What is the worst song you ever heard?

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 07 Mar 04 - 04:53 AM

BRUCIE? With a name like Brucie, how can you denigrate "YMCA", the gay guys national anthem? Or GW Bush's "Onward CHRISTIAN Soldiers"?

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Peace
Date: 07 Mar 04 - 11:36 AM

GUEST, guest

Ya know, when I first used the name 'brucie' on the Mudcat, one of the fellows sent me a message to tell me I'd have to live with it once I used it. I informed him that the name Bruce was taken already, so I'd suck it up and move on. YOU are the person he was warning me about! LOL

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Jeri
Date: 07 Mar 04 - 11:47 AM

What we have here is an abundance of Bruces. Brucie, I think you meant Bruce Olson, who passed away last year. Of course, there are probably other Bruces. Someone could be Brusse or Brusce or Broose, or spell it in Gaelic something like 'Bhraieoufhssphtaeiou'. (Except I think that' would be pronouced 'Arnold'.

And I LIKE 'YMCA'. A former local group did a bluegrass version of it.

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Pete Betts (inactive)
Date: 07 Mar 04 - 12:09 PM

Everley BROTHERS -Ebony Eyes
Roy Orbison - There won`t be many coming home.
Jim Dale ? Goodbye Buddy ( Holly )
Agadoo , Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep, Birdie Song take your pick
unfortunately they all sold remarkably well - so what do we / I know ?

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Peace
Date: 07 Mar 04 - 12:17 PM

Jeri,

In bluegrass, maybe. By the Village People: NO! NO! NO! Death, where is thy sting? The song never went away. Kids today in school dances are getting DJs to play the song. Then they do that thing with the arms. Took me years to figure out they are making the letters Y M C A in the air. I did not take enough medication in the '60s to understand the disco era.

". . . or spell it in Gaelic something like 'Bhraieoufhssphtaeiou'. (Except I think that' would be pronouced 'Arnold'." LMAOROTF

brucie (and proud of it).

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Peace
Date: 07 Mar 04 - 10:45 PM

These Boots Are Made For Walking

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: GUEST,Jim Knowledge
Date: 08 Mar 04 - 11:30 AM

I `ad that Whispering Bob `arris in my cab once. `e asked me what was the worst song I `ad ever `eard? I said that one by Van Morrison. `e said what one? I said I dunno, I couldn`t make out the words!!
What am I like?

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 08 Mar 04 - 12:16 PM

Brucie, thanks for taking my jibes in the intended spirit :-) But wait a minute! What's with the "Boots" thing?
Pete Betts, you brought back some horrible, horrible memories. I immediately heard that "Buddy Holly Tribute" tune in my head. It wasn't Jim Dale, it was Mike Berry (1963) - written by G. Goddard.
What a wonderful thing this world wide web is - within only two searches I turned up the immortal (if sparse) lyrics.

Wow-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, yeah-yea-yea-yeaaah-yeah
Snow was snowing, wind was blowing
When the world said, goodbye Buddy
Still I know that up in heaven
Is where we'll hear him sing again

Wow-oh-oh-oh-oh, yeah-yeah, yeah-yea-yeaaah
We'll always remember Buddy Holly

[Spoken]
Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash, in 1959
But his songs will always be remembered, always

Wow-oh-oh-oh-oh, yeah-yeah, yeah-yea-yeaaah
We'll always remember Buddy...

Snow was snowing, wind was blowing
When the world said, goodbye Buddy
Still I know that up in heaven
Is where we'll hear him sing again

Wow-oh-oh-oh-oh, yeah-yeah, yeah-yea-yeaaah
Wow-oh-oh-oh-oh, yeah-yeah, yeah-yea-yeaaah

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Peace
Date: 08 Mar 04 - 08:42 PM

GUEST, guest: I thought your jibes were great. I like funny stuff. I knew when I took the 'cat name 'brucie' that I would haer about it. I've laughed at every one of 'em. Thank you.

There is one more song that came out in the CB radio days. I wanted to dig a hole and pull it in after me every time it was played on the radio. The two lines I remember are

" . . . them bears was thick as trees" and the other was from what I think was meant to be a chorus: "We got ourselves a C O N v o y." If anyone would help me to forget those two lines, I will owe you lots. Friggin' words have stayed with me since 1976 or 1977. Too damn long, I can tell you that.

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 08 Mar 04 - 11:59 PM

Sorry Brucie, no one can help. You are forever destined to have these words zooming around in your brain. You may be 95 with severe alzheimers sitting in the rest home, chattering away and infecting other ancients with ditties about "bears as thick as trees" until the nursing staff give serious consideration to converting the place to an insane asylum.
In the meantime, you will indeed forget lines and even entire verses of songs you have sung and enjoyed hundreds of times, usually about two seconds before you crucially needed to remember them, in the middle of the song and in front of an audience.
Welcome to the human race.

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Peace
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 12:12 AM

Yeah. Did that one night on stage. Was singing something or other and mentally occupied with what I was gonna do later that night. Forgot not only what words acme next, I also had no idea what song I was doing. But I guarantee it wasn't the bears as thick as trees thing. And there it is again!

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Joe Richman
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 01:30 AM

I'm not sure what the worst I've ever heard is but in the last 5 min it's 'Girls just want to have fun".

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Joe Richman
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 01:34 AM

Oh yeah, my wife's brother gave her a toy gorilla that played the Macarena. Thankfully it broke within a day. What an awful tune!

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Amergin
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 01:58 AM

that giddy up go song thing....red sovine....like anything else he ever did...pure trash.

Brucie...that's not the song Convoy by CW McCall is it?

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: GUEST,Hugh Jampton
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 10:50 AM

Brucie,
       So as not to let you escape you will no doubt recall "--they even got a bear in the air!"

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: VIN
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 11:51 AM

Probably our national anthem!

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Peace
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 12:42 PM

Amergin: THAT'S IT! Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I'm free at last. (You ever need a favour--someone's knees broken, don't want the body found, like that, you let me know). Now I can let it go. Thank you, thank you. You are my new hero. Sorry to Bill Shatner (and his doppelganger, Little Hawk).

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Amergin
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 02:19 PM

Oh.....I wouldn't thank me yet....hehehehehehehe

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: GUEST,Pete Betts
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 02:47 PM

Guest Guest
Date: 08 Mar 04 - 12:16 PM
Thanks a million
Mike Berry (1963)it was - what a goldmine of info.
Apologies to Mr Dale.

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: LNL
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 03:41 PM

Well, I hope this isn't sacrilege around here, but: anything I've ever heard by the Kingston Trio. Unfortunately, my dad had a fondness for them when I was little. I still haven't recovered!

Also due to my dad, "Slack Your Rope, Hangman." He thought that what I'm guessing was the PP&M version was a suitable lullaby. He would croon and I would go into hysterics until my mother stepped in.

Not sure if this is the title, but "Ghost Riders in the Sky"... another one I was terrified as a toddler.

For sheer annoyance, "I am Woman" tops my list. On the other hand, I'm secretly a fan of "Leave me Alone (Ruby Red Dress)," "Delta Dawn," and "Angie Baby."

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Maurice Mann
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 03:52 PM

Deck of Cards, by everybody that ever recorded it!

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 06:14 PM

Are you all fogetting Achy Breaky Heart? I sure wish that I could as well! Not only was it awful but it seemed to top the charts forever. If this was not the worst ever it sure had to be the most agrivating.

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Peace
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 06:37 PM

Joe Richman:

How'd you break it?

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Peter Woodruff
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 08:11 PM

This is an answer to another thread. McArthur's Park is the alltime worst song ever written with really sappy lyrics. "Someone left the cake out in the rain?" Give me a break!

Peter

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: GUEST,freda
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 08:26 PM

I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus..

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Peace
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 10:43 PM

And exactly WHERE was the mistletoe hanging?

(Lotsa latitude for the wags on this one!)

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Joe Richman
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 11:08 PM

Brucie...believe it or not I didn't break it. It was a cheap toy bought at a gas station, and it just broke of it's own shoddy accord. A shoddy toy playing a shoddy tune. Imagine that!!

Joe

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: maire-aine
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 12:41 PM

I don't know if it's the worst, but the one I hate most is Sonny's Dream.

M.

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Peace
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 04:53 PM

Joe Richman: You did that well. Sounded so sincere. "Honest, officer, I don't know HOW that gun got in my holster." LOL

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: GUEST,Bad Dog
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 05:45 PM

I can't believe the thread has gone on for this long without anyone mentioning the collected works of Burt Bacharach! From "Do you know the way to San Jose?" to whatever, they consisted of utterly banal lyrics set to tunes that were, sort of,well, "anti-music."

The metrical structure was usually symmetrical but jarring, and the melodies seemed to conform to some abstract rules about what notes theorietically went together but never, ever, sounded like a real tune.

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Joe Richman
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 08:37 PM

Believe me if it hadn't broken, Brucie, I'd have taken a 9 lb hammer to it. What more can I say? it was probably made in China!

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: iancarterb
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 09:45 PM

I did see one mention of Eve of Destruction scanning the responses, but it seems everyone has repressed The Ballad of the Green Berets!

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: GUEST,pattyClink
Date: 11 Mar 04 - 04:23 PM

"The Wedding" or "Irish Wedding Song" or whatever they call it. Stupefyingly bad. It's painful to hear people try to sing it well, it can't be sung well cause it stinks!

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: alanabit
Date: 12 Mar 04 - 07:10 AM

El Greko's singing nightmare from Spain was called Baccarat, I believe. They seem to have been forgotten now, which is not a bad thing.
My own least favourite song of the seventies was probably "Daddy Cool" by Boney M. The ladies who had to sell this trash were joined onstage by a little wriggling man. He resembled a worm being toasted. This was the brainchild - or perhaps brain damage - of the German producer Frank Farian. He imported three competent West Indian lady singers and got them to chant a football crowd chorus, written in fake American slang, and recorded the ensuing abomination over an electronic drumbeat. It was moronic in a new sort of way - quite groundbreaking at the time. And what a horrible time it was. Inflation rose. Unemployment rose. Margeret Thatcher rose. Sales of nasty, brutish disco records rose. Not much nostalgia for those days!

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Peace
Date: 12 Mar 04 - 08:27 PM

Well, I figure I'll break some new ground here. "Teen Angel" is both good and bad. It's schmaltzy but good. Name a few others like that. "Tell Laura I Love Her" qualifies. "Patches" doesn't, because it is one of the greater ballads of all time, despite what folks will say. So?

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: matai
Date: 13 Mar 04 - 06:42 AM

Here in NZ 'Ten Guitars' or 'Me and Bobby McGee' always bring on the groans but then most of Leonard Cohen's do as well and he's a great song-writer so there is no accountin' for taste. A musician friend of mine got hold of 'Ten Guitars' and turned it into something like a Beethoven concerto for guitar...very cool.

Matai

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: tempora
Date: 13 Mar 04 - 08:23 AM

Feelings ('nothing more than *dramatic pause* feelings...') ARGH!

& something that goes 'I don't know much, but I know I love you'

I REALLY REALLY hate Stoney...

Seasons in the Sun

Cycles ('So I'm down & so I'm out, but so are many others...') Some silly thing about after winter spring comes. The tune's abominable too.

Not forgetting Simple Man by Charlie Daniels band... Xenophobic racist load of s**t

The thing about these terrible songs is you NEVER forget them. & they just play in your head, and play... and play...

Oh & that version of Bach's double violin concerto where they replaced the violins with voice. Major YUCK.

Cheerios

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: rock chick
Date: 13 Mar 04 - 04:53 PM

chicken in a basket..........I HATE IT...nothing more to say about it. Grrrrrrrrrrr

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Mar 04 - 07:59 PM

Nice to see that the rotten songs are still rolling in!

You know, it's a damn shame that Red Sovine never recorded a collaboration album with William Shatner, and an even greater shame that Big Bill never recorded his own version of "Girl On The Billboard". It would have undoubtedly ROCKED!

I'll put in another nod for the theme of "Titanic".

- LH

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 14 Mar 04 - 06:46 AM

O yes, Baccarat - thanks, alanabit, for bringing the horrible memories back to mind...
Boney M were a German creation too, weren't they? Their "Rasputin" would have started a revolution by itself (of music lovers).
OK, the Greeks are not innocent either. Demis Roussos' voice still rings out in my nightmares, like a cat being put through the mangle - slowly. "Rain and Tears" caused me to cry for all the wrong reasons.
And how abput Tiny Tim's voice, now, there was a case worthy of a muzzle...

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 14 Mar 04 - 01:21 PM

'Without You' by some twallop called Nilsson.
'Mony Mony' by some ultra-forgettable seventies group.
'I will Survive' by any twerp who ever sang it.
'Simon Says' by another dopey seventies group.

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: alanabit
Date: 14 Mar 04 - 03:24 PM

I believe that Mony Mony was by Tommy James and the Shondells and Simon Says was by the 1812 Fruitgum Company. They were both from the sixties - allegedly the golden age of pop music. I think Gloria Gaynor was the first to unleash "I Will Survive" upon us. Like Strolling Johnny, my first thought on hearing it was, "I hope you don't love" - well - as a pop star anyway. That was the early seventies, so I guess it belonged alongside other pieces of its time like "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" - (very cheap but not particularly chirpy peice about a rapidly vanishing family).
Frank Farian was/is indeed German, El Greko. If you think he was bad, you should hear Dieter Bohlen, famous wife beater and perpetrator of garbage like "Brother Louie". TS Barnum should have been born into this age. There's one born every second these days!

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Mar 04 - 05:32 PM

That's funny, alanabit. That's exactly the same thought I had upon hearing "I Will Survive". Ironical, isn't it? A medley of "I Am Woman"/"I Will Survive"/"You and Me Against the World" would be a killer disc! Perhaps Mariah Carey could be persuaded to do it?

- LH

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Mar 04 - 06:06 PM

'Rock Me Amadeus'
The Greats of Manilow: I Write The Songs, Mondy, but in particular Copacabana
Any songs where adults mimic children singing super syrupy, such as that one about Jesus not liking when adults are mean to widdle childwen
Nearer my god to thee
and the one which is dreadfully great, but I have to close my eyes when I write the name or else the damn thing will recycle in my synapses for about 16 hours: Turning Japanese

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: alanabit
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 04:23 AM

You have a perverse imagination, don't you LH? I don't doubt that your proposal for a horrendous medley would rake in the dollars. You had better not play it within my hearing though!

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: JJ
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 09:04 AM

Alan, that was the 1910 Fruitgum Company. 1812 is an overture. You also appear to have conflated TS Eliot with PT Barnum. ;-)

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: alanabit
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 02:55 PM

You are quite right of course. I should have known. In fact I did know better. Next time I shall wake up before typing! Thanks for the correction.

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: GUEST,Shlio
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 04:19 PM

There is a song that I always get stuck in my head. I have no idea who sang it, when they sang it or why they sang it. I only know eleven words and a tiny part of the tune, and I'm not even sure where I heard it or if I ever did.
Nevertheless, when my mind goes blank the words drift across my defenceless mind..."it was an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka dot bikini..."
HELP!

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: alanabit
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 04:33 PM

Was it Brian Hyland? Yeah, it was ghastly!

Subject: RE: What is the worst song you ever heard?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 04:45 PM

"Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" was also recorded in the German language! You've gotta hear it to believe it.

It was among the most frequently played novelty songs of the 60's, which included great works like "Monster Mash", "MacArthur Park", "Winchester Cathedral", "Ahab the Ay-rab", "Alley Oop", "Huggin' and a-kissin' with Fred (in the back seat)", "Snoopy and the Red Baron", and "One-eyed, One-Horned, Flying Purple People Eater". A lot of those fell in the category of one-hit wonders. Bob Dylan wrote none of them. :-)

Now if William Shatner could be persuaded to record a modern compilation disc of the best (or worst) of these 60's novelty tunes, I should think it would be just unforgettable, conveying a resonance of those historic times that would be, well, timeless...

I'm gonna call him up on the weekend and suggest it.

- LH