“Yummy Yummy Yummy” by the Ohio Express (1968, #4)

One person’s view:  “As far as bubblegum goes, this is definitely NOT ‘Sugar, Sugar’, but rather a joyless stomp sung by someone who sounds like he was forced to perform this at gunpoint.” – darth_tyrannus_rex @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.57 / 5.00

Ohio was on top of the world in the late 1960s.  The Buckeye State’s economy was booming because it produced the highest quality soap, car tires, and astronauts.  Then something terrible happened that would reverse the state’s fortunes and trigger an inexorable decline.

Ohio’s long downfall began around the time that a band called the Ohio Express scored its biggest hit:  “Yummy Yummy Yummy”.  This was almost certainly not a coincidence.  The tune had perhaps the worst central lyric of any song up to that point:  “Yummy, yummy, yummy, I’ve got love in my tummy.”  The singer’s voice, which sounded as though he had inhaled a couple of Legos that were now blocking his sinuses, made the record even more unpleasant.  It was a cringeworthy listen and a pox on the reputation of the group’s apparent home state.

Shortly after “Yummy Yummy Yummy” completed its reign of terror on the airwaves, a fire erupted in the polluted Cuyahoga River.  River fires had long been a source of merriment for locals, and a great way to roast marshmallows, but this particular blaze attracted unwanted attention and turned Cleveland into a national punch line.  The Kent State massacre soon followed, giving Ohio another black eye.  In the ensuing decades, factories closed, businesses fled, and most of the major cities suffered steep population losses.  Ohio’s woes have only worsened in recent years, as its government has been rocked by massive corruption that would put New Jersey or Louisiana to shame.  It’s hard for voters to pay attention to the scandals anymore.  When an electric utility was caught bribing several top officials to secure a billion-dollar bailout, and two of the suspects committed suicide, the entire state let out a synchronized yawn upon hearing the phrase “electric utility”.  Everyone knows that Ohio tax dollars are supposed to be stolen more creatively than that, by funneling  them into quixotic ventures such as “charter schools” or “rare coin funds” or “Cleveland Browns stadiums” that are designed to enrich political donors while bringing no joy to anyone else.  Meanwhile, people of talent and good taste are no longer opting to be born in the state.  The land that once yielded Ulysses Grant, John Glenn, and Dean Martin is better known today for Jake Paul, Traci Lords, and JD Vance.  Consequently, many Ohioans now try to minimize their embarrassment by employing an Indiana accent whenever they travel.

All of this can be traced back to “Yummy Yummy Yummy” and the damage that it did to the state’s image.  But it was in fact a cruel hoax; no one from Ohio had anything to do with that record or any of the other four Ohio Express tracks that reached the top 40.  These annoying singles were churned out entirely by studio musicians in New York, but you wouldn’t know this if you went to an Ohio Express concert and saw five young men from Mansfield, Ohio performing them.  This was actually a group called Sir Timothy & the Royals, which had been recruited to go on tour under the Ohio Express name.  Audiences were falsely told that Sir Timothy and the other Ohioans were the same group that had made the hit songs, and the record sleeves even featured their picture.  It was this band that showed up to do “Yummy Yummy Yummy” on American Bandstand, and Dick Clark never figured out that he had been hoodwinked.  The scheme almost unraveled when the Royals were unable to play the latest Ohio Express hit, “Chewy Chewy”, at one of their shows because they had just learned of it that day after hearing it by chance on a car radio.  Say what you will about Milli Vanilli, but at least their manager kept them up-to-date on all of the songs that they didn’t sing.

The comparison to the Vanilli twins is a little unfair, because the Royals were a real band that had genuine talent.  There was nothing that tied them to the music from New York, however, and their singer stubbornly refused to jam anything up his nose to sound more like the guy who had done the vocals on the singles.  The producers could have hired a band from any state to take the blame for “Yummy Yummy Yummy”, and it’s Ohio’s misfortune that the song wasn’t credited to the Vermont Express or the Manitoba Express.

Almost every bad top ten hit has something good that can be said about it, and “Yummy Yummy Yummy” is no exception.  Its innovative sequence of opening chords helped inspire the first few notes of “Just What I Needed”, a song that was crucial to the early success of the Cars.  Without “Just What I Needed”, the members of the Cars might have had to pursue careers outside of music – and that is a bizarre thought.  It’s tough to imagine Ric Ocasek as an insurance salesman or a kindergarten teacher.  So was it worth destroying an entire state to bring about the creation of a classic song and the prominence of one of the all-time greatest rock bands?  Yeah, probably.

My rating:  3 / 10

“An Open Letter to My Teenage Son” by Victor Lundberg (1967, #10)

One critic’s view:  “It is hard in a mere magazine – short of rolling this page into a tube and orating through it – to convey the sanctimonious roundness of Lundberg’s voice.  ...  The minute he says ‘Dear Son’ you know he hates the kid.” – William Zinsser, “The Pitfalls of Pop’s Pompous Pop-Off”, Life, Jan. 5, 1968

The public’s view:  1.06 / 5.00

An Open Letter to My Teenage Son
Regarding “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son”

Dear Son.  You ask my reaction to Victor Lundberg’s “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son”.  First of all, I do not know how you learned of this obscure record that was released 40 years before you were born.  Perhaps it was included in one of those Guitar Hero games that you youngsters play?  It is the most poorly rated top ten hit of the 1960s, but some great men made poorly rated top ten hits in the 1960s:  Ray Stevens and Bobby Vinton.  If you believe that Victor Lundberg is a symbol of our nation, and that our heritage is worthy of this display of pride, you have my blessing to listen to him.

Some will unfairly judge you for being a Lundberg fan, just as I have been unfairly judged for my fondness of Men at Work.  Your mother told me that it is inappropriate to bribe a church organist to play “It’s a Mistake” during someone else’s wedding procession.  However, such transactions are part of our free enterprise system in the United States and are worth protecting, even if they displease your mother and her new husband.

Just as your mother has no right to judge me, you have no right to call your sister a glue sniffer merely because she spends her allowance on glue every week.  We must judge every human being on his own individual potential, and your sister has more potential than a glue sniffer has.  With her potential, she may someday be a telemarketer or perhaps even an unlicensed dentist.  You must accept responsibility for losing your last four bottles of glue rather than blaming your sister every time one disappears.

You ask whether you should order the riblets at Applebee’s.  This is a question each individual must answer within himself.  But are you to tell me that these pieces of bone, surrounded by barbecue sauce and tiny but delectable specks of meat, just happened?  That they simply fell off of a pig one day?  God is love, and He makes himself known through His glorious creation that is available only at Applebee’s.  If you reap the rewards commensurate with your own efforts, you will be eatin’ good in the neighborhood.

Remember that the menu at any restaurant is a guide and not a storm trooper.  Realize that many of the past and present generation have attempted to legislate whether you can substitute a salad for one of your sides, or even to tell you that a baked potato is available only after 4 PM.  This created your generation’s need to rebel against our society with fast casual dining, Uber Eats, and tapas.  All of these go against the principles upon which our country was founded.

You ask my opinion of the teacher who plays Victor Lundberg to her class every morning after the Pledge of Allegiance.  You ask my opinion of the factory owner who purchases copies of “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son” to give to his employees as their Christmas bonus, along with pamphlets titled Labor Unions:  Communism’s Foothold.  You ask my opinion of the disc jockey who locks himself in the radio studio and plays Lundberg’s record non-stop for 7 hours until he is tased by the police when he comes out to poop.  Well, maybe you didn’t ask any of that, but I’m going to tell you what I think anyway.

Each of the aforementioned individuals is employing the record as Victor Lundberg intended.  We all sometimes need to yell invective at a hippie peacenik, or at an impressionable person who is being swayed by that amoral lifestyle.  It is tempting to litter our off-the-cuff comments with insults directed at minorities, but that would detract from our core message.  We might also forget to muse about the existence and nature of God while condemning the treasonous bum.  Lundberg’s recorded speech helps us avoid these difficulties.  It appeases the enemy on the less impactful issues, like civil rights and male hairstyles, while allowing no room for disagreement on the sanctity of the Selective Service System.  It is a tirade that we can proudly broadcast to our unwilling audience.

This does not mean that people will enjoy hearing it, but that is not the point of “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son”.  It is not a record to be enjoyed.  It is one to be inflicted.

Yours truly,

Your infinitely wise and patriotic father

P.S.  I apologize that this letter is open.  I cannot seal it because the glue flaps are missing from all of my envelopes.  I must have lost them somehow.

My rating:  1 / 10

“Please Love Me Forever” by Bobby Vinton (1967, #6)

One critic’s view:  “[H]is light, ingratiating manner, applied in the same way to every song, was pleasant without ever becoming really involving.” – William Ruhlmann, in his AllMusic review of the Please Love Me Forever LP

The public’s view:  2.21 / 5.00

Bobby Vinton is the man who became massively successful by being oblivious to the changes in the world around him.  I wonder what his life is like today at age 90?  I bet he still has a Diners Club credit card.  He probably drives a Country Squire station wagon.  His friends told him there were some good movies being streamed, so he hooked his Betamax machine up to a creek.  And now he’s being made fun of on a blog, like it’s 2004 or something.

In the era of guitar rock, Motown, protest songs, and psychedelia, Bobby released an album with covers of bygone ballads like “It’s All in the Game”, “Young Love”, and “Who’s Sorry Now”.  This was out of touch even by Vintonian standards.  Nonetheless, the title track “Please Love Me Forever” somehow earned a prime spot at the 1967 musical dining table and pushed the Polish Prince back into the top 10 after a three-year absence.

Vinton was the third act to bring “Please Love Me Forever” to the Hot 100, following versions by Tommy Edwards in 1958 and Cathy Jean & the Roommates in 1961.  Edwards’s rendition is the best of the three, because it focuses our ears on the singer’s rich voice and not on the blathering sentiments that he is expressing.  These lyrics have less intellectual heft than a Valentine’s Day poem written by a 6th-grader, and it is best not to ponder them too deeply.  One of Bobby Vinton’s trademarks, however, is his clear diction that places the words of every chorus and every verse out in the open to be scrutinized.  In Bobby’s iteration of “Please Love Me Forever”, each line is conveyed with accuracy and sincerity, much in the way that his fellow Pittsburgh native Mister Rogers would speak.  This forces us to pay attention to the schmaltzy content.  When he gets to the bridge, I think:  “He’s alluding to the ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’ prayer.  He isn’t going to recite the whole thing, is he?  Aw crap, he is.”

I also object to this line:  “You’re in my dreams nightly.”  This sounds romantic until you realize just how freaky and weird dreams are.  If you’re in a relationship with someone, and it’s progressed to the point where you’re asking them to love you forever, they will not be in your dreams nightly.  They will show up only rarely, and even then they will be miscast as a supporting character.  Your girlfriend might play the role of Annoying Classmate in your dream about repeating the 10th grade at age 36, or appear as Horrified Spectator #3 in your recurring nightmare about using a toilet that is inexplicably installed in a restaurant’s dining area.  When you finally get to enjoy an erotic dream, the star of it will be the scary bald woman with the face tattoos who you see gesticulating and cursing at random people at the bus stop by your office.  Too bad that the phrase “scary bald woman with the face tattoos” never fit into the meter and rhyme scheme of any of Vinton’s songs.

One common criticism of Bobby Vinton is that he didn’t grow as an artist despite having a long career.  His fans would say that was a good thing.  They didn’t want any surprises, and – aside from the scandalous use of foreign language lyrics in his 1974 hit “My Melody of Love” – he didn’t deliver any.  Most of Vinton’s songs were sappy love ballads, and he performed them all in that same Fred Rogers tone.  He embraced his identity as the Polish Prince without ever changing the “Prince” part of his nickname to an unpronounceable symbol.  He deserves credit for not chasing every trend that came along, or really any trend that came along, but I wish he hadn’t picked the crooner days of the 1950s to get stuck in.

My rating:  3 / 10

“Little Ole Man (Uptight – Everything’s Alright)” by Bill Cosby (1967, #4)

One person’s view:  “What’s supposed to be funny about this?  ...  There’s absolutely nothing in this song to enjoy.” – Nerd with an Afro

The public’s view:  2.88 / 5.00

Before I begin today’s write-up, I want to mention that it is sometimes hard to separate opinions of a song from people’s feelings for the performer behind it.  This is especially true when a hit record was made by someone who now has an odious reputation.  Anita Bryant’s “Paper Roses” attracted some of the lousiest reviews of any top 10 hit from 1960, but I chose not to feature it here because I suspected that much of the criticism was directed at her personally rather than the song.  I expect I’ll face a similar dilemma when I get to Chris Brown.  Anyhow, in a totally unrelated development, Bill Cosby’s “Little Ole Man” is often listed among the worst hits of 1967.  I have to agree that it’s a bit of a stinker.

“Little Ole Man” is the tale of a senior citizen who complains about being run over by a train and by a herd of elephants, and who then later admits that neither of those catastrophes actually occurred.  We are never given a reason why he would lie about something so serious.  Maybe it is a Jussie Smollett-style hoax intended to slander the Elephant-American community, or perhaps the man is hoping that the railroad will pay him a quick settlement without asking why he still has all of his limbs.  Most likely, though, this is simply an elderly person who is very confused and should not be allowed outdoors by himself.  Someone probably stepped on his toes in 1918, and the addled old man now misremembers this incident and exaggerates it into something more recent and far more threatening.  Likening a minor foot-stepping to an elephant stampede is a stretch, even if the perpetrator was Fatty Arbuckle.

This is sometimes classified as a comedy recording because Cosby is a comedian and he tells the story as if it’s a joke.  However, “Little Ole Man” is only slightly funnier than Ray Stevens’s “Ahab, the Arab”, and in some ways is an even more disappointing experience.  For all its many faults, “Ahab” is at least kind enough to let us know right away what we are getting into.  “Little Ole Man” toys with us for a bit before letting us down.  The setup is promising and Cosby’s pacing is good, but then there is no payoff at the end – unless you think that an individual’s senility qualifies as a punch line.  If laughter is the best medicine, Dr. Cliff Huxtable is lucky he didn’t have his prescription privileges revoked.

The use of Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” as accompanying music is almost as baffling as the old man’s fibs.  Wonder’s song had reached #3 on the Hot 100 a year earlier, and Bill Cosby wisely realized that he couldn’t improve on it.  Nonetheless, he should have at least transformed it in some way instead of hiring a band to recreate it note-for-note.  The target demographic for “Little Ole Man” was people whose copies of “Uptight” had gotten broken or lost in the preceding year, and who were now willing to settle for an inferior version with a rambling story about dementia where Stevie’s singing used to be.  Somehow, there were enough consumers in this predicament for Cosby’s single to peak nearly as high on the charts as “Uptight”.  I hope this served as a good lesson for everyone to take better care of their Stevie Wonder records.

My rating:  2 / 10

“I Dig Rock and Roll Music” by Peter, Paul and Mary (1967, #9)

One person’s view:  “It’s sad actually because in the shallow well of songs actually written by Peter, Paul or Mary this is one of their more memorable melodies.  It just happens to be attached to a really pretentious set of lyrics.” – Remtiw @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.80 / 5.00

Peter, Paul and Mary built their brand around acoustic folk music and enjoyed only a brief time on top before the public moved on to other genres.  Many people can sympathize with this.  One day you have a vibrant career in coal mining, Visual Basic programming, or giving DEI seminars, and then the world changes and you are left fighting for relevance.  You can either reinvent yourself or else you can cling to the old ways for as long as possible while complaining bitterly about everyone and everything.  I guess another possibility would be to embrace your status as a nostalgia act, but that only works for musicians.  There isn’t a lot of nostalgia for Visual Basic.

The three folksters had too much integrity to abandon their roots, and they weren’t ready to go out on the oldies circuit opening up for Tennessee Ernie Ford.  That left bitterness and complaining as the most appealing option for them in 1967, and the result was “I Dig Rock and Roll Music”.  Many critics derided this record as an elitist jab at the rock bands that had usurped Peter, Paul and Mary’s popularity.  Being called elitist by a music critic is like being called ugly by Shrek, but the characterization has stuck with this song over the years.  It continues to be one of the more divisive hit singles of its time.

If “I Dig Rock and Roll Music” was intended as a vicious attack against rock ‘n’ roll, it didn’t succeed.  The song’s satires of the Beatles, the Mamas & the Papas, and Donovan come across as playful style parodies much like those later perfected by Weird Al.  The imitations are too well-studied to be taken as mean-spirited, and the performers that the trio chose to mock were popular and highly regarded.  I get the impression that PP&M really did dig rock ‘n’ roll music, but were too embarrassed to admit it without using light sarcasm as a cover.  If Peter, Paul and Mary had truly wanted to make a snobbish point about music becoming overly commercial or devoid of any serious meaning, I think they would have picked on easier targets like Tommy Roe or the Monkees.

While the song is more of a good-natured roast of rock ‘n’ roll than a pointed insult, it is sincere in its criticism of the media environment that discouraged music with overtly political messages.  However, Peter, Paul and Mary were about to demonstrate the weakness in their argument by recording a song called “Eugene McCarthy for President (If You Love Your Country)”.  Radio stations had good reasons not to touch unsubtle material like this, otherwise they would be stuck giving equal time to eight other candidates.  Listeners would tune out after hearing “The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Deems Hubert Humphrey Tolerable” back-to-back with “Bobby Kennedy Has 11 Kids Who Will All Grow Up to Be Non-Insane People Who Treat Animal Carcasses with Respect”.  Meanwhile, DJs would be double-checking themselves constantly to ensure that they didn’t play a Motown record adjacent to “George Wallace Is a Groovy Guy”.

“I Dig Rock and Roll Music” wasn’t particularly effective as a protest, because any of the outcomes that might have been acceptable to PP&M were not going to work for anyone else.  Nobody wanted preachy music that told them who to vote for.  No radio stations were going to drop the Beatles in favor of Pete Seeger.  The Mamas & the Papas weren’t going to take a break from their drug binges to offer thoughtful observations on Thurgood Marshall’s nomination to the Supreme Court.  Nonetheless, Peter, Paul and Mary’s upbeat and entertaining song can be appreciated despite the unreasonable expectations they had for society.  The resentment that went into it only makes it more intriguing.

My rating:  7 / 10

“Somewhere, My Love” by Ray Conniff and the Singers (1966, #9)

One person’s view:  “How did this sh*t ever get so popular?  You see these albums everywhere but no one wants them.” – ottoshutoff @ Tapeheads.Net, inquiring as to the appeal of Ray Conniff

The public’s view:  2.57 / 5.00

I could write a long essay about “Somewhere, My Love”, but reading it would be almost as boring as listening to the song.  Instead, I’m going to use most of this entry to tell you about a superior Ray Conniff record that I encountered in my childhood.

The story begins on a Christmas morning in that decade we like to call the 1970s.  Santa Claus had been duly apprised of my need for a Kenner Close ‘n’ Play, a children’s phonograph that was frequently advertised during my Saturday morning cartoons.  Judging by the TV commercials, a Close ‘n’ Play was the main ingredient of a happy life.  Simply close the lid to play music and open it to stop.  Hours of fun!

But there was no Close ‘n’ Play under the tree on that day.  Instead, there was a note from Santa.  This was highly unusual; lots of kids wrote letters to the old guy but this was the only time I heard of him writing back.  The note informed me that Santa was unwilling to tarnish the North Pole’s strong brand by delivering low quality junk such as Close ‘n’ Plays.  He had brought me a different record player which he believed was better.  It was trickier to use than Kenner’s model, but Santa said that I was a big boy now and could handle it.

This was a clear breach of my contract with Santa.  I had foregone many opportunities for mischief over the preceding months with the expectation that I would get a Close ‘n’ Play.  But before I could grab the Yellow Pages and look for a lawyer, my parents told me that Mr. Claus was right.  Kenner’s product might be a hot item at the moment, but this fad was doomed to oblivion in another 5 or 10 years.  I wouldn’t impress any ladies in 1995 by inviting them to my apartment to hear the latest Neil Sedaka single on a Close ‘n’ Play.  Modern, urbane men were expected to know how to operate a tone arm, so I might as well learn while young.

Santa gave me a couple of kids’ records along with the record player, and my parents soon augmented those with about three dozen 45s that they or other relatives had acquired.  Some of these were older hit songs that, even at my tender age, I rightly recognized as quality material.  B.J. Thomas’s “Hooked on a Feeling” was one of the best, as was the Coasters’ “Yakety Yak”.  I also enjoyed Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia”, though it was many years before I figured out why Paul Simon was so keen on washing his face.  A few of the records had a more mysterious origin, as they didn’t seem like anything that would be voluntarily purchased.  They had likely been distributed free in cereal boxes or given to my grandfather as promotional items at the store that he managed.  The most curious of these singles was Ray Conniff’s “Begin the Beguine”.

This record was unlike the others.  It had only a small spindle hole in the middle and was designed to be played at 33 1/3 RPM, despite being the same 7” diameter as the 45 RPM singles with the gaping centers.  It was the musical arrangement, however, that made the record truly special.

The frenetic rumbling rhythm of Conniff’s “Begin the Beguine” sounds as though a cavalry brigade is stampeding past the listener on its way to a battle.  After a few seconds of this, singers join in with berserk war cries of “Fi-yah!  Fi-yah fi-yah!”  Some of the members of the chorus prefer diplomacy to fighting, however.  One of them calmly responds to the opposing horsemen with:  “Bah dah bah doo dah.  Bah dah doo dah.”  It’s tough to argue with a reasonable proposal such as that.  After a couple minutes of these negotiations, it seems as though war has been averted – but the lull is misleading.  The horns grow louder and more urgent as the détente ends and the battle rages in a brief but dramatic finale.  One of the horses releases a tremendous burst of flatulence, and it is over.

I didn’t fully appreciate how transformational Conniff’s arrangement was until I heard different versions of “Begin the Beguine” and learned the song’s history and original lyrics.  It began life as a wistful Cole Porter composition about the memory of a romantic dance.  Every other performer has treated it this way, as in the vocal renditions by Bing Crosby, Johnny Mathis, and Julio Iglesias and the well-known instrumental by Artie Shaw.  Porter’s melody is pretty, to be sure, but it is ultimately just a mundane love ballad to be enjoyed a few times and then forgotten.  Conniff creatively gave “Begin the Beguine” new life as the soundtrack for the human imagination, and it was on the agenda almost every time that my brother and I fired up the record player.  Sometimes we played it at 45 RPM and pretended that the Ray Conniff Singers were high on amphetamines.  I no longer envied the brats in the Close ‘n’ Play commercials, who spent much of their time playing a juvenile game of musical chairs while alternately lifting and closing the lid of their fad toy.  I was now a serious audiophile.

Conniff knew that his reworking of “Begin the Beguine” was amazing.  He produced several versions of it over the years, including one that used Cole Porter’s lyrics in place of some of the “bah dah bah doo dah” dialogue.  “Somewhere, My Love” isn’t in the same league.  Conniff and his chorus recorded this latter song for the film Doctor Zhivago, and it is perfectly fine within that context.  If your spouse has dragged you to a theater to watch a three-hour-long romance set during the Bolshevik Revolution, “Somewhere, My Love” is not going to make your bad day any worse.  It is, however, a run-of-the-mill easy listening song.  I guess the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer people told Conniff that they wanted some of his music for their movie, but they didn’t want any of his ingenuity.

When it came to the singles charts, Conniff was a victim of what I call Cheap Trick Syndrome.  Cheap Trick missed the top 40 with their beloved signature tune “Surrender”, only to later reach #1 with the forgettable ballad “The Flame”.  Similarly, “Begin the Beguine” never found its way onto the Hot 100 despite its importance to Conniff’s legacy.  It’s a travesty that the formulaic “Somewhere, My Love” was his only top 40 hit.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Don’t Just Stand There” by Patty Duke (1965, #8)

One person’s view:  “Let’s remember Patty for her incredible acting career and her work in helping remove the stigma from mental health issues.  And not for this.” – GuncleMark @ YouTube

The public’s view:  2.86 / 5.00

Why is there so much pressure on actors to branch out into singing when they are doing just fine as it is?  This rarely happens to people in other jobs.  No one ever says, “Ted, you’re the best forklift operator in the warehouse.  Hardly any accidents last year.  How’d you like it if we wrote you a pop tune and put you on American Bandstand?”  Judging by the short duration of Patty Duke’s music career and the minimal enthusiasm she had for it, she might have preferred to drive a forklift.

When I was a young child, Patty Duke was one of those vaguely important individuals in the same category as Zsa Zsa Gabor, Dr. Joyce Brothers, and Mao Zedong.  These were celebrities who never did anything Muppet-adjacent, so it was a mystery why they were famous enough for me to keep hearing their names.  Maybe Patty Duke was in a movie once, or maybe she had caused a deadly famine while forcibly industrializing an agrarian society.  There was no way to know.  She continued to make no impression on me as I grew older, and almost every bit of knowledge I have about her was acquired just now while researching this post.

Duke’s best known song, “Don’t Just Stand There”, inhabits a special place of mediocrity in what was otherwise a pretty good year for music.  There’s a consensus that it’s among the worst major hits of 1965, but no one says it is the very worst.  You could play it 20 times in a row on the jukebox at a diner, and it might make all the food taste bland but it wouldn’t provoke anyone to violence.  It isn’t much fun to write about records like this, but they are a big part of the Bad Top Ten Hits ecosystem so I don’t have much of a choice.

Most of the reviews of this song compare Patty Duke to Lesley Gore, who I am only slightly more familiar with.  Patty’s handlers tried to position her as the new Lesley, which set up one of the more uninteresting rivalries in pop music history.  People of my age and younger know what a real music rivalry is:  Kendrick vs. Drake, Brandy vs. Monica, Neil vs. Barbra, Barbra vs. Megadeth.  But Gore’s career had already peaked by the time Duke began dabbling in singing, and there’s little indication that either of them paid much attention to the other.  There aren’t any stories about Lesley Gore’s bodyguards shooting a member of Patty Duke’s posse in a strip club parking lot, and if there was any bad blood at all between the two young women it didn’t linger.  Gore didn’t even bother to disrupt Duke’s acceptance speech when she won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series at the 1977 Primetime Emmy Awards.

Duke’s “Don’t Just Stand There” and her follow-up, “Say Something Funny”, share a common lyrical theme with Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me”.  In each of these three records, the singer is trying to salvage a dying romance by lecturing her boyfriend on what he needs to do to fix it.  Although I enjoy a lot of “angry woman” music, I prefer not to hear about the phase of a relationship that is dominated by nagging.  Music is supposed to be an escape from unpleasant everyday realities, not a reinforcement.  I would rather have Patty or Lesley skip ahead to the inevitable break-up record, or to the five-years-post-break-up song about what a jerk the ex is and how he and his sleazy new wife and their arrogant infant child all deserve to get tetanus.

While “Don’t Just Stand There” is one of the better compositions of the boyfriend-being-scolded genre, that is somewhat faint praise.  Meanwhile, Duke’s vocals do very little to make themselves appreciated – much like the guy she is whining at.  Today she is probably better known for the three guest appearances she made on Touched by an Angel than she is for her two top 40 hits.

My rating:  4 / 10

“What’s New Pussycat?” by Tom Jones (1965, #3)

One diner patron’s view:  “Goddammit!” – the reaction to hearing “What’s New Pussycat?” five times in a row, according to John Mulaney

The public’s view:  2.76 / 5.00

The story behind our next top ten hit reminds us that the descent into cultural vapidity started long before everyone was walking around with miniature distraction devices in their pockets.  Its title phrase “What’s new pussycat?” originated when Hollywood producer Charles K. Feldman overheard Warren Beatty greeting a girlfriend in this manner on the phone.  This barely even qualifies as an anecdote, as it was unsurprising that Beatty would have a line like that in his repertoire.  It isn’t like he was the pope.  However, Feldman thought this was a comedic goldmine and that other people would also be easily amused.  He gave Beatty’s expression a life of its own, stretching it farther than anyone could have imagined or wanted.

First the phrase became the driving motivation of Feldman’s 1965 film, What’s New Pussycat?, about a man who calls every woman he meets “pussycat”.  (Try that today and see what happens.)  The movie spawned the theme song that we are here to discuss, and What’s New Pussycat? would later also become the title of a Tom Jones musical play.  In 2009, comedian John Mulaney did a popular stand-up bit about repeatedly playing “What’s New Pussycat?” on the jukebox at the Salt & Pepper Diner.  It took several decades, with lots of casualties along the way, but finally – for the first time ever – Mulaney found a way to make this inside joke humorous to someone besides Charles K. Feldman.

To me, “What’s New Pussycat?” belongs in the same category as Barry Manilow’s “I Write the Songs”.  It has a terrible concept at its root, but then everything else is done with such perfection that you have to admire the resulting product even if you don’t enjoy hearing it.  Consider the constraints that Burt Bacharach and Hal David were working under when they wrote this.  This was to be the theme music for Feldman’s comedy movie that, from what I can gather, featured talented big-name actors but a so-so screenplay.  The song needed to have the same questionable title as the film, and it ideally needed to repeat that title numerous times.  Bacharach & David weren’t at liberty to call their tune “The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music”, nor could they hand Feldman a solemn protest song about Vietnam.  The lyrics, at least, were going to be pretty bad no matter what they came up with.

The smartest thing that anyone did for “What’s New Pussycat?” was to recruit Tom Jones, though Bacharach first had to convince him that it wasn’t a joke.  Jones was probably the only man of his generation who could deliver multiple silly compliments about a woman’s “pussycat nose” in a way that was both classy and sexy.  Even Warren Beatty would be on thin ice if he expressed such a weirdly intense interest in a lady’s nostrils.  This song, more than any other, helped build Jones’s mystique.  He became known as a performer who could give any material a level of seriousness and gravitas, while at the same time implicitly acknowledging how ridiculous some of it was.

The Tom Jones mystique is even part of my family’s lore.  My grandmother and grandfather held sharply diverging views of the singer, and any mention of him was taboo when we visited their house.  Likewise, when any of us grandkids asked why their stereo didn’t work, all of the adults in the room would grow quiet and someone would quickly change the subject.  The details are murky, but I later learned that the broken stereo was connected in some way to the Tom Jones controversy.  I suspect that the Salt & Pepper Diner’s jukebox would also have suffered permanent damage if Grandpa had been there on the same day as John Mulaney.

In some respects, “What’s New Pussycat?” was quite a feat.  Bacharach’s music perfectly captures the frivolity of a comedy movie, and Jones’s singing is hard to top.  I’d rate it a 9 out of 10 on that basis.  On the other hand, it uses the word “pussycat” a dozen times before it is even halfway through.  That merits a 1 out of 10.  Let’s take the average.

My rating:  5 / 10

“You Turn Me On (Turn On Song)” by Ian Whitcomb and Bluesville (1965, #8)

One person’s view:  “It’s a musical disaster with one of the very worst vocal performances of any song in history.” – dagwood525 @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.70 / 5.00

I can relate to Ian Whitcomb’s struggles with “You Turn Me On”, because I once suffered a similar bit of self-inflicted damage to my artistic reputation.  It happened when I was about 8 years old and my class was told to craft lifelike portraits of dragons using pastel crayons and construction paper.  Each of us had to make two dragons, so it seemed logical to me that one should be male and the other female.  And, sadly, dragons do not wear clothes.

I don’t know why I thought that anatomically correct dragons were a good idea, but I suppose they fit in to my unsuccessful years-long campaign to get expelled from my Catholic school so that I could go to a normal one.  When the teacher saw my female dragon, she was not happy.  “I don’t like this at all,” she said with a frown.  I braced myself for her critique of my other creation, whose sizeable dragonhood was even more obvious than the pink dots on Mrs. Dragon’s triple-Ds.  Her reaction to the male dragon was not what I expected.  “Oh, this is fantastic work!,” she gushed.  “I’m hanging it in the hallway so that all the classes can see it, and it will be on display for next week’s open house.”

This was a particularly poor piece of art, even by the low standards I had set with my previous pencil sketches of dogs with trapezoidal heads.  Aside from carefully applying a thin layer of glue to the dragon’s scrotum to give it a bumpy texture, I had put no effort into it.  If not for the beast’s obvious state of arousal, an onlooker might have mistaken him for a dinosaur from The Flintstones.  I instantly regretted that this work would be my legacy.  Nude studies of dragons might appeal to the rubes in Sister Thaddeus’s 4th grade class across the hall, but the sophisticated glitterati attending the school’s open house would never be impressed by something so clichéd and so badly executed.

Given creative freedom and the right budget, I knew I could do much better.  I asked my teacher if I could construct a different dragon-themed piece for the hallway exhibition.  I envisioned a mural of a dragon burning the school down with its fiery breath.  Sister Thaddeus would be shown screaming amid the flames, having waited too long to flee because she assumed it was another one of my hilarious prank fire alarms.  I was told that this concept wasn’t realistic, however, because our building was 90% asbestos and wouldn’t combust even if launched into the Sun.  Besides, my teacher wasn’t just trying to teach me a lesson for my flippant attitude toward the assignment.  She genuinely loved Mr. Dragon and his textured scrotum, even if the only fire he would ever light was the one in her heart.

Ultimately, my instincts proved correct.  My dragon was not well received at the school’s open house, and no visitors expressed interest in acquiring him for their collection.  When I got him back I tore him into pieces and flushed him down the toilet.

It was much the same experience for Ian Whitcomb when he learned that the record company would promote “You Turn Me On” as his big career-defining single.  This song had some of the same qualities as the recent Newbeats hit “Bread and Butter”:  overtly sexual lyrics, a guy using a preposterously high voice, and a repetitive beat that reminds today’s listeners of the Sesame Street theme.  However, it lacked anything that could fairly be described as songwriting, production, or singing.  The whole thing was just a joke that he and his band did to burn a few minutes of pre-paid studio time at the end of a session.  Whitcomb improvised the song on the spot, including a part of the chorus that sounds like he was reaching more than just a musical climax.  An ashtray was knocked off of his piano at one point, marring the recording with a noisy crash, and no one cared.  This wasn’t intended for public consumption.

Whitcomb objected to the label’s decision.  Why not push one of his other songs that was more representative of his style, and in which he didn’t sound like an inmate of an insane asylum?  The label insisted that “You Turn Me On” was the record that would make him a star.  At any other time in history, the execs would have been proven wrong and this song would have met the same fate as my pastel artwork.  Whitcomb was probably already searching public bathrooms for a drain big enough to swallow a reel-to-reel tape.  This was 1965, however, and Englishmen like him were a hot commodity.  That alone was enough for his worst song to catch on in parts of the U.S.

It was the risqué lyrics that took the song to the next level of commercial success.  Whitcomb’s sarcastically high vocal was about as erotic as a Mickey Mouse impersonation, but the puritans who had slept through the reign of “Bread and Butter” were suddenly more attuned to the subversive nature of rock music.  They began calling for “You Turn Me On” to be banned, which only fueled its sales.  After it was publicly condemned by the mayor of Portland, Oregon, its popularity soared and it headed straight for the top ten.

I’m going to test whether this also works for blogs.  This message is for Portland Mayor Keith Wilson:  Go dunk your head in the Columbia River, you hyperpartisan nincompoop.  I hope Mt. Hood erupts and covers your city with smelly lava, and I hope the Trail Blazers move to Eugene and take the Moda Center with them.  I look forward to reading an outraged press release from you shortly.  We now return to our regular programming.

While “You Turn Me On” brought Whitcomb money and groupies, which is more than my artwork ever did for me, it didn’t get him the respect he was seeking.  Many of his fellow British musicians thought that it had embarrassed their entire country.  He soon left the business of making pop records, with a measure of disgust about the industry, and later got into music journalism.  If he hadn’t passed away a few years ago, maybe he would have offered to take my job so you wouldn’t have to read any more unwanted tangents about my childhood.

So, can this song be enjoyed at all, or is it irredeemable?  I think it can be appreciated as a novelty, simply because Whitcomb’s wailing is so defiantly awful.  You can imagine him raising both middle fingers to his label’s management as he does his squeaky moaning, before saying “Release that as a single, bitch!”  Then the label says, “OK, we think we will.”

My rating:  3 / 10

“Bread and Butter” by the Newbeats (1964, #2)

One critic’s view:  “This guy sang like he just inhaled some helium while being tortured in hell.” – Mike Oliver @ My Vinyl Countdown

The public’s view:  2.93 / 5.00

Larry Henley of the Newbeats had a unique gift:  he could sing like a woman.  This was more than just a falsetto like Frankie Valli’s or a bizarrely high male voice like Michael Jackson’s.  Henley was able to sound like an honest-to-gosh ovary-packing woman whenever he felt like it.  Of course, he recognized that this was something of a parlor trick and couldn’t be the whole basis of a music career.  If you needed someone to do a female vocal, there were thousands of women singers who would oblige – and you could pay them less than a man.  Henley’s special talent was utilized on one hit single, and one only, but he sure made the best of it.

Henley’s remarkable soprano is what everyone remembers about “Bread and Butter”, but the lyrics don’t get nearly enough credit.  This was almost certainly the filthiest hit record of the 1960s.  While it isn’t morally depraved like “Little Children”, it does take us on a musical and culinary tour of all of the sex acts and related body parts and fluids that were known in the U.S. at the time.  (If this song had come from Scandinavia, it wouldn’t have clocked in at only 1:58.)  Considering that even the Kingsmen’s harmless “Louie Louie” was under fire for supposedly pornographic lyrics, it’s astonishing that no one raised any significant objections to “Bread and Butter”.  Either Henley’s outlandish vocals successfully diverted people’s focus from the actual content of the Newbeats’ song, or else parents and clergy were too busy investigating the subliminal horrors contained within the Singing Nun’s Belgian babbling.

Despite consisting entirely of sexual double entendres, “Bread and Butter” somehow managed to become a favorite of advertisers.  According to Wikipedia, it was even used in a Walmart TV ad a few years ago.  I never saw that commercial, but I imagine it had this voiceover:

“At Walmart, we like bread and butter as much as you do.  Toast and jam is not our thing at all, but we don’t judge.  And if there’s cheese on your sandwich, one of our friendly pharmacists can help.  Stop by the bakery and watch us lovingly beating our batter by hand.  You’ll walk away with a couple of hot biscuits bulging out of your bag!  Show your biscuits to the greeter on the way out, and he’ll gladly put some gravy on them.  Now your local Walmart has a new treat:  Nutella on a Kaiser roll.  You can get it behind the store at 10 PM.  Save money.  Live better.  At Walmart.  Offers may vary in Utah.”

“Bread and Butter” shows up on a lot of “worst song” lists, and it’s easy to understand why.  It is extremely catchy, but also remarkably repetitive and almost instantly irritating.  After you’ve figured out what each food represents, it’s time to toss the record in the trash.  This endeavor with the Newbeats wouldn’t be the last time that Larry Henley would do something to upset music listeners.  He also co-wrote Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings”, which I reviewed on my Bad #1 Hits blog, and he allegedly encouraged his friend Bobby Goldsboro to record “Honey”.  These were the only hit records that Henley was ever connected to, and all three would be ideal selections for a compilation CD:  Now That’s What I Call Eviction!  Songs to Play to Get a Squatter to Move Out of Your Basement.  When it was time to cause human suffering, this guy knew how to get it done.

Although it doesn’t stand up whatsoever to repeat play, I actually have a lot of respect for “Bread and Butter”.  The Newbeats pulled one over on the censors and completely got away with it, while Larry got to show off his amazing skill.  I don’t particularly want to hear the song again, but I don’t need to hear it for it to bring a smile to my face.

My rating:  6 / 10

“Little Children” by Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas (1964, #7)

One journalist’s view:  “To the blessedly uninitiated, and in any context, this is arguably the creepiest pop hit ever written.” – Sadie Stein @ The Paris Review, “Worst.  Kid.  Song.  Ever.”

The public’s view:  2.89 / 5.00

There are many historical bits of pop culture that we look back on and say, “That aged about as well as an ice cream sandwich in my armpit on a hot July day.”  Much of the time, however, people say that about things that were inappropriate in the first place.  “Little Children” hasn’t aged poorly.  It was a terrible idea from the start.

In “Little Children”, Billy J. Kramer is singing to a group of kids who have caught him doing something very naughty.  He must keep them quiet, so he issues vague threats.  “I’m tellin’ you, little children, you better not tell what you see.”  This isn’t working, so he moves on to bribery.  “I’ll give you candy and a quarter.”  Then he gets frustrated with these brats’ presence and possibly with their very existence.  “I wish they would go away, little children.”  Murder is not off the table.

Up until the bridge, which isn’t heard until the latter half of the song, we aren’t told what misdeed needs to be concealed.  We must make an educated guess based on the clues that we have.  We know the transgression was of sufficient gravity for the dude to pay hush money to cover it up.  We know it occurred in a location where he can get candy to effectuate this bribe.  We also know that the man’s wrongful actions are something that even a young child would recognize as unusual and might excitedly blab about.  (The kids probably aren’t going to turn him in to the SEC for insider stock trading.)  Applying Occam’s Razor, we deduce that the simplest explanation is also the most likely:  the children saw the narrator engaging in an extremely improper act with a jar of Ragu at the grocery.

I know some people won’t come to the same conclusion.  “Oh, he just doesn’t want the kids telling everyone that he ran over the neighbors’ dog,” an unworldly naïf might believe.  That simply doesn’t fit the scenario as well.  For me, the evidence is quite clear:  the man in the lyrics did something unwholesome in an indoor place, probably a store, and the meddling tykes witnessed it despite his attempt at discretion.  I will concede that it didn’t necessarily involve pasta sauce; he may be more of a Chiffon margarine guy.  However, this isn’t my imagination running amok.  The songwriters want us to hear lewdness in “Little Children”, because the vile details that we provide with our own brains are what keep us listening.  The music won’t do it by itself, as it is only average at best.

There are two clever directions that “Little Children” could take with this concept in its second half.  One is to subtly reinforce the obscene mental image that the lyrics have painted.  There could be a lament about A&P banning the singer from the entire grocery chain, or a verse in which the little children refuse to say why they won’t eat the lasagna that everyone else loves.  It would still be a gross song, but the humor might keep it afloat.  The other option would be to shatter our assumptions by revealing an unexpectedly innocent explanation for why the kids need to keep a secret.  It turns out that they are the narrator’s own children, and he doesn’t want them giving away the surprise party he is planning for their mom’s 38th birthday.  Now the joke is on the listener for having a dirty mind.

Unfortunately, “Little Children” follows a third path.  We ultimately learn that the little children caught the narrator in flagrante delicto with their sister, and are being ordered not to tell their parents about it under any circumstance.  Wow.  This is no longer a victimless crime that can be remedied with a quick cleanup in the spaghetti aisle.  I like to defend controversial songs, but here it is too much of a stretch.  Under the most generous interpretation, the narrator’s girlfriend could theoretically be of legal age with a gap of many years between her and her young siblings.  The lyrics don’t rule this out, but then we would need to invent a different reason why the guy is so worried about the woman’s parents finding out about the relationship.  Perhaps they will disinherit her if she dates someone who isn’t a Zoroastrian?  Once again, Occam’s Razor tells us that this probably isn’t the case.  Let’s just accept that the simplest, and most disturbing, explanation is the correct one:  the singer will be going to jail if the kids tell the grown-ups what they have seen.

Billy J. Kramer didn’t write “Little Children”, so he doesn’t deserve all of the blame.  I have to wonder, though, why he didn’t stop the recording and ask for a rewrite of that awful second half of the song.  “You know, chaps, we shouldn’t have the guy be that big of a perv.  Maybe he could just enjoy a good wank at Tesco every now and then.”  In any event, this was his biggest hit and he has to live with the consequences.  Imagine headlining a nostalgia show at age 70, and the one song you absolutely must perform is about giving kids candy to shut them up about what you’re doing with their sister.

My rating:  1 / 10

“Don’t Let the Rain Come Down (Crooked Little Man)” by the Serendipity Singers (1964, #6)

One critic’s view:  “[W]hat the hell do people like about this schlock? ...  The best I can come up with is that the Serendipity Singers evoke memories of a simpler time, when dad went off to work, mom stayed in the kitchen, and everybody’s tastes in music were for shit.” – TVD HQ @ The Vinyl District, in a review of the Serendipities’ greatest hits compilation

The public’s view:  2.57 / 5.00

I had never heard of the Serendipity Singers until I researched the history of unloved top 10 hits for this blog, but their name gave me an idea of what they might sound like.  I suspected that they were closer to the Mike Curb Congregation than they were to Slipknot, and I was right.  The Serendipities were a nine-member group from Colorado that was designed for people who liked folk music but who didn’t want the liberal connotations.  The group did dabble in the political arena by performing for LBJ in 1964, which was not a terribly controversial move in that landslide year, but it’s a huge stretch to find an ideological message in their lyrics.  If there is any such meaning in “Don’t Let the Rain Come Down”, you have to go deep down a gopher hole to find it.  Naturally, someone did.

“Don’t Let the Rain Come Down” is based on a centuries-old nursery rhyme about a man who buys some nails to mend the leaky roof of his house.  This poem was probably written as either a fun diversion for children or as a radio jingle for a medieval hardware store, but some scholars have refused to accept either hypothesis.  Rather, they suggest that the man’s crumbling abode is a metaphor for the uneasy alliance between Scotland and England.  I’m skeptical of this analysis, which relies on multiple iffy assumptions, but a Ph.D. is a license to reinterpret any work as long as the author is too dead to object.  One professor used to maintain that “Humpty Dumpty” was an allegory about the Royalist army’s siege of Gloucester in 1643, and other historians nodded their heads and agreed until someone with common sense stepped in to debunk this theory.  I’m waiting for some random academic to claim that “Baby Sittin’ Boogie” was intended as a brutal satire of Henry VI’s conduct during the Wars of the Roses.

I doubt that the Serendipities had any strong feelings about England or Scotland, other than wishing that the Royalist army would put a siege on Liverpool.  When “Don’t Let the Rain Come Down” was at its peak, it had to compete with three Beatles records that were in the top 10 at the same time.  It was a close call as to which would ultimately be the bigger of the two acts, but the Serendipities did not prevail.  They followed their one big single with a track called “Down Where the Winds Blow” and a tune about beans, but I can’t think of anything cute to say about those two songs.  Eventually the group got tired of tooting its own horn and making a big stink, so it squeaked out the back door and disbanded.  A different lineup of musicians later used the Serendipity Singers’ name to campaign for the Young Republicans, thereby blowing the act’s folk legacy away with a cloud of noxious gas.  These replacements for the original Serendipities weren’t exactly silent but they were deadly.

While “Don’t Let the Rain Come Down” may not be the most inventive song of the decade, the Serendipities had enough personality to make this mundane story about roof repair somewhat interesting.  I especially like the rendition from the group’s reunion concert, with the little flourish in which one of the performers raps on his colleague’s bald head.  Even if the lyrics really are some coded message about Scotland, this record still beats a whiney love ballad any day of the week.  I just wish we knew whether the guy with the bad roof actually does drown when it finally starts raining.

In an alternate dimension, music historians classify 1964 as the year of the Colorado Invasion and praise the Serendipity Singers as “The Fab Nine”.  It isn’t a bad dimension to visit, though I wouldn’t want to live there.

My rating:  7 / 10

“Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” by Rolf Harris (1963, #3)

One person’s view:  “‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’ is awful.  The musicianship and production is ramshackle, and the lyrics are first draft levels of bad.” – music blogger Dr. Nelson Winston

The public’s view:  2.67 / 5.00

If you were trying to write a commercially successful song, you’d likely settle on a popular lyrical theme like romance, dancing, partying, or making fun of Drake.  You probably wouldn’t draft a dying declaration from an Australian rancher to his buddies, charging them with the disposition of his animals and his remains.  But that’s because you are not Rolf Harris.  Harris was lured back from England to his Aussie homeland to host a children’s TV show, a hiring decision that looks about as smart in hindsight as asking the Sex Pistols to mind the evidence locker at a police station.  This relocation led to perhaps the most bizarre top 10 single of the 1960s.

The narrator of “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” owns a veritable menagerie of Australian wildlife, and each one requires a certain level of attention.  He starts by telling one friend to watch his wallabies feed, cautioning him that they are a dangerous breed.  He goes on to explain that his cockatoo must be kept cool, his platypus must not run amok, and, most important of all, his kangaroo must be tied down.  After the rancher finally dies, his hide is tanned and hung on a shed in accordance with his wishes.  It’s an unusual estate plan overall, but it cleverly avoids inheritance taxes.

Now I must address something unpleasant.  I’ve discussed several controversial songs here and on my #1 hits blog, and have mostly defended them from the political correctness crowd.  I wouldn’t hire Pat Boone or Jason Aldean to provide the entertainment at a civil rights rally, or probably anywhere else, but I don’t think that their songs have racist lyrics.  It’s harder to stick up for “Tie Me Kangaroo Down”, and I’ll explain why.

It turns out that the rancher owns several aboriginal people as slaves, or is at least keeping them in some kind of bondage involving forced labor.  He asks his friend Lou to let them “go loose” upon his death, because they are “of no further use”.  But that’s not the worst part.  These human chattels are on a list with livestock, and they rank behind four different types of animals among the rancher’s concerns.  The dude could expire at any moment and needs to prioritize his instructions, yet he mentions the damn kangaroo three times before he gets around to freeing his workers!  This is as if George Washington’s will had said:  “I beseech my dear friend Alexander Hamilton, who I love as much as one straight man can love another, to clean the cage of my hamsters, Snookums Woo Woo and Cutie Pie.  They are a dangerous breed.  Oh, and he can emancipate my useless slaves if he gets a chance, but the important thing is the hamsters.”

You can make a compelling argument that “Tie Me Kangaroo Down” is one of the biggest disasters in the history of recorded music.  Rolf Harris was a native Australian, yet his lyrics about his own country sound like something Ray Stevens wrote in five minutes while sitting on the toilet.  The song has the tone of a children’s sing-along, but there are multiple reasons why Harris probably shouldn’t sing it with kids.  (The verse about the guy’s skin being taken off and tanned might not even be one of the top reasons.)  Despite all of that, “Tie Me Kangaroo Down” has the type of charm that comes from not taking itself seriously at all.  This is a record that knows it is thoroughly stupid and invites us to laugh at it.  And the rancher may be a colonial enslaver and a weirdo, but at least he dies in the end.  It’s all part of the fun.

My rating:  6 / 10

“Still” by Bill Anderson (1963, #6)

One person’s view:  “It’s a mirthless, wince-inducing slog all-around, in my opinion the worst hit song of the entire year.” – Nic Renshaw @ Pop Goes the Year

The public’s view:  2.53 / 5.00

While I have some editorial discretion in deciding which songs to feature on this blog, my selections are guided by reviews and ratings that others have given.  When I saw that Bill Anderson’s “Still” was one of the most poorly regarded hit singles of 1963, and then listened to the record, I wasn’t thrilled with having to write about it.  This is an emotional song, one that probably means a lot to some people, and I felt bad about potentially exposing it to ridicule.  But then I listened to it again and focused on the lyrics, and realized that anyone choosing “Still” as a sentimental favorite is probably, at a minimum, missing the point.  Either that, or they need to seek professional help.

The best part of “Still” is the chorus, though even this is not exactly brimming with excitement.  The chorus is sung three times, and the two spoken word verses are placed in between like the filling of a double-decker sandwich.  It isn’t quite an edible sandwich, however.  It’s more like two sheets of Styrofoam on a slightly stale Big Mac bun.  Part of the problem is that Anderson is simply not very good as a spoken word performer.  Few people are truly skilled at this, to be fair, but even a so-so spoken section can work when it builds anticipation for some great vocals that follow.  In “Still”, any expectation of a glorious falsetto aria is destroyed when the second verse begins and Anderson is still speaking his lines rather than singing.  Come on, Bill, we’re paying you to use those pipes!

The lyrics are more worrisome than the delivery.  The singer is addressing a woman who broke his heart, and there is initially some ambiguity about how she left him.  My first guess was that this was another ‘60s death disc, and we were going to hear about his wife getting hit by a commuter train while picking up a ChapStick she spotted lying on the tracks.  It soon becomes clear, though, that the characters in this song managed to avoid the transportation hazards that brought an early demise to so many of their cohorts.  Their relationship did not end due to a tragic accident, but because the woman realized that life would be better without Mopey McMopeface tagging along.  It was a smart move for her, but the guy is incapable of processing the break-up in a healthy way.  Rather than gradually recovering from the loss, he admits that his abnormal obsession with his ex is actually getting worse with time.

I reviewed a similarly themed song on my #1 hits blog:  James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”.  Like “Still”, Blunt’s ballad might superficially be perceived as a touching tribute to a woman, when in fact it’s a distressing psychological portrait of a man descending into self-harm.  I like this about “You’re Beautiful”, though I seem to be in the minority.  That song works for me because of Blunt’s bizarre voice and the lyrics that bounce from one extreme to another, but “Still” doesn’t have any of this manic-depressive energy.  Much of it doesn’t even have singing.  It is just depressing.

“Still” doesn’t insult the listener’s intelligence, so I won’t give it my lowest rating.  However, if I was forced to choose a somber top 10 hit to put on repeat during a rush hour commute, I would pick “Tell Laura I Love Her” over this.  I have a feeling that Laura will get over the death of her Tommy faster than the guy in “Still” recovers from being dumped.

My rating:  2 / 10