by Dave Barry
This book is dedicated To whoever put the bomp In the bomp ba-bomp ba-bomp
“Wo wo wo”
“Feelings”
MORRIS ALBERT
“Wo wo wo wo”
“My Love”
PAUL MCCARTNEY
“Wo-o-o-o-o-o-o”
“What’s New Pussycat”
AS SUNG BY TOM JONES
“I said na
Na na na na
Na na na na
Na na na
Na na na
Na na na na”
“Land of 1,000 Dances”
Cannibal and the Headhunters
Contents
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Dedication
Wo wo wo
I said na
Warning
Introduction
Bad Song Survey Results
Weenie Music
Love Songs
Songs Women Really Hate
Teen Death Songs
Songs People Get Wrong
Conclusion
Credits
Copyrights
WARNING!
Do not read this book. It will put bad songs into your brain.
Actually, that statement is not quite accurate: The bad songs are already in your brain. Your brain has an amazing capacity to remember bad songs. This is because of the way your brain assigns memory priority, as shown in this chart:
Memory Priority Assigned by Your Brain
Type of Information
Low
Your ATM number; your blood type; the location of your car keys; names of people you have known for years.
Medium
Totally useless information you learned in fifth grade, such as the capital of Vermont. 1
High
Commercial jingles for products that as far as you know no longer exist, such as Bosco. 2
Ultimate Highest
Songs you really, really hate.
So I can guarantee you that many, if not most, of the bad songs discussed in this book are already festering somewhere in your brain. The good news is, most of the time these songs are dormant. The bad news is, every now and then something will wake one of the songs up, and you will have a hard time making it go back to sleep.
For example, you’ll be enjoying a pleasant day at home, reading a book, when suddenly somebody—perhaps a trusted family member—will, out of the clear blue, hum just a few notes of the song “(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden.” Since this is a song that you have detested from the first instant you heard it, your brain has assigned it a prime memory location. The song immediately wakes up and starts echoing in your skull so that no matter how hard you try to focus on your book, all you can hear is that woman’s smarmy voice singing
I beg your PARdon...
I never promised you a ROSE garden!
And since this is the only part of the song your brain remembers, it repeats it over and over and OVER AND OVER AND OVER, sometimes for days, until you want to commit suicide by driving off a cliff, except you can’t remember where you left your car keys.
That is the danger posed by this book. This book lists dozens and dozens of songs that are so bad they make “(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden” sound, in terms of musical quality, like “The Messiah.”3 If you keep reading, you’re going to have all kinds of bad songs waking up and creeping around inside your brain, refusing to die, just like the corpses in the movie The Night of the Living Dead, except all the corpses did was eat innocent civilians, which is not nearly as bad as causing innocent civilians to hum “A Horse with No Name.”
You may ask: “Dave, if this book is such a bad thing, why on Earth should I buy it? What can I do with a book that I’m not supposed to read?”
The answer is: You can give it to somebody you don’t like. This book is an extremely powerful psychological weapon; it can immobilize even the most powerful intellect.
Suppose you’re a candidate for a big promotion, but the other candidate is a coworker who happens to be very smart. All you have to do is surreptitiously leave this book on his desk (after first tearing out this warning section). After he reads just a few pages, he will have the brain functionality of an ashtray. He’ll be staring at important work papers, trying desperately to read and comprehend them, but he will be unable to do this because he will hear Gary Puckett’s voice inside his brain, howling:
YOUNG girl, get out of my mind!
My love for you is way out of line!
His career will be over. The end will come when he tries to make an important presentation, and he blurts out, in front of the corporation’s top-ranking officers, that he is too sexy for his shirt.
That is the kind of weapon this book is; that is the power it has. Use it wisely.
And whatever you do, don’t turn the next page.
I’m Really
Serious.
Do Not Turn
the Page.
You Will
Regret It.
Okay, I see I’m going to have to use drastic measures to get your attention. I didn’t want to have to do this to you, but it’s for your own good:
Muskrat Suzy
Muskrat Sam
Do the jitterbug
Out in muskrat land...
Had enough? I’m warning you, it’s going to get worse! I haven’t even mentioned Barry Manilow yet! Let alone Bobby Goldsboro! Turn back now, while you still have some, umm, some
Floatin’ like the heavens above, looks like
OH NO! I CAN’T STOP MYSELF! I CAN’T STOP
MUSKRAT LOOOOOOOOVE
Too late.
1 Montpelier.
2 “I LOVE Bosco! That’s the drink for me! Momma puts it in my milk,” etc.
3 “The Messiah” was a 1973 hit by Three Dog Night.
Introduction
Why You Should Not Blame Me for This Book
This book, like so many of the unpleasant things that we encounter as we go through life, is Neil Diamond’s fault. Here’s what happened:
One day back in 1992, I was doing what I am almost always doing, namely, trying to write a newspaper column despite the fact that I have nothing important, or even necessarily true, to say.
In this particular column, I was complaining about the fact that they never play any good songs on the radio. When I say “good songs,” I of course mean “songs that I personally like.” For example, I happen to love “Twist and Shout” as performed by the Isley Brothers. As far as I am concerned, oldies-format radio stations should be required by federal law to play this song at least once per hour.
But they hardly ever play it. Instead, they play “Love Child” as performed by Diana Ross and the Supremes, which is a song that you can listen to only so many times. And when I say “only so many times,” I mean “once.” And if they ever do play “Twist and Shout,” for some bizarre reason they play the Beatles’ version, which, according to mathematical calculations performed by powerful university computers, is only 1/10,000 as good as the Isley Brothers’ version.
So anyway, in this column I was ranting about songs that I don’t particularly care for, and I happened to bring up Neil Diamond. I didn’t say I hate all Neil Diamond songs; I actually like some of them.1 Here’s exactly what I wrote:
It would not trouble me if the radio totally ceased playing ballad-style songs by Neil Diamond. I realize that many of you are huge Neil Diamond fans, so let me stress that, in matters of musical taste, everybody is entitled to an opinion, and yours is wrong. Consider the song “I Am, I Said,” wherein Neil, with great emotion, sin
gs:
I am, I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair.
What kind of line is that? Is Neil telling us he’s surprised that the chair didn’t hear him? Maybe he expected the chair to say, “Whoa, I heard THAT.” My guess is that Neil was really desperate to come up with something to rhyme with “there,” and he had already rejected “So I ate a pear,” “Like Smokey the Bear,” and “There were nits in my hair.”
So that was what I wrote: A restrained, fair, and totally unbiased analysis of this song. Who could possibly be offended?
Well. You think Salman Rushdie got into trouble. It turns out that Neil Diamond has a great many serious fans out there, and virtually every one of them took the time to send me an extremely hostile, spittle-flecked letter. In a subsequent column, I combined the key elements of these letters into one all-purpose irate–Neil Diamond–fan letter, as follows:
Dear Pukenose:
Just who the hell do you think you are to blah blah a great artist like Neil blah more than twenty gold records blah blah how many gold records do YOU have, you scumsucking wad of blah I personally have attended 1,794 of Neil’s concerts blah blah What about “Love on the Rocks,” huh? What about “Cracklin’ Rosie”? blah blah If you had ONE-TENTH of Neil’s talent blah blah so I listened to “Heart Light” forty times in a row and the next day the cyst was GONE and the doctor said he had never seen such a rapid blah blah What about “Play Me”? What about “Song Sung Blah”? Cancel my subscription, if I have one.
The thing is, I got at least as many letters, just as strongly worded, attacking Neil Diamond. But that was just the beginning: I got a whole lot more letters from people who wanted to complain about other songs that they hated to hear on the radio. And these people were angry. These people were advocating the use of tactical nuclear weapons against the next radio station to play, for example, “American Pie.”
I have, in my twenty years as a newspaper columnist, written about many vitally important issues—politics, the economy, foreign policy, mutant constipated worms, etc.—and none of these topics has ever stirred up so much passion in the readers as the issue of bad songs. People were stopping me on the street, grabbing me by the shirt, and, with cold fury in their eyes, saying things like: “You know that song about the piña coladas? I HATE THAT SONG! I HATE IT!!”
So I realized that I had tapped into a throbbing artery of emotion. I realized that Americans—who are so often accused of not being interested in or informed about the issues—care very deeply about song badness. I also realized that, by probing deeper into this subject, I had a chance to do something that could provide a truly significant benefit to the human race; namely, I could get an easy column out of it.
And thus I decided to conduct the Bad Song Survey. I asked my readers to vote for what they considered to be the worst songs, the songs that cause them to poke finger holes in their car radios in their desperate haste to change the station.
The response was unbelievable. I think more people voted in the Bad Song Survey than in the presidential election. Certainly the Bad Song voters were more enthusiastic. Here are some typical quotes from the voters:
“The number one worst piece of pus-oozing, vomit-inducing, camel-spitting, cow-phlegm song EVER in the history of the SOLAR system is ‘Dreams of the Everyday Housewife.’ ”
“I’d rather chew a jumbo roll of tinfoil than hear ‘Hey Paula’ by Paul and Paula.”
“Whenever I hear the Four Seasons’ ‘Walk Like a Man,’ I want to scream, ‘Frankie, SING like a man!’ ”
“I wholeheartedly believe that ‘Ballerina Girl’ is responsible for 90 percent of the violent crimes in North America today.”
“I nominate every song ever sung by the Doobie Brothers. Future ones also.”
“Have you noticed how the hole in the ozone layer has grown progressively larger since rap got popular?”
“I nominate ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’ by Harry Chapin. Harry’s dead, of course, so we’ll never have to worry about hearing it performed live again, but darn it, Dave, the next disc jockey here in K.C. that plays that song is going to get smacked across the head with a tube sock full of wood screws.”
I ended up writing two columns on the results of the Bad Song Survey. These columns generated still more mail, some from people who wanted to cast additional votes (“I can’t BELIEVE you left out ‘Eve of Destruction!’ I HATE THAT SONG!”); some from people who were very upset about certain songs that were voted as bad (“Perhaps your readers are not aware that ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ is a very fine traditional...”). And I heard from some people whose lives had actually been changed by the survey. Here’s one of my favorite letters:
Dear Dave,
Your articles on Bad Songs were wonderful. I laughed ’til I cried. However, when I tried to read it to my boyfriend, much to my dismay he knew the words to all of the songs and likes them. I had to repeatedly stop reading so he could sing each one, and then listen to his exclamations of “What’s wrong with THAT one!?” and “He doesn’t like ‘Honey’?!!!” etc. I knew he was a sentimental fool, but had no idea how bad his taste was. Now I’m afraid we’re too incompatible to continue the relationship.
Thanks a lot, Dave.
Susan Bolton “Alone again, naturally”
And that was not the end of it. I don’t think there will ever be an end to it. We’ve had an entire presidential administration2 since the Bad Song Survey, and I am still getting mail about it from people wishing to vote for songs they hate, as well as from fans whom I have offended.
Special Note to Neil Diamond Fans
Please stop writing! You have convinced me! Neil is a music god! I worship Neil on a daily basis at a tasteful shrine to him erected in my living room! I love all the songs Neil sang to us! Not to mention all the songs he brang to us!
Why do people feel so passionate about this subject? Because music is personal. The songs we hear a lot—particularly the ones we hear when we’re young—soak into our psyche, so that forever after, when we hear certain songs, we experience sudden and uncontrollable memory spasms taking us back to specific times—some good, some bad—in our lives.
For example, I cannot hear a Beach Boys car song without being immediately transported back to the summers of 1962 through 1965. These were good summers for me—I was in high school and had never heard of gum disease—and Beach Boys car songs got played on the radio all the time, and I have loved them uncritically ever since. To this day, when I’m alone in my car, if the radio plays “Shut Down,” a song about two guys drag racing—one driving a Corvette Stingray and the other driving a Dodge with a 413 engine3—I’ll crank the volume all the way up and sing along:
Pedal’s to the floor, hear his dual quads drink
And now the 413’s lead is startin’ to shrink
On a technical level, I have no idea what the Beach Boys mean by the term dual quads. I’m not a car guy. I’m the kind of guy who, if there’s a warning light on my dashboard that won’t go away, will repair it by putting a piece of duct tape over it.
But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that when I’m singing along to “Shut Down,” I’m no longer a middle-aged guy driving to the laundry to pick up my shirts; I’m seventeen, and it’s a summer night with tantalizing possibilities of adventure and romance hanging semipalpably in the humid air, and I’m cruising the roads around Armonk, New York, and even though the vehicle I’m cruising in is my mom’s Plymouth Valiant station wagon, which boasts the performance characteristics and sex appeal of a forklift, I am feeling good, and I am stomping on the gas pedal (not that this has any measurable effect on my mom’s Valiant) and imagining that I’m at the wheel of a Stingray, singing triumphantly along with the Beach Boys as we roar past the Dodge 413:
He’s hot with ram induction, but it’s understood
I got a fuel-injected engine sittin’ under my hood
Shut it off, shut it of
f
Buddy now I SHUT YOU DOWN!
So I don’t care how many times I hear “Shut Down,” or “Little Deuce Coupe,” or “Fun, Fun, Fun.” They’re always welcome on my radio; I’ll go back to that summer night any time. On the other hand, I’ve always had a violent hatred for “I Got You Babe” because when it came out back in 1965 it was presented as some kind of anthem that spoke for America’s youth; whereas in fact it was a flagrantly inane song (“So put your little hand in mine; there ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb”), on top of which, as an American youth, I did not wish to be spoken for by a whining little puke like Sonny Bono.
So songs evoke powerful emotions, both positive and negative. I think the negative ones tend to be stronger because, as I noted in the preintroduction warning to this book, your brain, as part of its lifelong effort to drive you insane, insists on remembering the songs you hate and playing them over and over and over.
That’s why people still write and talk to me about the Bad Song Survey. They seem to have this powerful need to get their feelings about certain songs out into the open; somehow, this makes them feel better. It’s kind of like psychotherapy, where the goal is to get patients to probe their subconscious minds, deeper and deeper, until they finally realize that the root of all their emotional problems is the fact that, during early childhood, they were exposed to the hit song “The Name Game” by Shirley Ellis (“Shirley Shirley bo Birley, bo nana fana fo Firley, fee fie mo Mirley, Shirley!”).
