I've been pipped to the post! We already have Grammys, MTV, NME, and Brit Awards to celebrate the best of pop and rock - the past and future legends I usually discuss in this column. With this in mind, I have decided to honor the following recipients with my own award - The Shitey - to celebrate those legendary moments when pop plummeted to its saddest depths.
Pretentious at the best of times, Sting was at his narcissistic best with this autobiographical account of his life as…well…An Englishman in New York. I'm sorry, but any song which contains the lyric “You take coffee, I take tea, my dear” should be laughed out of town. Grow up, Sting. Nobody's impressed (my dear).
You are not alone. Wish I was, if company means this drivelling drone. All very nasty.
Anyone remember this one? You should; it was number one in England, the U.S., and practically everywhere else, played continually through 1987 - and for several years beyond. Some British band (please forgive us!) with a screeching girl singer made up T'pau, China in Your Hand being a synthesized ballad about your dreams being like china in your hand. Nobody could ever figure out if they were talking about Wedgewood or the People's Republic. Do you know?
For reasons only known to God, this rubbish was number one in the English charts for about thirty-seven weeks or something. The ill-fated Linda played tambourine, and the video showed Paul sitting by some bleak-looking loch saying he'd never leave his mull of Kintyre. Horrible. Truly.
If you don't know this song or this band, just count yourself lucky and read on. For those of you acquainted with the mindless, endless psychedelic dirge, I am sure you will agree that any song that discussed “seven vestal virgins” has no business in show business. Let's pretend it never happened.
A so-called “classic,” this weird, rambling, insane song has twelve movements - none of them any good. Initially released by actor Richard Harris in 1968, disco diva Donna Summer brought out a funky version in the '70s - both takes on MacArthur's Park as bad as the other. Nobody has ever been able to work out what this song is actually about. How could they? It has a lyric about somebody leaving a cake out in the rain (???). All very baffling.
Our hatred of Madonna has now peaked. Her phoney British accent, her love of fox hunting (it “helps center her”) and her “I've-had-voice-training” new singing style have put her in our bad books for life. However, '80s Maddie was irresistible. Most of the time. There are, however, exceptions, and True Blue is one of them. Whining her way through a doo-wop number about being faithful to her true love, if anyone besides Madonna had recorded this fluffy trite it would have been laughed out of the charts.
Oh my GOD! This song is so horrendous that it has actually been blamed for a slight raise in the international suicide rate in 1986, the year that this sloshy anthem was released. Chris de Burgh (who had a worryingly short Richard III fringe and very dry skin) had a massive international hit with his “tribute to the lady he loved” (who then divorced him on infidelity charges about a year later). Interestingly, Lady in Red was Prince Andrew and Fergie's song. And look what happened to them.
How can one “not worry” and “be happy” when one is forced to listen to stuff like this? Not only does this cheerful song (with whistling bit) make everyone very unhappy, it is more than a little worrying; how did this facile rubbish make it to number one?!
Not the most subtle of race-relation anthems, Ebony and Ivory compared Afro-American culture with those of Anglo-Saxon and Mediterranean lands by use of metaphor; the black and white keys of a…piano. Oh, please. Sickly sweet and cloyingly P.C., Paul McCartney tells us that “we all know that people are the same wherever we go.” This is not true. Irish people are not the same. If all this isn't bad enough, Ebony and Ivory has the most irritating fade in the history of pop music (“Ebony - Ivory - Livin' in perfect har-mon-y” ad infinitum ad nauseam!). If any of you like this song, please don't tell us in Pubs. We won't be your friend anymore.
If any of you were in Paris the year before last, you will be well aware of Belle. It is the love song from the duff French musical, Notre Dame de Paris, and is sung by three blokes whose names I do not care to know. This song was played everywhere. Constantly. Worst of all, its omnipresent nature made it sort of catchy; whether we liked it or not (and most of us didn't), we'd find ourselves humming Belle (oh, for shame). The lyrics were (obviously) in French, and therefore made no sense to me. But the jist of it went something like this: “BELLE - blah-blah-French-French-blah-blah ELLE.” The easy rhyming of ‘belle' to 'elle' was just the start of it; they also rhymed it to 'laquelle.’ All this dramatic waffling climaxed with the three blokes falling to their knees and calling to “Lucifer.” Ey?
“Near…Far…Wherever you are, I believe that my heart will go on.” You all know it, so no pretending. We're in this together! How many times have we been forced to hear the theme song to Titanic (as shrieked by Celine Dion). A million? A killion??? The interesting thing about this song is that - although we have all heard it at least a quadrillion-billion times - nobody knows the lyrics to the verse. I think they go something like, “Blah-blah I LOST YOU, blah-blah I FOUND YOU, blah-blah MY HEART WILL GO ON.” Dunno. You tell me.
