Eifel 65: Blue (Ba Da Bee)
OK, so there’s this race of aliens, see, and they’re blue. Not only that, but everything in their world is blue. So it’s all blue. Trees, wildlife, the works. All blue. And those little alien dudes, they aren’t just blue, they’re so blue. Even on the insides. Even their thoughts. It’s important that you know how blue they are.
Dead or Alive: You Spin Me Round
This guy’s a lot like SCTV President Guy Caballero, who only used the wheelchair for respect; buddy here has an eyepatch, but not always, because his vision is apparently 20/20 in both peepers. You’re probably too mesmerized by the hair to notice when he doffs the pirate gear. Anyway, this song has been used for decades by my brother Mark and me as the perfect “earworm cleanser”; when you have an awful song in your head that you can’t stop hearing, while it plays obstinately, endlessly, over and over, echoing up and down the corridors of your tortured mind, just imagine You Spin Me Round instead, and that other song will be given the boot. Poof, like that. It’s like Earworm-B-Gone.
Not a bad thing to know as you peruse a list like this. It might just save you from something you find here. Of course, then you’ll have Dead or Alive in your head instead…
…like a record baby, round round right round…
The Fixx: Saved by Zero
The Great Artist struggles with his Art. Literally. At one point a hand emerges from a paint can like it means to throttle him, but lamentably, it either fails or changes its mind. He finally sells one of his masterworks, but this is portrayed as a tragedy or something.
Reminds me of my days before I went to law school, when I earned my ducats as an interior painter. I was at a party when a girl asked me what I did, and I told her “I’m a painter”, to which she asked “ever sell anything?”. “Every damned day”, I told her. “I can’t stop selling the shit”.
Quiet Riot: Cum On Feel The Noize
Girls, rock your boys!! You know what we mean by “rock your boys”, right? You understand, right girls?
This one was out at around the same time that Twisted Sister was big with the quite similar We’re Not Gonna Take It, and I could never decide which was more dreadful. This one, I think in retrospect, because unlike Dee Snider’s best efforts, Cum On feel the Noize doesn’t seem to be intended as a joke, even though I’ve never seen anything from “real” pop music that looked and sounded more like something from Spinal Tap.
These screeching overgrown post-post-post-adolescents sure were repetitive, weren’t they?
Greg Kihn Band: Lucky
I issue this challenge: take all the time you need, and scour the world over, leaving no stone unturned, until you can come back one day with a popular song more limp, dull, and bereft of energy and inspiration than this. If our independent judges assess you’ve succeeded, I will sell my Toronto home and gift you the proceeds. Note, however, that you will not succeed; you will die trying out there, all alone and unlamented, and I too will be in the ground, having waited in vain until my final day on Earth for your return.
This one makes Kihn’s prior snooze-fest, Jeopardy – itself a potent alternative to Lorazepam – sound like Safe European Home. What special effects, though, eh? That King Kong on saxo-ma-phone bit must have cost a mint.
Duran Duran: Wild Boys
Another coin toss. Almost anything by this crew of pasty-white English Miami Vice wannabes would fill the bill, and in fact, all their songs are the same, you can mash them all together without adjusting either key or tempo, here, I’ll show you:
New moon on Monday
And she dances in the sand
her name is Rio
and she’s hungry like the woooolllffff…
I picked Wild Boys because it’s so shrill, and obviously strained poor Whatsisname’s vocal cords to the shredding point. What was his name again? Simon something?
Tony Orlando and Dawn: Tie a Yellow Ribbon
I murdered Frank,
OK it’s true
And the thing is that
I damn near murdered you
Cuz Sweets you were unfaithful
and it drove me round the bend!
Nobody could fault me
as I planned your violent end
I schemed
your vi-o-lent end!!
Still tie a yellow ribbon
‘round the old oak tree
I’ll forget poor Frank
If you’ll still bone me
I’d better see a ribbon
round that old oak tree,
or I’ll get off the bus,
forget about us
and you don’t wanna see
Exactly what I’ll nail
to the old,
the old oak tree
Crash test Dummies: Keep a Lid on Things
Who put the shit in the shit house? Oh, you did baby. You did.
Mike and the Mechanics: The Living Years
Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody
I know, people revere this. They take it seriously, as Art. Sorry to be contrary, but this is my choice, no matter how many further lists I make, for Absolute Worst Most Overblown Piece of Crap Ever. Bis-millah, it sucks! When they get to that ultimate dramatic high point before the Big Guitar Flourish, the bit immortalized in Wayne’s World, I can’t help but bellow:
Beezelbub
has a duckie in his tub
for meeeeeee
for meeeeeeeeeeeeee
for meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
The chickens do it justice, though.
the needlefish 