Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs (Backlist eBook Program)

by Dave Barry

  P.S. to John Denver Fans: John is also the greatest! I don’t think he’s a weenie at all for writing “Annie’s Song” and “Sunshine on My Shoulders”!

  Barry Manilow got votes for several songs, including “Mandy,” “Looks Like We Made It,” and of course the truly hideous “Copacabana (at the Copa),” but he really scored big with “I Write the Songs.” The irony here is, Barry DIDN’T write “I Write the Songs”: it was written by Bruce Johnston,1 and it was also recorded by (since we’re talking weenies here) David Cassidy, who is also Donny Osmond, who in addition to “Puppy Love,” recorded “Too Young,” “The Twelfth of Never,” and a number of other hit songs, despite the fact that he had, by actual count, over forty thousand teeth.

  Another leading vote-getting weenie in the Bad Song Survey was Gilbert O’Sullivan, who was singled out for “Alone Again (Naturally),” in which he cheers everybody up with these words:

  In a little while from now

  If I’m not feeling any less sour

  I promise myself to treat myself

  And visit a nearby tower

  And climbing to the top

  Will throw myself off...

  Don’t let us stop you, Gilbert!

  Other songs getting votes in the you-don’t-love-me-so-it’s-time-to-jump-into-the-bathtub-with-an-electrical-appliance genre were Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” and Randy Vanwarmer’s “(You Left Me) Just When I Needed You Most.”

  In the Group Weenie Efforts category, the survey leader was Bread, which got votes for:

  “Diary”—“I found her diary underneath a tree and started reading about me.”

  “If”—“If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can’t I paint you?” (Huh?)

  “Baby I’m-a Want You”—“Baby I’m-a too lazy to write lyrics that scan, so I’m-a just add an extra ‘a’ whenever I’m-a need a syllable.”

  Another weenie band I’d like to take special note of is Climax, whose hit “Precious and Few” sounds roughly like this:

  Precious and few are the moments we two can share

  So it seems kind of odd that when we are together

  All I do is keep repeating the same statement, namely

  Precious and few are the moments we two can share

  With those precious words echoing in my few remaining brain cells, I think I’m-a stop here.

  1 Who, speaking of writing songs, also wrote “Do the Surfer Stomp.”

  Love Songs

  Words from the Heart(Or Somewhere Around There)

  Love can be wonderful, but it also can be very destructive. It can cause people to lie, to cheat, to steal, to commit murder, and—worst of all—to write lyrics like these:

  Why do birds suddenly appear

  Every time you are near?

  These lyrics are of course from the Carpenters’ huge hit “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” which received a solid vote in the Bad Song Survey. You frankly have to ask yourself: “Do I really want to be near somebody who causes birds to appear suddenly? Didn’t Alfred Hitchcock do a horror movie about this?”

  “(They Long to Be) Close to You” was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who also wrote many fine songs. On the other hand, they wrote “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” not to mention “Wives and Lovers” (see “Songs Women Really Hate”) as well as the Perry Como hit “Magic Moments,” which contains these lyrics:

  The way that we cheered whenever our team was scoring a touchdown

  The time that the floor fell out of my car when I put the clutch down

  But getting back to love songs: The voters in the Bad Song Survey singled out several songs that, although they seem to be intended to stir romantic feelings in a person of the opposite gender, seem more likely to stir some other emotion. Fear, for example. I am referring here to Steve Miller’s “Abracadabra,”1 which begins with this sensitive and poetic statement:

  Abra, abracadabra

  I wanna reach out and grab ya

  A similar sentiment is expressed in the Four Seasons’ “My Eyes Adored You,” wherein Frankie Valli sings these classy lines:

  My eyes adored you

  Though I never laid a hand on you

  Speaking of romantic sentiments, one of my personal favorites, even though it got only a couple of survey votes, is “Girl Watcher,” sung by the O’Kaysions, which features a line that would surely melt any woman’s heart:

  Hello there female

  My my, but you do look swell

  Gosh! Thank you, male! Let’s have sex relations!

  Another very romantic song receiving survey votes was Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night,” in which Rod wins the Mr. Subtle Award for this line:

  Spread your wings and let me come inside

  In the same song, Rod also wins the Mr. Logic Award for singing:

  Just let your inhibitions run wild

  Don’t worry, Rod! Our inhibitions are completely out of control! Which is why we’re keeping our wings tightly folded!

  A somewhat less direct approach was taken by Tony Orlando when he and Dawn sang “Knock Three Times,” a song about a guy who is infatuated with the woman in the apartment underneath his, but he’s apparently too shy to talk to her, so instead he sings to her, at the top of his lungs:

  Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me!

  Twice on the pipe, if the answer is no!

  I hate to suck the romance out of this story, but there’s a good chance that if Tony keeps that up, the neighbors are going to get some pipes and start knocking on him.

  There are a lot more bad love songs, but in my opinion one of the worst, when you consider who wrote it, is “Silly Love Songs” by Paul McCartney because it...it...how do I find the words...it just sucks. And so does “My Love,” wherein Paul, apparently too busy to write actual words, goes with:

  Wo wo wo wo

  Wo wo wo wo

  My love does it good!

  The big question is: What happened to Paul? Did his brain get taken over by aliens from the Planet Twinkie? I mean, he was a Beatle, for goshsakes, a certified genius, a man who wrote dozens of truly great songs, including such butt-kicking rockers as “I’m Down,” and then for some mysterious reason he began cranking out songs like “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey,” “Listen to What the Man Said,” and “Let ’Em In,” which expresses this powerful and universal theme:

  Someone’s knockin’ at the door

  Somebody’s ringin’ the bell

  Someone’s knockin’ at the door

  Somebody’s ringin’ the bell

  Do me a favor, open the door

  And let ’em in

  Paul also got a number of votes in the Bad Song Survey for one line in “Live and Let Die”: “But if this ever-changing world in which we live in...” Mr. McCartney, step up and receive your Certificate of Redundancy Certificate!

  Not to keep picking on Paul, but, he also co-sang on another truly bad love song, “The Girl Is Mine,” with (speaking of aliens) Michael Jackson. This is the one wherein Michael, needing a romantic, tender two-syllable adjective to describe the girl he loves, came up with:

  The girl is mine

  The doggone girl is mine

  Fine piece of writing, Michael! Reminds me of Cole Porter! (“I’ve got you under my skin, doggone it!”)

  Michael Jackson was of course married for several sincere and meaningful minutes to Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis. The King sang all kinds of wonderful songs, including “Do the Clam,” and in his early hit “All Shook Up” sang what I consider to be one of the finest expressions of love in all of music:

  I’m proud to say

  She’s my buttercup

  Yes, love is a beautiful thing, but when love goes bad, it can be a terribly painful thing. I will close this chapter by quoting from a song that, in the opinion of some survey voters, most eloquently captures this pain. The song is “Backfield in Motion,” recorded in the 1960s by Mel and Tim, who conveyed the anguish,
the despair, the loss, and the heartache of the jilted lover as follows:

  I caught you with your backfield in motion, yeah

  I’m gonna have to penalize you

  Backfield in motion

  Baby you know that’s against the rules!

  1 Steve also got a number of Bad Song votes for “Take the Money and Run,” in which, in a single verse, he rhymes “Texas,” “facts is,” “justice,” and “taxes.” But we can forgive Steve for any bad lyrics he wrote because he also wrote “The Joker,” thereby guaranteeing that thousands of years from now, people will still be wondering what the hell a “pompatus” is.

  Songs Women Really Hate

  “I Want a BRAVE Man, I Want a CAVE Man”

  I decided to devote a chapter to songs that women really hate because—follow me closely here—the Bad Song Survey indicated that there are certain songs that women really hate.

  A prime example is “Dreams of the Everyday Housewife,” which was recorded by Glen Campbell and features these lyrics:

  She picks up her apron in little-girl fashion

  As something comes into her mind

  Slowly starts dancing, remembering her girlhood

  And all of the boys she had waiting in line.

  Oh, such are the dreams of the everyday housewife

  You see everywhere any time of the day

  An everyday housewife who gave up the good life for me

  BONUS POINTS: “Dreams of the Everyday Housewife” was also recorded by Gary Puckett.

  Another song unpopular with women is “Little Green Apples,” in which O. C. Smith sings boastfully about how he calls his woman up at home, “knowing she’s busy,” and gets her to drop everything and meet him for lunch, and he’s “always late,” but she sits there “waiting patiently.”

  BONUS POINTS: “Little Green Apples” was also recorded by—I am not making this up—Gary Puckett.

  Then there’s the 1969 R. B. Greaves hit “Take a Letter, Maria,” the song sung by a boss to his secretary. This song prompted Denise Bernd to write: “As if she isn’t busy enough, he wants to dictate a letter to his wife that he’s leaving her. The guy makes my skin crawl. I’d love to hear Maria’s response. Perhaps that’s where ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ comes from.”

  BONUS POINTS: “Take a Letter, Maria” was also recorded by—I am still not making this up—Gary Puckett.

  But the hostility for all of the preceding songs combined does not match the hostility voiced by women in the survey for Jack Jones’s hit “Wives and Lovers,” the one that goes:

  Hey, little girl, comb your hair, fix your makeup

  Soon he will open the door

  Yo, Jack: Fix this.

  Another detested song from the woman-as-helpless-appendage-of-man genre is “It Must Be Him,” in which a desperate-sounding Vikki Carr sings something like:

  Let it please be him

  Oh dear God it MUST be him

  Or I will stick my head in the oven again

  And then there’s “I Will Follow Him,” in which Little Peggy March sings:

  I love him! I love him! I love him!

  And where he goes I’ll follow! I’ll follow! I’ll follow!

  “ ’Cause I’m a moron,” adds survey voter B. J. Halstrom.

  AMAZING FACT: To the best of my knowledge, “I Will Follow Him” was never recorded by Gary Puckett.

  Many voters cited various songs of teenage-female angst, with one of the leading vote-getters being Lesley “It’s My Party” Gore, who was cited for the part of “Judy’s Turn to Cry” where she sings:

  One night I saw them kissing at a party

  So I kissed some other guy

  Johnny jumped up and he hit him

  ’cause he still loved me, that’s why

  Also cited by many voters was the Joanie Sommers hit “Johnny Get Angry.” (I assume this is a different Johnny, but you never know.) In this song Joanie, in a giant stride forward for feminism, sings:

  Johnny get angry, Johnny get mad

  Give me the biggest lecture I ever had

  I want a BRAVE man, I want a CAVE man

  Johnny show me that you care, really care, for me

  But “Johnny Get Angry” sounds like “I Am Woman” when you compare it to “He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss),” recorded by The Crystals, which features these lyrics:

  And when I told him I had been untrue

  He hit me and it felt like a kiss

  He hit me and I knew he loved me

  If he didn’t care for me

  I could have never made him mad

  But he hit me, and I was glad

  (We can only speculate whether O. J. had this on the cassette player during the Bronco chase.)

  There were also survey votes for:

  Todd Rundgren’s “We Gotta Get You a Woman,” especially for the part where he sings “They may be stupid but they sure are fun.”

  Kenny Rogers’s “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town,” because, as Elizabeth Cosgriff put it, “In these days of kneejerk political correctness, it’s refreshing to hear a song that’s unashamed to stand up for wife murder.” Kenny Rogers, by the way, gets bonus Bad Song points for singing, with Dolly Parton, “Islands in the Stream,” which was written by the Bee Gees and begins with these unforgettable lyrics:

  Baby when I met you there was peace unknown

  I set out to get you with a fine tooth comb

  The Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose song “Treat Her Like a Lady” because of the part where they sing “Strange as it seems, you know you can’t treat a woman mean.”

  And of course the lovely Willie Nelson/Julio Iglesias duet, “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before, Please Send Me Your Blood Test Results Immediately.”

  Survey voter John Lilly nominated Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman,” with this explanation: “On first hearing, I thought it was a VERY long Geritol commercial (‘OOOH, she takes care of herself...’) and a damned good one, since it made me physically ill.”

  In conclusion, I would like to cite, as a strong example of the type of song that women generally do not sing any more as a result of the changing social climate, The Cookies’ 1963 recording, “Girls Grow Up Faster Than Boys,” which features these lyrics:

  Won’t you take a look at me now?

  You’ll be surprised at what you see now

  I’m everything a girl should be now

  Thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-five!

  I have to admit that, despite the lyrics, I like that song. I also really like another song done by The Cookies, “Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad (About My Baby),” in which the Cookies, standing up for their baby, sing:

  He’s good

  He’s good to me

  So girl you better shut your mouth.

  Say what you want about The Cookies; they were tough.

  Teen Death Songs

  GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE GONE!

  Many, many voters in the Bad Song Survey felt that the worst songs of all are the ones concerning hormone-crazed teenagers who wind up going, through some tragedy or another, to that Big Prom Up in the Sky.

  Although most of the classic teen death songs were produced in the ’50s and ’60s, this theme has been popular in music and literature for hundreds of years, dating back to when William Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, a play about two teenagers from enemy families who fall in love and try to run away, only to die in a car crash.

  This is similar to the theme in one of the most famous teenage death songs, “Teen Angel,” which received many survey votes. It’s about a couple whose car stalls on the railroad track with a train approaching, and the girl gets killed. What makes this song really tragic is that it didn’t have to happen. As the singer sings:

  I pulled you out and we were safe

  But you went running back.

  The singer doesn’t explain why his date had to be “pulled” out of a car that had merely stalled; perhaps she was an unusually large teena
ger who tended to get wedged between the seat and the dashboard. But the singer does explain why she “went running back”:

  They said they found my high school ring

  Clutched in your fingers tight.

  That’s right: She placed herself directly in the path of a moving railroad train for a high school ring. Because of this, a lot of survey voters argued that “Teen Angel” is not so much a tragedy as it is an illustration of how the law of natural selection improves the gene pool. Nevertheless, I feel that, to prevent this kind of incident from happening again, we should all write to our congresspersons and demand passage of a new federal law requiring that the following warning signs be posted at railroad crossings: