Month: May 2019

This song mostly gets hatred from people who simply don’t understand it. Chumbawamba were an extremely political band, and this commercial experiment is no exception. The political content is subtler, veiled just beneath the surface, but this is far more than just a generic drinking song. The triumphantly raucous chorus of “You’re never gonna keep me down”, the snatches of old folk songs between the verses, the atmosphere of a rowdy tavern where the people sing ‘the songs that remind him of the good times’…not to mention the very unambiguous spoken message in the intro to the album version…paint a picture of the unbreakable spirit of the common man. If you’ve ever read George Orwell’s 1984, think of the scene where Winston realizes that in a world where the ruling class have been turned into brainwashed lunatics, the Proles have retained their humanity, and that however stupid and vapid they seem, their love and loyalty to each other ultimately renders the Party’s victory null and void, and you have the right idea.

Verdict: Good, but you need a little context to understand why

Hootie and the Blowfish get a fair amount of scorn from the rock-snob set because the followed the model of their Easy-Listening predecessors more than most other Adult Alternative bands, but their music ranges from okay to really good, and this one is easily their best. It has a soulful, almost bluesy quality that didn’t really show up that much in their other work, and it does a great job of showing off Darius Rucker’s marvelous voice, which was always the band’s biggest asset.

Verdict: Good

This song’s main problem is that it is totally lacking in the appealing qualities we normally associate with this band. Weezer are, above all else, known for their catchiness; even their most serious and ambitious album, Pinkerton, is loaded with melody. But this song is harsh, tuneless and belligerent, which, combined with its pessimistic harangue of a lyric, makes it perhaps the most unappealing song this band has ever done.

Verdict: Bad

I’ll never understand why this wonderful song gets included on so many ‘Worst songs of all time’ lists. I guess it’s mostly because it’s essentially a showtune (having been written for a musical children’s movie by veteran Broadway songwriters), and was a massive radio hit at a time when Rock snobs’ contempt for anything that suggested Broadway or Great American Songbook-era pop was at its zenith. But this is a gloriously sunny and delightful gem sung by one of the great popular singers of the century, and there’s no real reason it should still have a negative reception today, especially now that the movie it comes from is a beloved classic.

Verdict: Good

Bobbie Gentry was the female answer to the ‘Outlaw’ Country artists like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, a voice of pure visceral artistic truth in an era when Nashville polish, while nowhere near as bad as it is now, still sometimes stifled the kind of rawness Gentry represented. This song is dark, depressing, and deliberately ambiguous, leaving the listener to draw his own conclusions about what motivated the title character’s suicide and what the narrator’s real relationship was to him. It’s a brilliant and disturbing piece of work, probably too disturbing for a lot of the Country music audience, but still as fascinating and evocative today as it was then.

Verdict: Good

This song’s biggest liability is that the English lyrics (the song was originally in French) were written by Paul Anka, who, as “You’re Having My Baby” clearly shows, was not exactly a lyrical mastermind. When you hand it to a truly great figure in music like Sinatra or Elvis who can justify the sentiments the song is built around, it simply works, so well that the clumsy lyrics become a non-issue. Give it to Anka himself or any other mere mortal singer, however, and it becomes simply a mediocre-to-poor song with a vast reputation it cannot possibly live up to.

Verdict: It depends entirely on who is singing it.

There have been a lot of dance crazes that look really stupid in retrospect, but this song has retained a special hatred as the years go by, and is one of the few novelty songs from past decades to remain almost universally hated. This isn’t because of the dance itself…plenty of other songs connected to stupid-looking dance crazes have become affectionately-regarded nostalgic classics (e.g. “The Funky Chicken”). It is entirely because of the music itself, a maddeningly irritating earworm that is catchy in the absolute worst sense of the word, and would be one of the worst hit songs of the Nineties with or without its accompanying novelty dance.

Verdict: Bad

This song has certainly stuck around, but it isn’t really all that good even by the standards of the Novelty Song genre. It was a clear rip-off of “The Purple People Eater”, but had none of that song’s bizarre humor, and the hook is legendarily irritating, sort of the “Macarena” or “Barbie Girl” of its day.

Verdict: Bad

I don’t know whose idea it was to have Britney Spears cover Joan Jett, but the fact that it was one of the singles from the grisly Crossroads movie does at least mean that the people involved were not known for their good judgment to begin with. Actually, the very early-2000s Pop instrumentation is as big a problem as Spears, sounding incredibly obnoxious and utterly out-of-place. That said, given that Spears’ vocals are a serious liability even in songs written specifically for her, it’s not surprising that she sounds downright unlistenable trying to match Joan Jett’s range and force.

Verdict: Bad (but only this cover. The original song is still a masterpiece.)

I don’t think that many people really consider this a ‘bad song’ (although Dave Barry does, according to his iconic volume Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs), but it does get some backlash simply because it was basically declared the official anthem of the Hippie generation, and while it does as good a job of living up to that as any song can be expected to do, a claim like that is never going to satisfy everyone. Granted, Sonny Bono is not overburdened with performing charisma (the guy had songwriting talent, but he never would have made it as a performer without Cher as his partner). Also granted, some of the lyrics might read a little trite on paper, but when set to the song’s soaring and stirring melody, they still sound every bit as profound that they were made out to be at the time. Granted, the actual vocal melody is one of those two-note wonders that people used to accommodate tone-deaf singers before autotune was invented, presumably so Sonny Bono can actually sing it. But the instrumental accompaniment, which manages to create the illusion that it is continually ascending into higher and higher keys with each repetition, provides all the melody the song could possibly need. This is still one of the best songs Cher ever released, and is further proof that the Soft Rock genre had genuine respectability before it was bastardized in the Eighties.

Verdict: Good.