Worst Song by a Respectable Artist

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