In the past couple years Dave Barry has had a "Ten Worst Rock and Roll Songs of All Time" contest in his column. I don't remember the whole list, but his number one loser was "MacArthur Park", a song so full of bombast and overblown metaphors that it collapses under its own weight ("Someone left a cake out in the rain..."), especially when "sung" by the musically impaired Richard Harris.

This contest was a lot easier for rock'n'roll than for folk songs in some ways; a lot more REALLY BAD songs get a whole lot more exposure and airplay in the pop music world than in folk music circles. One good thing about the oral tradition; if a song REALLY stinks, it will die after a couple generations. Unfortunately, those of us living in the same generation the song was "born" or written in are stuck with it...

There's a really big crop of recently written "folk" music I'd love to see consigned to the trash dumpster of history, especially "message" songs that advocate feminism, ecological correctness, peace, love, freedom and other politically correct causes without regard to melody, meter or elegant language. It's not that I don't agree with the political viewpoints expressed; it's just that the songs are written with all the subtlety of a 2 X 4, and sung with such painful earnestness that I want to cringe. There's the generic protest song, "Gonna Keep on Walkin' Forward" (your cause here), the sappy/cute eco-consciousness song "Hugh the Manatee" (Hugh Manatee - get it?, get it? Aren't we clever), any of the myriad of "Wymyn's movement" songs("all men are scum and we sisters should become lesbians and just get rid of them"), etc. Personally, I think Tom Lehrer's "We Are the Folk Song Army" should be required listening for anyone tempted to write a topical/political song!

Ah, well, I know that in generations to come, right thinking people (meaning those who share MY opinions) will bury these mistakes in the collective unconscious, whence they will be revived by earnest amateur folklorists like myself looking for a "new" obscure song to present to THEIR fellow folksingers...