“Disco Duck” by Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots (1976)

One person’s view:  “This song is to baby boomers what LMFAO’s ‘Sexy and I Know It’ is to millennials – an unholy mixture of shameless trend-hopping and lazy hack comedy that most people would rather just forget ever existed.” – Nic Renshaw @ Pop Goes The Year

The public’s view:  1.74 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1976

It used to be quite common for comedic novelty songs to reach #1 on the Hot 100.  In 1976, there were two that managed this feat:  “Convoy” and “Disco Duck”.  There have been none in the 48 years since, unless you count near-novelties like “I’m Too Sexy” and “Thrift Shop” or unintentionally funny songs such as “Sussudio” and “Kokomo”.  Evidently, “Disco Duck” was the novelty hit that ended all novelty hits.

While doing this project, I’ve been surprised by the amount of unvarnished hatred that is now directed at these novelty singles that once filled our lives with so much mirth.  One of the reviewers I rely most heavily on, dagwood525 @ Rate Your Music, even calls “Disco Duck” the absolute worst #1 of all time.  Given the vitriol that he’s employed against other records, this is quite the statement.  But my view is that novelty songs need to be judged by their own standards.  A man turning into a duck on the dance floor is a stupid idea for a song, but “Disco Duck” is supposed to be stupid.  This record was made by Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots – not Dr. Linus Pauling & His Faculty of Ivy League Professors.

Let’s give the Cast of Idiots credit for how well the backing track to “Disco Duck” turned out.  Dees hired some quality Memphis studio musicians for this effort, and you can hear their work as an instrumental on the flip side, “Disco Duck (Part 2)”.  I think the instrumental version could have been a hit on its own.  Remember, this was the mid 1970s and we had stuff like “Fly, Robin, Fly” floating around.  As long as it was disco, someone would buy it.

Unfortunately, Dees – a radio personality with no apparent musical training – decided to sing the A-side of the single himself.  Remember when I wrote that Ringo Starr is often labeled a terrible singer?  Dees makes Ringo sound like Pavarotti by comparison.  His lead vocals on “Disco Duck” may be the most amateurish of any #1 hit.  This doesn’t mean that the song would necessarily be improved by substituting a world-class performer in his place.  Barbra Streisand would have no idea what to do with a line like “Flapping my arms I began to cluck.”  However, Isaac Hayes or Tom Jones might have been able to elevate the vocal to a new level while maintaining the appropriate demeanor.

The bigger problem with “Disco Duck” is that the lyrics never fully develop the concept and leave too many questions unanswered.  Why does the gentleman periodically turn into a duck?  Was his DNA altered when he was bitten by a radioactive duck?  Is this some kind of ironic cosmic punishment for running over a duck with his car?  Who knows?  And who really cares?  It’s not like anything interesting happens as a result of this transformation.  The guy does the same things he was already going to do – dancing and chasing women – but now does them as a duck.

There’s nothing about waterfowl feeding patterns, biology, or social behavior in “Disco Duck”.  Dees could make a couple superficial changes to this song and turn it into a disco record about any other kind of animal, like an ocelot or an earthworm.  Please, no one tell him how easy this would be for a quick cash-in.  Aw, shit.  Too late. 

“Afternoon Delight” by Starland Vocal Band (1976)

One person’s view:  “Just a horrible, obnoxious single release from beginning to end.  The vocals are childlike and sickening sweet.  The lyrics are beyond redemption.” – owsh @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.24 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 1976

I’ve now reached a personal milestone with this blog.  All of the previous #1s are historical relics to me, but “Afternoon Delight” is one that I can remember hearing before it topped the charts.  And I heard it straight from the Starland Vocal Band itself, as the group was performing on a stage literally ten feet in front of me at my city’s biggest concert arena.

How was I in such an enviable position to see this talented young band and hear its future #1 hit?  The road to this moment unfurled a couple months earlier when I heard a scream from my family’s kitchen.  My mom had just opened the envelope containing our tickets to see John Denver – and our seats were in the front row!  I know that this story is difficult to believe, but I swear it is true.  A middle class household with no connections to organized crime was able to send a check for a modest amount and, by the pure luck of the draw, receive front row tickets to one of the hottest acts of the decade.  No one stole our tickets from the mail.  Ticketmaster didn’t add $67.50 in service charges to each one.  We didn’t have to load an app onto our phone to use our tickets, which would have been very difficult considering that our phone had a rotary dial and was permanently affixed to the wall.  And when we got to the arena, no one rummaged through my mom’s purse or stuck their hands down my pants to see if we were smuggling in a switchblade.  OK, now that I think about it, maybe this story does seem kind of crazy.  I must have dreamed it, but it was a vivid dream so I will continue telling it as if it really happened.

John Denver’s opening act was the Starland Vocal Band, which consisted of two married couples.  Before performing “Afternoon Delight”, one of the Starland men, Bill Danoff, told us the song’s origin story.  He had been eating lunch at a diner and noticed that one of the menu items was called an Afternoon Delight.  He then came home and demonstrated to his wife what that phrase really meant.  The crowd roared in laughter at this anecdote, and I laughed along with everyone else.  I assumed that he had proceeded to fix a sandwich that was far better than anything the crappy restaurant was offering.  It wasn’t until I was 25 or so that I realized, to my horror, that the song actually wasn’t about food.

It also wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned that “Afternoon Delight” wasn’t the universally beloved perfect pop song that I remembered.  I should have deduced this by the way it had faded from existence.  Sure, the 1970s weren’t the cool thing anymore, but not every chart-topper from 1976 had been wiped so cleanly from our collective memory.  One of my local top 40 radio stations still inexplicably played Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now” as much as it played many new hit records, but no one ever played the Starland Vocal Band.  It’s crazy to think that “Afternoon Delight” somehow tested more poorly with listeners than Peter Cetera’s mournful yowling.

“Afternoon Delight” has been criticized as both too explicit and too tame.  Some of the lyrics, particularly those that analogize sex to fishing, fail to reach Shakespearian heights of eloquence.  Nonetheless, I think the song and its music video serve as the ideal time capsule for the 1970s.  The imagery of fireworks – “sky rockets in flight” – evokes the U.S. Bicentennial, which occurred the week that the song reached #1.  And Bill Danoff even looks a bit like Greg Brady with glasses.  When I see this video, I almost expect it to be intercut with a scene of Gerald Ford tripping down the steps of Air Force One.

The Starland Vocal Band were briefly given their own TV show in which they co-starred with an aspiring comedian named Dave Letterman.  Unfortunately for them, this was before television franchises were industrialized as delivery mechanisms for hit songs.  The Glee assembly line eventually turned out approximately 3,258 Hot 100 singles that no one asked for or wanted, but things didn’t work that way in the 1970s.  The Starlanders never had another top 40 hit again, both couples divorced, and life became slightly worse for all of us.  But hey, at least we still got to hear “If You Leave Me Now” on the radio every three hours until 1992.

“I Write the Songs” by Barry Manilow (1976)

One person’s view:  “This might just be the most over-baked soft rock song of the entire 1970s:  a pretentious, gooey mess of saccharine slop.” – dagwood525 @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.26 / 5.00, the third-worst #1 hit of 1976

Barry Manilow is not as popular today as he once was, but that doesn’t mean he’s been consigned to history’s dustbin along with Lawrence Welk.  His Wikipedia article notes that his songs are still sometimes employed to deter loitering and to drive protesters away from government buildings.  Researchers are probably working on using highly targeted doses of “Mandy” to kill cancer cells.  And “I Write the Songs” is the type of record that you never forget after a few listens.  It’s so majestic and spiritual that it seems sacrilegious to force it through an AM radio in a Chevy Impala, yet that’s exactly the kind of crazy shit that people did back in the ‘70s.

“I Write the Songs” has one of the most unusual lyrical concepts of any #1 hit.  It is sung from the viewpoint of Music itself, which is operating as sort of a subsidiary of God.  God (d/b/a Music) informs us that He has been alive forever and that He wrote the very first song.  He goes on to explain that He, in fact, writes all the songs, and that He threw some rock ‘n’ roll our way so that we “can move.”  What a helpful deity.

So why would God write another song to tell us all this?  Because this is apparently the insecure God who we remember from the Old Testament, and He’s tired of us humans taking credit for all of His songwriting work.  When BMI lists Ray Stevens as the composer of “The Streak” without acknowledging God’s contribution, it’s like erecting an idol to Baal.  Yet God seems to have mellowed out since the days of the Golden Calf, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Great Flood.  There’s no vengeance this time.  He makes His point with a bunch of grandiose trumpet flourishes, some hard-hitting background singers, and a triumphant key change, and then goes away without even demanding the publishing royalties that are rightfully His.

If we accept that God writes every song, then this leads to a lot of other questions that I’d like to ask Him.  Do you also write all the books, God?  Paint all the paintings?  Sculpt all the sculptures?  Including that Golden Calf?  Ha, got you on that one, God!

With lyrics this weird and narcissistic, it’s impossible for anyone to sing “I Write the Songs” without inviting some amount of derision.  Manilow understood this and was reluctant to record it.  After caving under pressure from his label boss Clive Davis, he decided to lean in to the song’s premise all the way.  He starts out slowly, but builds up to a bombastic finish that has listeners wondering if the “Ron Dante” guy who is listed as co-producer on the record is actually just a pseudonym for God.  Manilow may not have wanted to do this song, but he definitely got into it once he did.  Compare this version to the one by the Captain & Tennille, and it’s easy to hear why one was a hit and one wasn’t.

I see Barry Manilow as something of a musical magician here.  A magician saws a woman in half and leaves everyone in awe at the talent and rehearsal that went into his act.  Manilow turned a thoroughly ridiculous composition into a #1 record, and I am in awe at the talent and genius that this required of him as a singer, arranger, and co-producer.  However, just like you really shouldn’t go around sawing people in half, you also shouldn’t be subjecting them to “I Write the Songs”.  It’s perhaps the most memorable hit that I’ve covered so far on this blog, but I’m fine with leaving it in the past.

“Island Girl” by Elton John (1975)

One critic’s view:  “The reggae elements aren’t inherently offensive.  When combined with Taupin’s glaringly racist lyrics, however, they become much harder to stomach.” – Sam Kemp @ Far Out, “The Creepy Elton John Song That Has Aged Very Badly”

The public’s view:  3.04 / 5.00, in the bottom third of #1 hits of 1975

It’s hard to choose which “bad” chart-topper epitomizes 1975.  It was a year with critically panned hit singles by the likes of the Carpenters, the Captain & Tennille, and John Denver, but none of those anger our ears as much as the four bad #1s that I covered for 1974.  If we go simply by the Rate Your Music scores, we’ll be stuck with Tony Orlando & Dawn’s “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You)” as the worst of the year.  I’ve already dissected a more memorable Tony Orlando tune, however, and five paragraphs about “He Don’t Love You” would bore everyone to tears.  After considering all the options, I think Elton John’s “Island Girl” best sums up the spirit of this project.  It’s an outdated and slightly offensive song that is rarely heard anymore and is now largely ignored by its creator.  Rolling Stone notes that Elton has not performed it in concert since 1990.

Let’s consider where Elton John’s career was in late 1975.  In five years he had gone from a nobody to one of the biggest concert draws on the planet.  He was collaborating with people like John Lennon.  He had earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and his eyewear collection could probably have received its own star too if it had asked.  Elton could be forgiven if he started to show some hubris.

Perhaps one sign of hubris was the Neil Sedaka comeback that Elton helped engineer through the label he started, Rocket Records.  Sedaka’s big hit “Bad Blood” featured Elton on backing vocals.  Its chorus also contained a very un-Sedaka-like word:  “bitch”.  Nice Guy Neil was unfamiliar with how to use the epithet properly, and thus we were given the line:  “The bitch is in her smile.”  With awkward lyrics like this, it’s little wonder that Sedaka was never able to transition to a career in hip-hop.

“Bad Blood” might have earned an entry on this blog if not for Elton’s own hit that knocked it out of #1.  In “Island Girl”, he regales us with the story of a Jamaican prostitute working the streets of New York.  Bernie Taupin’s lyrics for this song are often decried as “racist,” an accusation that I consider to be way over-the-top.  “Island Girl” is definitely racial, but is a far cry from being racist.  This is not to say that the song is a happy little nest of flowers and puppy dogs.  The six-foot-three Island Girl comes across like a serial killer, and I imagine that the Prostitutes’ Guild wasn’t very pleased with this portrayal.

Worse still, the “Island Girl” lyric sheet in Elton’s Greatest Hits Volume II LP is adorned by a grotesque caricature that resembles a dark-skinned female version of the Michelin Man.  This drawing may actually cross the boundary that the lyrics didn’t.  It also raises some concerning questions that have nothing to do with Elton John.  Why is the Michelin Man white, anyway?  Isn’t he supposed to be made of tires?  Is there an ointment he can use to restore his natural skin tone?

Musically, “Island Girl” sounds like Elton John wanted to incorporate elements of reggae but wasn’t interested in learning much about the genre first.  This isn’t entirely a bad thing, as the resulting pastiche has more personality than, say, an Eric Clapton remake of Bob Marley.  I wouldn’t put it up there with “Rocket Man” or “Crocodile Rock” or even “Philadelphia Freedom” as one of Elton’s most enduring melodies of the era, but it’s just catchy enough that it deserved its moment in the sun.

The trajectory of “Island Girl” from #1 hit to persona non grata is instructive of how political correctness works.  A song like “Brown Sugar” or “Sweet Home Alabama” can overcome all objections and become an immortal classic just by having a great riff.  But if the music is only average or barely above, mildly insensitive lyrics are enough to completely doom a record in the long term.  And so we have yet another lesson in unfairness, courtesy of the Bad #1 Hits blog.

“(You’re) Having My Baby” by Paul Anka with Odia Coates (1974)

One person’s view:  “If you replaced him knocking her up with him slugging her in the jaw, the lyrics wouldn't have to change much – it’s the same sort of impassive and impersonal look at the situation.” – DonKarnage @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  1.50 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of the 1970s

There are two #1 hits in pop music history that have been so widely ridiculed that I can think of very little else to say about them here.  One of them is “(You’re) Having My Baby”.  (I’ll mention the other one when we get to 1985.)  In 2023, nearly 49 years after its release, this Paul Anka record still held such infamy that Reddit users ranked it as the absolute worst chart-topper in history.

The overriding complaint with Anka’s song is that it is extraordinarily self-centered.  It reduces the conception and gestation of a new life into nothing more than a means of pleasing the male singer.  The song has been described as “obnoxious”, “disgusting”, “vile”, and “garbage.”

It’s hard to see how this record could be any more offensive – but I’ll try.  Here are my alternate lyrics for all of those millions of people who hate the original:

You’re having my baby
Along with a side of onion rings and a Pepsi
You’re having my baby
What a crazy way of tellin’ me that you’re hungry 

You didn’t have to eat it
You could barely chew it
But then you asked the waiter for a knife
And you cut right through it
Whoa, you’re having my baby

Kind of makes you appreciate Paul Anka’s version, doesn’t it?  Now please pass the ketchup.

“Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” by Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods (1974)

One critic’s view:  “It’s an irritating little nothing of a song made even worse by its pretense of wrestling with heavier subjects.” – Tom Breihan @ Stereogum

The public’s view:  2.57 / 5.00, the third-worst #1 hit of 1974

I enjoy reading history books written by British scholars because they have such a different perspective than what is taught in U.S. schools.  For example, the Brits insist that the American Revolution was a dreadfully unnecessary affair that could have been averted if the hotheaded colonists in Boston hadn’t wasted all of that glorious tea.  But not everyone wants to read books, so we also need popular culture to occasionally force-feed a few history lessons to the masses.  This is what happened in 1974, when a team of two Englishmen, Mitch Murray and Peter Callandar, wrote two #1 hit songs that told stories of our American heritage:  “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” and “The Night Chicago Died”.  What an educational time to be alive!

Calling Murray and Callandar history scholars is probably an exaggeration.  Even calling them “buffs” may be a bit too generous.  Mostly, they were a couple of ordinary blokes who had watched a few fictionalized historical films and decided that a good song could stretch the truth a lot farther than any movie could.  After writing their two pseudo-historical hymns, the duo asked English band Paper Lace to bring these songs to life.

“Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” is not so much about history as it is about heroism – or about stupidity that masquerades as heroism.  From its lyrical reference to “soldier blues,” we can gather that Billy served in the Union Army in the Civil War.  He was apparently a grinning dimwit who immediately volunteered for any kind of foolishly dangerous task.  (“The sheep’s bladder we use in our ball games just rolled into the Confederate camp.  Can someone walk down there and ask for it back?  OK Billy, but not so fast, they’ll shoot you if you show up in a Union uniform.  How about if we disguise you as an escaped slave?”)  His fiancée knew of Billy’s propensity to dig himself in over his head, and she warned him about it – to no avail – before he went off to war.

Paper Lace had a U.K. hit with “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero”, but ran into a major obstacle in the States.  A band from Cincinnati, Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods, had recorded their own version of the song that more closely mirrored the tastes of the U.S. public.  The upbeat vocal on Paper Lace’s original, along with the sound of Billy’s fiancée pleading with him to not be such a doofus, was replaced by an even more upbeat and almost cheerful tone.  In the hands of Donaldson and his lead singer Mike Gibbons, the “hero’s” tragic death was not a depressing story that might make Americans feel badly about their history.  It was more like:  “The Civil War:  a good time was had by all!”  Paper Lace saw their record falter at #96 on the Hot 100 while Bo and his Heywoodian friends rocketed straight to the top of the chart with their Americanized version.

“Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” is one of those annoyingly catchy songs that sounded so great on the AM radio in the 1970s, but which critics of today love to disparage.  It has that in common with “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” and “Love Will Keep Us Together”, but the contrast between the chipper singing and Billy’s lamentable fate gives Bo Donaldson’s record an additional reason to be considered among the supposed “worst” songs of its era.

After being aced out on “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” in the U.S., Paper Lace was able to quickly bounce back.  Their version of “The Night Chicago Died” soared to #1 on the Hot 100 a couple of months later in 1974, aided by the sympathy the band got when people heard how Bo Donaldson had robbed them of their other potential hit.  By all rights, “Chicago” deserves to get worse retrospective reviews than “Billy”.  It is an upbeat song about an even bigger tragedy, plus it contains a couple of major historical and geographic inaccuracies that cast doubt on Murray & Callandar’s credentials in the field of American Studies.  A fellowship at Princeton was probably going to be out of their reach after this.  Nonetheless, “Billy” has slightly lower scores from listeners and many critics, and so it is the song that I have chosen to feature here.  Life isn’t fair, and neither is this blog.

“The Streak” by Ray Stevens (1974)

One person’s view:  “His songs never have any actual jokes, just setups that try to double as punchlines.  I’m sorry, but the fact that your song is about a guy running around naked is just not funny by itself!” – Nic Renshaw @ Pop Goes the Year  

The public’s view:  1.67 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 1974

When I was a teenager in the 1980s, one of the biggest fads was mooning.  High school field trips weren’t complete without the sight of a classmate’s bare butt cheeks smashed against a rear windshield on the busiest street in town.  Occasionally, my friends would talk in hushed tones of an even more daring pastime:  streaking.  This was what their parents and older siblings had done in the 1970s, before Reagan and the Moral Majority came along and ruined everything.  As great as mooning was, I always felt like it was a consolation prize for the kids of my generation who had lost the chronological lottery and were being watched over by a bunch of Puritan freaks.

Mooning never got its own theme song.  Sure, Bob Seger made an effort with “Shame on the Moon”, but he didn’t come close to capturing the spirit of the sport.  If not for Ray Stevens – the very same man who taught us that “Everything Is Beautiful” – streaking would also have lacked a major hit record to memorialize its impact on the nation.  Unfortunately, “The Streak” is regarded by many of today’s critics as one of the worst #1 hits in a year full of bad #1 hits.  Let’s see if we can figure out why.

In “The Streak”, Stevens plays a TV news reporter who responds to streaking incidents at a grocery store produce section, a gas station, and a basketball game.  Each time, the reporter interviews the same slow-witted yokel – also played by Stevens – who has witnessed the nudity.  And each time, the yokel belatedly begs his wife Ethel not to look at the streaker’s thingamadoodle.  By the end of the song, Ethel – the shameless hussy that she is – has stripped her clothes off too and is joining in the fun.

When I first contemplated this entry, I was prepared to defend “The Streak” as I did with “My Ding-a-Ling”.  It has a catchy chorus, it covers an important topic, and it contains funny rhymes like “streak / show off his physique / give us a peek.”  But I had never really studied the lyrics, and hadn’t even understood half of them until I looked them up while writing this post.  The slow-witted yokel doesn’t enunciate very clearly, plus there’s a vexatious, poorly timed laugh track drowning out some of the record.  And I had always thought the female singers were saying “Look at that, look at that,” but they are actually saying “Boogity, boogity.”  I think I can be forgiven for not figuring that phrase out.

After reading all of the words to “The Streak”, I believe Stevens left some potential laughs on the table.  Why is he talking about pole beans and shock absorbers and snow cones?  No one has ever heard of pole beans, and the other items don’t matter.  I can write better lyrics with just a few minutes of effort.  This line would work at the grocery:  “At least he reminded Ethel that we need bananas and cucumbers.”  At the gas station:  “Now there’s a couple of nuts that can’t be tightened with a torque wrench!”  Or:  “I stopped here to check my tailpipe, but I didn’t need to see that guy’s exhaust system too.”  Or:  “I’ve said that Everything Is Beautiful, but I’ll make an exception for that hairy ass!”

“The Streak” is not as terrible as the critics say, but it also demonstrates why Weird Al is so beloved and Ray Stevens is viewed as a second-rate hack.  There’s rarely any wasted space in a Weird Al novelty like there is here.  If Stevens had spent another week polishing this song, rather than rushing it to market to beat the dozens of other streaking records that were coming out, he might have had a true classic.  And I wish that someone had made a theme song for another 1970s pastime that I always heard stories about but missed my chance to participate in:  blowing up school toilets with M-80s.

“You’re Sixteen” by Ringo Starr (1974)

One critic’s view:  “The age gap is bad enough, but making it the entire focus of the song is just disgusting.” – Matthew Trzcinski @ Showbiz CheatSheet, “Why Ringo Starr’s ‘You’re Sixteen’ Is a Complete Failure”

The public’s view:  2.80 / 5.00, in the bottom 25% of #1 hits from 1974

It’s hard to find any positive retrospective critical reviews of “You’re Sixteen”.  The best anyone says about it is that the record is perfectly round and doesn’t have any jagged edges that might injure listeners or damage stereo equipment.  Everything else is condemned:  the singing, the musical arrangement, and the lyrics.  As such, “You’re Sixteen” ranks highly on many lists of the worst number #1 hits of all time.

Let’s consider each of the complaints in turn, starting with the singing.  It has long been alleged that Ringo Starr has a limited range as a singer, or even that he simply “cannot sing.”  However, he had not just one, but two #1 hits as a lead singer.  Paula Abdul has had six #1 hits yet there are still those who claim that she can’t sing.  At what point do you accept that success is more than just luck?  No one ever says, “Phil Mickelson has won six major golf tournaments, but he can’t golf.”  With this in mind, I’ve decided to hold off on any substantial criticism of Ringo’s performance until I’ve had a couple of chart-toppers of my own.  Check back with me in a year or two.

Then again, “You’re Sixteen” is a tune that a below-average karaoke singer could handle with ease.  It doesn’t demand superb lead vocals, so maybe it wasn’t just the powerful waves of sound emanating from Ringo’s larynx that sent this song to #1.  Maybe it was Paul McCartney’s contribution to the track, which consists of a kazoo-like noise that may or may not have been made with an actual kazoo.  This wasn’t exactly the type of Beatles reunion that critics were yearning for, however, and it gives them a second reason to hate the record.

Of course, the biggest gripe with “You’re Sixteen” is that nobody wants to hear a 33-year-old man reveling in his illicit relationship with a 16-year-old girl.  However, Paul’s silly kazoo and Ringo’s Ringo-like vocals give the whole thing an air of levity that makes the lyrics almost acceptable.  It sounds like a group of musician friends got together, drank some beers, and goofed around in the studio for a few minutes without realizing that someone had hit the “Record” button.  They chose “You’re Sixteen”, a song whose original version came out in 1960, because it’s the only one that all of them were able to perform in their inebriated state without rehearsing.  See, no one was really serious about any of this!  So please don’t put Ringo on a registry or ban him from going within 1,000 feet of a park.

The various faults of “You’re Sixteen” help to cancel each other out.  It may not be among the best #1 songs of all time, but in my view it isn’t among the very worst either.  Some have deemed 1974 the most horrific year ever for pop music in both the U.S. and the U.K., and in that context “You’re Sixteen” seems almost like a genuine achievement.