“Sometimes When We Touch” by Dan Hill (1978, #3)

One critic’s view:  “Hill, who wrote these words to ruin a perfectly good melody by Brill Building legend Barry Mann, bends over backwards in an attempt to make failure to commit seem somehow noble and romantic.” – Robert Fontenot @ About.com

One comedian’s view:  “Top Ten Headlines That Would Start a Panic  ...  Number Three:  ‘Sometimes When We Touch’ Made National Anthem”, David Letterman, The “Late Night with David Letterman” Book of Top Ten Lists (1990)

The public’s view:  1.96 / 5.00

We’re up to 1978, the year that I first became aware of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and its often tenuous connection to the songs that were played on the AM radio in my mom’s car.  If the Hot 100 was to be believed, the most popular tunes of the era were “You Light Up My Life”, “Night Fever”, and “Shadow Dancing”.  Those three hits combined to hog the #1 position for nearly six entire months, but there were three others that I heard far more often:  Pablo Cruise’s “Love Will Find a Way”, Player’s “Baby Come Back”, and Dan Hill’s “Sometimes When We Touch”.  I grew to detest these three overplayed songs, at least one of which was guaranteed to sully the speakers on every single ten-minute ride to school or to Grandma’s house.

My hatred for these records eventually dimmed after other tracks replaced them in heavy rotation on the air.  Today I look back at them with nostalgia, and can admit that “Love Will Find a Way” is actually a pretty good song when I don’t have to hear it every goddamn moment of the day.  “Baby Come Back” is still not something I would voluntarily listen to, but I at least see the humor in its absurd level of pathos and the dude’s ridiculous high note near the end.  My view of “Sometimes When We Touch” is more nuanced and complicated.  Sort of like Dan Hill’s feelings.

I recently wrote about Kenny Nolan’s “I Like Dreamin’”, a ballad so bland that it passes right through the brain without making any lasting impression.  “Sometimes When We Touch” may be the polar opposite of “I Like Dreamin’”.  Everything about it is memorable:  a beautiful melody written by Barry Mann, dramatic orchestration that would make Manilow jealous, Dan Hill’s earnest vocals, and – most of all – the lyrics.  Sweet merciful crap on a diving board, those are some memorably bizarre lyrics.  Even as an 8-year-old kid, I knew that something about them was a little off.

“Sometimes When We Touch” is not a romantic devotional; it is a song about an unhappy relationship between two people who keep hoping that the other will eventually change.  Hill won’t tell his girlfriend that he loves her because he just isn’t feeling it.  Maybe someday things will be different, but don’t hold your breath.  He justifies his unwillingness to say the L-word by calling himself a “hesitant prizefighter”.  (If you’re going to rationalize your faults, you might as well do it in a way that makes you sound athletic.)  Hill’s reticence is not the couple’s only problem.  The woman can be kind of a handful herself, so there are times that the singer would like to break her and drive her to her knees.  The pleasant music masks all of this turmoil, causing “Sometimes When We Touch” to rank up there with “Every Breath You Take” and “You’re Beautiful” as a song that should never be played at weddings but sometimes is.

I like that “Sometimes When We Touch” is not an obsequious ode of worship for a lady, as is so annoyingly common in soft rock.  Lionel Richie would rather shave his head than sing lyrics like these, and I see that as a plus.  On the other hand, the grandiose piano, strings, and vocals all add up to very little in the end.  This is not a call to action, nor is it a promise that the singer will ever make the kind of commitment that is expected of him.  It’s just an expression of emotions and excuses that, at very best, might placate a woman for a day or two.  More likely, it is going to piss her off.

We don’t have to speculate as to how a female will react upon being fed these lines.  Like a doctor who injects his family with his own experimental vaccine, Dan Hill bravely tried out “Sometimes When We Touch” on his girlfriend before singing it to anyone else.  She then immediately left the country with another man.  Let that be a warning to anyone who treats this as a love song.

My rating:  5 / 10 

“I’m in You” by Peter Frampton (1977, #2)

One person’s view:  “Quite possibly the worst piece of garbage I’ve ever had to listen to.  The cover is surely a clue to the crap that lies within, and yet the crap within almost surpasses the cover for being total shit!” – Drummer1956 @ Rate Your Music, regarding the I’m in You LP

The public’s view:  2.65 / 5.00

“Wah.  Wah wah wah wah wah.  Wah WAH WAH WAH!”  This was a ubiquitous battle cry of my 1970s childhood, courtesy of Peter Frampton’s “Show Me the Way”.  I always enjoyed hearing Frampton’s unique guitar work on the radio, especially when his six-string sounded like it was talking, crying, or throwing up.  But “I’m in You”, his biggest chart single, was a piano ballad whose brief guitar solo lacked any interesting talk box effects.  Seven-Year-Old Me could find nothing of value in “I’m in You”, and even Fifty-Something Me has had to work hard to find good things to say for this review.  (Eleven-Year-Old Me might have at least gotten an inappropriate laugh from the song’s title, but radio had moved on from Frampton by that time.)  Today, Frampton’s huge hit beckons us to ponder its divisive legacy.

It’s important to consider the context of the I’m in You album.  This was the successor to Frampton Comes Alive!, the biggest LP of 1976 and the best-selling live album ever at that point.  Frampton felt the pressure to deliver another commercial smash, but Frampton Comes Alive! was not part of a formula that could be replicated.  Building another album around the talk box gimmick would be like the Captain & Tennille putting out a second song about muskrats.  Instead, to maximize its sales, Frampton’s follow-up record needed to attract new audiences who weren’t into guitar rock at all.  For this reason, he included a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” and released it as the second single.  This was a defensible move, but many fans preferred Frampton’s original music and didn’t see him as an R&B act.  “I’m in You”, the first single, was even more controversial.  It was soft enough to reach the easy listening chart, and that wasn’t exactly a badge of honor.  Maybe the new album should have been called Frampton Goes to Sleep!

I’m in You went platinum, but the alienation of much of Frampton’s fan base might not have been worth it.  Making matters worse, he was in the midst of a terrible streak of bad luck.  First, his shirts all lost their buttons in a laundry mishap and would no longer close properly.  This caused every photo of him to be marred by an unwanted glimpse of his chest, and people began to confuse him with Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett.  Many folks walked into record stores to buy I’m in You and then walked right back out when they saw the album sleeve.  Next, Frampton was badly injured in a car accident.  After recovering well enough to go out on the road again, his South American tour was disrupted by the crash of a plane that was carrying his gear.  He assumed that his favorite guitar had burned up in the disaster, but in fact someone had found it in the debris and taken it home.  It wasn’t reunited with its owner until 31 years later after a guy at a music shop recognized it as the instrument on the cover of Frampton Comes Alive!  It was the most famous talking guitar in the world, yet it never talked when it really needed to.

Then there was the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band project, in which Peter Frampton co-starred with the Bee Gees in a movie based on an old Beatles album.  To explain this to readers under 30:  this is like if Morgan Wallen co-starred with BTS in a movie based on an old Destiny’s Child album.  Or like if you order orange juice and fabric softener from the grocery, and they arrive together in the same jug which the Instacart driver then dumps on your head.  The Sgt. Pepper’s debacle ended Frampton’s second career as an actor just as it was beginning, but it isn’t as though Peter sank the film all on his own.  It was a collaborative effort that squandered dozens of people’s talents to create one of the most enduring cinematic bombs of all time.  Even the 2017 Blu-ray release of Sgt. Pepper’s, which allowed home video enthusiasts to savor Frampton’s toothy grin in high resolution, did not prompt a reassessment of the movie.  Critic Matt Brunson noted that “its standing as a turkey for the ages remains undiminished.”

Although often cited as a power ballad, “I’m in You” sort of plods along without ever generating much power.  There aren’t any poetic lyrics that might justify the effort of listening to it.  I didn’t care for the song until I found a clip of it from a Frampton concert in 2024.  He delivers superb vocals and pleasant guitar pluckin’ in this rendition, and forsakes the heavy synths that marred the 1977 studio version.  This elder statesman’s stamina should give all of us hope that we will still be effectively plying our respective trades into our twilight years.  I bet you’re looking forward to another two decades of reading my inane blog posts.

While “I’m in You” has aged gracefully along with its performer, Frampton is probably better known today for his GEICO commercial.  And for those of us in Generation X, he is still remembered mainly for “Wah.  Wah wah wah wah wah...”  Those are words to live by, and they are a lot more insightful than “I’m in you, you’re in me.”

My rating:  4 / 10  (The live version from 2024 is a 6 / 10.)

“I Like Dreamin’” by Kenny Nolan (1977, #3)

One person’s view:  “This song is by turns sappy and creepy.  It’s like a stalker’s theme song.” – Sheila @ Songfacts

The public’s view:  2.21 / 5.00

You may have heard of the Mandela Effect, which causes inaccurate memories to spread through the population and embed themselves in our culture.  One example is the commonly held belief that Humphrey Bogart’s character in Casablanca urges a pianist to “Play it again, Sam.”  If you watch the film closely, you will observe that Bogie never quite says those words.  His actual line is:  “Luke, I am your father.”  Sam the pianist was very confused after being told this.

Today we’re going to discuss a related phenomenon of the human memory.  A bleak musical event once washed over the United States and disrupted the lives of 200 million people, but then all of them immediately forgot that it had happened.  This was a case of collective amnesia, the reverse of the Mandela Effect.  Let’s call it the Kenny Nolan Effect.

I began investigating this incident a few years ago after perusing Billboard’s official list of the biggest hits of 1977.  I was baffled by the presence of an unfamiliar record all the way up at #6 on the survey, ahead of such famous chart-toppers as “Dancing Queen” and “Hotel California”.  Who in the wide world of hell was Kenny Nolan, and what was “I Like Dreamin’”?  I had been immersed in pop music and the Billboard charts for nearly my entire life, and yet I did not recognize either the performer or the song.  I was determined to find out why this massively successful hit single had completely escaped my notice.

My first instinct was to question Billboard’s data.  Maybe this song didn’t really exist, and the magazine had added a fictitious entry to its year-end chart to trip up plagiarists?  It was doubtful, however, that Billboard would have risked its reputation by putting a bogus tune all the way up in the top ten for an entire year.  When mapmakers place copyright traps in their work, they add imperceptible features like extra squiggles in a river.  Billboard listing Kenny Nolan at #6 for 1977 is the equivalent of the Rand McNally Road Atlas plopping a huge new city of 150,000 people onto the Arizona desert and calling it “Surprise”.  It’s too absurd and outrageous to be a lie, so it has to be real.  Plus, Wikipedia indicates that “I Like Dreamin’” was also a hit in Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand.  I wouldn’t put it past Canada or South Africa to go along with a Billboard stunt, but the good people of New Zealand would never stand for such tomfoolery.  Clearly, “I Like Dreamin’” was a real song that was popular at one time.

I thought of another possible explanation for why I didn’t recognize this record.  Perhaps Kenny Nolan was an avant-garde auteur who gave his songs idiosyncratic titles that had nothing to do with their lyrics?  If so, I might have heard “I Like Dreamin’” a hundred times without knowing what it was.  However, I was forced to reject this hypothesis after listening to “I Like Dreamin’” on YouTube.  The song was not something I recalled ever hearing, and there was nothing pretentious or misleading about its title.  The very first line is “I like dreamin’”, and all of the verses are about why Kenny Nolan likes dreamin’.  Gosh almighty, does he like dreamin’.  If Nolan had wanted to make an unconventional artistic statement, he would have called this song “She Blinded Me with Science” or “Theme from ‘Rocky’”.  He did not.

I finally concluded that I almost certainly had suffered many encounters with the song in 1977, but they had not left any lasting impression.  “I Like Dreamin’” evaporates from the memory shortly after it is heard.  It is like a Snapchat message that disappears upon being read, or a fart that can be smelled only once before dissipating.  Even now, just a couple hours after playing “I Like Dreamin’” on YouTube a second time, I can hardly remember anything about it.  I am evidently not the only one, as modern popular culture is devoid of any references to Kenny or his hit song.  By unspoken agreement, all of society has decided to forget the sixth-biggest record of 1977 and the guy who made it.  It is the Kenny Nolan Effect in action.

Now I am listening to the song again so that I can review it, and I have a revelation:  “I Like Dreamin’” is mostly just an inferior version of Frankie Valli’s “My Eyes Adored You”.  Both songs feature a dude pining for a woman, and they have musical similarities as well.  To its credit, “My Eyes Adored You” is sentimental and has some sweetness to it.  Valli’s character lived a good life, and his only regret is that he isn’t still with his childhood crush.  By contrast, the narrator of “I Like Dreamin’” is pathetic.  He keeps dreaming about someone who has either rejected him or who he is too afraid to approach.  I get the impression that he sleeps with a blow-up doll and this woman’s photo is taped to the face.  It’s depressing and a little gross.

“I Like Dreamin’” never wormed its way into our brains because the memory cells that it needed were already occupied by Frankie Valli’s hit.  It’s the same reason why no one remembers Ernest Goes to Africa.  That would require pushing Ernest Goes to Camp or Ernest Goes to Jail out of our heads, and we refuse to do it.  Nonetheless, Nolan can’t be too upset about the situation.  Guess who is listed as a co-writer of “My Eyes Adored You”?  The Kenny Nolan Effect may have wiped away the legacy of his monster hit of 1977, but his finances are probably doing just fine.

My rating:  2 / 10

“Muskrat Love” by the Captain & Tennille (1976, #4)

One person’s view:  “We burned disco records at the end of the decade, but not this?” – music blogger Dr. Nelson Winston

The public’s view:  1.73 / 5.00

There are lots of famous songs about animals, but very few that depict the animal in the act of mating.  The crocodile in “Crocodile Rock” is not having sex.  The chameleon in “Karma Chameleon” is not having sex.  Same for the eagle in “Fly Like an Eagle”, the tiger in “Eye of the Tiger”, and Snoopy in “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron”.  “Muskrat Love” is a rare exception.  It describes the lustful romantic endeavors of two muskrats named Susie and Sam, who like to nibble on bacon, cheese, and each other.  The concept alone is enough to put the song on almost every list of bad hit records of the 1970s.

“Muskrat Love” didn’t originate with the Captain & Tennille.  It first appeared on the self-titled album by singer-songwriter Willis Alan Ramsey in 1972, and few people at the time found it to be upsetting or inappropriate.  Whenever you buy a record of gritty modern folk music by some guy you’ve barely heard of, you can’t complain if one of the songs turns out to be about muskrat sex.  It’s the risk that you take.  Some listeners even tolerated the tune well enough that they encouraged Ramsey to make a second album.  He declined, saying, “What’s wrong with the first one?”  He has stood by this decision to the present day.  Whether you respect “Muskrat Love” or not, you have to respect Willis Alan Ramsey.

Unlike Ramsey’s record, which was little known outside of underground Bohemian folkie hipster circles, the Captain & Tennille’s cover version of “Muskrat Love” was impossible to avoid.  Not only did it reach #4 on the Hot 100, it also topped the easy listening chart.  This meant that people in stores and doctors’ offices were bombarded with the tale of Muskrat Susie and Muskrat Sam when they weren’t in the mood for it at all.  Meanwhile, actual muskrats were staying under the radar.  Despite their abundant population and a habitat that ranges over most of North America, they are rarely spotted in the wild.  There isn’t a muskrat exhibit at the zoo, either, because muskrats don’t bring in crowds.  No one is going to spend $30 on zoo admission to see a muskrat, unless it is to see one getting fed to an elephant.  “Muskrat Love” is virtually the entire sum of publicity that Ondatra zebithicus has received in the past century, so now the species is forever linked in everyone’s minds to Toni Tennille and her nautically themed husband.

Aside from having a hit record about them, there is one thing about muskrats that distinguishes them from beavers, otters, and similar riffraff.  Muskrat is one of only two types of meat that Catholics are allowed to eat on Fridays during Lent.  The other is capybara.  I know it sounds like I made this up as a joke, but I didn’t.  You have to accept a lot of really weird and arbitrary shit if you want to be Catholic.  It wouldn’t be surprising for the Pope to decree that all Catholics must wear purple pants on Tuesdays during Advent.  Anyway, because they are exempted from this bizarre rule about meat, muskrats are commonly served at Lenten church barbecues in parts of Michigan.  Just try to imagine yourself enjoying a delicious muskrat-and-pimento hoagie at St. Bobbalitius Church while washing it down with a cup of capybara juice.  Jesus will be smiling down on you for obeying the Vatican’s ridiculous commands, so don’t ruin the moment by humming “Muskrat Love”.  Your festive meal is not the best time to contemplate the past reproductive activities of the rodent in your sandwich, or to think about the other furry critter that is now mourning its lost paramour.

Willis Alan Ramsey’s original is a serious and contemplative musical work, but the Captain & Tennille added some silly sound effects to their version.  They must have picked up some tips from Pat Boone’s Guide to Half-Assing a Novelty Hit.  Let’s just be thankful that The Ray Stevens Manual of Ethnic Generalizations was checked out of the library that day, probably by Bernie Taupin as he was writing the lyrics for “Island Girl”.

Whatever you think of the result, the Captain & Tennille deserve props for taking a chance on a quirky tune.  This wasn’t a lazy cash grab like the Beach Boys single that I wrote about last week.  It was a daring move that could have, and arguably should have, destroyed the duo’s career.  They even audaciously sang “Muskrat Love” for Queen Elizabeth II at a White House state dinner, offending one of the royal attendants and nearly rekindling the War of 1812.  (The Queen herself dozed off during the performance and was unscathed by the bawdy ballad.  We can assume that she was written up for sleeping on the job, and that her pay was docked.)  The song has also given me an idea for a Good Friday road trip up north to grab some dinner.  Muskrat Susie and Muskrat Sam will be doing the jitterbug in Esophagusland.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Rock and Roll Music” by the Beach Boys (1976, #5)

One person’s view:  “Exhibit A in the Mike Love shitification of the Beach Boys.” – RustyJames @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.41 / 5.00

The Beach Boys’ cover of Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music” is somewhat catchy and is enjoyable in small doses.  It feels unfair to list it on the Bad Top Ten Hits alongside such bona fide stinkers as “Let Her In” and “Run Joey Run”.  However, this is not a record that you should mention around diehard fans of either the Beach Boys or Chuck Berry.  Unless, that is, you want to hear a tirade about the decline of a legendary music group and the desecration of a classic tune.

The thesis of “Rock and Roll Music” is that rock ‘n’ roll is superior to all other forms of music, particularly for those who wish to dance with the individual who is singing.  This was a bold assertion when Chuck Berry wrote and recorded the song in 1957.  It was his way of jabbing a thumb into the establishment’s eye and challenging the hegemony of the McGuire Sisters and the Les Baxter Orchestra.  But by the time the Beatles unleashed a remake in 1964, “Rock and Roll Music” was no longer controversial.  It was now a triumphant declaration that was impossible to refute.  Rock ‘n’ roll really was the best type of music, and anyone who argued with John Lennon about it was just going to look silly.  Then along came the Beach Boys with their less energetic version in 1976 that undercut the entire premise and suggested that the rock genre was running out of new ideas.  We know today that this was not true, and that highly original rock music continues to be created even in the 21st century (despite Ed Sheeran’s best efforts).  There was no reason for such a prominent band to be throwing in the towel.

“Rock and Roll Music” was the lead single from the Beach Boys’ 15 Big Ones LP.  The music press describes this album as a bigger calamity than the Hindenburg explosion, so naturally I was eager to research the making of it.  I imagined the recording session to be dominated by fistfights, opium binges, ego trips, and random distractions and disasters.  Maybe Carl Wilson let his dogs (the replacements for the late Shannon) run amok in the studio, and they chewed up the master tapes just as the album was nearly completed.  Maybe Dennis Wilson’s former friend Charles Manson kept phoning in from the penitentiary with unhelpful song ideas about how to dispose of a corpse.  Maybe Al Jardine was learning to play the harmonica and threatened to quit the band and sue everyone if he wasn’t allowed to do a bluesy solo on every track.  Sadly, none of that happened.  The album’s deficiencies were mostly the product of simple procrastination, laziness, and lack of direction.  This reminds me of pretty much every project that I worked on in my time as a software engineer.  It’s depressing to learn that the Beach Boys are just as boring as I am.

The absence of an interesting backstory is just part of the disappointment of 15 Big Ones, as the album also suffered from advance marketing hype that was at odds with reality.  The Beach Boys’ label ran ads touting Brian Wilson’s role as the record’s producer, but Brian seemed to regard that as merely a lofty title with few actual responsibilities.  It was like being a nutritionist for Cracker Barrel, or Chief Ethics Officer at Facebook.  Meanwhile, the group kept hinting that they had written dozens of great new songs.  Only a few of these ultimately materialized on the LP.  Those who bought 15 Big Ones felt cheated to hear a bunch of remakes of other musicians’ works, along with some rejected songs from earlier Beach Boys albums.  You know what would have been a hilarious way to troll the fans even more?  If the band had put just 14 tracks on the record.

The 15 Big Ones recording of “Rock and Roll Music” fades out before ever reaching the final verse, but still hits the same two-and-a-half minute runtime as the unabridged versions by Chuck Berry and the Beatles.  The slower tempo is exactly what is not needed on a tune that is supposed to convey the supreme excitement of rock ‘n’ roll.  Les Baxter and the McGuire Sisters were probably laughing their asses off.  But at least the Beach Boys and their label made a lot of money, and that was the one and only point of this whole endeavor.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Let Her In” by John Travolta (1976, #10)

One critic’s view:  “You think Battlefield Earth is the worst product John Travolta ever made?  Well you’re right, but ‘Let Her In’ comes pretty damn close.” – Todd in the Shadows

The public’s view:  1.78 / 5.00

If you’re still young enough to get out of a chair without your bones making loud cracking noises, you probably don’t know about Welcome Back, Kotter and how omnipresent it once was.  I was just starting kindergarten when this TV sitcom debuted, yet even I could recognize the signs of Kottermania all around me.  Vehicles sporting “Kotter for President” bumper stickers drove up and down the highway with the show’s #1 hit theme song blaring out the windows.  Children reused their Gene Shalit costumes from the previous Halloween by trimming an inch from the hair and mustache and going trick-or-treating as Kotter star Gabe Kaplan.  The priest at my church incorporated the show’s signature catchphrase, “Up your nose with a rubber hose!”, into every one of his homilies.  Of all the times to be alive, it was one of the stupidest (aside from 2025).

Kotter revolved around a group of academically impaired high schoolers known as “Sweathogs”.  I enjoyed watching the program each week because it showed me what my educational experience would someday be like.  High school was evidently going to be a world of wisecracks, pranks, and ethnic diversity.  I might even get to finally meet a Jewish person.  At my tender age I never grasped the show’s underlying humorous premise, which was that the Sweathogs had to be given their own classroom because they were in their mid-to-late 20s and were apt to commit statutory rape if allowed to freely mingle with the other students.

Every TV show needs to have a sex symbol who can pose on posters and magazine covers.  The obvious male hottie on Kotter was John Sylvester White, who played Vice Principal Woodman.  However, John Travolta unexpectedly stole the spotlight as Vinnie Barbarino, the leader of the Sweathogs.  Around this time, Travolta went into a recording studio and sang “Let Her In” and nine other tracks for an album.  I assume this was just a vanity project that he intended to give to his mom for Christmas instead of the potholder set that she really wanted.  There was such a demand for Kotter merchandise, though, that the record wound up being released commercially.  With the tailwinds of Kottermania pushing it along, “Let Her In” clambered its way up the charts and into the history books.

This song is a source of great controversy among those who study 1970s pop music.  Some insist that “Let Her In” was a brutal affront to civilized peoples, but that Travolta took singing lessons afterwards and redeemed himself on the Grease soundtrack a couple years later.  Other scholars adamantly disagree.  They argue that “Let Her In” was a brutal affront to civilized peoples, and that Grease only made the crime worse.  As usual when faced with a dispute such as this, I am going to deliver a screed that sidesteps the issue and appeases no one on either side.

First I must acknowledge that Travolta is a national treasure and one of Hollywood’s most beloved stars.  His cinematic magnum opus Look Who’s Talking Too brought mirth and laughter to millions, and he repeated the feat with his portrayal of an angel in Michael.  Therefore, it is my patriotic duty to grant him leniency in my review of “Let Her In”.  Note that I have no patriotic duty toward the song itself, so my chief task here will be to deflect the blame onto others besides Travolta who had a hand in this disaster.  I’m going to pin this mostly on Gary Benson.

Gary Benson is the English singer-songwriter who wrote and originally recorded “Let Her In”.  Don’t cast aspersions on Travolta’s singing until you’ve heard Benson.  His rendition of “Let Her In” is even more insufferable than Travolta’s hit version, though comparing two works of this caliber is like debating whether to drink a gallon of milk that’s five years past expiration or one that’s ten years past.  Benson sings in an insolent high-pitched whine.  Travolta mostly does the same, but slightly more memorably.  His recognizable voice serves him much better at his day job as an actor than it does in music, but in “Let Her In” it at least gives us something to ponder while we frantically reach for the mute button.

Travolta seems to be imitating Benson’s stylings to try to make a very similar record, and unfortunately he succeeds.  He didn’t have enough skill or musical ambition to mold the song into something better.  “Let Her In” was never going to be a work of great artistic merit, but a superior singer like Barry Manilow might have elevated it to the status of a worthy flip side or a throw-away track to donate to an all-star charity album.  It’s remarkable that such a bland composition was ever released as a single, and that it was able to reach the top ten with nothing more than Travolta’s inexperienced vocals to sustain it.

Inspired by his co-star’s unwarranted musical success, Gabe Kaplan put out a single as well:  “Up Your Nose”.  (Remember what I said about it being one of the stupidest times?)  The cast of Welcome Back, Kotter had one consistent message to the record-buying public:  “Up your nose with a rubber hose!  In your ear with a can of beer!”  However, having a can of Stroh’s shoved into your ear hole might not be as bad as listening to “Let Her In”.

My rating:  1 / 10

“Shannon” by Henry Gross (1976, #6)

One person’s view:  “The most obvious flaw of the song is Henry Gross’ singing.  Dear Christ, that falsetto on the chorus.” – Nerd with an Afro

The public’s view:  2.58 / 5.00

Hello again, and welcome to the Bad Top Ten Hits blog.  I’m not Casey Kasem.  Every week we’re seen on great screens in the 50 states and around the world, including:  Linda Biffwater’s iPad in East Orange, New Jersey; the point-of-sale system at the Jack in the Box in Ogden, Utah; and a bot in Singapore that downloads our entire site 22 times an hour to feed an AI-powered content generator that will replace this blog and all other sources of human creativity.  It’s good to have you with us.

Now we’re up to our long distance dedication.  It comes to us from a man in Hawthorne, California named Carl Wilson.  Here’s what he writes:  “Dear Bad Top Ten Hits.  Recently there was a death in our family.  She was a little dog named Shannon.  Last Wednesday, Shannon slipped out of our yard and was run over by a car.”

Wait a minute.  Who is picking these goddamn songs?  This is turning into the most depressing website on the planet!  Last week was a pregnant girl getting shot by her own goddamn father, and now I gotta talk about a fuckin’ dog dying!  You know, they do this to me all the time.  I don’t know what the hell they do it for.  I want somebody to use his fuckin’ brain and make a goddamn concerted effort to find some bad top ten hits that don’t make me want to stick my head in a microwave and push the popcorn button.  Isn’t there any more shittiness from the Osmonds that we can dredge up instead of this?  This is ponderous, man, fuckin’ ponderous.

Sorry for that detour.  Back to the letter:  “I think it was a Buick.  She was pretty much pancaked, but we were able to save her collar.  Can you please play ‘Shannon’ by Henry Gross and dedicate it to our unfortunate furry pal?  It was Shannon’s favorite song, because she was the only one in the house who could hear the chorus.  Love, Carl.”  Carl, here’s your long distance dedication.

I can understand why “Shannon” appears on a lot of lists of bad ‘70s hits.  It’s gooey and sentimental, and the tempo is just slow enough to be disagreeable.  When he reaches the chorus, Henry Gross forsakes his pleasant Fogelbergesque vocals and hits some high notes that do not exist in nature.  All of this is in service of a truly alarming set of lyrics about a dog drifting out to sea, never to return.  Outside of “Shannon”, I’ve never heard of such a thing happening to a domestic animal.  Occasionally there might be a news story about a human having too many beers, falling asleep in an inner tube, and getting rescued three days later by the Coast Guard.  Dogs, however, have enough innate common sense to know their limits when frolicking in the ocean.  The people of the mid-1970s were already worrying about gasoline shortages, shark attacks, and whether pieces of Jimmy Hoffa might turn up in their TV dinners, and then this song also infected everyone with an unfounded fear for their dogs’ safety.  Thanks a lot, Henry.

Nonetheless, much like the titular canine, I am going to swim against the tide in my review of “Shannon”.  While there’s nothing I particularly love about this record, there is plenty that I like.  I like Gross’s soothing guitar.  I like the melody of the verses, which is enjoyable enough that other songs have repurposed it.  (See Freddie Jackson’s “You Are My Lady”, for example.)  I like that we aren’t directly told that Shannon was a dog, so we have to use our fuckin’ brains and infer this fact like we’re Sherlock Holmes or something.  It makes us feel smart when we figure it out.  The extreme falsetto limits the replay value, but it also helps distinguish the song from its peers.  If I ever have to assemble a playlist of songs inspired by the untimely demise of dogs, cats, and goldfish belonging to the members of the Beach Boys, I will put “Shannon” near the top of that list.  I will call this collection of music “Pet Sounds”.

And there you have it.  Tune in next time for a Bad Top Ten Hit that will make “Shannon” – and even the Osmonds – seem like a delightful memory.  Until then, keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the earplugs.  You’re going to need them.

My rating:  6 / 10

“Run Joey Run” by David Geddes (1975, #4)

One person’s view:  “Melodramatic, clunky, hokey, and not even catchy or fun.  Worthy of all the mocking it gets.” – DonKarnage @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  1.79 / 5.00

Here’s a quick synopsis of “Run Joey Run”, a top ten hit that was more of a soap opera than a musical work.  Joey and Julie were teen lovers and then Julie got pregnant.  Her father went berserk because he did not want to be grandpa’d against his will.  He grabbed his gun and went looking for Joey, and Julie called her fertile young friend to warn him.  Joey thought he could outsmart his pursuer.  The angry dad would never anticipate the young man being dumb enough to show his face at Julie’s home under these circumstances, so that is exactly where Joey decided to go.  However, the expectant grandpappy actually did think Joey was an utter moron who would come right over to be shot.  He was lying in wait when Joey arrived.  Fortunately, the heroic Julie and her heroic unborn baby took the bullet for Joey and he survived to sing the tale.  Finis.  Tune in next time for another enthralling episode of The Young and the Stupid, in which Lance and Moira poke a wasp nest with a five-iron.

There is much to hate about this song, including the paradoxical details that we are given about the shooting.  For example, Joey was somehow able to see his nemesis sneaking up behind him at Julie’s house.  While this is an improbable feat, I suppose that it isn’t totally implausible.  Perhaps Joey was wearing mirrored see-behind sunglasses that he ordered from an ad in a comic book, or maybe he spotted the assassin’s reflection on Julie’s polished silver spittoon.  But I don’t get how Julie jumped in front of Joey and shielded him from this attack that was coming from the other direction, nor do I understand how Joey was able to cradle his dying girlfriend in his arms without the crazed dad finishing him off.  Firearm technology in the 1970s was not as advanced as it is today, and the gun was probably not an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine, but I still think the guy could have fired a second shot without having to wait three minutes for the muzzle to cool down.

Julie insists that the pregnancy was not Joey’s fault, and this implies astounding ignorance of the basic principles of reproductive biology.  Her pleading seems even more juvenile and naïve when it is juxtaposed against David Geddes’s mature portrayal of the title character.  This combination of serious adult and annoying child reminds me of Clint Holmes’s “Playground in My Mind” and its waifish contribution from 7-year-old Philip Vance.  It isn’t a coincidence.  It turns out that Philip’s father Paul was the producer and co-writer of both “Playground” and “Joey”, and Philip’s teen sister Paula provided the vocals for Julie’s part in “Joey”.  Paula also inspired “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini”, a 1960 song co-written by the elder Vance.  Whatever we think of these three oft-vilified records, we must salute Paul Vance for not forgetting about his children when he went off to work in the Bad Top Ten Hits factory each day.  It must have been big fun for young Paula to stand in front of a microphone and pretend that she had just been shot by her dad.

Geddes did not have the personality of a typical rock star.  Consider, for example, his nerdy obsession with the transportation infrastructure of Michigan.  He picked his stage name from a street in Ann Arbor, and his 1972 regional hit “House on Holly Road” was inspired by an interstate exit near Pontiac.  That record failed to chart nationally, despite being far superior to his later records that did, so Geddes put his singing on hold and headed to law school in Detroit.  While other musicians were snorting cocaine off of groupies’ butts, this guy was busy Shepardizing the decisions of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.  It wasn’t all work and no play, however.  I imagine he took occasional breaks from his legal studies to photograph the Davison Freeway and build models of the Mackinac Bridge.

His final semester of law school was derailed when Paul Vance convinced him to get back into the music business by singing on “Joey”.  After the success of this single, Geddes followed up with another morbid story song called “The Last Game of the Season (A Blind Man in the Bleachers)”.  It turned out to be the last game of his season in the spotlight, and he vanished shortly thereafter.  Internet searches have yielded no interviews or career updates from him in the last 50 years.  Geddes clearly values his privacy, so I dispatched a team of investigators to track him down and sift through his garbage.  They found him living quietly in upstate New York as if “Joey” had never happened.  Don’t expect him to perform at any oldies concerts, but if you ever bump into him at a map store in Schenectady please ask him whether he thinks U.S. Highway 127 through Lansing should be redesignated as Interstate 73.  Let me know his reply, because I’d like to hear some educated opinions on this matter before I vote in the midterms.

Although David Geddes is certainly an exciting individual and a capable singer, I really can’t abide “Run Joey Run”.  It is the kind of song that gives senseless gun violence a bad name.  Now I need to listen to “Pumped Up Kicks”, “Straight Outta Compton”, and “Copacabana” to cleanse my auditory palate.

My rating:  2 / 10