subconscious minds, deeper and deeper, until they finally realize that the root of all their emotional problems is the fact that, during early childhood, they were exposed to the hit song “The Name Game” by Shirley Ellis (“Shirley Shirley bo Birley, bo nana fana fo Firley, fee fie mo Mirley, Shirley!”).
Anyway, for whatever sick, masochistic reason, people have been bugging me for years to write more about the Bad Song Survey. Okay, people—you asked for it. In this book, you’ll find the survey results presented in far greater detail than in the original columns, along with many more bad songs and comments from the over ten thousand people who responded to the survey.
Before we get to the survey results, however, I want to stress a couple of points. The main one is that this survey does NOT attempt to cover all songs ever written. It basically covers pop and rock songs that were popular in the United States from roughly 1960 through 1990 because this is the era that shaped what is left of the brains of the vast majority of the people who responded.
There were some votes for older songs, especially the schmaltz-o-rama songs of the 1950s, such as “Oh, My Papa,” “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window,” and “That’s Amore” (“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore!”). There were a couple of votes for “anything by Wagner.” And there was one response from an opera fan who admitted that many impressive-sounding operatic lyrics become pretty stupid when translated into English:
BARITONE : Say you love me!
Say you love me!
SOPRANO : I love you.
BARITONE : Oh! I’m so happy!
There were quite a few Bad Song Survey votes for rap music in general, but virtually none for any specific rap song, perhaps because it is very difficult, even with sensitive laboratory instruments, to distinguish one rap song from another. 4 And obviously, since the survey was conducted in 1992, there are no votes for songs that have become popular since then. I think this is okay; to qualify as really bad, I think a song has to be sincerely hated by a lot of people for a minimum of five years.
Also, I arbitrarily ruled out certain songs, even if they got a lot of votes. For example, many people voted for two legendary songs by The Rivingtons, “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow” (“Papa-oom-mow-mow, papa-oom-mow-mow”) and “The Bird’s the Word” (“The bird bird bird, bird is the word”). These songs are bad, yes, but The Rivingtons were obviously trying to be bad, and they succeeded spectacularly, which means these songs are good . For a song to qualify as truly bad, the artist had to be trying, on at least some level, to be good.
For this reason I ruled out the novelty songs that are clearly intended as jokes, such as “The Purple People Eater,” “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini,” “Short Shorts,” “Alley-Oop,” “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor (on the Bedpost Overnight),” “Transfusion,” “Monster Mash,” “Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer,” and “The Ballad of the Green Berets.” 5
Using similar reasoning, I ruled out the whole enormous category of country music, which has a long-standing tradition of songs with deliberately comical titles (“Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goal Posts of Life”; “I’ve Got Tears in My Ears from Lyin’ on My Back While I Cry in My Bed over You”; “The Only Ring You Gave Me Was the One around the Tub”; “Take the Dice Away from the Baby, Momma, Before He Craps All over the Floor”; “Get Off the Stove Grandma, You’re Too Old to Ride the Range”; etc.).
So I’m not saying this book is a definitive list of all the bad songs ever: It’s just a bunch of arbitrarily selected ones from a survey of my readers, bless their twisted little minds. But believe me, there are plenty of bad songs in here. In researching this book, I spent
Anyway, for whatever sick, masochistic reason, people have been bugging me for years to write more about the Bad Song Survey. Okay, people—you asked for it. In this book, you’ll find the survey results presented in far greater detail than in the original columns, along with many more bad songs and comments from the over ten thousand people who responded to the survey.
Before we get to the survey results, however, I want to stress a couple of points. The main one is that this survey does NOT attempt to cover all songs ever written. It basically covers pop and rock songs that were popular in the United States from roughly 1960 through 1990 because this is the era that shaped what is left of the brains of the vast majority of the people who responded.
There were some votes for older songs, especially the schmaltz-o-rama songs of the 1950s, such as “Oh, My Papa,” “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window,” and “That’s Amore” (“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore!”). There were a couple of votes for “anything by Wagner.” And there was one response from an opera fan who admitted that many impressive-sounding operatic lyrics become pretty stupid when translated into English:
BARITONE : Say you love me!
Say you love me!
SOPRANO : I love you.
BARITONE : Oh! I’m so happy!
There were quite a few Bad Song Survey votes for rap music in general, but virtually none for any specific rap song, perhaps because it is very difficult, even with sensitive laboratory instruments, to distinguish one rap song from another. 4 And obviously, since the survey was conducted in 1992, there are no votes for songs that have become popular since then. I think this is okay; to qualify as really bad, I think a song has to be sincerely hated by a lot of people for a minimum of five years.
Also, I arbitrarily ruled out certain songs, even if they got a lot of votes. For example, many people voted for two legendary songs by The Rivingtons, “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow” (“Papa-oom-mow-mow, papa-oom-mow-mow”) and “The Bird’s the Word” (“The bird bird bird, bird is the word”). These songs are bad, yes, but The Rivingtons were obviously trying to be bad, and they succeeded spectacularly, which means these songs are good . For a song to qualify as truly bad, the artist had to be trying, on at least some level, to be good.
For this reason I ruled out the novelty songs that are clearly intended as jokes, such as “The Purple People Eater,” “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini,” “Short Shorts,” “Alley-Oop,” “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor (on the Bedpost Overnight),” “Transfusion,” “Monster Mash,” “Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer,” and “The Ballad of the Green Berets.” 5
Using similar reasoning, I ruled out the whole enormous category of country music, which has a long-standing tradition of songs with deliberately comical titles (“Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goal Posts of Life”; “I’ve Got Tears in My Ears from Lyin’ on My Back While I Cry in My Bed over You”; “The Only Ring You Gave Me Was the One around the Tub”; “Take the Dice Away from the Baby, Momma, Before He Craps All over the Floor”; “Get Off the Stove Grandma, You’re Too Old to Ride the Range”; etc.).
So I’m not saying this book is a definitive list of all the bad songs ever: It’s just a bunch of arbitrarily selected ones from a survey of my readers, bless their twisted little minds. But believe me, there are plenty of bad songs in here. In researching this book, I spent
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