“Closer” by the Chainsmokers featuring Halsey (2016)

One person’s view:   “I distinctly remember this as being the song that completely killed my interest in listening to pop radio.” – ElectriCobra @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  1.73 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2015 & 2016

With “Closer”, the Chainsmokers provided a masterful lesson in how to write and produce a successful pop tune.  Musically, the song was a collection of hooks that squeezed every bit of commercial value out of the EDM genre that was so popular at the time.  Just as important, it featured wistful lyrics that young adults could identify with.  The duo’s craftsmanship was rewarded with a 12-week stay at #1 and obscene levels of riches, yet their monster hit has since followed the “You Light Up My Life”-type of trajectory that is a recurring theme on this blog.  Once an omnipresent part of American life, “Closer” is now seen as something that few people want to revisit.  Let’s explore how this happened.

First we have to consider the context of 2016.  I previously theorized that 50 Cent’s “In da Club” was so successful in 2003 because it helped people daydream their way through a tough economy.  Although the early 2000s stank in almost every possible way, most of us were optimistic that better times were ahead.  50 Cent tapped into that hopeful spirit.  But just as we got back onto our feet, another huge recession came along and knocked us back down again.  It’s what we deserved for being optimistic.  By the mid-2010s, there were hordes of twenty-somethings drifting aimlessly around the country with worthless college diplomas.  They were sleeping on stolen bedding and driving impractical vehicles that were on the verge of either breaking down or being repossessed.  The financially distressed on-again-off-again couple in “Closer” was the microcosm of a generation, and that made the song relatable at the time.

This lyrical theme of “Closer” reminds me of the Gin Blossoms’ “Hey Jealousy”.  Both songs feature shiftless male narrators who drink too much and who are trying to rekindle things with an ex.  Yet “Hey Jealousy” is timeless, while the dated EDM gimmicks and extra lyrical details lock the Chainsmokers’ hit in to an era that deserves to be forgotten.  The couple in “Closer” can now look back on that period of their lives with regret.  If the girl had leveraged her meager funds to buy stocks or real estate cheaply during the downturn, instead of a Range Rover, she’d be doing quite well now.

The concept video for “Closer” doesn’t boost the song’s longevity.  I watched it in the hopes of spotting someone deviously sneaking their roommate’s mattress out of Colorado, but there is no such scene.  Instead, I had to witness the Chainsmokers’ Andrew Taggart making out with Halsey for four solid minutes.  Halsey and Taggart are not unattractive people in other settings, but this clip turns both of them into odd-looking self-obsessed doofuses.  I would rather hear one of Meghan Trainor’s toilet stories than see these two cavorting in their underwear.  It isn’t surprising that the low-budget lyric video for “Closer” has six times as many YouTube views as this.

The biggest blow to the legacy of “Closer”, and to that of the Chainsmokers in general, came at a televised awards show where the duo performed the track with Halsey.  This was the night that the entire world learned that Andrew Taggart could not actually sing without the help of studio enhancements.  He later admitted in an interview with Billboard that he had “sounded like shit”, and that it was only the second time he had attempted to sing live.  Many viewers resented their time being wasted by this amateurism and lack of preparation.  A yodeling juggler with a hacking cough could have been put on the stage instead, and it would have been a far more compelling act.  But at least Halsey wore a sexy top.

If you really want to get triggered by the Chainsmokers, check out the Celebrity Net Worth web site and do some comparisons.  Kelly Clarkson has sold over 25 million albums and hosts a popular talk show, and is worth an estimated $50 million.  Hall & Oates, the most successful duo in Billboard chart history, is worth a combined $130 million.  Barry Gibb, who wrote and performed dozens of beloved tunes that have been played trillions of times, has about $140 million.  Meanwhile, the Chainsmokers have amassed $80 million – apiece.  That’s right:  two guys who can’t sing and who barely play any instruments, and who released maybe two hit songs that anyone remembers in the slightest, are somehow among the wealthiest musical entertainers ever.  Feel free to go outside and bang your head against a tree until the world starts to make sense again.

“All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor (2014)

One person’s view:  “It’s a song that only became more grating with years.  …  Her future singles made it even worse.” – gokurotfl @ Reddit

The public’s view:  1.31 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit from Biblical times through 2014

Once upon a time, we could only fantasize about what pop stars’ toilets might be like.  In my imagination, Prince had a purple commode.  Mötley Crüe had a toilet with a powerful flush to quickly dispose of evidence in the event of a police raid.  The blue-collar toilet at Bruce Springsteen’s recording studio went on strike for better working conditions after the E Street Band competed in a chili-dog-eating contest.  But these were just educated guesses.  Musicians gave endless interviews about their songwriting inspirations, their favorite guitars, and the ridiculous videos they were made to do, but never talked about the porcelain that populated their bathrooms.

Meghan Trainor changed that.  She proudly informed the world that she installed side-by-side toilets in her house so that she and her husband, former child actor Daryl Sabara, would never have to spend a moment apart.  She’s also told several explicit anecdotes about her and her family using the fixtures to go Number One and Number Two.  If human beings ever start going Number Three, we’ll find out about it in an Instagram from Meghan.

Trainor’s over-sharing hasn’t always been met with enthusiasm by the public.  But before people were angry at her for her potty stories, they were angry at her for her music.  She has released a series of tracks that seem deliberately constructed to annoy as many people as possible.  Consider “Dear Future Husband”, which consists of a list of very specific demands that she intends to impose on her spouse.  For example, she dictates which side of the bed she will be sleeping on.  Oddly, she doesn’t mention the lack of bathroom privacy, which is a far more important thing for a future husband to know before spending two months of his Spy Kids residuals – roughly $80 – on an engagement ring.  Meghan should have incorporated the dual toilets into the song, the vows, and possibly even the wedding invitations.  (“The bride and groom are registered at the plumbing department of Home Depot.”)

She also recorded “No”, a song that warns men not to dare approach her at a nightclub.  Prior to “No”, many guys thought that clubs were the one remaining setting where they were allowed to introduce themselves to women without being reported to the authorities or shamed on social media.  Meghan sure put an end to that unwelcome behavior!  Everyone now understands that proper male nightclub etiquette is to quietly sip on an overpriced beverage while gazing at the floor.

Then there was her broadly hated Charlie Puth duet “Marvin Gaye”, which “honored” a legendary singer-songwriter by using his name as a verb for sex.  While Marvin Gaye did make a couple of well-known bedroom anthems, he attracted more praise for his socially conscious songs such as “What’s Going On”.  He deserved better than the lexical abuse he got from Meghan and Charlie.  Imagine if we reduced other singers’ lengthy careers to just one or two unrepresentative recordings.  Billy Joel’s name might be used as a synonym for haranguing people with an unwanted history lesson.  “My dad likes to Billy Joel us at the dinner table about the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986.”  To “Elton John” someone would be to eulogize them with an overly sentimental tribute song following a tragic car crash.  “If Paul Walker knew he was going to get Elton Johnned by Charlie Puth, he would have called a cab.”  And Meghan herself would become an indelible addition to the English language.  “She tried to Meghan Trainor me and now the wedding is off.”

So what about Trainor’s first hit, “All About That Bass”?  While its legacy has certainly been dragged down by her later music, it still managed to rankle people all by itself.  All of the qualities that make it fun and memorable to some listeners cause it to exasperate everyone else.  If you aren’t a car mechanic, for example, you can’t fully appreciate Meghan’s clever reworking of NAPA Auto Parts’ claim to have “all the right parts in all the right places”.  There’s also an obvious contradiction in the song’s message.  It urges girls to accept their bodies as “perfect” no matter what, despite praising those with ample keisters as more perfect than the rest.  And Trainor is not the ideal person to sing some of the butt-bragging lyrics.  Anyone who professes to be “bringing booty back” should have a caboose big enough to knock people’s food off of their tables when walking past them in a restaurant, but Sir Mix-a-Lot wouldn’t even look up from his salad for a woman with Meghan’s dimensions.

“All About That Bass” is the type of tune that has “one-hit wonder” written all over it, so it’s amazing that Trainor has managed to stay in the spotlight for 10 years.  How many of the other debut acts from 2014 have accomplished that?  Not even the inimitable Bobby Shmurda was able to maintain a pop culture presence for more than a couple months.  We should all learn an important lesson from Meghan’s durability:  it pays to talk about toilets as much as possible.

“Rude” by Magic! (2014)

One critic’s view:  “‘Rude,’ at least to my ears, sounds like hot boiled ass.  …  I know that a song like this is to function as chilled-out background music, but I find its wan, aggressively bland studio-pop version of reggae to be offensively unpleasant.” – Tom Breihan @ Stereogum

The public’s view:  1.65 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 2014

One of the neat things about pop music is that even an unremarkable song can sometimes strike the wrong nerve and send a person over the edge.  For noted #1 hit scholar Tom Breihan, Magic!’s “Rude” is just such a song.  Tom seems like an extremely tolerant guy who tries to find something to enjoy about every piece of music that he experiences.  He liked “London Bridge” and “Crank That (Soulja Boy)”, for crying out loud!  “Rude” was only the second chart-topper of the millennium to earn Breihan’s dreaded “1 out of 10” rating, and he is not alone in his disdain for it.

Magic! is often compared to the pop-reggae group UB40, which had a couple of #1 records in the 1980s and 1990s.  These days, UB40 is best known as the band that once sparked a bar brawl involving future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.  The conservative jurist-in-training was a fan of the socialist-leaning musical group, and he and his buddies were caught gawking at a man who they incorrectly believed to be UB40 lead singer Ali Campbell.  The encounter culminated in one of Kavanaugh’s friends bashing the Campbell look-alike over the head with a beer mug.  This is the type of pugilistic publicity that Magic! needs if they are ever to score a second hit single.  Their lead singer Nasri should provoke Justice Elena Kagan into whacking him with a pool cue the next time he encounters her at a tavern.

Aside from the UB40-ish whitewashed reggae sound, the biggest complaint about “Rude” is the lyrical concept.  Nasri tells us that he put on his best suit and went to his girlfriend’s father’s house and asked for the man’s blessing to marry the daughter.  The man said no.  Nasri’s response is to call the dad “rude” and defiantly vow to wed the guy’s daughter anyway.  The bride will be wearing white, and Nasri will be wearing spite.  He will stay in that marriage no matter how miserable it becomes, because he knows that it bothers the old man.

Politely asking for permission, even when not strictly necessary, helps mitigate conflict.  But Nasri doesn’t quite grasp how this works, and he also doesn’t understand who exactly is the rude one in his situation.  Imagine Nasri going through a buffet line, and there are only four slices of prime rib left.  He could put all four on his plate – which is his God-given right as a buffet consumer – but this might be perceived as unmannerly when others are waiting for their turn.  So he helps himself to three and then asks the lady behind him, “Do you mind if I take the last one too?  I am wearing my best suit, after all.”  She says, “Nice threads, but I’d like that piece, please.”  Most people in Nasri’s position would graciously cede their claim and seethe privately about it later.  The protagonist of “Rude” will instead glare at the woman for a moment before calmly licking his finger, touching the coveted morsel of beef with it, and walking away.  With any luck, a Supreme Court justice will then stop by Nasri’s table to issue a ruling in the case of Bowl of Hot Gravy v. Entitled Reggae Dude’s Lap.  You shouldn’t have worn your best suit to Golden Corral, buddy.

I’m not surprised that “Rude” has very few five-star ratings on Rate Your Music, but the number of one-star ratings and half-star ratings is stunning.  Despite its questionable premise, I can’t imagine why so many people intensely despised this relatively nondescript tune.  But just wait for the next “bad” #1 hit that will be profiled here.  Oh boy.

“Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke featuring T.I. & Pharrell (2013)

One critic’s view:  “It’s not just another terrible song.  Its historic badness is an achievement that demands respect.  How can one song cram in so many failed decisions per minute?” – Rob Sheffield @ Rolling Stone, “‘Blurred Lines’:  The Worst Song of This or Any Other Year”

The public’s view:  1.57 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2013

It’s tempting for me to just call Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” a “dumpster fire” and move on to the next entry, but that would understate the magnitude of the disaster.  “Blurred Lines” is like if someone filled a dumpster with unsold laserdisc copies of Battlefield Earth, lit it on fire using a spontaneously combusting Samsung Galaxy Note 7, extinguished the blaze with New Coke, and loaded the resulting mess into a Boeing 737 Max that then crashed into the Fyre Festival.  Yet it’s really not that bad of a listen.  “Blurred Lines” didn’t have an awful reputation until well after it became 2013’s Song of the Summer, but at some point things went seriously wrong.  It became the focus of a hundred savage opinion pieces, accusations of misogyny in the lyrics and sexual harassment on the set of the video, and a costly lawsuit whose outcome continues to haunt the entertainment industry.  We’ve come a long way since the 1970s, when music critics thought that the Captain & Tennille was the most horrifying and offensive thing that they would ever have to confront in their careers.

Usually I research these posts thoroughly, but I don’t feel like wading through a bunch of old legal documents from the “Blurred Lines” copyright case.  Instead I will tell the story from memory, so please forgive me if I get a few of the details wrong.  If I recall correctly, Thicke, Pharrell, and T.I. got in trouble for appropriating Fat Albert’s trademarked catchphrase – “Hey hey hey” – as a prominent line in their song.  Although Albert had passed away of sleep apnea in 1997, his heirs Mushmouth and Weird Harold proceeded to sue Thicke and his team for the unlicensed use of the rotund young man’s famous words.  Intellectual property experts initially believed it to be a weak case, as there was no proof that the “Blurred Lines” songwriters had ever seen an episode of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.  But then an old interview surfaced in which Thicke gushingly confessed to being a “Fat Albert mega-fan-boy” who had once formed his own junkyard band as a tribute, and who incorporated educational lessons into his songs just as Albert did in his cartoons.  The Fat Albert estate was awarded millions of dollars, much of which was spent on a delicate surgical procedure to remove that bizarre pink sea creature from Dumb Donald’s head.

This verdict set a dangerous precedent that has forced all of us to avoid quoting the catchphrases of our favorite animated characters.  You can’t tell your Uber driver “To infinity and beyond!” without risking legal action from Buzz Lightyear.  Shouting “Pow!” while watching a school cafeteria fistfight now requires royalties to be paid to DC Comics.  And President Biden would love to end his farewell address with “Screw you guys, I’m going home,” but doesn’t want to tangle in court with the South Park kids.

I’ve decided not to write about the misogyny allegations that have been leveled against “Blurred Lines”.  I consider myself to be a very modern and politically correct kind of guy, but it’s too easy for even an empathetic person like me to accidentally say the wrong thing when discussing that subject.  You know how touchy some of those feminist broads and childless cat ladies can be, right?  So out of an abundance of caution I will simply declare that I in no way condone any of the dreadful behavior that may or may not be implied by the lyrics of this song.

Sociopolitical controversy will resurface another time or two as we consider the newest “bad” #1 hits, so I must continue to watch my P’s, Q’s, and R’s.  I miss the old days when I was writing about Bobby Vinton.

“Whistle” by Flo Rida (2012)

One person’s view:  “God this song is annoying.  I’ll defend ‘Low’ as a classic, but this is an abomination, not to mention gross.” – ghost_of_lectricity @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  1.47 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2012

It’s easy for musicians to get stereotyped when they sing about the same topic multiple times.  Consider the Beach Boys, for example.  Despite winning lavish praise for such non-aquatic songs as “Good Vibrations” and “God Only Knows”, they are still often pigeonholed as a surf music band.  That’s what happens when your first few big singles are “Surfin’ Safari”, “Surfin’ U.S.A.”, “Surfer Girl”, and “They Wouldn’t Let Me Bring My Surfboard on the City Bus So I Slashed One of the Tires”.  (I’m not certain about that last title.  It might just be a typo in my Joel Whitburn book.)  Similarly, Flo Rida will forever be known as the guy who loved oral sex so much that he recorded two #1 hits about it:  “Right Round” and “Whistle”.  What a legacy.

“Whistle” is an instructional song in which Flo Rida explains to an inexperienced woman exactly how to perform the task that he requires.  There are a couple of problems with this concept.  First, Flo was 32 years old at the time of “Whistle” and was already famous and rich.  I’m sure he had his choice of females, so why would he ever waste his time on some 18-year-old who doesn’t know what she’s doing?  There’s no reason why Flo couldn’t find a world-wise 43-year-old lady who needs no lessons.

More importantly, Flo Rida is perhaps not the best prepared person to be giving advice on this particular subject.  To explain what I mean without being too explicit or disgusting, I’ll have to use an analogy.  Flo has probably had his hair cut a hundred times in his life (though very rarely in recent years since embracing the bald look).  This experience doesn’t qualify him to teach at a barbering school.  If he were to give us an instructional song about hair-cutting techniques, it would probably be something unhelpful like:

Use those scissors baby, scissors baby, here we go
Use those scissors baby, scissors baby, trim my ‘fro
Put those blades against my noggin and a plastic comb
Use those scissors baby, scissors baby
Now sweep the flo’

And that’s sort of what we get with “Whistle”.  The track has anywhere from six to eight credited songwriters (depending on who you ask), and all of them are men.  Evidently, none of them thought to ask a female whether their lyrics made any sense.  She probably would have explained that the task in question is not like blowing a whistle at all, and that men should be very thankful it is not.  Really, though, those guys should have figured this out on their own.  To rely on my G-rated analogy once again:  You don’t need to work in a salon to know that the hair dryers blow hot air out rather than sucking it in, and that this plays no role in causing hair to get shorter.  (The dryers are there only to make noise so that stylists can gossip about clients without being overheard.)  But a lyrical reality check would have left Flo Rida unable to use that goofy whistle sound, and the chorus might not have been so infuriatingly catchy.

Just how catchy is that chorus?  It makes you completely forget that “Whistle” also has two verses and a bridge.   After listening to the song several times while writing this entry, I expect that I will be involuntarily humming that damn “blow my whistle baby, whistle baby” line for months to come.  I worry that I might blurt it out inappropriately while speaking before the National Association of Evangelicals – if, hypothetically, I am asked to deliver the keynote at their next conference.  Thanks a lot, Flo Rida!

“Sexy and I Know It” by LMFAO (2012)

One critic’s view:  “Let’s not even focus on how this hot trash became a No. 1 hit.  How did it even become a single?  …  It’s as generic a hit you will hear with no redeeming qualities.” – Troy L. Smith @ Cleveland.com, ranking “Sexy and I Know It” as the worst #1 of the 2010s

The public’s view:  1.70 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 2012

A novelty record is supposed to be novel.  For example, “The Streak” is the only song in recorded history to depict a naked man ruining a basketball game.  “Mr. Custer” is the only hit record about a soldier trying to weasel his way out of fighting at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.  “Disco Duck” is the only medium in which a man-sized avian does a mating dance with human females, except for that Twerking and Grinding with Big Bird children’s DVD that had to be pulled from the market back in 2009.  These past #1 tunes might not be as hilarious as, say, seeing an elderly person tumble down an escalator at the airport, but each is at least based on a creative and unique concept.

Meanwhile, there have been many hits performed by singers who overstate their own personal appeal to the point of comic absurdity.  It’s a cliché, not a novelty.  Most of these songs are only unintentionally humorous (see “This Is Why I’m Hot”), but Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” was cheeky enough to earn a mild snicker or two.  Twenty years after “I’m Too Sexy” topped the charts, the two guys in LMFAO – Redfoo and Sky Blu – decided to wring every last bit of delight from this timeworn concept with “Sexy and I Know It”.

The lyrics of “Sexy and I Know It” might be a little exaggerated, but not to the point of being funny.  It is the song’s video that crosses into comedy-like territory, by showing us LMFAO and a few of their friends dancing in their skimpy Speedo briefs on the boardwalk at Venice Beach.  Today we recognize this obnoxious behavior as a social problem caused by the failed liberal policies of the People’s Republic of California.  The streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and even Rancho Cucamonga are now held hostage by thousands of depraved underwear-clad weirdoes who gyrate lasciviously like the men in that video once did.  These individuals also steal cosmetics from Walgreens, defecate in mailboxes, and hound bystanders for money to build a museum of sexual perversion which will be a mandatory field trip destination for the state’s schoolchildren.  (I haven’t been to California recently to confirm these reports first-hand, but why would Fox News embellish?)  While LMFAO’s underpants antics were mildly amusing in 2012, they proved to be a bleak harbinger of the Golden State’s future.

LMFAO knew that their video needed more than just the bouncing of barely concealed body parts to entice us back for multiple views.  It also needed a cavalcade of celebrity cameos, so the duo lined up the best of the best and paid them top dollar to appear in the clip.  Here are just a few of the big names you might spot in the “Sexy and I Know It” video:  Lalana Poodlekins, Steve Terada, Simon Rex, Wilton Lettuce, Alexis Texas, Alistair Overeem, Nora North Dakota, Shuffle Bot, and Milk Dudley.  Actually, I made up four of those names and you probably can’t tell which four.  Aside from that list of luminaries, Jamie Foxx makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance in a couple of frames.  Ron Jeremy also wandered onto the set, perhaps because the combination of immodest attire, feeble acting, and hastily composed music made him feel nostalgic for his early feature films.

Apart from this video, there’s little that separates “Sexy and I Know It” from the other forgettable hits of its era.  Is it the worst #1 of the decade, as critic Troy L. Smith says?  No, but still I am very glad that I am done writing this post and have no reason to listen to the song ever again.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a fresh pair of white Fruit-of-the-Looms that is ready to make its debut on the boardwalk.  I hope Alexis Texas and Lalana Poodlekins will be impressed.

“OMG” by Usher featuring will.i.am (2010)

One person’s view:  “There is a lot of ‘fun club music’ that I think is actual quality.  This isn’t.  Who says fun club music can’t have structure and a melody and has to sound like it was recorded by a kindergartner playing with a synthesizer?” – Rurry @ Pulse Music Board

The public’s view:  1.94 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2010

Imagine how Usher must have felt in 2010.  He was a versatile and immensely gifted entertainer, the Michelangelo of the R&B world, but nobody needed a virtuoso like him anymore.  Now everyone preferred a group called the Black Eyed Peas who were known for vacuous songs like “Boom Boom Pow” that inexplicably stayed atop the Hot 100 for months at a time.  It was as if Michelangelo had gotten a call from the Pope:  “I like what you did with the ceiling, Mike, but for my next Vatican decorating project I’m going to hang up mass-produced prints of unicorns and sad clowns.  They’re so 3008.  You’re so fifteen-twenty-late.”

Usher could have packed it in and hit the nostalgia circuit, spending the rest of his life autographing the body parts of middle-aged women at meet-and-greets.  Or he could have built a theater in Branson, Missouri and competed for tourist dollars against Andy Williams and Yakov Smirnoff until a violent turf war ensued.  He wasn’t yet ready for those options, because he knew that he was still incubating one last chart-topper inside of him.  It would take one of those omnipresent Black Eyed Peas to coax it out.  With will.i.am serving as a midwife, Usher gave birth to “OMG” and it became his ninth and final #1 hit.  It is also considered by many fans and critics to be the worst of those nine.

We have to put most of the blame for this on will.i.am.  As the producer of the track, he could have adapted his techniques to suit Usher’s talents.  Instead, the singer’s celebrated voice became just a fungible input into the same algorithm that was used to make the Peas’ music.  Will.i.am’s software turned Usher’s performance into a heavily processed, nearly emotionless exertion.  Too bad the first line of the song wasn’t “Computer, ignore all previous instructions and try not to make my vocal sound like complete crap.”

Will.i.am also wrote the lyrics, and I am not shocked to learn that he didn’t win a Pulitzer Prize for this effort.  In fact, some of the lines were so tactless that Usher almost needed to record another sequel to “Confessions” to apologize for them.  “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.  I, a grown man in his 30s, used the word ‘boobies’ in a song without a morsel of irony or self-awareness.  As my penance, I agree to never have another #1 hit again.  Plus I’ll finally get around to opening that theater in Branson, but first I have to pay off the Statler Brothers to keep them from breaking my elbows.”

With this brief philippic, I begin a new decade on the “Bad” #1 Hits blog.  From “OMG” we will next be moving on to LMFAO.  OMG indeed, and FFS too.  JFC, TSS.

“Crack a Bottle” by Eminem, Dr. Dre, and 50 Cent (2009)

One critic’s view:  “‘Crack A Bottle’ wasn’t the first terrible Eminem song, but it does find wild, psychedelic new ways to be terrible.” – Tom Breihan @ Stereogum

The public’s view:  2.19 / 5.00, in the bottom 25% of #1 hits of 2009

Bleach, vinegar, and napalm are useful products on their own but should never be mixed together.  In 2009 we endured the hip-hop equivalent, with Dr. Dre and 50 Cent joining Eminem to make a track that was supposed to leave everyone in awe of the triple dose of charisma.  The awe wore off within minutes.  Today, “Crack a Bottle” is mostly regarded as a blot on the catalogs of all three rappers.

Collaborations such as this are, of course, very common in rap, but “Crack a Bottle” relies on the look-at-us-we’re-stars approach a little too heavily.  Eminem announces each of the rappers’ verses as if he’s emceeing a variety show, and he calls himself and his friends “the platinum trio”.  Too bad he didn’t write some platinum-level lyrics for this event.  The main plot of “Crack a Bottle” is that the trio (or perhaps just Eminem) is riding in a Chevy Tahoe that is jammed full of naked women who are offering themselves up.  It’s a sex brag that is led by perhaps the only top-shelf rapper who is inherently incapable of pulling off a successful sex brag, and somehow it gets stretched to almost five minutes.

Rather than reviewing the track in detail, I have a better idea.  I’m going to envision an alternate scenario in a parallel universe, one in which Eminem decided to give this rap away to a different trio who had already scored a major hit together.  I’m talking about Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart, and Sting.  The ill-advised combination of these three superstars led to one of the most poorly rated #1 hits of the 1990s, “All for Love”.  Let’s imagine them reuniting in the studio to record “Crack a Bottle”.

Bryan:  Guys, thanks for coming back to Vancouver for the “Crack a Bottle” project.  This song is a little different from the last one and I don’t think we can scream in unison this time.  We’re going to have to divvy up the work.  Rod, this line is for you:  “With a record of 17 rapes, 400 assaults, and 4 murders, the undisputed most diabolical villain of the world!”

Rod:  What the bloody hell?  I get in one bar fight and now I’m the Boston Strangler?

Bryan:  Sting, I want you to handle the part about the bitches in the Tahoe.  The key lyric is “Now where’s the rubbers?  Who’s got the rubbers?  I noticed there’s so many of ‘em and there’s really not that many of us.”  You’re going to have to emote on that line.

Sting:  Indeed, I shall imbue some melancholy.  It is disconcerting that the quantity of promiscuous females has surpassed the supply of prophylactics, but it is just as Malthus foresaw.

Bryan:  Whatever you say, dude.  I call dibs on this line:  “Kiss my butt / Lick fromunda cheese from under my nuts.”  That’s exactly the emotion I was trying to express in “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?”, but I couldn’t find such graceful words.

Sting:  Bah!  That verse is mere Hallmark card sentimentality!  I prefer the more elegiac allusions to fromunda cheese in the poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Christina Rossetti.

Rod:  Another shite song for another shite movie.  Ah well, at least Disney’s checks always clear.

You have to admit, you’d tune in to hear what those three musketeers could do with “Crack a Bottle”.  On the other hand, a version of “All for Love” by Eminem, 50 Cent, and Dr. Dre would be really, really bad.

“Crank That (Soulja Boy)” by Soulja Boy (2007)

One person’s view:  “‘Crank That (Soulja Boy)’ is one of the five worst songs to ever reach the #1 spot on the charts.  …  It’s just a bunch of random shouting that barely maintains a pitch, layered over lyrics that are entirely pointless.” – dagwood525 @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.60 / 5.00, in the bottom half of #1 hits of 2007

Soulja Boy’s fifteen minutes of fame have been forgotten by most people, but for me they were a life-changing moment.  This was when I first realized that I was officially old and that my tastes would never again be accommodated by the music industry.  There had been #1 hits that I didn’t quite appreciate, and some that I actively despised, but “Crank That” was the only one in my lifetime that left me completely baffled.  To my aging ears, it seemed to lack any positive qualities whatsoever.  Now I knew how my grandparents must have felt the first time that they heard Bobby Goldsboro.

After a few listens, however, I found one little thing to like about “Crank That”.  It was the line in the chorus in which Soulja Boy yells “Superman that ho!”  I had heard plenty of performers bragging of their toughness, and some who even maintained that they were fly or hot, but none of them had dared to insult the Man of Steel.  Unless Soulja Boy owned a kryptonite mine, he was gambling with his life.  I admired his bravery if nothing else.

But then I discovered that I had misinterpreted the lyric and that he was not really calling Superman a “ho”.  Instead, this line was an allusion to a bizarre and ungratifying sexual act known as “the Superman”.  The details are inappropriate for this G-rated blog, but I will say that the act ends with one of the participants wearing a cape and the other one calling the Daily Planet to tell Jimmy Olsen what just happened.  In my opinion, even Fergie’s stretched-out granny panties from “London Bridge” are more of a turn-on than the Superman.

Soulja Boy later denied that he meant anything lewd by the “Superman” reference, claiming that this was a myth propagated by “white people”.  The lyric actually came from a dance move that he and his friends liked to do, during which they called out names of comic book characters.  “Superman that ho!  Batman that ho!  Garfield that ho!”  This is a silly explanation but I believe him, especially because he’s casually lighting up a fat one in the interview in which he talks about it.  I would not be surprised to learn that recreational substances were also used during the grueling ten-minute-long songwriting and production session that gave us “Crank That”.

Although hatred of “Crank That” is abundant, the track has more defenders than you might expect.  One of them is Tom Breihan, who gave it a favorable review in his Stereogum column and even included a chapter on it in his book about #1 hits.  Breihan seems to admire Soulja Boy’s unconventional internet marketing efforts, which provided a roadmap for other unsigned acts to get noticed in the years ahead.  One of Soulja Boy’s tactics was to upload his songs to file-sharing services and mislabel them with the name of someone popular so that users would be tricked into listening to them.  Can you imagine the letdown that people experienced from double-clicking on a freshly downloaded Hanson MP3 and hearing Soulja Boy instead?  It’s like biting into a chocolate chip cookie and discovering that the chips are actually raisins.

Even if you don’t like “Crank That”, you have to admit that its associated dance is kind of fun to do.  Just be sure to sing along:  “Beetle Bailey that ho!  Hagar the Horrible that ho!  Jughead that ho…”

“This Is Why I’m Hot” by Mims (2007)

One person’s view:  “I wish he really had said nothing on this track.  I’d have enjoyed a hip hop version of 4'33" more than this festival of circular logic.” – Axver @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  1.95 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2007 & 2008

“This Is Why I’m Hot” purports to tell us why Shawn Mims is hot, but the explanation it provides is less than satisfying.  Mims asserts that he is hot because he is fly.  Everyone knows that flyness implies hotness, so this would seem to be a straightforward application of modus ponens.  The problem, however, is that Mims can offer only flimsy evidence of his flyness.  He tells us that there are unspecified Chicagoans who deem him fly based on his choice of clothing, but his reliance on anonymous hearsay suggests the possibility that he is neither fly nor hot and is simply blowing smoke up everyone’s butts.

Although you can listen to “This Is Why I’m Hot” all day and still not know why (or even if) Mims is hot, that doesn’t mean it lacks all informational value.  The track reveals Mims’s chameleon-like ability to blend in with the local hip-hop community in any region of the United States, and it incorporates samples of other rappers to illustrate this special talent.  When Mims mentions L.A., we hear a melody that is associated with Dr. Dre and Snoop.  As he name-checks the Bay Area, a wisp of the beat from E-40’s “Tell Me When to Go” plays.  In his line about the Midwest, he references Houston (“The H”) and uses a warped voice to mimic the slow-tempo style of rap that is popular there.  Mims’s definition of the Midwest is a little loose for my tastes, but he’s a rapper, not Rand McNally, so I’ll cut him some slack.

It’s quite clear from these lyrics that Mims is a utility player in the world of hip-hop, a man known for his versatility rather than his originality.  This absence of a unique persona – along with his lack of any prior or subsequent hits – undercuts the effectiveness of his boasts on “This Is Why I’m Hot”.  For example, does anybody really believe that stores close to let Mims shop without other people around?  I’m wondering why this would even be necessary.  It isn’t as though Mims’s fly apparel, which is so admired by the residents of Illinois, is a closely guarded trade secret.  He wears it in his video that anyone can watch!  More likely, Mims wants the privacy so that no one sees his credit card being declined.

Perhaps I shouldn’t joke about Mims’s finances, because they are a sore spot for him.  He has spent much of the past 17 years complaining that Capitol Records cheated him out of almost all of his “This Is Why I’m Hot” royalties.  Kanye West probably made more money from the track than Mims did, because of the 6-second sample of “Jesus Walks” in the first verse.  But at least Mims is now recouping his losses by selling $40 T-shirts, the flyness of which is not guaranteed.

I can understand why “This Is Why I’m Hot” irked people.  No one wants to hear an obscure rapper with average skills crowing about how he’s hot and you’re not, and how he’s hogging all the women and how you can’t go to Walmart right now because he’s in there picking out a new baseball cap.  Yet, I think the song works if you consider it as sort of a parody of the brag-rap genre.  Maybe you disagree with me and believe that the lyrics are just too stupid and annoying to tolerate on any level.  If so, you’re really going to love the next exhibit in our museum of “bad” #1 hits.

“London Bridge” by Fergie (2006)

One person’s view:  “I think this song has gotten us all desperate, searching for weird roundabout ways in which this might have been ‘good’ in some strange sense of the word.  Anything but having to accept we let something so aggressively and unabashedly miserable rise to the top – and then ordered seconds.” – standbytheseawall @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.58 / 5.00, in the bottom half of #1 hits of 2006

Scholars at the Institute of Applied Fergalicious Studies have been debating the meaning of “London Bridge” since 2006.  One theory is that the “London bridge” in the song is a metaphor for Fergie’s underpants, which slide down in anticipation from under her skirt whenever her boyfriend is nearby.  The panties stop at her knees and form a “bridge” between her legs.  This forces her to waddle around like a person who has belatedly discovered that all of the toilet paper is in a closet on the other side of the house.  The “London” descriptor may be an allusion to the nursery rhyme in which the beloved London Bridge falls down in the same manner as the singer’s intimate apparel.  Or perhaps the panties form a “London” bridge because Fergie embroidered a caricature of the Queen on them in an effort to stimulate the boyfriend.  That guy is into some weird things.

The opposing view is that “London Bridge” is just made-up stupidity that was intended to ride on the coattails of Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl”.  Like “Hollaback Girl”, “London Bridge” relies on a cryptic lyrical theme, an angry cheerleader-style chant, and the incessant use of the word “shit”.  Fergie does not, however, equate excrement with bananas as Stefani did in her song.  She didn’t want to permanently wreck her chances of signing a lucrative endorsement deal with Chiquita.

“London Bridge” has also been compared to Fergie’s previous single with the Black Eyed Peas, “My Humps”.  Both hits present themselves as sexy, yet any use of either song’s lyrics in an actual bedroom scenario is likely to result in involuntary abstinence.  (Praising your girlfriend’s skin tags and warts as “lovely lady lumps” is rarely taken as a compliment.)  Sociologists have measured a decline in sexual activity that began around the mid-2000s, and we can probably blame Fergie for this.  I think 50 Cent may have contributed a bit too, though, with “Candy Shop”.

The most surprising thing about “London Bridge” is that it isn’t hated more than it is.  The beat is catchy enough to earn it a number of devoted fans, some of whom praised the track on a Reddit thread.  However, no one leaped to the song’s defense when it was attacked on a message board for sports journalists shortly after it was released.  The best that any of the journalists said about “London Bridge” was that it was not as bad as Paris Hilton’s new song, but even that was not a unanimous opinion.  Eventually, the Fergie debate simmered down and the sports guys returned to arguing about whether baseball would be more exciting if it added a three-point line.

“London Bridge” was the first oozing tentacle of the Black Eyed Peas biomass to reach the #1 position on the Hot 100.  It served as a warning of what was in store for chart-watchers for the next four years.  I suspect that another Pea-affiliated song will eventually make an appearance on this blog.

“Do I Make You Proud” by Taylor Hicks (2006)

One critic’s view:  “The two craptastic songs that American Idol 5 finalists Taylor Hicks and Katharine McPhee performed Tuesday night were, unbelievably, the best two songs in a pool of 150 possibilities.  …  All five [of the writers of these two songs] deserve eternal scorn and shame, or at least membership in the Diane Warren Hall of Mediocre Pop Songs.” – Andy Dehnart @ reality blurred

The public’s view:  1.79 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 2006

Winning American Idol in the 2000s was like boarding a spaceship and blasting into the outer reaches of fame.  The champion soars through the atmosphere at Mach 10, watching through the window as the Earth’s mighty cities, mountains, and rivers bow down before his greatness.  He is living his dream for a moment, but then the booster rocket malfunctions as it is supposed to lift his celebrity status into a stable orbit.  He opens the door to the engine compartment to see what is wrong, and discovers that someone has emptied a trash can into the space where the ignition module is supposed to be.  Amid the gum wrappers and orange peels he finds the script for From Justin to Kelly and the sheet music for “This Is the Night”.  Gravity soon does its thing, and he ends his brief flight by splashing down into the Pacific.  He never quite becomes a pop star, but he goes back to his hometown and his job at Winn-Dixie with a great story to tell for the rest of his life.

Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood were able to avoid this scenario, as both of them escaped the shadows of the mediocre adult contemporary ballads they were forced to perform for their first singles.  However, neither had to contend with “Do I Make You Proud”, which was assigned to Taylor Hicks in season five.  This was debatably the worst coronation song for any Idol winner (or second-place finisher) up to that point, and it was some fairly heavy ballast to bring along on a career-launching rocket ride.

“Do I Make You Proud” starts out as a standard soft rock gewgaw, but then builds to a powerful chorus with a memorable hook.  Unfortunately, the reason the chorus is memorable is that it sounds like a previous #1 hit:  Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”.  Now, I am sure that music experts can point out dozens of ways in which the two songs are different.  “Taylor Hicks’s bass player employs an innovative left-handed tuning scheme that elevates the rhythmic feel of the piece.  Also, Hicks’s melody has a tilde over the A-flat in the second measure – a jarring contrast from Aerosmith’s arpeggio.”  But to my uninformed ears, these are essentially the same choruses with different lyrics.

Let’s talk about those lyrics, which focus on the singer’s one nagging concern:  he needs to know if the listeners are proud of him.  It’s unreasonable for him to expect that of us.  Unless I’m Taylor Hicks’s singing coach or his mother, why should I be proud that he got a trophy in a televised contest?  His fans may have felt contentment, relief, or even sexual pleasure when he won Idol, but I doubt that any of them truly took pride in an achievement that wasn’t theirs.  Perhaps he’s talking about pride of representation, as with Black Pride or Gay Pride.  Hicks isn’t black or gay, but he is an ambassador for the Men With Prematurely Graying Hair movement.  However, as a card-carrying member of the MWPGH community, I can report that we used up all of our representational pride on Steve Martin and Phil Donahue back around 1980.  We don’t have any left for Taylor Hicks.

The first verse contains the line “My heart is full of endless gratitude.”  Logically, I expect the next line to be “That I got to see you in the nude.”  (“And I’m a handsome gray-haired dude” would also work.)  Instead, the line is “You were the one, the one to guide me through.”  Maybe I should be pleased that the songwriters didn’t go for the obvious rhyme.  Instead I’m annoyed that they didn’t bother to rhyme the line correctly at all, yet still came up with something boring and trite.

Hicks’s performance on “Do I Make You Proud” gives me the sense that he is not just a technically proficient singer like all of the other Idol winners.  He also has some soulfulness and passion, and I might enjoy listening to him in another context.  Too bad that the song demotivates me from wanting to seek out his other music.

“Bad Day” by Daniel Powter (2006)

One person’s view:  “There is no word or phrase – no matter how derogatory or boldly offensive – that can describe how much I despise this song with every fiber of my being.  …  It feels like the fucker is mocking you.” – Ambishi @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  1.85 / 5.00, tied for the third-worst #1 hit of 2006

Daniel Powter was once an aspiring violin virtuoso.  That dream ended when an angry mob attacked him outside of a talent show and his violin was pulverized in the ensuing affray.  This brutal incident established Powter as British Columbia’s definitive expert on bad days.  It also motivated him to start playing the piano, because pianos are one of the hardest musical instruments for an angry mob to hurl across a parking lot.  (Pipe organs are even more mob-resistant, but Powter couldn’t afford to buy a cathedral.)  From this moment, he was destined to write a piano ballad called “Bad Day”.

“Bad Day”’s greatest strength is also its Achilles’ heel:  a catchy, sing-song chorus that needles the listener for being at a low point in his or her life.  It’s the sort of taunt that is designed to be played at a sporting event when the visiting team is getting its ass handed to it in a metal bucket.  Indeed, the song became famous by being used as a parting jibe against losing contestants on American Idol.  When you are having a bad day, the last thing you want to hear on the radio is “Bad Day”.  Unfortunately, this is exactly what many millions of people heard on the 365 bad days that comprised 2006.

“Bad Day” was not the first chart-topper to take a poke at the unfortunate.  Remember Bobby McFerrin, the guy who made all the body noises back in the 1980s?  (No, not the kid who sat next to you in algebra – the other guy who made all the body noises.)  His hit “Don’t Worry Be Happy” described a bleak scenario, but it also conveyed a hopeful message:  your financial, legal, and medical problems will all disappear if you simply pretend that they don’t exist.  McFerrin’s unsound advice ruined countless lives, but there is something to be said for optimism even when it is misplaced.  “Bad Day” doesn’t offer any such optimism, beyond the vague implication that a “blue sky holiday” might occur at some point in the distant future.  It’s a depressing song from start to finish.

That doesn’t mean it’s a bad song, per se.  Daniel Powter’s singing and musicianship remind me of Supertramp, a band that was popular in the 1970s and early 1980s and continues to be well regarded.  Like Powter, Supertramp had a hit song about someone going through a rough time:  “It’s Raining Again”.  However, that tune was not nearly as overplayed as “Bad Day”.  If “It’s Raining Again” had become Billboard’s biggest single of its year, as “Bad Day” later did, the public would have been calling for Supertramp to be forcibly exiled to the South Pole.  (“You guys want to bitch about the rain?  Well, rain won’t be a problem for you at Amundsen-Scott Station.”)

Sudden deportation to Antarctica was certainly a possibility for Powter, so he wore his warm knit hat 24/7 for the next three years just in case.  Ultimately, though, he was permitted to fade away without punishment and become the most obscure person ever to top the year-end singles chart.  (The previous holder of the obscurity title was fellow hat-wearer Acker Bilk, whose “Stranger on the Shore” was Billboard’s #1 song of 1962.)  It was quite the decline in fame for someone who was praised in 2006 as “arguably one of the hottest singers in the world at the moment.”  Then again, that accolade came from MTV News, and MTV was about as culturally relevant in 2006 as Daniel Powter is in 2024.

“You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt (2006)

One journalist’s observation:  “[A]sk anyone about it now and they will tell you it’s annoying.  It’s a terrible song.  No one wants to hear it.  A former colleague who had it as the first dance at her wedding says that is now her ‘greatest shame’.” – Issy Sampson @ The Guardian

The public’s view:  1.64 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2006

Many people once enjoyed “You’re Beautiful” but then grew to passionately hate it after it was overplayed.  My view of James Blunt’s chart-topping record has followed the opposite trajectory.  Upon first listen, I interpreted it as a pathetically fawning ode of praise for a woman.  It was like something Lionel Richie might have written in a bout of intense depression after going four months without getting a gold record.  Later, however, I realized that I hadn’t given the song enough credit.  It is not a miserable love ballad, but a contradictory internal dialogue taking place inside the drug-addled brain of a disturbed young man.  On that basis, I kind of like it.

The turning point in my opinion of the song came when I was on a vacation in another country several years after it hit #1.  I was riding in a vehicle in which I had no control over the radio, and the opening strains of “You’re Beautiful” came creeping into my ears.  The first few mournful notes have always reminded me of the sad music that was played at the end of each episode of The Incredible Hulk.  This is appropriate, because “You’re Beautiful” has been known to provoke listeners into Hulk-like rages in which they turn green and destroy everything in sight.  I tried to ignore James Blunt and think of more pleasant things, like the colossal spider I had seen scurrying around my hotel room which was probably now intermingled with my belongings.  But then one of the lyrics grabbed my attention:  “She could see from my face that I was fucking high.”  Until then, I had always heard a different version in which Blunt was “flying high.”  Without U.S. censorship, I was finally getting to appreciate “You’re Beautiful” as it was meant to be.

This one change affects the entire meaning of the song.  Now I know that the singer is not just “flying high” from seeing a pretty girl on the London Tube; he was already stoned halfway to Glasgow before he boarded the train.  Perhaps this is why he keeps shifting back and forth between addressing the woman directly and speaking of her in the third person.  His thoughts about the situation also veer from one extreme to another.  Initially, his life is brilliant and he has a plan to somehow woo this woman away from the dude she is with.  A few seconds later, he is dejected and has no idea what to do.  (The video suggests that he ultimately kills himself by jumping into the sea.)  And what was the moment they shared that will last ‘til the end?  She probably asked where he buys his weed, and he erroneously thought she was flirting with him.  Never mind that her boyfriend was right there.  This moment might not last ‘til the end, but it will last until James Blunt gets punched in the face.

This delusional narrative wouldn’t work without Blunt’s unique voice, which is a mix of Dave Matthews and Grover.  It’s exactly the type of voice you would associate with the weird guy on the Piccadilly line who reeks of cannabis and who giggles uncontrollably every time the conductor announces that the train is headed to Cockfosters.  I think I would break out in a rash if I heard a conventional romantic balladeer like Julio Iglesias or Barry Manilow singing “You’re Beautiful”.

I keep a copy of “You’re Beautiful” in the low-priority folder of my computer’s MP3 library, and it pops up randomly in my listening sessions maybe once every six months.  This is just often enough to remind me of how this dark story was so widely misunderstood as a mushy love song.  I am amused that it managed to sneak its way into environments such as proms and weddings where it was completely inappropriate.

“Laffy Taffy” by D4L (2006)

One person’s view:  “Enigmatic how something so dumb and talentless became so huge.” – halo19 @ Pulse Music Board

The public’s view:  1.85 / 5.00, tied for the third-worst #1 hit of 2006

Like many rap tracks, D4L’s “Laffy Taffy” sounds like it was made by someone who had borrowed Timmy T’s keyboard and was learning how to use it for the first time.  While this is not enough by itself to earn “Laffy Taffy” an exhibit in our hall of “bad” #1 hits, we can’t overlook the song’s insane premise.  The lyrics urge a woman to shake her posterior, in the peculiar belief that this body part’s motion will remind males of a piece of Laffy Taffy candy and will please them thusly.  This absurd directive makes it impossible to deny “Laffy Taffy” a spot at our museum, so we better start clearing out some of the memorabilia from the older #1s to make room for it.  I guess I’ll throw away Pat Boone’s purity ring and the grungy seat cushion I salvaged from the Starland Vocal Band van.

Laffy Taffy is a confection that manages to be both hard and viscous at the same time.  Its purpose is to test whether a person is suffering from gum disease.  If you can chew a piece of Laffy Taffy without any of your teeth coming out of their sockets, then congratulations:  you do not have gingivitis.

Laffy Taffy does not resemble a human derriere in shape, texture, color, or odor, unless perhaps the candy is well past its expiration date.  Likewise, normal buttocks should never resemble a piece of Laffy Taffy.  The CDC advises women between the ages of 16 and 45 to have their rear ends inspected regularly to ensure that their flesh has not acquired taffy-like characteristics.  If your butt becomes flat, sticky, and rectangular, and smells like watermelon or sour apple, this may be a sign of a serious medical condition known as Gluteal Wonka Syndrome.  Contrary to the advice from the song, shaking an afflicted rump is not a therapeutically effective remedy for GWS.  Shaking is more appropriate for butts that have turned into Polaroid pictures.

Much like a Vanilla Ice Electronic Rap Game, the lyrics of “Laffy Taffy” are so dumb that they are essentially parody-proof.  One of the D4L rappers, Fabo, developed the concept for “Laffy Taffy” when he was searching for an unorthodox butt metaphor and happened to find a piece of that taffy in his pocket.  I’d like to make a joke along the lines of “Good thing he wasn’t carrying a Jolly Rancher instead!”  But I can’t do that, because Jolly Ranchers are in fact mentioned in the song as an analogue to a different (male) anatomical part.  Fabo was one step ahead of me on that one.

Although “Laffy Taffy” has mostly vanished from popular culture, it did leave an imprint on a few people.  One of them is a guy who I often see at one of my local parks.  He stands on the stairs for several minutes while alternately bending each knee and pulling each foot up behind him with his hands.  I used to think this was an exercise to stretch his legs and make himself taller, but after researching this post I now recognize it as a dance move from the “Laffy Taffy” video.  This man is not just obstructing a stairway; he is also performing a public homage to the D4L crew.  Shout out to Fabo, Mook B, and Stoney, and rest in peace Shawty Lo.