“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?” – 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

“Feelings” by Morris Albert (1975, #6)

One critic’s view:  “If you wonder why punk had to happen, listen to this song.” – Andy Greene @ Rolling Stone

The public’s view:  2.51 / 5.00

Morris Albert was born in Brazil as the son of Austrian immigrants.  As such, he is presumably most comfortable conversing in either Brazilian or Austrian.  Nonetheless, he summoned up his poetic talents to write a smash hit in English without needing a huge vocabulary.  He chose one word and then beat the living crap out of it until everyone was ready to banish that word from the language.  He could have selected a word like “morphological”, “Congregationalism”, or “typhoid”, but no.  Albert opted for a word that was mushy and imprecise rather than entertaining or informative.  The word that he chose was “feelings”.  Nothing more than “feelings”.

When I was a child in the 1970s, I saw “Feelings” mocked more often than I heard the actual recording.  Comedy skits and Mad Magazine cartoons depicted awful lounge singers groaning their way through painful renditions of it.  “Feelings.  Woe, woe, woe, feelings.”  “Feelings” may also be the only hit song whose lyrics have been ruled terrible by a court of law.

This was the outcome of a copyright suit in which Albert was accused of stealing the song’s melody from an obscure French tune called “Pour Toi”.  “Pour Toi” had been featured in the 1957 film Le feu aux poudres.  If I remember my high school French correctly, that title translates to The Fire in the Powder Room.  Albert vigorously denied the plagiarism allegations, claiming that he had never heard “Pour Toi” or seen the associated film.  He had better things to do than watch foreign movies about flammable toilets.  He was found liable nonetheless, because his song was deemed to have such a “striking similarity” to the other that it couldn’t be just a coincidence.  A million monkeys could each write a million songs a day for a million years, and would only come up with “Pour Toi” or “Feelings” – not both.

Albert’s best hope of averting a large payout was to explain that his lyrics, rather than the infringing melody, had made “Feelings” a commercial success.  Ordinarily, the ownership of a song is split 50-50 between the composer and the lyricist.  However, Albert retained an expert witness who testified that the lyrics were far superior to the music, and therefore the Brazilian entertainer should be allowed to keep the majority of the record’s profits.  The expert then undercut his own argument when he was asked to sing “Feelings” on the stand and was unable to remember most of the words that he had just praised.  The jury ultimately awarded Albert a mere 12% of the song, giving the “Pour Toi” fellow the other 88%.  Albert’s expert had told the court that even a “bad” lyricist always gets at least 15%.  Ouch.

How did Morris Albert get crushed so thoroughly in this trial?  My guess is that the jurors were all heavily biased against him because they had lived through the lengthy “Feelings” rampage of 1975 and 1976.  Unlike many Bad Top Ten Hits, this song did not race up the charts and right back down again.  It inexplicably stuck around for months, frustrating and angering the vast majority of people who wished it would go away.  In that respect, Albert was the forerunner of Teddy Swims.  If there is ever a copyright complaint regarding “Lose Control”, the jury will probably decide that Teddy should be tarred and feathered.

As for my opinion of “Feelings”, this is one instance where I believe the consensus view is pretty much correct.  I know I’m being vague, but it’s a feeling that I have.  Nothing more than a feeling.  Woe, woe, woe.

My rating:  3 / 10

“Morning Side of the Mountain” by Donny and Marie Osmond (1975, #8)

One person’s view:  “[T]eenage siblings should not take on the roles of star-crossed lovers pining for each other from opposite sides of a mountain.  People don’t want to hear it.” – Nic Renshaw @ Pop Goes the Year

The public’s view:  1.59 / 5.00

When I was a teenager in the 1980s, people seemed to be embarrassed that the 1970s had ever existed.  Aside from Star Wars and a handful of classic rock songs that were stuck on repeat on the radio, the cultural artifacts of the decade were now seen as shameful mistakes made by a primitive, ignorant, and immoral society.  I was sure that some of the adults I knew had once danced to disco, watched Rhoda, or hosted a fondue party, but none of them wanted to talk about it.

It wasn’t until 1989 or so that the stigma surrounding the ‘70s began to wear off.  The decade’s cast-aside icons, such as John Travolta and Jimmy Carter, eventually returned from exile to become cool, rad, and groovy once again.  The reign of the Osmonds, however, is still generally viewed as a cringeworthy goof that must be erased from humanity’s timeline.  Sure, Donny had a brief comeback as a singer, but he succeeded only by imitating George Michael and leaving his old image behind.  Other than an occasional spin of “One Bad Apple” on an oldies station, it’s as if the family’s abundant 1970s output has ceased to exist.  This is an unlucky break for all of us who were waiting on the 50th Anniversary Edition re-release of Goin’ Coconuts in 2028.  I was hoping we’d get a director’s cut that restores the controversial nude scenes.

While I’ve already covered the Osmond family in the “Puppy Love” entry, their endeavors in the field of Bad Top Ten Hits are so extensive that they merit a second post.  “Morning Side of the Mountain” is Donny and Marie’s remake of a Tommy Edwards song from the 1950s.  It is about a couple who would be perfect for each other, but they are fated to never meet because they reside on opposite sides of a mountain.  In the world outlined by this song, mountains are impassable obstacles.  Nobody climbs mountains or goes around them, and tunnels are dismissed as infeasible and foolish.  People are born on one side of a mountain or the other, and that is where they will live and die.

I prefer to think of the mountain as a metaphor for any type of impediment that might prevent a person from finding his or her true love.  For example, right now there’s a young lady in Bluefield, Virginia whose ideal husband lives on an isolated small island in the Bay of Bengal.  Ekɖaik Məəŋɖa-bāī is the only man on the planet who meets Miley Rae’s exacting age and height requirements, possesses no disqualifying political opinions, and enjoys canoeing, jewelry making, and long walks on a tropical beach.  They even have similar dietary preferences.  Ekɖaik subsists solely on fish that he has caught himself, and Miley Rae also plans to become a pescatarian just as soon as Dairy Queen brings back their tilapia sliders.  However, she has foolishly configured her Bumble account to only show matches within 5,000 miles, so she doesn’t learn of his existence.  And if the two of them were ever to hook up after a chance meeting in a Holiday Inn lounge, Ekɖaik would perish soon afterward because his tribe has not acquired immunity to the chemicals in Miley Rae’s hair conditioner.

The futility of love is a great topic for a song, and “Morning Side of the Mountain” describes it in poetic fashion.  It reminds us that virtually everyone who chooses to participate in the game of romance is settling for someone inadequate, while missing out on millions of better options.  And, although Tommy Edwards did an OK job on the original, this is one of those rare cases where you can justify turning a song into a duet.  Unfortunately, there is no justification for making this into a duet between Donny Osmond and his sister Marie.

It isn’t just that the implications are gross, though they are.  It’s that a brother and sister are the diametric opposite of the couple that is described in the lyrics.  They aren’t just from the same side of the mountain – they are from the same family.  While the couple in the song existed in complete unawareness of each other, Donny and Marie were having typical household arguments about Donny getting crumbs in the margarine and Marie using up three entire tubes of toothpaste each time she brushed.  There’s also a grating smugness to their teenage voices, and the 1950s-style orchestration only makes it worse.  Even Paul Anka, who was an actual 1950s act, had the courtesy to update his sound for the 1970s as part of his comeback.

Although I give the siblings credit for resurrecting a worthwhile song that was languishing in obscurity, they are exactly the wrong people to be singing it.  And I have to describe their version with a word that wasn’t used more than once or twice in the entire run of the Donny and Marie TV variety show:  shitty.  That’s something that both sides of the mountain can agree on.

My rating:  3 / 10