“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

“One Man Woman / One Woman Man” by Paul Anka with Odia Coates (1975, #7)

One person’s view:  “There’s something inherently cringeworthy about a song that glorifies infidelity.” – Joe @ ILoveClassicRock

The public’s view:  2.22 / 5.00

What do you think is the snobbiest and most elitist organization in the universe?  It might be the British royalty.  Ideally, anyone would be allowed a shot at a position as duke or king or viscount.  Simply take a few community college courses in Banquet Manners, Public Family Squabbles, and Recreational Equine Usage, and then do an internship and pass a licensing exam.  Boom, now you’re the Princess of Sheffield!  In reality, however, you have to get past the toffee-nosed gatekeepers in Buckingham Palace’s HR department, and it winds up being all about who you know rather than what you know.  It’s nearly as difficult as becoming a member of Augusta National.

Radio station executive John Rook thought that one institution was even snootier than the Royal Family:  the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  The Hall portrayed its secretive selection process as the authoritative umpire of musical quality, yet so many legends of the rock genre were overlooked.  Why weren’t Rook’s friends Pat Boone and Connie Francis in the Hall?  Where were Marie Osmond and Tony Orlando?  And how, for the love of God, can you call yourself a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame if you haven’t made room for Perry Como?

It was unsurprising that the Rock Hall didn’t reflect popular tastes, as it was controlled by a shadowy cabal of critics, industry execs, and weird leftist musicians like that dude with the bandana from Springsteen’s band.  But John Rook did more than just complain about the situation.  He formed a rival institution, called the Hit Parade Hall of Fame, that was designed to appeal to mainstream music fans.  It was overseen by a committee of discerning tastemakers such as disc jockey Rick Dees, game show host Wink Martindale, and radio programmer Scott Shannon.  On the one hand, these were wild, uninhibited hellions who could probably recite the Carpenters’ entire discography from memory.  On the other, they were also folks who your grandmother would trust as spokesmen for term life insurance or adult diapers.  You couldn’t have asked for a more suitable panel for this purpose.

The Hit Parade Hall of Fame announced its first class of inductees in 2007, and John Rook must have been pleased to see Paul Anka among them.  As one of the biggest stars of pre-Beatles rock and roll to have been snubbed by the Rock Hall, Anka is exactly the type of entertainer who the Hit Parade Hall was designed for.  To be fair, however, the singer-songwriter didn’t do his legacy any favors during his 1970s comeback.  Aside from the legendarily awkward #1 hit “(You’re) Having My Baby”, he generated three other top ten singles in the ‘70s that are all viable contenders for the Bad Top Ten Hits blog.  After consulting with Rick Dees, Scott Shannon, and (via Ouija board) Wink Martindale, I’ve determined that the song we shall discuss here is “One Man Woman / One Woman Man”.

The chief complaint against “One Man Woman” is that it continues the misogyny and overall dickishness that were on display in “Having My Baby”.  It’s a song about a dude getting caught cheating on his wife – again.  She forgives him – again.  The faithless husband then declares that he has turned over a new leaf and is now a “one woman man”.  It is an unconvincing transformation, as the guy has never suffered any consequences for his misdeeds and has no incentive to change.  It would be more believable for a chronic overeater to vow to become a “one cheesecake man” while enduring an intense bout of indigestion following a dessert binge.

Although I can’t defend the lyrics of “One Man Woman”, I don’t hate the song.  It has a pleasant melody and the vocals are decent, especially Odia Coates’s performance as the woman who has put up with more horseshit than a stable hand at Churchill Downs.  I also like that Anka rhymes “sorry” with “story”, as Canadians are wont to do.  It’s a rare reminder that he grew up on the stinking streets of Ottawa and came to this country as a migrant without a farthing to his name.  The ICE agents who are grabbing Canadians out of Home Depot parking lots and sending them back to El Salvador might very well be costing us the next Paul Anka.

I wish I could close out this entry by giving you directions to the Hit Parade Hall of Fame so that you can see Anka’s exhibit in all of its glory.  Unfortunately, I can find no evidence that the Hall has yet been built.  And after the Class of 2015, which included such timeless rock and roll favorites as Charlie Rich, Air Supply, and the Captain & Tennille, no additional musicians have been inducted.  If there is ever a hall of fame for halls of fame, it is quite likely that the Hit Parade Hall will fail to make the cut.  Chalk up another win for the evil forces of elitism.

My rating:  5 / 10

“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.)