Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs (Backlist eBook Program) Read Free Page B

(perpetrators of “Simon Says”), were part of a genre of music known as “bubble gum,” which gets its name from the fact that many people would jam wads of used bubble gum in their ears to avoid hearing it.
    “Yummy Yummy Yummy” is an excellent example of the bubble-gum form. It’s a love song, a sensitive, lyrical expression of romantic yearning, a plaintive, passionate plea, worded thusly:
    Yummy yummy yummy I got love in my tummy
    And I feel like loving you
    Talk about your poetry! What woman could resist?
    One interesting fact about “Yummy Yummy Yummy” is that Ohio Express did not do the worst version of it. A much worse version—so bad that it is wonderful—was performed by actress Julie London. Her version is part of another distinct genre of bad music, Songs Performed By Actors Who Unfortunately Do Not Have Any Friends Courageous Enough To Tell Them That, Although They Might Be Good At Acting, When It Comes To Singing, They Suck.
    If you want to hear some great examples of this genre, you should get hold of a CD put out by Rhino Records called Golden Throats , which includes William Shatner performing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Mister Tambourine Man”; Leonard Nimoy performing “Proud Mary”; Mae West performing (I swear I am not making any of this up) “Twist and Shout”; Eddie Albert performing “Blowin’ in the Wind”; Sebastian Cabot performing “It Ain’t Me Babe” and “Like a Rolling Stone”; and Jack “Dragnet” Webb 3 performing a version of “Try a Little Ten-derness” that is guaranteed to void even the strongest bladder.
    But getting back to the Bad Song Survey: The song voted the third worst—speaking of love in a tummy—was “(You’re) Having My Baby,” by Paul Anka, who is widely suspect of also being Neil Sedaka. Many people, in voting “(You’re) Having My Baby,” cited these touching and very tasteful lyrics:
    You could have swept it from your life
    But you wouldn’t do it
    We should not be surprised that Paul Anka was able to come up with these words. Paul has been giving the world memorable lyrics since way back in 1957, when, in his hit “Diana,” he sang:
    I’m so young and you’re so old
    This my darling I’ve been told
    In that era Paul also gave us “Puppy Love” (later re-recorded, needless to say, by Donny Osmond) and “You Are My Destiny,” which contains this extremely perceptive observation:
    You are my destiny
    You are what you are to me
    But if you want my opinion, Paul Anka’s ultimate achievement, the one that puts him head and shoulders above all the other songwriters, with the possible exception of Mac Davis (see below), is “My Way.” This song, which has become the international anthem of drunken untalented businessmen in karaoke bars, has some of the most classic lines ever written, including:
    Regrets, I’ve had a few
    But then again, too few to mention
    And of course:
    I did what I had to do
    And saw it through without exemption
    And let us not leave out one of the most inspirational images ever put to music:
    Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew,
    When I bit off more than I could chew.
    But through it all, when there was doubt,
    I ate it up, and spit it out
    Speaking of eating, the song that finished fourth in the survey, just out of medal contention behind “(You’re) Having My Baby,” was “Timothy,” performed by the Buoys. It’s a real tribute to this song that it got so many votes because it was nowhere near as a big a hit as the three songs that finished ahead of it. But “Timothy” compensates for its relative lack of exposure by being extremely memorable, in the sense that the singer of the song appears to be saying that he...well, he ate the subject of the song. Really. What happened, according to the lyrics, is that there was a mining disaster:
    Trapped in a mine that had caved in
    And everyone knows
    The only ones left were Joe and me and Tim
    Naturally, in a situation like that,