One critic’s view: “It purports to be anti-commercial but reeks
of ‘80s corporate-rock commercialism.
It’s a real reflection of what practically killed rock music in the
‘80s.” – Craig Marks @ Blender, as
quoted in USA Today
The public’s view:2.05 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 1985
With so many articles, books, and doctoral dissertations
written about why “We Built This City” is the worst thing that has happened since
the Visigoths sacked Rome, there is little I can add to the discussion.I will keep this post brief.
Is “We Built This City” really that awful?No, not compared to so many of the other hits
that have been featured here, but it does have a fundamental incongruity at its
core.The song was conceived as a
protest against greedy corporations that were buying out popular venues and ruining
the live music scene in Los Angeles.This was an amazing germ of a song idea, but too many people got
involved in the writing and production.The track was reworked into something so corporate that it should have featured
a calculator solo by Grace Slick’s stockbroker.Meanwhile, it kept enough of the original theme – and a few nonsense lyrics
– to come across as hypocritical.The
last thing that critics want to hear in a rock song is hypocrisy.
I can’t think of any other hits that followed a similar tortuous
path from inception to hypocrisy, so I’ll make up an example of what this was
like.Imagine that a third songwriter
had barged in on Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson while they were working on
“We Are the World”.Let’s call this
fictional person “Bryan Adams”. Now
suppose that after Lionel finishes writing two heart-rending verses about the
famine in Africa, “Bryan” adds a powerful chorus urging everyone to go to
Sizzler, gorge themselves on the all-you-can-eat buffet, and leave a pile of
wasted food on their plate when they’re done.Also, in a nod to Michael’s pet snake, he inserts the line “Balboa
played the boa.”And then – despite some
initial misgivings – the all-star celebrity choir sings these lyrics with
sincerity and conviction.Bruce
Springsteen screams “Eat at Sizzler!”, and it becomes one of the iconic moments
of the decade.
Now we have a charity fundraising single with the same
problems as “We Built This City”.Actually, I think this would be pretty cool.
One person’s view: “Every copy of this
single ever made should be ritually burned.” – rushomancy @ Rate Your Music
The public’s view:1.83 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1983 through
1985
After exiting the doldrums, pop music and the Hot 100 had a
couple of magnificent years in 1983 and 1984.For a moment it looked like I would be permanently out of fodder for
this blog.However, there comes a time
when we heed a certain call to skewer yet another song.
“We Are the World” presents me with the same type of conundrum
as “Everything Is Beautiful”.It’s one
of the most well-intentioned chart-toppers ever, and I don’t have any kind of
personal beef with it.However, the
retrospective reviews of it are horrendous.If I don’t write at least a brief post about it, I can’t call my blog
“The Bad #1 Hits”.
The complaints about “We Are the World” could fill a room
the size of the egos that were famously checked at the door at the recording
session.The project is derided as a
performative bit of “hey look at me” do-goodism which accomplished nothing that
couldn’t have been achieved by less irksome means – like having each person in
attendance write a check for $1 million.The lyrics are simplistic and focus on the do-gooders rather than the
people who need help.The vocalists all
sound like parodies of themselves.The tune
drags on for nearly twice as long as necessary, turning a plea for money into
an especially aggravating plea for money.
All of this is essentially true.However, it’s hard to imagine a lofty endeavor
like this turning out much better than it did.Put yourself in Lionel Richie’s shoes:you have a very limited time to write a song that must become a multimillion-selling anthem.Worse still, you have to work on it with
Michael Jackson at his house, and he has a pet boa constrictor that doesn’t
always stay in its cage.You’d get one
verse written, hear a noise behind you, and then have to take a break to change
into a clean pair of trousers.I’ll give
Lionel credit just for finishing the song under these circumstances.
The real problem with “We Are the World” and its sibling “Do
They Know It’s Christmas?” is that they led to a period in which rock stars
thought they could solve any worry with a sing-along.This was especially the case in the U.K.,
where charity anthems became a frequent occurrence.If you stubbed your toe on the streets of
Ipswich, there would soon be thirty people gathered in a studio to call
attention to your plight.
In the U.S., the main legacy of “We Are the World” was the
even more ambitious project Hands Across America.This event was like if the Underpants Gnomes
from South Park got into the
charitable fundraising business.Step
1:Ask millions of people to form a
human chain stretching from New York to L.A.Step 2:???Step 3:Hunger and poverty have been eradicated.
By some measures, Hands Across America was a huge
success.None of the participants got
run over by a car or a train, nobody got struck by lightning, and there weren’t
any fistfights over who had to hold hands with that kid who was picking his
nose outside of Albuquerque.However, by
this time the charity craze was about over.Today, whenever you hear anyone mention raising money to fight world
hunger, it brings back memories of other fads of that era like Cabbage Patch
dolls, shoulder pads, and Dynasty.People sure did some weird things back in the
‘80s.
One person’s view: “An important lesson
I learned as a kid, watching the video for this awful awfulness, was that
people you love, or simply admire, always let you down.” – blackmore4 @ Rate Your Music
The public’s view:2.40 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 1982
Paul McCartney isn’t known for his protest songs.He’s just not the type of person who gets
angry enough to write or sing them effectively.Even when he focuses on animal rights and vegetarianism, causes that he
cares passionately about, he usually winds up with something like “Meat Free Monday”.That song leaves me with the
impression that I could take a bite out of a live calf right in front of him, and
he’d be fine with it as long as it’s on a different day of the week.
Let’s look at a few of his efforts at angry music.There’s “Big Boys Bickering”, in which he literally
cusses about politicians but doesn’t specify who he is mad at or why.There’s “Give Ireland Back to the Irish”,
which may be his most potent and direct political song but not one that he
followed up with any notable action.Many people expected him to join the I.R.A. or assassinate a member of
the Royal Family after that, and he never did.One time he made a song called “Angry” that had some angry lyrics, but
he sounded like he was having too much fun on it to really be upset.Let’s face it:Paul McCartney is not Rage Against the
Machine.He’s more like the Machine.
So, it’s no surprise that “Ebony and Ivory” is one of the
least angry songs about racism ever written.It’s so blasé about the issue that the apartheid government of South
Africa didn’t bother banning it until Stevie Wonder antagonized them over
something else a couple of years later.
With that in mind, I’m going to judge “Ebony and Ivory” on
its musical merits rather than all of the social progress that didn’t happen
after it was released.It’s a cute but
repetitive song with one of those unintentionally hilarious videos that were so
common in 1982.It deserved to hit #8 on
the Hot 100 and get some moderate airplay for a couple months.It did not deserve to spend 7 weeks at #1 and
be heard every 15 minutes on the radio in every godforsaken family station
wagon that was driving 13 hours to Myrtle Beach that summer.And yes, I speak from having lived this trauma.
But the legacy of “Ebony and Ivory” is more damaging than just
a ruined road trip.It set the stage for
the primary duet formula of the 1980s:1) Get two superstars together, often two people who have much less
chemistry with each other than what we heard from Paul and Stevie.2) Have them record material that is far inferior
to anything that either of them would have come up with on his own.3) Watch it soar up the charts before anyone
gets the chance to say, “You know, that really wasn’t such a great idea.”
I’ll cite a particularly egregious example of this type of pairing.In 1984, I began hearing excited talk on the
radio and on MTV that Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger had worked on a song
together.My brother and I tuned in as one
of the local radio stations premiered the highly awaited track.After listening to four and a half minutes of
a repetitive guitar riff and the most amateurish rhymes imaginable, both of us
spontaneously burst into laughter.“State
of Shock” was the least amount of effort anyone had put into a record all year,
and yet we knew it was going gold.
“Ebony and Ivory” is not as bad as many of these later
duets.But in a year that saw major
successes by the J. Geils Band, Joan Jett, John Cougar Mellencamp, Men at Work,
and the Go-Go’s, there was no need for a trite bit of adult contemporary to
become the biggest song of the summer.
One person’s view: “The music is
uninteresting at its best, but usually it’s actually bad or annoying.” –
ListyGuy @ Rate Your Music (reviewing the The
One That You Love LP)
The public’s view:2.12 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1981
Radio programming expert Guy Zapoleon theorizes that pop
music radio (and, by extension, the Hot 100 chart) is locked into a
never-ending cycle that repeats itself roughly once every ten years.There’s a boom period in which everyone and
their uncle is listening to top 40 radio, and everybody knows and tolerates the
songs that are topping the charts.After
a while, the music industry starts pushing the genre boundaries and stations are
forced to play more divisive records that many people dislike.Ratings begin to fall.Eventually, some pop stations splinter off
into other formats while the remaining ones lapse into a conservative,
defensive posture.This leads to a
period known as a “doldrums” in which top 40 radio is dominated by dull ballads
and older, overplayed records, while only a few newer tracks are able to break
onto the airwaves.Eventually there is
some kind of stimulus, perhaps a new source of competition, that forces radio
stations to snap out of their trance.
Although the Zapoleon Cycle had not yet been discovered, it
is clear in hindsight that the storm clouds were gathering in 1979.That was the year that one of my local pop
music stations, in a fit of comically bad timing, switched to an all-disco format.This station had been the American Top 40 affiliate, and now there
was no way for me to hear Casey Kasem.Two new broadcasters arrived soon afterwards, but they failed to fill the
gap.They played a freshly invented
format that was marketed under various names:“adult contemporary”, “soft rock”, “lite rock”, and “auditory torture”.My parents bought into the hype and I was
made to hear these new FM stations often.Meanwhile, the remaining top 40 outlet desperately tried to retain older
listeners by playing the same wimpy songs as these upstarts.By the time 1981 arrived, listening to the
radio was as much fun as being stuck behind someone going 50 m.p.h. in the
passing lane on the freeway.We were in
the depths of a doldrums.
You could make a strong case for Christopher Cross as the poster
boy for the doldrums, but he at least had some critical acclaim and
Grammy-winning gravitas.Lionel Richie
probably made more money off of the crisis than anyone else, but he hadn’t yet completely
squandered the R&B credibility that he had earned from the Commodores.In my opinion, no act symbolizes the 1980s
doldrums more than Air Supply.The
success of Air Supply depended entirely on the soft rock dominance of the radio
dial.The band’s record sales soared
along with that dynamic in 1980, and then collapsed when stations revitalized
their playlists in 1983 and 1984 after realizing that they were losing out to
MTV.
Although the group is forever linked to that dark era, I
don’t think that Air Supply is nearly as bad as the history books say.Their songs usually had a strong melody and a
decent hook which made them more palatable than the truly sleepy ballads that were
so pervasive in the early 1980s.(I’d
rather hear literally any Air Supply record than Kenny Rogers singing “Lady”.)Air Supply mixed things up by using two lead
singers, and unlike most bands with multiple lead singers the members weren’t constantly
threatening to punch each other in the face.Admittedly, they followed a formula:start with the word “love” and then string related stuff around it.If there is an Air Supply song about a topic
other than love, I’ve never heard it.But
they were masters of this formula, and they didn’t attempt a half-assed pivot
to some other genre when the adult contemporary gravy train dried up.I respect them.That being said, “The One That You Love” reached
#1 only through the capriciousness of the chart gods.
“The One That You Love” was composed by guitarist and co-lead
singer Graham Russell before outside writers commandeered most of the band’s
output.The song features some inelegant
lyrics about a couple that is on the verge of splitting up.“We have the right, you know,” is probably
the most political statement that Air Supply has ever made, but we never learn
which right they are referring to.Freedom of the press?Indictment
by grand jury?And when Russell comes in
on the bridge, he sings his one and only line in an absurdly high voice that
doesn’t fit with anything else.I think
he’s supposed to represent a supernatural presence who warns the other singer
that time has run out to convince his woman to stay.Maybe she invoked her right to a speedy trial
and is getting the hell out of the song.
As muddled as it is, it’s no surprise that Rate Your Music
users have given “The One That You Love” the lowest rating of any of Air
Supply’s major hits.Yet Russell also
wrote two of Air Supply’s very best songs:“Lost in Love” and “All Out of Love”.(Did I mention that these guys really liked singing about love?)Either of these would have represented the
band honorably in the pantheon of #1 singles, but both fell just short of that
chart position.I especially like “Lost
in Love”, though I cringe at some aspects of the production.Were those whooshing noises added
deliberately, or did someone keep flushing the toilet in the studio while the
band was working?
We’re now up to the point at which music videos play a role
in how we remember each #1 hit.At 1:22 of
“The One That You Love” there is a slow motion scene of singer Russell
Hitchcock watching a woman go down a playground slide.If you could sum up the 1980s doldrums with
one ridiculous visual, this would be it.Air Supply has complained that MTV never played their videos, but maybe
the network did them a favor on this one.
One person’s view: “This song is such a failure that it makes
‘Afternoon Delight’ sound like ‘Let’s Get It On.’” – dagwood525 @ Rate Your Music
The public’s view:2.30 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1978 to
1980
It’s little wonder that I latched on to the Billboard charts when I did, because 1978
and 1979 were a pretty good time for hit music.Unfortunately, that means I’m hard pressed to find any stinkers from those
two years to highlight on this blog.There
were a few slow-moving ballads that get mediocre retrospective reviews, but there’s
no consensus that any of them is a genuine outrage against humankind.And Rupert Holmes nearly achieved “bad #1”
status with “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”, but that song still has something
of a fan base.This is disappointing,
because it would have been more fun to pick apart Holmes’s bizarre infidelity tale
than to analyze the record I’m covering today.
“Do That to Me One More Time” took a long while to climb the
charts to #1, probably because radio programmers and the public needed time to
warm up to its overtly sexual theme.No
one should have been surprised by the lyrics, however, because the Captain
& Tennille had been hinting at this for years.They’d already reached the top 10 with “The
Way I Want to Touch You” and “You Never Done It Like That”.If the husband and wife team had continued
their recording career, Toni Tennille might have next written a song called
“I’m Gonna Jump Over That Piano and Straddle You”.Good thing that they decided to go in a
different direction in the 1980s, with Tennille hosting a talk show and singing
big band music while the Captain apparently did a whole lot of nothing.Perhaps he finally worked on getting that
boating license.
There are a lot of bad reviews of this song, and some of
them stress just how repulsive it is to contemplate the Captain & Tennille being
intimate with each other.Yet this was
an actual married couple – not an artificially assembled couple like Peaches
& Herb or Daryl Hall & John Oates – so there was really nothing disgusting
about it.In fact, many of the people of
their time seemed to think that Toni Tennille and Daryl Dragon looked really
cute together.The comments sections of their
YouTube videos are populated by middle-aged fans who say they had a crush on
one or the other when they were kids in the 1970s.This trend must have missed my city.My peers admired the beauty of Linda Ronstadt
and Donna Summer, but no one ever put up posters of Toni Tennille except maybe at
dental offices that were advertising teeth whitening procedures.
Some of the criticism is probably ageist.The Captain & Tennille were already in
their mid 30s by the time they became famous, and nobody wants to hear about
people over 30 having sex.We all know
it happens occasionally, but it doesn’t need to be scrutinized.I can think of only one other singer from that
era who recorded a lot of sexual songs despite starting her career late:Roberta Flack.She was often singing about making love or
celebrating her love, and then at age 54 she had a hit duet about setting the
night to music.I never thought that Flack
was too old for this material, but as a kid I was always grossed out when Casey
Kasem reminded me that she had once been a schoolteacher.I really didn’t want to know what went on in
teachers’ bedrooms, especially because I attended Catholic schools and many of
my teachers were 80-year-old nuns.Why
couldn’t Roberta Flack record a less libidinous song like “The Safety Dance” or
“Rock Me Amadeus” so that I could enjoy her music for a change?
The production and arrangement of “Do That to Me One More
Time” are legitimate targets for critique.The duo enlisted the respected saxophonist Tom Scott for the track, and
a sultry saxophone would have been perfect for a record like this.Instead, Scott played an electronic horn
known as a Lyricon.From what I can
gather, he owned the first Lyricon ever sold and it was a very expensive
instrument.I can understand why he
would want to get his money’s worth out of it, but this wasn’t the best
venue.The Lyricon comes into the song
like a toddler wandering into the bedroom at exactly the wrong moment.It reminds me of how the kazoo noises help
defuse any sexuality on Ringo Starr’s “You’re Sixteen”.That was a positive for Ringo’s record, but on
“Do That to Me One More Time” the Lyricon kills whatever mood might have been
there.
Most people were happy that “Do That to Me One More Time”
did not have a long shelf life on top 40 radio in the 1980s.It did, however, shape the Captain &
Tennille’s legacy.When the notorious
Parents Music Resource Center formed in 1985, it named the duo as one of the
industry’s bad influences on children – even though no child had voluntarily
listened to their music in years.Sadly,
the Captain & Tennille didn’t use this opportunity to line up an opening
slot for W.A.S.P.They could have called
it the “Do That to Me Like a Beast One More Time” tour.
One person’s view: “In short, vast
overplay completely eliminated anything positive the song had to offer.” – DonKarnage @ Rate Your Music
The public’s view:1.76 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1977 and
many years thereafter
The summer of 1978 was my great awakening.This was when I discovered that the songs I
heard on the airwaves weren’t just an alternating series of joy and pain,
delivered in three-and-a-half-minute bursts.The relative popularity of these songs was intended to be measured,
analyzed, and debated endlessly, just as sports enthusiasts did with the
performance of their favorite athletes.The
fountain of all music data was a magazine called Billboard and its feature known as the Hot 100.And a man named Casey Kasem – an infallible hero
on par with Abraham Lincoln – fought his way through the radio static each week
to play the 40 records that were atop the Hot 100 chart.
In those pre-Wikipedia days, information wasn’t always straightforward
to obtain.If a sports fan wanted to
know how many RBIs Joe Morgan produced last season, he might have to buy dozens
of packs of random baseball cards.He’d get
six Biff Pocorobas before his first Joe Morgan.Music fans didn’t have it much better, because Billboard was prohibitively expensive and it didn’t even come with
bubble gum.I listened to Casey’s American Top 40 program when I could,
but it was impossible to make a consistent commitment to it. I was eight years old, you know, so I had
other responsibilities.
One day, a record store manager noticed my intense
fascination with the copy of the Hot 100 that was displayed above the bin of 45
RPM singles.Probably assuming that I
had autism, she offered me a stack of old Billboard
issues that were set to be thrown out.I
absorbed many important facts from these magazines, including the legend of Debby
Boone’s “You Light Up My Life”.That
song had recently occupied the #1 spot on the Hot 100 for an astounding ten
weeks, becoming the most successful record in history.I knew that its achievement would likely never
be equaled in my lifetime, because even the great Andy Gibb could only manage
seven weeks on top with “Shadow Dancing”.
As the holidays approached, Casey Kasem announced that he was
going to count down the top 100 songs of 1978!The spectacle was set to start on New Year’s Eve at 9 AM and continue
for the next eight hours.This was one
of the most exciting things that had happened in my life up to that point, and I
had no intention of skipping it.Unfortunately,
New Year’s Eve fell on a Sunday.Shortly
after the show began I heard the three most dreaded words in the English
language:“Time for church!”I protested mightily, but was forced to put
on my most uncomfortable clothes and miss the next hour and a half of
Casey.My brother was deemed too
disruptive to attend church, so he got to stay home with my mom.They assured me that they would write down the
songs in my absence.
Church dragged even more slowly than usual that week.How could this man blather for so long about things
that happened two thousand years ago while such a major cultural event was
taking place?When I got home, I looked
at the list of songs I had missed.“Flash
Light” by Parliament?“Get Off” by
Foxy?“Native New Yorker” by
Odyssey?What the hell?I accused my brother of pranking me, but my mother
insisted that these were real songs that Casey had played.The records must have sold lots of copies, as
evidenced by their placement on the year-end countdown, but they had never
aired on any of the local radio stations.It would be many years before I got to hear any of them for the first
time.
“You Light Up My Life” ranked at #3 on the 1978 countdown as
a hold-over from 1977, but it already seemed like an artifact of the
Pleistocene Epoch.I had stopped hearing
it on the radio months ago.Player’s
“Baby Come Back”, the song at #7, was barely any newer yet it was still glued
to the turntable at every station.Boy,
was I sick of “Baby Come Back”.The only
good thing about going to church was that they never once used “Baby Come Back”
as the communion hymn.
In the space of a year, Debby Boone’s record-setting hit had
gone from ubiquity to pariah.And it
wasn’t just the gatekeepers at radio – the people who had arbitrarily deprived us
of Foxy and Parliament – who were to blame.Nobody wanted to admit having bought one of those two million copies of
“You Light Up My Life”, and it has never had a comeback.Today its Rate Your Music score is hardly any
better than “Disco Duck” and Donny Osmond’s “Go Away Little Girl”, and is well
below that of “Torn Between Two Lovers”.What’s going on here?I mean, it
really isn’t that bad of a song.
I think “You Light Up My Life” tried to be too many things
to too many people.It could be a love
song.It could be a religious song.It could be an ode to the Sun.And Debby Boone’s voice was adequate, but not
particularly memorable.It didn’t help
that she was ordered to exactly imitate another woman’s vocals after that other
singer had a disagreement with the composer and was dropped from the
project.(Apparently, the guy who wrote
“You Light Up My Life” wasn’t the most pleasant individual to work with.)As a jack of all trades and master of none,
ten weeks at #1 was enough to burn the song out so badly that few people ever
wanted to hear it again.
I’d rank “You Light Up My Life” in the middle of the pack of
1970s ballads – or even slightly ahead.It’s not a great pack to be in, but at least Debby Boone had her one big
moment in the spotlight.And, unlike the
guy who sang “Baby Come Back”, she didn’t emit an eardrum-exploding
high-pitched yelp near the end of her song.That dude from Player must have gotten his underwear painfully twisted.I know how it is, buddy.I’ve had to wear church pants too.
One person’s view: “Cassidy’s hollow,
breathy tone makes a classic Wall of Sound single sound like utter garbage.” –
dagwood525 @ Rate Your Music
The public’s view:1.90 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 1977
The Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron” originated from one of the legendary recording sessions produced by Phil Spector and featuring acclaimed studio
musicians like Hal Blaine.Sonny and Cher
were even in attendance for it.The song
is considered an all-time girl group classic, but it only reached #3 on the Hot
100.When 18-year-old Shaun Cassidy boldly
recorded a cover version, his remake outperformed the original and went all the
way to #1.Let’s look at why music
critics have never been pleased by this turn of events.I don’t think we’ll need the Hardy Boys to
solve this mystery.
If there were a factory to make teen idols – and I’m not so
sure there isn’t – it would base all of the specifications on Shaun
Cassidy.(Today, though, the factory
would probably make a Korean version.)I
didn’t watch Cassidy’s TV show and only occasionally heard his music on the
radio, so my main exposure to him was via magazine covers.Whenever I went to the drug store to read the
latest Song Hits without buying it,
he would be grinning at me from the Tiger
Beat on the next rack.He was
presented as the ideal of male attractiveness, but I never saw any guys in my
town trying to emulate him.Those who
did were probably in the hospital after being beaten up for wearing an outfit
that was half overalls and half bell bottoms, as Cassidy did on one of the “Da
Doo Ron Ron” picture sleeves.
Although Cassidy was a pinup boy, that doesn’t necessarily
mean that his music sucked.In fact,
there are some areas of “Da Doo Ron Ron” in which he arguably improved on the
Crystals’ version.I know we’re not
supposed to criticize Phil Spector for anything other than his handling of
firearms, but his Wall of Sound could stand to be dialed back a bit.An Armoire of Sound or a Bookcase of Sound might
have been better than all of the instruments that Spector crammed into “Da Doo
Ron Ron”.Cassidy’s remake has the
benefit of 15 years of advances in studio equipment and production techniques,
and there’s nothing wrong with preferring his well-polished record to Spector’s
innovative one.
Then again, the cleaner-sounding backing track on Shaun
Cassidy’s version comes with a heavy price:Shaun Cassidy.In “Da Doo Ron
Ron”, he sounds like he’s trying to get a dog excited about going for a car
ride.“Somebody told me that her name
was Jill.Yes they did, boy!Now who wants to get a distemper shot?”It’s the type of singing that might work in a
commercial for Knott’s Berry Farm, but it’s a significant downgrade from the
Crystals.
If this was the only Shaun Cassidy record, I might dismiss
him as just another actor who should have stuck with acting.But his other two top 10 hits – “That’s Rock
‘n’ Roll” and “Hey Deanie” – show that he knows what to do with an Eric Carmen
power pop tune.I can’t say that his
versions of these songs are objectively better than the ones Carmen recorded,
but Cassidy is definitely in his wheelhouse.Not so for his remake of “Do You Believe In Magic”, in which he uses his
super fun amusement park jingle voice once again.Someone should have told him to stop doing
that.
We’ve explored the mystery of why a remake of a beloved song
is one of the most poorly regarded #1 hits of the 1970s.Now let’s see if the Hardy Boys can figure
out what happened to Nancy Drew when ABC kicked her off of her own TV series so
that Shaun Cassidy could have more screen time.I hope the trail doesn’t lead to Phil Spector’s house.
The public’s view:2.47 / 5.00, in the bottom 25% of #1 hits
from 1977
Here’s an amazing statistic:We’re up to the 20th entry on this blog and yet “Torn Between Two
Lovers” is the only one so far to feature a female on lead vocals.That’s because I haven’t found any pre-1977 #1
songs by women that are considered awful by overwhelming consensus.Even the Singing Nun has earned enough
grudging respect from critics and listeners to stave off a sarcastic write-up
here.While we can venture a few guesses
as to the reason for the gender imbalance, it probably boils down to sexism in
the music industry.It’s far easier for
a terrible song by a man to hit #1 than a terrible song by a woman.This shittiness gap (as the experts call it) persists
into the 21st century, thanks in part to Maroon 5, but it is less noticeable than
it once was.
“Torn Between Two Lovers” was written by two male
songwriters, but it is sung from a woman’s vantage point.She confesses to her husband that she is
having an adulterous relationship.In
songs of this nature, the cheater almost always grovels for forgiveness and
tells their partner how much they regret their own actions.One of the best and most obvious examples of
this is Usher’s “Confessions (Part 1 to N)”.More rarely, there will be a song by a Shaggy who unconvincingly denies
all of the evidence of infidelity.“Torn
Between Two Lovers” takes an entirely different tactic:telling the partner to simply accept the
cheating.
Lyrics like this can work if they are accompanied by some
defiant justification of the philandering.For example, the woman might point out that her husband has been screwing
around too, and that she’s only doing what is fair.Or maybe the cheater is the type of person who
needs lots of partners to stay happy, and the husband should have known that
when he married her.“Torn Between Two
Lovers” is too wimpy to succeed in this way.It’s mostly just a subtle but emasculating put-down of the spouse.The singer says that her husband has been an
adequate one, but that the other guy is great too and she is not going to give
him up.She hints that the other man is
the only one who can satisfy her in the bedroom.She then tells her husband that she hopes
that this unexpected revelation doesn’t cause him to leave her.I guess she still needs him around to do the
dishes and mow the lawn.
Let’s contrast Mary MacGregor’s rendition of “Torn Between
Two Lovers” with Amy Winehouse’s similarly themed “You Know I’m No Good”.Winehouse sounds like a bad-ass, and her
attitude makes the scenario more acceptable.She probably would cheat on any guy, and her boyfriend shouldn’t feel
bad because there’s nothing that he could have done any differently.But MacGregor has a particularly sweet voice
that exudes kindness with every note.Hearing
these words from her is like Mister Rogers telling you that he’s moving just so
he doesn’t have to be your neighbor anymore.Oh, but he still wants to come back every few weeks to borrow some of
your tools.
To her credit, MacGregor knew that the song was
disgusting.She resented that it became
the central focus of her career, and that many people wrongly assumed the lyrics
were autobiographical.But if it wasn’t
for her well above average singing talent, I’m skeptical that this would have
been a #1 hit.Were there really that
many women who could relate to this storyline and bought the record?I doubt that any men bought it.
On the other hand, men seem to be driving the views for the
performance video I embedded above.I know
this because YouTube says that the most replayed parts of the clip are in its
second half, which is when somebody apparently turned up the air conditioning
way too high in the room where MacGregor was singing.I’m more intrigued by the large neon lighted
letters that spell out her name.How
much money went into this prop that probably got used only a few times before she
faded away as a one-hit wonder?Were the
letters then repurposed for use by another entertainer?It’s too bad that “Mary MacGregor” can’t be
rearranged to spell “Yvonne Elliman” or “Walter Egan”.
You’ll be glad to know that I’ll be spotlighting another
female vocalist soon.Here’s a
hint:the letters in her name can be rearranged to spell “Bob
boned ye”.