You have been warned.
With little further ado, here is Leonard Nimoy, singing:
Jack Webb didn't even try:
What brought this on was reading some old Dave Barry columns about the worst songs ever recorded. Over 10,000 readers responded, back in the day when that had to be done by mail. Which meant they all found postcards and mailed them in.
Some of the names that people came up with were hilarious. My favorite misquoted title was "Ain't No Woman Like the One-Eyed Gott."
The worst song, for both music and lyrics, was "MacArthur Park":
MacArthur's Park is melting in the darkBut I'll bet that it was a considerable amount.
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh no!
Runner-up was "Yummy Yummy Yummy". Second runner-up "Having My Baby".
A song that I despise didn't even make it into the final column.
Anyway, "The One-Eyed Gott" seems to be a natural for a comic book series or even a movie. (I want royalties, if you do it.)
There was a series of books for mis-heard lyrics. One of my favorite was “when a Man loves a walnut“.
ReplyDeleteSteve Miller's hit 'Fly Like a Negro'; Credence Clearwater's 'There's a Bathroom on the Right'; Jimmie Hendrix's lyric 'scuse me while I kiss this guy'.
ReplyDelete1910 Fruit Gum Company. Take more than needles
ReplyDeleteSteve Miller Band:
ReplyDeleteSlime keeps on drippin' drippin' drippin'
Out of my sutures...
-Doug in Oakland
"I'm a Pool Hall Ace,"by The Police.
ReplyDeleteI heard some guy enthusiastically sing this in a bar one late night way back when, and beer shot 'out my' nose, I laughed so hard!
Man, I still remember how horrible a feeling it is to have suds of beer gush out of your proboscis!
Ah, but Maynard Ferguson redeemed "MacArthur Park" utterly.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ova0NyHbGKA
Comrade, what did we do to you?
ReplyDeleteThat's not the whole story with "MacArthur Park."
ReplyDeleteDave Barry wrote, "What I think really put 'MacArthur Park' over the top on the Bad Song Survey Hostile-O-Meter is the fact that in 1978, just when it had started to fade from the national consciousness, it was brought back to life, Jason-like, by Donna Summer. This meant that in addition to the length factor and the cake factor, you suddenly had the disco factor. Oh NOOOOO...
In the interest of completeness, here's the Donna Summer version.
MacArthur Park goes disco!
3383, you were warned.
ReplyDeleteSam, thanks for making that link clickable.
ReplyDeleteUsually disco ruined the base song. This was an exception. She truly was the Queen of Disco.