the breakfast bar this morning.  Maybe our Iranian friend would enjoy a refreshing swim in Lake Mead with Mr. Las Vegas?

Mr. Khomeini:  I would like that very much.  The hospitality in this country is as amazing as the bacon.  Long live America!

My rating:  4 / 10

“Puppy Love” by Donny Osmond (1972, #3)

One person’s view:  “Anka’s original from 1960 wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, but Osmond manages to make it even worse.” – Joe @ ILoveClassicRock

The public’s view:  1.48 / 5.00

I didn’t start following the pop charts until the late 1970s, so I never developed the intense lifelong hatred for the Osmonds that afflicts those who experienced the family’s music first-hand.  Therefore, my first instinct is to defend them.  I’ve lived through “Separate Lives”, Bryan Adams movie themes, and Soulja Boy.  Certainly the Osmonds couldn’t have been any worse?  After investigating this matter, however, I have come to understand the criticism.  I now feel that the Osmond siblings, and especially Donny, deserve their notoriety as the most prolific purveyors of Bad Top Ten Hits in all of history.

This is not to say that they are bad people.  Far from it.  Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jay, Donny, Marie, and Little Jimmy have never been caught in a scandal.  You might occasionally read a tabloid story about one of their children or grandchildren doing something unbecoming, like parking in front of a fire hydrant or experimenting with caffeine, but that can’t be avoided when you have hundreds of lineal descendants.  (It is estimated that one-third of all Americans will be part Osmond by the year 2075.)  The Osmonds have also mostly avoided divisive politics, except for Donny’s public opposition to same-sex marriage in 2008.  I’m sure that gay couples appreciated being lectured about deviant relationships by a guy known for singing love songs to his sister.

Tallying up the Osmond family’s many hit singles is like counting the number of casualties from a gruesome choir loft explosion.  The Osmonds had four top tens as a group, Donny had six solo, Marie had one, and Donny and Marie had two as a duo.  Most of these records are eligible for inclusion on this blog; i.e., they are widely regarded as painful listening experiences.  If I were to give each one the attention that it deserves, I would be stuck writing about our dentally gifted friends from Utah almost every week until Thanksgiving.  I need to select one top ten hit to serve as the scapegoat for all of the Osmonds’ musical sins, and Donny’s rendition of “Puppy Love” gets the honor.

I chose “Puppy Love” partly because it has the lowest Rate Your Music score of any of the family’s top tens, but also because it exemplifies the questionable handling of the siblings’ career.  This crew was talented in many ways, and the Osmonds’ most highly praised hit, “Down by the Lazy River”, was written by two of the brothers without any outside help.  But when their management wasn’t trying to market them as a less menacing version of the Jackson 5, it was mostly feeding them remakes of songs that should have been left in the dustbin where they were found.

Of course, there were other ‘70s acts that relied heavily on redoing other people’s old records.  Linda Ronstadt famously made a vocation out of this.  The difference is that Ronstadt had the good taste to cover Martha & the Vandellas, Chuck Berry, and Warren Zevon, while Donny and Marie were rehashing Dale & Grace, Steve Lawrence, and Anita Bryant.  This was the artistic jetsam of the early 1960s, the music that had been cast overboard at roughly the same time that the Beatles set Pete Best adrift on a raft in the North Sea for refusing to adopt an ugly hairstyle.  Hearing these forgotten songs again was like taking a time machine backwards and mentally undoing all of the scary progress of the preceding 10 to 15 years.  The Moon was now unspoiled by human footprints.  The Civil Rights Act was no longer in force.  Father Knows Best was back on the air 24/7, replacing all the shows that made jokes about birth control and toilets.  Osmond fans ate up this perverse nostalgia like the masochists that they were.

The choice of source material raises an interesting question of causation.  Did the siblings’ producers deliberately seek to remake songs with poor critical reputations, or do the older versions now have bad reputations because they were remade by Donny and/or Marie?  Philosophers continue to debate that, but either way there is general agreement that the Osmonds’ cover tunes were inferior to the originals.  No matter how accurately Donny and Marie hit all the notes, there was something forced and insincere about their work.  The children were ordered to sing about romantic situations that they had not yet experienced, and woe be to them if they did a half-assed job.  Mike Curb never threatened them with physical violence, but the brother and sister knew that a lack of effort would bring disgrace to their family, their church, and the bell bottoms that they were wearing.

While none of the cover singles were timeless treasures, some were decidedly worse than others.  My other blog highlighted Donny’s “Go Away Little Girl”, a song whose rise to #1 was achieved only through the direct personal intervention of Satan.  “Puppy Love” is not nearly so offensive.  For one thing, it is not literally about a romantic fixation on a puppy as most listeners incorrectly believe.  Paul Anka wrote it for his teenage love Annette Funicello, and his original recording from 1960 has some authentic charm to it.  There was absolutely no need to remake it in the 1970s, nor to extend it by half a minute in its new iteration, but at least 14-year-old Donny wasn’t a thoroughly inappropriate choice to sing it as he had been with “Go Away Little Girl”.  And at least he wasn’t singing it to Marie.  Or Marie’s dog.

Donny Osmond has something of a love-hate relationship with “Puppy Love”.  He once tried to distance himself from it, even mockingly performing a heavy metal version at a concert, but relented when a fan told him that he was disrespecting her childhood memories.  That wouldn’t have stopped me.  Disrespecting childhood memories is a big part of what I do here at the Bad Top Ten Hits blog.

My rating:  3 / 10