Saturday, February 17, 2018

The worst Number One hits ever

Ever get a REALLY bad song stuck in your head for no known reason? This has been happening more and more often to me lately. First noticed it awhile back when I was in the shower and suddenly Melanie's "Brand New Key" popped into my head, ghod knows why. I don't mind if songs suddenly occur to me -- but I'd like them to be songs I LIKE. Who's programming my brain?
Then other songs I liked even LESS started hitting me at odd moments, so I figured I'd do some research on this odd medical phenomenon. I dug out Joel Whitburn's reliable TOP POP HITS compendium of BILLBOARD chart data, and thought I'd scribble down what seemed to me the worst Number One hits ever. Here's what I came up with, in chronological order....
* "Monday Monday," The Mamas and the Papas (1966). Even songwriter John Phillips didn't know what it was about....
* "Sunshine Superman," Donovan (1966).
* "All You Need is Love," Beatles (1967).
* "Ode to Billy Joe," Bobbie Gentry (1967).
* "One Bad Apple," Osmonds (1971).
* "Brand New Key," Melanie (1971).
* "My Ding-a-Ling," Chuck Berry (1972). Never underestimate the power of a really bad and stupid dirty joke. Repeated endlessly.
* "My Love," Paul McCartney and Wings (1973).
* "Bennie and the Jets," Elton John (1974). Made worse by radio overplay. See below.
* "Billy, Don't Be a Hero," Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods (1974). Who?
* "The Night Chicago Died," Paper Lace (1974). Who?
* "You're Having My Baby," Paul Anka (1974). '74 really wasn't that great a music year....
* "Fallin' in Love," Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds (1975). Absolutely flat mainstream pop. Coulda been an insurance commercial.
* "Let's Do it Again," Staples Singers (1975). Yeah, they were pretty great. But not here.
* "Disco Lady," Johnnie Taylor (1976). See Chuck Berry. Too bad, because Taylor's "Who's Makin' Love?" is a classic.
* "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart," Elton John and Kiki Dee (1976). In the Bottom 10 among the worst things Elton ever did. I never thought "Philadelphia Freedom" was so great, either.
* "You Light Up My Life," Debbie Boone (1977).
* "My Sharona," The Knack (1979).
* "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)," Rupert Holmes (1979). Who? Ever hear Rupert's "Nearsighted"? Best thing Barry Manilow never did.
* 1981. Almost all of 1981's Number One hits were total crap. "Physical." "Bette Davis Eyes." The only exceptions were Blondie's "Rapture" (worth it just as comedy), one barely tolerable REO smash, and two OK songs by Hall and Oates. Otherwise, right down there with 1974 for bad music years.
* "I Will Always Love You," Whitney Houston (1992). Still being used to clear birds off of airport runways. Check out writer Dolly Parton's gorgeous original version instead.

No comments: