Worst Song by a Respectable Artist

Subject: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Dan
Date: 01 Jul 99 - 09:35 AM

Some good artists never do bad material, and some prostitute themselves on a regular basis. My vote for the worst all time song by a respectable artist is Willie Nelson's "Last Thing I Needed First Thing This Morning" which starts off with that inimitable line, "Woke up this morning, spilled all the coffee." What's your vote?

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Bert
Date: 01 Jul 99 - 09:43 AM

I've always thought that there was something wrong with that song. When it starts out, it has the potential of a great comic song, then it changes mood and tries to be serious. It just doesn't come off. I agree with you, Willie should have put his foot down and made them get it right before singing it.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Ferrara
Date: 01 Jul 99 - 10:09 AM

Well --- There are inadvertent worst songs and then there are deliberate worst songs. Helen Schneyer has the set of Victorian songs she calls her "Hideobilia," and then there's Allan Dameron, who tops off his collection of purely rotten songs with "Fort Worth," which has the rousing chorus, "On the muscle of my arm there's a red and blue tattoo / saying, Fort Worth, I love you!" I truly think that hollering this thing out in the audience at Kerrville has been one of the musical highlights of my life. - Rita F

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Mudjack
Date: 01 Jul 99 - 12:46 PM

You said respectable, Willie hardly fits that image. Oh! as a writer, OK Willie has written some great songs but frankly has covered much better ones than he's ever written.(thats 2 cents worth of opinion.)
My wife is (was) a Neil Diamond fan until he did his Nashville crap that trashed his reputation among the baby boomers.In our house he gets the sour grapes award.
I think all song writers get their share of duds, which is why the studio producers want their artist to toe the line and put out only the marketable stuff. Give me the singer/songwriter good or bad, at least it's honest bad and a pure form of expression.
A good subject for a thread......
Mudjack

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Jeri
Date: 01 Jul 99 - 02:38 PM

There's that one Neil Diamond did where he talks to an empty room and seems miffed the furniture doesn't talk back.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: lesblank
Date: 01 Jul 99 - 04:36 PM

It is painfully obvious that none of the above thread composers are from Texas -- Thank Heavens !!

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: DougR
Date: 01 Jul 99 - 05:46 PM

I would say you are probably right, Les. Sign me, ex-Texan. By the way, are you the filmmaker, lesblank?

DougR

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Captain Swing
Date: 01 Jul 99 - 07:30 PM

'Sailing' - Rod Stewart (Respectable artist? When he was with the Faces maybe)

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Shack
Date: 01 Jul 99 - 07:34 PM

"She Wears Red Dresses" by Dwight Yoakum, is horrible.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Chet W.
Date: 01 Jul 99 - 07:38 PM

I guess this is sort of related. I've always regretted when I heard a recording by one of my favorite performers, whose stage show is a work of art every time, but then they go into the studio and hire a batallion of side musicians so that they don't sound anything like themselves. This has been true of some of my most admired performers. And in most cases, it's not like they had a snowball's chance of having a chart hit anyway, so why screw up something wonderful, or at least the part of it that we get to take home?

Don't want to call any names, Chet W.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: lesblank
Date: 01 Jul 99 - 09:45 PM

To DougR :

I have been accused many a time, especially when on business trips to San Francisco (when I worked for a living !!), of being him , or at least, being mistaken for him. We are close to the same age, and a whisp of a resemblance is there, but he has more talent in his little finger than I do in my entire right hand !! Intrigued by the confusion, (hotel personnel were especially prone), I once attended a lecture he gave at a small film festival in Tiburon, Calif. on the making of short films with a message. He was very impressive, so much so that I got cold feet and did not go up to him at the reception, fearing total collapse! Now all is do is pluck a few songs now and then, correspond with Gene (oldtimer) and see Allen Damron perform at least 25 times per year.!! Eat your heart out, Ferrara !!

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: John Hindsill
Date: 01 Jul 99 - 10:19 PM

"Granada" a jazzed-up version by Ol' Blue Eyes, hot on the heels of a really great stentorian rendition by Frankie Laine. Sinatra's version was neither good jazz, nor good vocally or orchestrally. - John

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Jeremiah McCaw
Date: 01 Jul 99 - 10:55 PM

Heard a "new country" song a few years ago called "Please Don't Take the Girl". Several verses of the "goin' fishing, little girl next door wants to go too, kid begs Dad -insert title here" variety. End of the song, of course the kid's married the girl, his true love, and they get mugged or something and he begs the bad guys - insert title again. Piece of trite, cynical, manipulative, maudlin, formula-written CRAP!

Thanks a lot for reminding me of it! Phooey!

:-)

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: emily rain
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 12:28 AM

i nominate bob dylan's "lay lady lay" bleah!

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Bert
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 09:45 AM

lesblank, I envy you getting to see Allen Damron so much but I don't think he belongs on THIS THREAD>

Bert.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: lesblank
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 10:01 AM

My point EXACTLY !! Allen is a real true Texas legend and I've followed him for years. Nothing beats the feeling you get when you see him in an old club or coffeehouse with one song to go before he ends his last set and you wind up with 10-15 people left and then listen for an hour more !! He is also doing well healthwise these days ! He has a web site - don't have it handy, and don't know how to use blue clicky things, If interested, let me know. [e-mail]

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Peter T.
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 10:30 AM

Sinatra's Duets were an utter travesty of a range of beautiful songs, and in part the travesty was created by him! It was like watching Rembrandt repaint his earlier works with crayon. That it should have sold a zillion copies reminds us that we are in a world where Adam Sandler and Austin Powers are comic giants.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: LEJ
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 03:53 PM

Eric Clapton doing " If I could Change the World." He has always had lounge lizard over-tones, especially in his singing, but he really crossed the line with that one. Lou Reed doing "I'm just a Gift to the Women of this World." Pete Seeger with "Ticky Tacky."

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Bert
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 03:59 PM

By "Ticky Tacky", do you mean "Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds?
If so I think it's a great song, but I can imagine Pete Seeger murdering it. He can get WAY TOO SERIOUS at times.

One time I saw one of his TV shows where he brought a big log onstage and tried to hammer and sing at the same time. It was pitiful.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Marion
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 04:06 PM

I nominate "What Are You At?" by Great Big Sea. I love those boys, but I really have to fast forward through that one.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Captain Swing
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 04:12 PM

Don't forget "Don't Pass Me By" and "Revolution Number 9" on the Beatles' White Album.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: John Hindsill
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 05:01 PM

Peter T. - I agree with you about Sinatra's duets, but strictly speaking I do not consider them true duets since the singers never were in any kind of proximity...actually did not really sing together! Also, Frank was really old so I forgive him his shortcomings on those albums.--John

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 06:09 PM

In 1995, the usually-terrific John McCutcheon did an awful album called Between the Eclipse, featuring a tacky electronic accompaniment. I'm glad he went back to acoustic. Some of the songs on the album were pretty good when he performed them live, without the electronic stuff. Why use electronic instruments when you can play the hammer dulcimer?
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 07:28 PM

I guess to make this count, I have to pick an artist I truly admire, so I'd have to say that some (not all) of the very political stuff that Ewan MacColl wrote and sang during the Vietnam war qualified. And many years back in his Famous song "Manchester Rambler", he outdid himself with "married a maid, a spot welder by trade". Not to mention rhyming "grouse", with "louse". This was NOT a man who would have married a factory girl. (though according to his autobiography he slept with a ton of them) Actresses, and the delectable (and politically important) Peggy Seeger were more his style.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: dixie
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 07:46 PM

"Look at them Beans" by Johnny Cash, is insulting.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: DougR
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 08:20 PM

"To All the Girls I've Loved Before," by Willy and Julio gets my vote.

DougR

Note to Les Blanc: I'm a Texan transplanted to Arizona and I don't recognize the name of the artist you referred to in your earlier message (Allen Damron). Does he do the Texas Honky Tonks, or are there any of them left?

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: lesblank
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 08:47 PM

To DougR:

Yes Allen does play some honkytonks, but most of his stuff is better suited to smaller venues, in my opinion. Not that he can't play to crowds -- He brings down Kerrville every year and has been doing it for 30 years !! Try the following :

www.fmp.com/damron/index.html

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Barbara
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 09:00 PM

Well, if we're going to do this, I might as well weigh in with the one that really POed me. I'm a long time Bok/ Trickett/ Muir fan, and I really hated "Sunday Morning" sung by Anne on I forget which album.
Actually had to tape the album sans that song so I could listen to it in peace. Right up there with Scarlet Ribbons for sappy, and without any of its redeeming graces.
Now I don't mind songs about religion and kids, but something about that one really annoyed me.
Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: DonMeixner
Date: 02 Jul 99 - 11:25 PM

Ain't it amazing what other people hate that I like.

Rick, I like the Manchester Rambler, every single word of it!!! Barbara, I like Sunday Morning but not particularly by Anne Mayo Muir. When Paul Stookey sings it it has a conversational quality that no one else gives it.

I don't like Tom Paxton's Ironman but thats a matter of taste. Its not a dreadful song. St. Stan of Rogers could have picked any song but the one that ends ".... because he kneads the dough". I love puns but that one was too much hard work.

Don

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Peter T.
Date: 03 Jul 99 - 01:31 PM

Bad Beatles Songs! "Don't Pass Me By" and "Revolution No. 9" pretty crummy, you bet!: White Album dreck like "Savoy Truffle", "Julia". Most of "Let It Be" is 3rd rate. Does anybody else really hate "Across the Universe"?John Lennon at his most 'poetic'. Makes you want to find an alternative universe immediately.
I must also be the only person in the world who hates "Imagine" -- whiny voice, downlifting lyrics.
And then there are all those 70's post-Beatles albums by everyone, 99% of which were hideous wastes of long-suffering vinyl. Can any bunch of people so talented have produced such piles of self-indulgent dreck, ever ? Frank Sinatra did it on his own, as did Elvis, but!
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 03 Jul 99 - 05:07 PM

Peter T. You're NOT the only Lennon McCartney fan to suspect that "Imagine" is weak. I was just waiting for someone else to come along and say it first!
Rick

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: WyoWoman
Date: 03 Jul 99 - 06:39 PM

How about that bizarre "First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin..." song by Leonard Cohen on Jennifer Warnes' "Famous Blue Raincoat" album? IT's one of those songs that sounds like it ought to be deeply meaningful, but if you really listen to it, it's basically horses**t.

And from the "Worst Contribution to an Excellent Compilation Album" would have to be that execreble Tom Jones thing on the "Long Black Veil" tape. I just keep imagining women tossing panties up onstage -- some things have no place on a folk-ish album!

(Ok, ok. Maybe I"m missing something. Maybe I'm really jealous and I simply don't understand the impulse to toss one's undies at strangers, no matter how much you like their songs. But maybe if, someday, I'm up onstage singing and flurries of jockey shorts start hitting the stage, I'll understand the mystery.)

KC

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: annamill
Date: 03 Jul 99 - 06:47 PM

KC, We may be talking about two different albums, but wasn't it Mick Jagger? Are you talking abot The Chieftain's album with Van Morrison, Sinad O'Conner, Mick Jagger and a host of others doing Irish music? It was called The Long Black Veil.

I kinda liked it..

But I'm not an expert on Irish folk songs.

annap

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: kayti (inactive)
Date: 03 Jul 99 - 08:12 PM

I'm with Emily Rain on this one.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: WyoWoman
Date: 04 Jul 99 - 12:51 AM

Annap-- Yes, the name of the collection was "Long Black Veil," and Mick Jagger sang the title cut, which was great. However, Tom Jones sang another cut on it -- I'll have to go out to my truck and dig up my tape, but as soon as I say the name,you'll say, "Ohhhh, yes. Ick. I remember..." I very much like the collection, but that one song is just alarmingly out of place...

kc

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: WyoWoman
Date: 04 Jul 99 - 01:01 AM

I found out! I went on Amazon.com and looked it up: "The Tennessee Waltz," sung by Tom Jones in his best lounge lizard smarminess on this lovely CD with the likes of Mick Jagger, Sinead O'Connor and Van Morrison. What were those wacky Cheftains thinkin'?

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Peter T.
Date: 04 Jul 99 - 10:21 AM

Gee, KC, Leonard Cohen did so many bad songs, that I am surprised to see this one top your list!!I think "We Take Manhattan" is one of Leonard Cohen's few songs that sounds deep and may actually be not completely shallow (as opposed to all the dreary ones that paste religious imagery and romantic imagery together as if this was something St. Teresa didn't do first and better). Don't you like "They sentenced me to 20 years of boredom, for trying to change the system from within?" I admit the sister lines are a bit weak. But the neo-fascism of contemporary Manhattan and Berlin...lines moving through the station taking people where exactly? (O.K., O.K. so it isn't The Wasteland, but it has a nice beat and you can dance to it. I give it a 9, Dick).
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: WyoWoman
Date: 04 Jul 99 - 04:59 PM

Well, you've got me there, Peter. That is my favorite line from that song. It's how I feel about the passing of the Sixties, sho nuff. But the "fashion business" and "sister" stuff just makes me scratch my head.I do like the imagery of the lines of combatants of some sort lined up in the stations. I suppose this means you don't like "Song of Bernadette," which is one I actually sing from time to time...

KC

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Peter T.
Date: 04 Jul 99 - 07:10 PM

KC, in case you hadn't noticed, I go rhetorically overboard every once in a teeny while. I think Song of Bernadette is a great song (especially JWarnes' version: great version of "Ain't No Cure for Love" too. Judy Collins' "Bird on a Wire" is far superior to JW's). I do get tired of all the Joan of Arc stuff, though.
yours, Peter T.
P.S. I connected the fashion business references to overthin models looking like concentration camp survivors. Though if I think of it that way, it is basically tasteless.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From:
Date: 04 Jul 99 - 07:20 PM

Was it Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra who did that appalling version of "Hey Jude"?

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: DonMeixner
Date: 04 Jul 99 - 10:06 PM

No That was Paul McCartney

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 05 Jul 99 - 02:06 AM

Don Meixner. 10 points plus a roll on the old snare drum.

Peter T. KC. No, No, No! "First We Take Manhattan" is a satire! It's comedy (and good comedy, in my occasionally humble opinion) from beginning to end. If I could produce Leonard Cohen right now (the way Woody Allen produced McLuhan in "Annie Hall") he'd tell you. I know he would!

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Peter T.
Date: 05 Jul 99 - 10:11 AM

"I've had nails in my hands, baby, and thorns on my face,
It's two A.M. and there's no one in the place
If your life is a leaf, or a bug or a tree,
slit your wrist with my mythology.
It's only the universe unfolding,
like a Swiss Army knife,
and the face in the mirror beholding
Is my first or second wife.
I can't remember which,
But my songs are half-baked,
and half not;
And I play where I ached
, and now I Zen where I thought.
It's my new bag:
Post Performance Drag!!!
Sincerely, L. Cohen (Sensei)

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: WyoWoman
Date: 06 Jul 99 - 12:59 AM

Has anyone heard of some dreadful compilation albums called "Golden Throats," or maybe "Golden Voices," featuring famous artists and actors allegedly "singing" various songs. Such as William Shatner doing a deeply awful and massively dramatic version of "Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man?" You have to imagine that those people hear these recordings now and wish they'd paid someone to burn the masters... And, Rick, how did you arrive at your assessment of "First We Take Manhattan?" I"m not saying I disagree, I"m just saying I wonder how you decide if someone's being intentionally goofy and mock-deep, or if they're being utterly pretentious and only sounding deep and meaningful.

KC

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 04:28 PM

For William Shatner doing Mr. Tambourine Man and Bing Crosby doing Hey Jude, Sebastian Cabot Doing Dylan, Yoko Ono doing Yoko Ono, Pat Boone doing Heavy Metal (the whole CD), Joel Grey doing White Room and much much more completely horrible stuff, go to the Rock & Roll Hall of Shame thread that I started yesterday, there is a link to all of this stuff. 'Spaw says he's bookmarked the site to entertain his friends. (Sorry, I can't Blueclickything)

And Peter T. I thought I just didn't get Leonard Cohen's stuff. I'm glad to hear your opinion.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 05:03 PM

Outdid himself with "married a maid, a spot welder by trade". Not to mention rhyming "grouse", with "louse". This was NOT a man who would have married a factory girl.

Not with you there on either point, Rick. For one thing the bloke in the song is the bloke in the song, not Ewan McColl. For another if you read the words again, the whole point is he doesn't marry her, he sneaks off and has a ramble instead. (And female spot-welders played a significant role making Spitfires and such in what we still call the last war over here, though it wasn't. Not obnly here either - ever see Rosie the Rivetter?)

But as for the line: He called me a louse and said "think of the grouse" - nothing wrong with that, far as I can see, it's a jokey sneer at the posh sod who thinks he owns the mountain, and the incongruity of the two words is part of it. (Or is it that in Toronto there'd something wrong with the rhyme as such, like you pronounce the words differently or something?)

Oh yeah, a nomination. Chuck Berry, My Dingaling.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 05:17 PM

Rod Stewart trying to do Wild Mountain Thyme.
There is something almost acceptable about an amatuer having a go but sorry folks its not his kinda song.
Lets face it as a folkie he's an amatuer.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 05:51 PM

Bert's right: Pete Seeger gets WAY too earnest sometimes.

My nomination for worst song by a respectable singer (in this case St. Pete) is If I had a Golden Thread. He's trying SO hard to be high-minded and meaningful, he ends up being dull, dull, dull, without a song worth singing.

Despite his sainted status, Pete sold his birthright for a pot of message!

DAve Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: harpmolly
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 06:06 PM

Although it kills me to say this (I adore Leonard Cohen), the above parody is hilarious. There. I said it. Don't expect me to say it again. ;)

I also agree wholeheartedly about Tom Jones' "Tennessee Waltz". That album had several great songs on it, but that wasn't one of them. Ick.

(Reminds me of the hilarious scene in "Little Voice"...the one where LV is upstairs rapturously listening to Judy G, and her mother is downstairs snogging with Michael Caine and decides to drown her out with Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual". Those are two performers that should NEVER be mixed. Eurrgh.

Luckily, the fuse then blows, giving LV a chance to show her stuff. God, I love that movie. :D

M

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Justa Picker
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 06:08 PM

On The Road Again - Willie Nelson
Every Breath You Take - Sting
Philadelphia - Bruce Springsteen
Candyman - Sammy Davis Jr.
Ceilia - Paul Simon
Nothing Compares To You - (Prince, for) Sinead
Stand By Your Man - Lyle Lovett (version)

...and anything performed by Kate Moss or Rickie Lee Jones.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Amergin
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 06:15 PM

I always thought Every breath you take was kinda creepy.....

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Justa Picker
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 06:19 PM

Well Amergin, although I have a tremendous amount of respect for Sting, he was really slumming when he came up with that one.

I believe he should be entered into the Guiness Book of World Records, for the number of ways you can voice a suspended chord. :-)

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: DebC
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 07:18 PM

"Bungle In the Jungle" Jethro Tull

Where was Ian's head when he wrote that?

Debra

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Jeri
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 07:51 PM

Mollificent, I was going to say that, but I can never tell whether something's a parody of Cohen, or Cohen.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Bugsy
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 08:23 PM

American Trilogy - Elvis Presley (makes you want to puke)

There was another but I just had a senior moment and away it went.

Cheers

Bugsy

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: SINSULL
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 08:39 PM

Frank Sinatra in white tux singing "Old Man River". Unbelievable. Of course I can't stand his voice anyway. Yuk!

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: DonMeixner
Date: 28 Mar 01 - 10:49 PM

Come on Debra! You know what was in Ian's head when he wrote that, Don't You?

Don

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 02:57 AM

I now some of you wouldn't class Lonnie Donegan as a respected artist but I'd nominate two of his as his worst: Ding Ding and World Cup Willie.
RtS

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Bugsy
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 03:03 AM

RtS, Lonnie Donegan is a Most Respected artist in my book, and I think would be to most muso's who grew up in UK in the 50'60's.

The other one I was thinking of earlier (When I had a senior moment) was Elton John - "Song or Diana". I can't believe that two people with as much talent as Elton John and Bernie Taupin couldn't come up with something a little better than that!

Cheers

Bugsy

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Bugsy
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 03:04 AM

RtS, Lonnie Donegan is a Most Respected artist in my book, and I think would be to most muso's who grew up in UK in the 50'60's.

The other one I was thinking of earlier (When I had a senior moment) was Elton John - "Song or Diana". I can't believe that two people with as much talent as Elton John and Bernie Taupin couldn't come up with something a little better than that!

Cheers

Bugsy

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Bugsy
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 03:07 AM

Bugger! Another Senior Moment. I forgot that I'd pushed the "Submit Message" button and did it twice!

I'll be forgetting my whatchemicallit soon!

Cheers

Bugsy

(I think)

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 03:16 AM

Rod Stewart does do quite a bit of folk music - Reason to Beleive adn Mandolin Wind to name but two. Probably his Celtic roots! I don't think he did too bad a job of either and his only fault on Wild Mountain Thyme was saying he wrote it - but what do I know...

Chris Rea (Rhea?) seems to purposely put at least one piece of drivel on each of his otherwise (IMO) excellent albums. My mind closes itself down when I try to remember the title but the song with the Father/Daugter conversation about people dying and all the ills of the world is a real vomit inducer for me...

DtG

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Bugsy
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 03:31 AM

There you go Dave, just goes to show that we don't all like the same thing", 'cos if you're talking about "Tell Me There's a Heaven" from the "Road To Hell" album, I think it's a pretty good song. Then again I have problems remembering my own Thingamijig, so what would I know.

CHeers

Bugsy.

(goingslowlysenile)

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 04:53 AM

That's the one! Wasn't thingamijig written by whatsisname? In which case what are you doing with it???

Suppose you like Bobby Goldsboro as well.. *BG*

DtG

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 09:34 AM

Some folks are picking popular songs? I don't like most of them, but, if you want to name the worst tripe from respectable artists go to the same albums and go to the bottom. Ex. - Some one picked "LaY lady lay" , I agree it is awful, but I can't even remember the names of the other more pitiful songs on "nashville skylines"......Oh maybe that is the problem. forget I said anything.
maybe it should be a worst album contest
I vote for Niel Young "reactor".
Dylan -"Nashville skylines"
Muddy Waters "Electric Mud" *** That's the winner, what a horrible thing electric mud is.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 09:49 AM

I should eloborate on my last posting.
"Electric Mud" was Leonard Chess's sons Idea, record a pschadelic rock album with Muddy Waters ....Shiver....
I bought the reissue on cd having no idea. they had the nerve to admit it was an ill concieved idea and a horrible album in the new liner notes after you laid down your money and unwrapped it. Shameful.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: LR Mole
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 10:03 AM

Dylan is also reponsible for "They're gonna put his ass in stir: They're gonna nail this triple mur
der on him..."But that's not worst song, just one of the worst rhymes.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 10:18 AM

LR Mole,

So it's a bad line, but the follow up, "He ain't no Gentleman Jim" succintly says an awful lot about racism, which Bob fought against in many of his songs.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 10:40 AM

I go for the ones by those disrespectables called traditional singers.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Willie-O
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 12:03 PM

Well, I'd give Stan Rogers the nod for "First Christmas Away From Home"--which he mercifully hardly ever performed. Kind of an anti-Christmas song, I think the cheeriest line is: "At least it means no beating from her dad..."

Talk about cheap emotional manipulation! At least with "Yeastcake Jones", mentioned above, he had the excuse that he didn't write it, and that album was for the family, not for us.

The really greatest songwriters seem to be able to come up with the worst songs, sometimes... Willie-O

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 12:56 PM

Great thread. Peter T., thank you for pointing out that the emperor has no clothes -- I have always felt that John Lennon's "Imagine" was an incredibly insipid piece of work. As for "Across the Universe," I agree that the version by the Beatles was weak. However, David Bowie did a duet of that (with John Lennon) on Bowie's "Young Americans" album; a complete overhaul, much more passionate than the watered-down Beatles version. It's worth checking out if you've never heard it.

Unfortunately, the task that this thread sets is an easy one, since a lot of truly brilliant people have put out their share of bad stuff. Paul McCartney is such an easy target that I won't bother with him. Dylan (who is at the top of my most-admired list generally) has done some terrible work; I happen to like the "Nashville Skyline" album, but most of "Self Portrait" was awful, as was much of his work after "Blood On The Tracks". Somebody cited a line from "Hurricane," with the disclaimer that they just disliked the line, not the whole song; for myself, I consider the whole song simplistic, forced, and patronizing (to say nothing of "Joey" off the same album). And despite my generally positive opinion of most of his recent "Time Out Of Mind," I think, the last song ("Highlands") sounds like he was making it up as he went along just to provide filler for the album.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 01:12 PM

Most of the songs people have quoted here are either ones I've never heard, but where I have heard them, they tend to be ones I reckon are pretty good.

If a song isn't in some way pretty good it'll never stick in the memory long enough to get into a list of worst ever.

How about a list of songs-other-people-think-are-crap-but-I-don't. Largely consisting of Dylan.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Jim the Bart
Date: 29 Mar 01 - 05:55 PM

One man's meat. . .But rather than point out where I disagree with some of the previous submissions I'll throw out two of my own - and then you can throw me out with 'em. One is a major dislike, the other a minor gripe.

The major one is Joan Baez' version of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". What a horrible reading (or misreading) of the song! Not that I think she's ever learned how to sing with that beautiful voice of hers. . .

The minor one is Steve Goodman's version of "Jazzman" on his first LP. It's a great song that he does little with and that I don't feel has ever gotten its due. I blame it on the producer, who I believe was Kris Kristofferson.

The song is too fast ("peppy" is the word that comes to mind) for Steve to really dig into, as he does on other blues tunes. Much of the production on that album is horribly dated. I'd love to hear Steve sing those songs again; that would mean he'd still be alive. . .

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,John Hill
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 07:21 AM

I have to vote for the Manchester Rambler too .. that line about the spot welder ruins the whole thing. It ridicules the whole purpose of the song. McColl (or James Miller as he surely still was at the time, before he pretended to be Scottish) wrote the song for the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in 1932. He was born in 1915 .. he was only 17 at the time... so I guess he can be excused.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: LR Mole
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 09:00 AM

Joan Baez never learned to SING? Oh, glory, I thought I was alone. I find her treaclier than Barry Manilow. But, as my mother used to say, they aren't waiting for us...

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Plume
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 09:17 AM

I remember Joan Baez doing a really appalling version of Jackson Browne's Fountain of Sorrow on one of her 70's albums. I actually have problems with most of Joan Baez — earnestness in the service of art is invariably deadly, as others have observed in this thread — but the fact that it was a Jackson Browne song, and one of his loveliest to boot, makes the crime particularly noteworthy.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 10:40 AM

Thank God I have some allies here. I haven't heard a lot of Joan Baez, but what I have heard is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down is a shining example of a good song that I think she ruined.

I feel much better for having got that off my chest!!!

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Willie-O
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 11:34 AM

Well I am going to leap to the defense of Joan Baez...I for one think she is a very fine interpreter, especially of traditional material, but does a good reading of contemporary classics like Dixie (hey, when you consider typical production values and arrangements you'd hear on the radio in the early seventies, there's all the reasons in the world her take got played to death and then some) ...and saying she doesn't know how to sing is just plain silly. You don't have to sound forced and quirky to be good. (I will agree that she's not a great songwriter--which is probably why she fell out of notice when she started concentrating on her original material).

But I digress...

Willie-O

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Willie-O
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 11:41 AM

...because to get back to the point of this thread, there's Rick Fielding's recording of "In My Life", which has been reviewed previously as "the lamest version I ever heard in my life" by some innocent newbie Mudcatter...

you know, it came out on Boring Alice Records.

Willie-O

(OK, I've never actually heard Rick sing the Song of the Century, but I read about it...)

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 02:26 PM

No, can't see the problem with the spot-elder who the Manchester Rambler never got round to marrying. Presumably there's an specific reference of some kind that lies behind it. But anyway, I can't see how it "ridicules the whole purpose of the song." Ewan MacColl was never noted for his sense of humour, couldn't accuse him of frivolity or excessive lightness of touch, and I suppose this is about as light as he gets. Cheerful rather than funny. But pretty good juvenilia.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 02:40 PM

I always thot the Spot Welder line to be hysterical. I liked it even. AS to Joan Baez and ".....Dixie Down" I was always a little miffed that she couldn't get the lyric right. And her just plain bad version of San Francisco Mabel Joy plumbs several depths in my estimation.

Arlo Guthrie made Steve Goodman a hat full od money with The City of New Orleans which I thot was absolutely awfull. But Steve Said he thot it was a better version than his. John Denver re-wrote the last verse to City of New Orleans and recorded it but better sense prevailed and he rerecorded it the way Goodman wrote some years later. Steve said he didn't like it the first way but he got paid for it.

Here again, the beauty of The Cat is we can have opinions and no one in the forum will hoist us to rudicule and rebuke unless we are discussing the Corries.

Don

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 02:55 PM

I think it was Peter, Paul, and Mary who first got me interested in folk music way back when. But they lost me when they recorded "I'm in Love with a Big Blue Frog." I think they recorded several stinkers on the same album. I had bought every one of their albums up to that point, but I never bought another one after that. But by that time I had discovered some other folk music.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Mr Red
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 03:41 PM

Dave the gnome

OK I wuz wrong, Rod Stewart has done decent folk, but his Wild Mountain Thyme was recorded in a drought.
Anyway even Francis McPeake never admitted to writing it but......
WE ALL KNOW WHO IT WUZ.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 04:35 PM

Colliertown, by Garnet Rogers, off Night Drive... I just don't get it...

but how about a better thread, "Best Song By A Pervert" so all the Ashly Makes-I-sick (LOL!) fans will have a place to dribble all over each other

;-)

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: rube1
Date: 31 Mar 01 - 07:02 AM

"The Boy Who Never Cried" by Steve Earle-an outtake that never happened

any song with didodiddlyoday type chorus

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: BlueJay
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 08:12 AM

Now I've always liked lots of Joan Baez's work, and she's a great singer. But one version of "Blowin' in the Wind" just makes me cringe. It's not that the entire song is bad, it's pretty good overall. But she insists on singing "Blowing" instead of the more natural sounding "Blowin'". I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure the original title uses the more informal form. I grew up listening to Joan, and have always had great respect for her. But that one word... Thanks, BlueJay

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Luke
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 12:40 PM

Joan Baez could not find the right direction to turn a phrase if she had to. Not only that, she's so full of herself she wouldn't dream of asking anyone to show her. She is and will always be the misguided pipsqueek on the end of that big hidious warbleing thing some folks call a beautiful voice. Man I feel better now.

Humbly, Luke

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: MARINER
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 12:58 PM

Wonderful Tonight, by Clapton,have you ever heard such dreadful pap?

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Maryrrf
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 06:06 PM

Lot's of good candidates here - I submit "Anything for You" by Gloria Estefan (You used to hear it everywhere and I cringed every time I heard it...I can't stand the begging, whining lyrics. The other one, and I'm sure lots of people agree and I can't remember the exact title, but it was by Whitney Houston and started out "I believe that children are the future..." - Oh,yes it was called "The Greatest Love of All". It was full of cliches, very earnest and very sickening.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Matt_R
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 06:41 PM

I always thought "Wonderful Tonight" was cute...

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Bugsy
Date: 01 Apr 01 - 08:57 PM

What about Cliff Richard's "Millenium Hymn" (the Lord's Prayer, to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne".)

Now that's got to come somewhere near the top of the list.

CHeers

Bugsy

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Brendy
Date: 02 Apr 01 - 08:15 AM

I don't know if Johnny Cash is a respectable artist or not (I always thought it was the change from a condom machine), but his rendition of Everybody loves a nut certainly takes a bit of beating

B.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,Seth from China
Date: 03 Apr 01 - 09:29 AM

I never liked " Give Peace a Chance", especially when I heard people try to rally or raise people's energy with it. I actually liked the record, but it sounded as if everyone connected with it was smashed out of their mind, which produced its only charm. When it was sung at marches or rallies, the energy level immediatly fell into the basement and nowdays if I hear " All we are saying.." it makes my flesh crawl Donovan recorded a song called Intergalactic Laxative, about pooping in outer space, that my six year old grand-daughter rejected as "really stupid".

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,celtaddict
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 01:54 AM

John Denver "Please, Daddy, Don't Get Drunk This Christmas"

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: alanabit
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 02:31 AM

Respectable artist?

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Li Maree
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 04:59 AM

Unfortunately, a lot of the songs I've read about here I've never heard of. But what did come to mind was Madonna's -(respectability debatable)- version of American Pie. It seems that if a song has a big name behind it, no matter how horrid it is, everyone just says, "oh it's just too wonderful". It sounded like crap!!

Li Maree

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Allan Dennehy
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 04:59 AM

Great thread.
Sting sang a song in Irish about 8 years ago with The Chieftains. Mo Ghile Mear, I think and I'm still in therapy. I wish that one of those trees that he hugs would fall right on top of him.
Steve Earle, one of my great heroes has written more than his fair share of crap.

And now I'm going to stick my neck out........... Ewan MacColl wrote many fine songs and murdered just about every single one of them. Most of his arrangements and his singing wouldn't hold up even at an amateurs evening.
Man I've wanted to get that bit about MacColl down on paper for years.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,celtaddict
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 05:26 AM

Ewan MacColl was only one, and not the worst by far, in a long tradition of songwriters who should have left the singing to others.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: kendall
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 09:17 AM

Buryl Ives stooping to the level of "A Little Bitty Tear" (let me down.and, Lonesome 77203.
Frank Sinatra doing anything.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Midchuck
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 09:18 AM

I'd say "Anything by Hank Williams, Jr. (with stress on the 'Jr,' of course) or David Allen Coe." But then we'd get into a fight about who is defined as a respectable artist.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 10:19 AM

Hey, this is a great thread!

Hmmmmm...wonder if I've changed my mind about "Manchester Rambler"? I don't think so.....although since MacColl WAS so young at the time, he may well have thought that he'd marry a 'spotwelder', rather than three charismatic and and artistic women. Doesn't matter...I'm just being silly anyway.

Willy-o, the "new mudcatter" who hated my take on "in my life" was hardly new, and not a stranger. I had my ways of finding out, ha ha! Funny thing is, I'm not at all thin skinned, they didn't HAVE to use a fake name to take the piss out of me! I could have at LEAST gotten the words right though!

Don Meixner, spot on about Stan's rhyme.

Wyowoman: Hard to say why and when I think someone's (Cohen) doing a 'put on'. Maybe it has to do with knowing a bit about the person....a long black and white documentary, where he rambled on a lot, certainly helped. Some of his songs just strike me as totally for laughs. "Manhattan" seems to be one of them.

Cheers

Rick

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: The O'Meara
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 12:15 PM

1. Has anyone noticed that about 80% of B. Dylan's poetic lyrics make no sense whatsoever? He's definitely on the list of songwriters who should never sing their own songs, along with Kris Kristofferson, Ewan MacColl Willie Nelson etc.

2. Many, many years ago I was at a small cafe in Minnesota when tableside jukeboxes were still around. One of the selections was The Rising of the Moon by Peter Paul and Mary. I loved PP&M, and Rising is one of my very favorite rousing Irish songs. I played it a second time because I couldn't belive it was as bad as I thought the first time. Rising is NOT a lullabye. That ended the love affair with PP&M on the spot. Now I merely like them.

O"Meara

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: SINSULL
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 12:20 PM

At least you are a "respectable srtist", Rick.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: kendall
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 12:36 PM

Leonard Nemoy singing "Proud Mary."

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: alanabit
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 12:48 PM

I have not heard that yet, Kendall - although I am happy to continue in ignorance of it. It doesn't sound like a marriage made in Heaven, does it?

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 01:54 PM

Achey Breaky Heart gets my vote. It must have made millions for Billy Ray Cyrus but it sure turned me off. The fact that it was on the charts for so long and got so much airplay made my hate grow to the point that I can't stand anything by Cyrus, even though he can really sing if he wants to.
Yogi would say something like "Nobody listens to that crap because it's always sold out at the record store." Go figure!
                         Sandy

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: *daylia*
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 02:14 PM

Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight"? Yup, it's pretty bad, but Elton John's "Something About The Way You Look Tonight" really makes me want to clobber him. I take it out on the "STOP" button instead ...

But it you want something really sickeningly simpering, try The Bell's "Stay Awhile". Makes ya just hate love ...

daylia

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,celtaddict
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 06:27 PM

Sinsull, is that "Rick, at LAST you are a respectable. . ."?
I had forgotten that Leonard Nimoy. It was beyond silly, too light for scary.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,celtaddict
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 07:02 PM

O'Meara: Much or most of Dylan's lyrics, and huge swaths of Paul Simon's, are gibberish to actual semantic analysis. So are most children's songs, many drinking songs, many shanties and work songs. Do we care? I wonder why not? I would like to think it is because the words are just filler for the melody, as in the "chin music" in which the tunes are "saved" by people who have no musical instruments, but I suspect a good deal of the time the jumbles of words (not the doodlydoo) are rather evocative in themselves, rather like the poetry of Dylan Thomas (for whom Zimmerman renamed himself and whom Simon mentioned in passing), in which phrases bring up mental images and words resonate with mood, though they are not subject to literal analysis. Is this perhaps another thread?

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Strupag
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 07:08 PM

Hey Bugsy! The thread said "respected artists" !

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: CraigS
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 07:22 PM

Mull of Kintyre by Paul Macartney (my father bought it)
Little Things by Willie Nelson (he sure can pick 'em)
Doom From a Room by Pete Atkin (a Leonard Cohen parody that went too far)
How Long Has This Been Going On? by Jon Bon Jovi (Darling, he's slaying our tune)

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Ely
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 08:23 PM

ANYBODY singing "Proud Mary". Mostly a matter of personal taste, but I HATE that song.

My acoustic music club insists on playing "Men of the West" ("Rosin the Bow") slowly and sadly, and it just makes me want to scream.

The whole of the Willie Nelson album that included "Sentimental Journey" (I can't remember the name of the album). I love Willie but I got the CD for my birthday, listened to about 15 seconds of each song, and sent it off to Goodwill.

The best version I ever heard of "Achy Breaky Heart" was a zydeco adaptation. It was in Cajun French, which I can't understand . . .

Steve Earle has written a considerable number of good songs, too. I would say at least as many (percentage-wise) good songs as his idol, Townes Van Zandt, who was often good but also suffered from questionable taste ("German Mustard", "Silver Ships of Andilar", lots of stuff about cheap women).

Hank Williams, Sr (another artist I otherwise adore): "My Bucket's Got a Hole in it", "Setting the Woods on Fire".

OK, it's not folk music, but I'm going to duck and run after I write the following: I saw Charlotte Church, the teenage Welsh soprano, on TV a while back and she did a version of "Summertime" that made me change the channel. I don't mind the song and I certainly can't criticize her voice, but the combination of pseudo-blues and opera just didn't work.

*whew* glad to get all that off my chest

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,John Moore
Date: 04 Dec 03 - 09:40 PM

"How Many Friends Have I Really Got" by The Who. From that inferior album called "Who By Numbers." By that time, all Townshend had to do was pass wind into a mic to get people to buy his records.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Grab
Date: 05 Dec 03 - 04:22 AM

There's some Irish bloke took Mark Knopfler's "Done with Bonaparte" (which works because it's a downbeat message set to an upbeat tune) and turned it into a godawful dirge.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Cluin
Date: 05 Dec 03 - 08:08 AM

If I never hear "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" and "No Man's Land" by ANYbody again, it won't trouble me.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Willie-O
Date: 05 Dec 03 - 12:21 PM

talk about your interrupted conversations...I only just now saw Rick's note (scroll down) posted in April, that the old "lame In My Life...Boring Alice Records" thing was a put-up job. Hum. Should have guessed it was too hilarious a coincidence to really be one. I am so naive.

But to bring up a new worst song, I nominate the title track of the CD "In My Hands" by the almost-always wonderful Natalie MacMaster. It features Natalie talking sexy to her fiddle with a disco backbeat..."I see your shape, and I'm attracted...I touch your neck and I'm..."   

PUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEAAAAAASSSSSSEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Cluin
Date: 05 Dec 03 - 12:31 PM

Agreed, Willie-O. I was, by turns, grossed-out, cracking up, and sympathetically embarrassed for her.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Dec 03 - 12:50 PM

O'Meara, you must've taken a severe blow to the head recently... :-)

Virtually all of Dylan's poetic lyrics make extremely good sense, unless you're a totally literal-minded putz with no imagination.

And Willie Nelson should definitely sing his own songs, plus anything else he can take on.

You might be right about Kristofferson... :-) But his first 2 albums were quite good.

- LH

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Dec 03 - 12:57 PM

My nominations:

"Achy Breaky Heart" - hilariously bad lyrics and relentlessly basic tune, but it's good dance music.

"I Will Always Love You" - by Whitney Houston - in which the diva once again massacres a gnat with a sledgehammer as only she can do it.

"Wiggle, Wiggle" - by Bob Dylan - very weird, but I still like the way he sings it. He's done some other pretty bad stuff too. Do I care? No. I wouldn't criticize Michelangelo for doing a couple of fingerpaintings on an off day.

- LH

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,Ballyholme
Date: 05 Dec 03 - 02:59 PM

Grab, I believe that "Irish bloke" is Niamh Parsons. Definitely not a bloke.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: PoppaGator
Date: 05 Dec 03 - 03:13 PM

I must second McG-of-H's nomination of "My Ding-A-Ling." As a number that is truly and embarrassingly awful, and at the same time completely atypical of an otherwise authentic artist, it exemplifies what I understand to be the criteria for this award.

Those who piped in with "any song by so-and-so" or "anybody's rendition of such-and-such a song" seem to me to have missed the point completely.

Not that their posts have not been interesting and entertaining. I, for one, enjoyed being reminded of how much I've always been irritated by John Baez's versions of just about anything contemporary. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is indeed the worst of a bad lot.

Sorry (well, really, glad) never to have heard the Natalie McMaster number described a few minutes ago by Willie-O. I'm not one to use the overworked expression "puh-leeze" very often, but this travesty sounds like a proper context for that nice elongated "PUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEAAAAAASSSSSSEEEEEEEE!!!!! "

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Amos
Date: 05 Dec 03 - 03:21 PM

celtaddict:

Good poets tyranscend semantic analysis, and penetrate souls otherwise, which is iften why we love 'em.

I vote for anything ever sung by William Shatner, who doesn't really qualify except by reason of Little Hawk stuffing the ballot box. (Watch...here it comes....)

A

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Dec 03 - 06:05 PM

The Beatles "Run For Your Life". CHorus: you better run for your life if you can, little girl, hide your head in the sand, little girl, catch you with another man, that's the end, little girl.
and in one of the verses: "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to see you with another man".

It's a song about a stalker. What fun.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Dec 03 - 07:18 PM

Yes, that was a different time, and they weren't really doing much in the way of songs that were intended to be taken seriously. Lennon later himself disowned those lyrics for the same reasons as you have, GUEST.

Amos - Quite right. Shatner is simply in a league of his own. His transcendent accomplishments in music and other major art forms cannot be held up to the same kind of scrutiny as the works of common artists. Most people don't get this, because he's so far beyond the normal perceptions of "good" and "bad". He's like a force of Nature. Majestic, incomparable, unstoppable, irresistible.

Joan Baez did a rather lame version of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" for some reason. I like most of her material quite well, but that's one is disappointing.

- LH

- LH

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Dec 03 - 10:38 PM

"Silly Love Songs" - Paul McCartney

"Oh Yoko" - John Lennon

"Beat It" - Michael Jackson

"My Way" - Sinatra (and Paul Anka, who wrote it)

- LH

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 06 Dec 03 - 07:19 AM

anybody in the world singing the god awful ' Lightening Express ' or
the totally dreary ' Kilkelly Ireland '.
eric

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,guest mick
Date: 06 Dec 03 - 08:54 AM

Lay lady lay gets my vote too.I find this thread very therapeutic .

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Dec 03 - 09:16 AM

Interestingly enough, Bob Dylan himself thought that "Lay Lady Lay" was a mediocre song, and in his own words "begged and pleaded" with his record company NOT to release it as a single! They said it would be a big hit and went ahead. He thought it would go down like a lead balloon into well-deserved obscurity. They turned out to be right, and it was a hit.

Go figure.

He later did a gutsier version of it on "Hard Rain".

Various malicious (or humorously minded) people have suggested the song was written about his dog. Not true. It was about his wife, obviously. The original version is very loving and domestic in tone, the later one is more flirtatious, on-the-road-one-night-stand kind of stuff.

- LH

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Cluin
Date: 06 Dec 03 - 09:28 AM

Guest, Lennon actually wrote "Run For Your Life" around that specific line you mentioned. Because he pulled that line from an Elvis Presley song "Baby Let's Play House". Lennon was a big Elvis fan.

And "Run For Your Life" was supposedly one of George Harrison's favourites. Go figger.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,Ely
Date: 06 Dec 03 - 03:50 PM

An old acquaintance of mine had a show on the campus radio station when we were in college. One day, he played the Judy Collins version of "Coal Tattoo", which sounded OK until he followed it with Hazel Dickens' version. Again, I can't fault Collins' voice but it was immediately obvious who had grown up in a coal camp and who hadn't.

As much as I hate to say this, Willie Nelson, early on, recorded a version of "San Antonio Rose" that is absolutely awful. He even destroyed the tune, which amazes me because it has to be one of the more distinctive pop-country tunes out there.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Dec 03 - 07:00 PM

A few of Willie's marriages sorta didn't work out too well either. :-) But they were all consumated and lived with absolute passion! Read his gloriously funny and entertaining book "Willie" and have a roaring good time. The guy is a one-of-a-kind lover of life, music and women, and like the Energizer Bunny he just keeps going and going and going...

- LH

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Sam L
Date: 06 Dec 03 - 08:03 PM

Well, I've never cared for Imagine, and Across The Universe sort of almost works, but Julia? A pretty good example of that vein of free-verse song, few if any rhymes, which is pretty hard to pull off. And the tune is very nice with no words at all--I like it thumpier, less wispy. Gee, PeterT, of all the Beatles tunes to pick on, it seems an odd selection.

Clapton's Wonderful Tonight is so bad it's hilarious, so slow, ponderous, and unaware of itself.

Elton John and Bernie Taupin--I have to confess I can only stand their ersatz teenybopper vein, like Bennie and the Jets, Crocodile Rock. It's amusing and disarming that anyone would ever bother to make stuff up like that--artificial bubble gum, a whole nother remove from reality, like inventing a margarine substitute.

Pause. Bill Monroe's standard bluegrass instrumental dismount-bounce-back-dismount-again, in any song. I've tried and tried to love this stuff. I like his slightly dirty style of playing mandolin pretty well, but then I give up. It just reminds me of the kinds of rock and jazz I also don't care for. Dog music, panting with it's tongue hanging out, blowing it's hot breath in your face. I don't get it.

I think Ian Anderson was probably thinking If I put a stupid rhyme in a dumb song I'll get radio play so people might buy the other songs. He might've also considered stuttering. (BbbbBenny and the Jets. Ttttttalkin Bout my ggggeneration. Bbbbbaby you just ain't seen nothin yet. If only he'd done BBbungle in the Jjjjungle it would have been a monster.) Some of his other stuff leaves me more perplexed.

Neil Diamond. The end of the Last Waltz always struck me as an odd gathering of terrific songwriters, and Neil Diamond.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: ossonflags
Date: 07 Dec 03 - 08:01 AM

Any one who slags of Ewan Macoll's singing style is talking through there arse.They must be tone deaf and/or do not know the first thing about music and singing whether accompanied or unacompanied.Macoll was a lot of things but what he wasnt was a crap singer/songwriter.

Macoll possessed one of of those rare things in a singer which is perfect pitch and anyone who could right a song such as "Dirty old Town" is ok with me.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Willie-O
Date: 07 Dec 03 - 08:53 AM

I am with ossonflags in the defense of Ewan MacColl. In a sidways manner he brings up a very good point--the Pogues version of "Dirty Old Town" is how 90% of the public know the song--and very unfortunately that's how aspiring rookies try to sing it---eeeeuuuugggghhhhh. Sean What's-his-face's voicing should have been the last word on a raunchy vocal of a contemporary folk song--instead it became a starting point for many much much worse attempts.

Lay Lady Lay has one major thing going for it: the hook is the first four chords, the loveliest progression Dylan ever authored (from a short list obviously), which make me want to like the song itself...
nice to hear and fun to play, and good for relative beginners who are just getting solid on barre chords.

A - C#m - G - Bm

W-O

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Janice in NJ
Date: 07 Dec 03 - 10:08 AM

Bob Dylan covering Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: KnockinLostJohn
Date: 07 Dec 03 - 10:19 AM

I've always wondered about Benny and Crocodile but if memory serves me well I think they kind of have to be taken as part of a whole "concept" (although I've never really been sure what the concept was) of Good-bye Yellow Brick Road. This album also contains the God-Awful Saturday Night's alright for Fighting and Jamaica Jerk-Off...kind of a Reggie Dwight at his pinnacle so let's record as much as possible kind of thing I think.

Also Neil's performance at the Last Waltz has been a hot topic among many (especially Levon Helm) as it held as a popular notion that his involvement stemmed more from the fact that Robbie Roberston co-wrote Dry Your Eyes and also produced the album mr Diamond was promoting at the time.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Dec 03 - 10:28 AM

That's another that would never have been heard if Bob had had anything to say about it. Columbia released it without his permission from a bunch of lame studio outtakes they had.

Willie - Dead right about the great chord progression in "Lay Lady Lay". Very memorable. However, Bob has a MUCH larger catalog of chord progressions than you imply...lots and lots of 'em. He's just never been afraid to rely on simple progressions upon which to hang magnificent lyrics...and a simple progression often makes the best song. One thing that amateur (yet ambitious) songwriters often do is try to write great music by using more fancy and unusual chords...the results are seldom stellar. If you want really arcane chord progressions that work well, however, listen to jazz, I suppose...or Joni Mitchell...or maybe Burt Bacharach. :-)

- LH

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: khandu
Date: 07 Dec 03 - 11:33 AM

Johnny & June Cash's version of Cat Steven's "Father & Son" was hideous!

On his impossible to find debut folk/bluegriass album "Front Porch Pickin'", Tom Jones did a pitiful version of "Little Sadie"; but
even that beat everthing he did since "What's New, Pussycat?".

ken

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Willie-O
Date: 07 Dec 03 - 11:36 AM

LH, perhaps I should clarify my Dylan remark. I meant, he hasn't come up with a lot of really nice, memorable and unique progressions in all his many years of cranking out guitar accompaniments. He's not a big "classic riff guy". But there are some--a few which come to mind, at the risk of thread creep, are:

• Don't think twice, it's alright
  
• Mama, you've been on my mind
  
• You ain't goin nowhere, which sounds nice the first hundred times you hear it, until the outstanding repetitiveness gets to you.
  

W-O
get my mind off of wintertime...

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Cluin
Date: 07 Dec 03 - 12:46 PM

Ha ha ha, Tom Jones doing "Tennesee Waltz" with the Chieftains! (in Frank Zappa's house, no less)

"Cheese it up, ya sagging Welsh snake 'n' egger!"

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Grab
Date: 07 Dec 03 - 07:16 PM

Ballyholme, maybe it was done by her, but I heard some bloke doing it (selected by MK himself as a favourite tune on Jools Holland last week, for some reason). Although if she did it to the same trad tune as this bloke, I don't hold out much hope of her having produced anything worth listening to either.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Dec 03 - 07:41 PM

Grab, why did you pick that member name? When I hear it, I think "clutch", "grasp", "sieze", know what I'm sayin'? :-)

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Cluin
Date: 07 Dec 03 - 07:56 PM

"Snatch"?

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Two_bears
Date: 07 Dec 03 - 09:30 PM

The worst song I remember hearing lately was an old song by Pat Boone called "Speedy Gonzales"

I forget the group; but I never got the song "Winchester Cathedral"

Two Bears

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Sam L
Date: 07 Dec 03 - 10:21 PM

I really like Richie Havens, and prefer his cover of Here Comes the Sun to Harrison's. But he had one awful song on which he sounds exactly like Huey Lewis.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Dec 03 - 12:19 AM

Well, "Winchester Cathedral" is a sort of kitsch masterpiece, Two Bears, and is quite charming in its own way. It's a deliberate novelty send-up of a style of music that was popular in....the 20's, I think or maybe the early 30's, but it was released in the 60's. I like it.

Another song that is sort of like that is "MacArthur Park", and I love that one! Used to argue with Spaw about it all the time. (Spaw is or was Mudcat's legendary curmudgeon/weirdo/etc, but he's in semi-retirement now, I think.) (Or else he "got a life".) :-)

It's really a pity that William Shatner has not seen fit to record covers of those 2 songs...

- LH

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: ossonflags
Date: 08 Dec 03 - 04:00 AM

i think "Honey" by Bobbie Goldsboro has got tobe the most vomit making song of all time.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Two_bears
Date: 08 Dec 03 - 07:42 AM

LH

Thank you for reminding me of MacArthur Park.

Two Bears

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Willie-O
Date: 08 Dec 03 - 09:01 AM

Just a reminder: The thread topic is worst song by a RESPECTABLE artist.

Sorry, Bobby Goldsboro does not qualify. ;)=

You are of course spot on in your appraisal of the work in question...

Wasn't MacArthur Park written by Jimmy Webb? That makes it a very good choice, because unlike LH, I will enthusiastically cast a ballot that it sucks and blows.

But other than that one, I very much like Jimmy Webb. I am not damning by faint praise when I say that he was one of the very best white-bread songwriters of the 60's and 70's. His better pieces were intelligent, soulful and tuneful. For example, "Galveston". That's a great song, if you can just get Glen Campbell's nasal twang out of your head when you think of it.

W-O

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Dec 03 - 09:29 AM

Glenn Campbell? His "Rhinestone Cowboy" is pretty annoying.

- LH

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Willie-O
Date: 08 Dec 03 - 09:46 AM

Pardon me, G-l-e-double-n.

He was a great session musician and should have remained one.
He played well and often picked good material, much of it by Jimmy Webb.

I have only just now realized how much his voice has always aggravated me. Possibly this long-repressed emotion is what ruined my life and made me the bitter cynical atheist I am today...think about how much my generation (I'm 47) was exposed to that nauseatingly cheerful, high-pitched instrument during our formative years...merry freakin Christmas everyone.

W-O

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Dec 03 - 10:10 AM

Twinkle twinkle little star...steeleye Span..dreadful. Bruce Cockburn's Christmas Album...ditto

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: PoppaGator
Date: 08 Dec 03 - 12:31 PM

"Winchester Cathedral"?

A pretty bad song, surely . . . BUT: Who recorded it, and whoever it was, were they otherwise "respectable"?

(NOTE: The above relates to the original question. From here on down, thread creep ensues.)

Mention of this song reminds me that one of my favorite New Orleans artists (and one of the world's most amazing guitar fingerpickers), Snooks Eaglin, used to do an improbably delightful cover version of this silly little tune. For a couple of years ('99 - '01, maybe?), it was one of his most-requested songs. More recently, Snooks and/or his audience seem to have finally tired of it, and I haven't heard him do it for a year or more.

Snooks Eaglin is often classified as a "blues guitarist," but his playing is really nothing like that of, say, BB King or Buddy Guy. Despite playing electric rather than acoustic guitar, and despite customarily performing with a small band rather than as a solo, he's more accurately classified as a blues "songster" (cover artist) in the tradition of John Hurt, Mance Lipscomb, etc. His sensibility is certainly fully informed by the blues, but he's more of a rock/pop/r&b artist, with studio credits dating back to the 1950s, when he played on some of the biggest hits ever to come out of the city.

Anyone with an interest in guitar technique (not to mention soulful American music) ought to give a listen to any of Snooks' many recent recordings. Opportunities to observe his unique five-fingered bare-fingered playing -- he looks like he has an extra set of knuckles, all of which bend in both directions -- are pretty rare outside of New Orleans, although he does go on tour worldwide once or twice a year. (He probably plays more gigs in Europe and Japan than in US cities outside Louisiana). If you ever get a chance to see him live at the Rock 'n' Bowl at Carrollton and Tulane, don't miss it.

It has taken many years for Snooks to get his due recognition; I lived here in town many years before I became aware of him, but he has finally achieved some of the recognition he deserves, if only among the local community and a *very* limited circle of international cognoscenti.

He is now often touted as "the Professor Longhair of the guitar," for his pervasive sense of humor as well as for his technical virtuosity, and I think the comparison is entirely valid. Also, my contention (above) that places Snooks in the tradition of Mississippi John Hurt is not made lightly. Fess and John Hurt are two of my absolute all-time faves, and Snooks might be the *only* living musician I would place in the same classification with those two. Please check him out if you can.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 11 May 04 - 01:16 PM

I think the godawful bloke who sang 'Done with Bonaparte' to the traditional air 'Valentia Island' might have been Jerry O'Reilly on his newly released 'Down from your Pulpits' - Niamh Parsons did record it - but you'd know she sounded like a woman and not a godawful man.   It just makes the song sound old - and highlights what a great wordsmith Mr. Knopfler is.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,skeet
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 02:04 PM

the worst song ever has to be by that complaining shithead jadakiss   ya know that song "why" i cant stand that bullshit

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 03:19 PM

obviously none of you have encountered a song called Granny Takes a Trip by my hero, favourite guitarist, singer songwriter Ralph McTell.

Hokey cokey!

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,James
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 03:54 PM

I am so glad that someone mentioned The Bruce Cockburn Christmas album..I love Bruce, but it was dreadful. June Tabor doing Jazz and Brian Ferry(who really cannot sing) doind standards. But I think the great and very respectable Van Morrison has produced huge amounts of bloody rubbish...and a huge number of Gems.
Rod Stewart has released Vol. 2 of His American Song boot..The Cover Art is awful and the songs live up to it. The man just cannot be embarasses.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 04:34 PM

So true. Rod Stewart is indeed beyond embarassment. This requires either tremendous nerve, collosal stupidity, complete lack of taste, or a combination of the above.

I nominate his songs "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" and "Tonight's the Night".

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,Auggie
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 07:26 PM

But Rod Stewart is not a respectable artist. He can't sing worth a damn, he doesn't play an instrument, and he doesn't write his own music. It's a total mystery to me why he's been around for so long despite having no discernable talent.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: alanabit
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 03:04 AM

You need a long memory to recall when Rod Stewart produced anything of worth. He did though. "Do You Think I'm Sexy" - notwithstanding its off putting title - is actually a story told in the third person. It is not (as you might suppose) sexual bragging by our Rod. I am reminded of Springsteen's "Born in the USA". Many folks heard the title and assumed it was a song boasting about the might of America - a very incorrect conclusion!
After a spell of travelling with the British folk musician Wizz Jones, Rod Stewart sang with some of the second line Brit R&B bands of the sixties. He eventually emerged with The Faces. At that time, he and Ron Wood were the only members of the band who had not enjoyed the success previously enjoyed by the other htree in the sixties. However, although the band had some success, Rod Stewart's solo albums took off in a much bigger way. His fisrt big seller, "Every Picture Tells a Story" had some fine British rock and folk musicians on it - including Ray Jackson of Lindisfarne playing violin. It also had some very attractive folk rock music on it - notably "Mandolin Wind", which he wrote. When he put his mind to it, he could write good songs. "You Wear it Well" is a charming tribute to a former lover. "The Killing of Georgie", about a gay man rejected by his family, was a sympathetic treatment of that theme before it became a popular cause. I still think it's a fine ballad. I won't comment about his singing other than to say that I know many people who say the same about Bob Dylan. They don't like his voice, so they say he is a "bad singer". I don't expect everyone to like Rod Stewart's work. He certainly doesn't interest me much at the moment. Let's give him credit for his better moments though. I wouldn't be ashamed of writing "The Killing of Georgie".

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: RobbieWilson
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 04:34 AM

You talk to me in sign language
while I'm eating a sandwich.........

It was there in the bakery
surrounded by fakery

Rhymes to almost match Bobby Goldsboro's she's always looking as if she's always wandering off a cliff, but by Eric Clapton--a respectable artist.

love Robbie

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: alanabit
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 08:26 AM

Excuse me. Ray Jackson played mandoline of course...

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,Stevie D
Date: 10 May 05 - 04:02 PM

it has to be,,,,, Paul Anka "Having My Baby". if you havent heard it, it's so bad its funny, there is even a reference to the fact that she could have had an abortion but decided she loves me too much. you really have to listen to it....

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST
Date: 11 May 05 - 08:23 AM

That whole album where Bryan Ferry does old standards like as Time Goes By. Dreadful..Ferry can't carry a tune at all.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,Paul H!
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 02:05 AM

When I first heard Karla bonoff sing "Personally," I thought it was okay but little else... until I heard Ronnie McDowell utterly DESTROY it. Now I like Bonoff's original version much better. Thank goodness McDowell's version didn't last long, otherwise I'd still be puking! =PSH

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Leadfingers
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 06:53 AM

I dont know how I missed this thread before !

If my mate Robb Johnson qualifies as a respected artist( Not had much exposure in the US of A ,but BIG in UK) I would nominate his song in praise of that pillock who deserted from the Army (after twelve years of having it cushy) rather than go and get shot at in Iraq - Nothing wrong with the lyric , ot the tune , but the subject matter is the LAST thing to glorify in song !

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Willie-O
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 12:04 PM

The well-respected, well-liked, and all-round Maritime (Canadian) good writer-producer-singer-sideman Gordie Sampson has been writing in Nashville and now is rolling in cash (I presume) from having penned the #1 country single in the US--"Jesus Take The Wheel". It features the absolute worst driving advice ever heard (and I listen to Car Talk whenever I can)....in brief: "if you're heading home for Christmas with the baby in the backseat, feeling like a sinner, and you hit a patch of ice and start to spin, just take your hands off the wheel, close your eyes, and ask Jesus to take over.

Don't try this. Really. Don't. First time I heard it I practically ran off the highway myself I was cracking up so bad.

New Country radio scares me.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,robomatic
Date: 19 Mar 06 - 03:59 PM

I know I've said this elsewhere in the mud, but . . .

Gordon Lightfoot: "Alberta Bound"(as in tied up in the back of a car, as I had to be to endure:)
"oh, the skyline of toronTO
is something you'll get onTO
.
.
.
and if you've got the MON-EE
you can get yourself a HUN-EE
a written guarantee to make you smile"

i don't smile

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Purple Foxx
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 02:52 AM

I can usually just about tolerate Bryan Ferry.
I think "She's Leaving Home" is an excellent song.
Nevertheless Bryan Ferry's version of "She's Leaving Home" used to actively annoy me.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: David C. Carter
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 12:47 PM

Cohen's album"Death Of A Lady's Man",Cohen meets Phil Spector.Can't think which song is worse than the next!And as for the"Production"!
Dylan's"Heart's In The Highlands" was surely half written when he put it down,seems like he just kept going!There's 5 great songs on that album,the others are are a bit "Touch and Gaughin".
The Temperance Seven did "Winchester Cathedral".A pretty eccentric bunch of gentlemen,wearing deerstalkers and Sherlock Holmes outfits,mutton chop sideburns and capes etc.Make of that what you will!
David

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Kaleea
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 01:06 PM

I love the Mills Brothers! The Count Basie & the Mills Bros "Board of Directors" album was wonderful, & I could even get a chuckle out of Tiny Bubbles, but . . . (heavy sigh & deep breath)but when the track I Dig Rock & Roll Music just did not do it for me.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: alanabit
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 03:45 PM

I had always thought that it was the New Vaudeville Band, who did Winchester Cathedral. I guess I stand corrected!

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Purple Foxx
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 04:06 PM

It was the New Vaudeville Band who had a hit,in 1966, with "Winchester Cathedral".
The Temperance Seven's biggest hit was "You're driving me crazy" in 1961.
Both groups had similar presentation.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,Sandy Andina
Date: 20 Mar 06 - 08:27 PM

Oh, so many stinkers, so little time (and thank goodness *I* don't qualify as a "respectable artist!"). Let's see:
Judy Collins' version of the Stones' "Salt of the Earth," topped only by
Joan Baez' version of the same song (Baez, whom I normally love, is a possible candidate for the Worst Cover Versions Hall of Fame, especially for her stilted readings of rock songs and politically correct butchery of lyrics).
Special Blackmail Material Edition: the live duet of Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison drunkenly blundering their way through "Brown-Eyed Girl." I often listen to it to remind myself that even the greats can have a reaaaaallly bad night.
Judy Collins again, for "Both Sides Now;" although it's not entirely her vocals' fault--it's that dripping-with-treacle string-and-keyboard intro and arrangement.
The Four Seasons' (aka "The Wonder Who") 1965 cover of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (though an argument can be made that it's so deliberately bad as to be hilariously campy).
"Endless Wire," by Gordon Lightfoot. Sings the entire song, especially the bridge, through his nose to the extent that the lyrics are utterly unintelligible.
"Touch Me, Babe" by the Doors. Inane lyrics, stupidly poppy horn section. Only good part was the "stronger than dirt" at the end.
"Coconut," by Harry Nilsson......no, wait a minute, that's so stupid that it's a guilty pleasure. I think it must have inspired "The Song That Doesn't End."
"Who Will Save Your Soul?" by Jewel. Okay, so she may not be "respectable," but those idiotic vocal mannerisms make me cringe. Come to think of it, just about ANYTHING by Jewel.....
And speaking of annoying vocal mannerisms, I'm gonna get flamed for this, but anything Ani DiFranco released after 2000.......
And the Grand Prize goes to (drum roll....................................................);
Chuck Berry, for "My Ding-a-Ling!"

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: David C. Carter
Date: 21 Mar 06 - 01:27 PM

Sorry about getting that wrong.T'was a long time ago!

David

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Purple Foxx
Date: 21 Mar 06 - 01:45 PM

That's ok David.
I just happen to have a copy of The Guiness book of British hit singles to hand.
I do not claim any great expertise in my own right.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: David C. Carter
Date: 21 Mar 06 - 01:49 PM

Cheers Purple Foxx

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 22 Mar 06 - 08:09 AM

Don't know about 'worst song' or 'respectable artist' but the SILLIEST song I ever heard was 'The Man who Called Himself Jesus' by (I think) Dave Cousins of the Strawbs. What used to get me is that everyone around me seem to treat this ludicrous travesty with great seriousness; they didn't even smirk at the silliest line of all which went something like, 'he thought his pint of beer had turned into a pint of blood' - yuckkkk!!!

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,pilgarlic
Date: 22 Mar 06 - 01:57 PM

Gordon Lightfoot's 'Same Ol' Loverman'. A moment of madness from one of greats. Any number of Faiport's (or anyone's fo that matter)recordings of songs by the appaling Huw "two tunes" Williams

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,I'm not here, right?
Date: 01 Aug 10 - 04:18 AM

The Beatles are my favourite band of all time but I utterly loathe 'Ob La Di Ob La Da' and 'A taste of honey'.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Genie
Date: 01 Aug 10 - 04:55 AM

I happen to like McCartney's Mull Of Kintyre (which someone mentioned as a "worst").

As for Willie Nelson, he is a superb guitarist and interpreter of songs. I happen to enjoy his voice too. I agree that most of his own compositions ("Crazy" being a notable exception) are not award-worthy, but the thread is about "respectable artists," not necessarily great singers or songwriters. There's very little I've heard Willie play and sing that I don't like. (As for his standards album, I understand that in a recent interview, Willie said he considers himself to be mainly a jazz artist - even though most people probably think of him as country.)

As for Paul Anka, I think he's a respectable writer of pop music, but "Having My Baby" has to be not only his personal worst but right up there among the worst songs ever written by anyone!

To me, probably the most striking example of an outstanding vocal artist delivering an atrocious - to the point of laughable - version of a song would be Patsy Cline's lounge-singer-style rendition of "Life's Mountain Railroad." It is so bad it's not to hear it as a spoof.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: TheSnail
Date: 01 Aug 10 - 05:40 AM

My first reaction on seeing this thread was to search on 'Ob La Di Ob La Da' but got the spacing different so missed it. Thank you absent friend.

Since lots of people are having a pop at Ewan MacColl, I can never forgive him for "Kissed her once again at Wapping / After that there was no stopping".

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: oldhippie
Date: 01 Aug 10 - 09:10 AM

Harry Chapin, normally a genius writer, went awful with "Cats In The Cradle" Pure crap, of course it gets the airplay. (Listen to his great songs - A Better Place To Be, Mr Tanner, Taxi/Sequel, I Wanna Sing A Love Song).

Another worst award to: Billy Joel for Movin' Out

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: GUEST,josep
Date: 01 Aug 10 - 11:30 AM

"Abraham, Martin & John" by Dion was so maudlin and over-produced I considered becoming a conservative to safely distance myself from it. Why aren't there any songs about Frederick Douglass? Now there's a guy who deserves a little praise once in a while.

"Every Picture Tells a Story" by Rod Stewart is a racist piece of crap:

On the Peking ferry I was feeling merry
sailing on my way back here
I fell in love with a slit eyed lady
by the light of an eastern moon
Shangai Lil never used the pill
She claimed that it just ain't natural
She took me up on deck and bit my neck
Oh people I was glad I found her
Oh yeah I was glad I found her
I firmly believe that I didn't need anyone but me
I sincerely thought I was so complete
Look how wrong you can be
The women I've known I wouldn't let tie my shoe
They wouldn't give you the time of day
But the slit eyed lady knocked me off my feet
God I was glad I found her

Forget how cold-blooded creepy it is to claim you're in love with someone you call "slit eye" because she's Chinese but it reeks of the old me-so-horny-me-love-you-long-time white man's fantasy crap that I could puke. I can't believe Stewart read through the lyrics and decided it would be ok instead of saying, "I'm not singing this shit!" Because that sure would have been my reaction.

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: olddude
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 08:16 AM

I think I would have to agree with DWDITTY ... now I like Neil Diamond a lot but "I am I said" the singin to the chair bit does drive me nuts

Subject: RE: Worst Song by a Respectable Artist
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 06:34 PM

Woody Guthrie wrote a few good ones and a lot of junk, one of the worst being "Billy the Kid." He never could get his facts straight.