When Will Patrick Mooney Announce His Loss At LostHeads?

[Pottapaug1938]

Back in the mid-80s, the Boston Phoenix ran a poll asking for nominations for the worst songs of the 1970s. "Feelings" was the winner, beating out competitors like "Muskrat Love". "You Light Up My Life", "Having My Baby", "All By Myself", "Precious and Few", "Kung Fu Fighting". "Sometimes When We Touch" and -- unfortunately, much, much more.

I played all those songs on the radio, over and over, about a million times. I should be eligible for some sort of disability benefits -- for Kung Fu Fighting alone.

When I was in college, much of that glurge had (fortunately) not yet appeared on the airwaves. Still, when I got a gig on my college radio station, I asked for the late-night shift because 1) I was a nightowl anyway and 2) I had no playlist requirements and could play just about anything that I wanted to play. More than once, I picked albums at random out of the library, and surveyed them on the spare turntable; and then put on random tracks. It was so much fun....

[Cpt Banjo]

Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs, one of the funniest books ever written, describes the time the columnist invited his readers to submit their choices for the worst songs of all time (the survey was prompted by reader responses to a Barry column that had trashed Neil Diamond's "I Am I Said"). The top (bottom?) five were:

1. MacArthur Park as sung by Richard Harris
2. Yummy Yummy Yummy (I Got Love In My Tummy) performed by Ohio Express
3. (You're) Having My Baby by Paul Anka
4. Honey by Bobby Goldsboro
5. Timothy written by Rupert Holmes and performed by The Buoys
6. Achy Breaky Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus

What a wretched group.

[Pottapaug1938]

How did Disco Duck (by DJ Rick Dees) not make the list?

I suspect it's because it was an obvious novelty song. The others are all pieces of aural swill that people expected us to take seriously.

[Quixote]

Honey is the worst of the bunch. Yummy Yummy Yummy is harmlessly mindless. Honey was apparently intended to be taken seriously.

[Pottapaug1938]

Honey is the worst of the bunch. Yummy Yummy Yummy is harmlessly mindless. Honey was apparently intended to be taken seriously.

Yummy Yummy Yummy falls into the "bubblegum" category; and since that sort of music was designed to appeal to preteens, I cut it a fair amount of slack -- although it is to music what potato chips are to good nutrition.

[wserra]

"Teen Commandments" - Paul Anka.

Actually, almost anything Paul Anka sang.

[Gregg]

I knew the end was near when I saw a show in the 80's about I think NXS where one part of the show they mentioned the song was written and recorded in one day, but the video took 4 weeks to film.

[grixit]

Then there's "Cat's in the Cradle", which has its own entry in the Geneva Convention.

[bmielke]

4. Honey by Bobby Goldsboro
5. Timothy written by Rupert Holmes and performed by The Buoys

I actually like Achey Breaky Heart, but of the rest of the list I only made it all the way through Timothy. This video is pretty funny, the actually video explains the song, some of it's history, and at the end the creator says he sometimes likes to tell people he sung the song, (I am not sure if he did or not) a screen pops up and says it could be worse, and there is a picture of the cover of Honey by Bobby Goldsboro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGNdvKvbxYQ