The Billboard chart rankings, at least in rock's first golden age, were well-known for their accuracy. Which means somebody must have loved these songs... but time has not been kind to these smash hits, all of which were the most popular songs in the US for at least one week of glory. (Click on "compare prices" to hear a clip of the song in question and, maybe, buy it anyway. Got a suggestion for another horrible Number One hit of the Fifties, Sixties, or Seventies? Feel free to e-mail me!)
1. Pat Boone, "Love Letters In The Sand"
(four weeks, June 8 - July 6, 1957)Yes, you can hate Pat for subverting rock and roll from the very beginning, or by using the segregation of radio to steal the thunder (and money) of the original black versions of songs like "Tutti Frutti," or for railing against rock ever since. But let's face it: this 1931 vintage ballad is surpassingly lame all by itself, and Boone's vocals don't help -- compared to this, "Moody River" is a blues song. A triumph of reactionary thinking, and mediocrity.
2. Brian Hyland, "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini"
(one week, August 13, 1960)Novelty songs are easy to bash -- there's always someone who hates them. But this (Number) one's pretty awful, even if Hyland himself wasn't really to blame. (He went on to do a great, distinctive cover of the Impressions' "Gypsy Woman.") The bikinied girl wearing something too small to be seen in public is actually a toddler, or at least that's how it was written. Ew. Billy Wilder's "One, Two, Three" features this song actually being used as a torture device!
3. Steve Lawrence, "Go Away Little Girl"
(two weeks, January 12 - 19, 1963This one was actually penned by famed songwriting duo Gerry Goffin and Carole King, but that doesn't make this syrupy, loping ballad any less goofy -- like any Brill Building vets, they turned out lots of duds simply due to the assembly-line nature of their job. We could blame Steve Lawrence, except that Donny Osmond came back with the very same song and a similar arrangement and owned the top spot all over again for three weeks in Septmebr 1971. Bleh.
4. Herman's Hermits, "I'm Henry the VIII, I Am"
(one week, August 7, 1965)The Hermits were only as good as their material, and this WWI music-hall singalong seemed to be yet another attempt by their handlers to make them the most British of the British Invasion acts (ironic, this, since the Brits had invaded by sounding American). Worse, the second-verse-same-as-the-first nature of the cover's lyrics removed the song's reason for being. Also used as a torture device, this time in the film Ghost. And -- get this -- never released in England.
5. Barry McGuire, "Eve Of Destruction"
(one week, September 25, 1965)Hard to believe this was written by P.F. Sloan, who also gave the world "Secret Agent Man" and the Turtles' "You Baby." But it's true: he's responsible for rhyming "Red China" with "Selma, Alabama" and declaring "My blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin'." It doesn't help that former New Christy Minstrel singer McGuire hits the "social outrage" button with a sledgehammer, either. The most dated and terrifying of the era's many, many Dylan knockoffs.
6. Bobby Goldsboro, "Honey"
(five weeks, April 13 - May 11, 1968)Even for a death song, this one's really soapy... the narrator's young wife cries a lot, likes puppies and trees, and then gets carried off by the angels one day, for some unknown reason. (Although, since Bobby finds her crying in the middle of the day and she passes the following spring, I'm going to guess cancer.) Features the wonderful rhyme scheme "She wrecked the car and she was sad / And so afraid that I'd be mad / But what the heck." Indeed.
7. Zager & Evans, "In The Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)"
(five weeks, July 12 - August 9, 1969)Scaaaaary. Five hundred years from now (and then some), we'll all take pills to think and have no use for our arms and pick our children from a long glass tube. Okay, maybe that last part is accurate. But what you're hearing here is a society shocked and frightened by its own technology -- this was Number One when man landed on the moon. So why can't this tuneless, retrofutursitic wonder come up with any resolution except "man has cried a billion tears"?
8. Minnie Riperton, "Lovin' You"
(one week, April 5, 1975)Riperton was a fine vocalist, and this is, at heart, a pleasant little song. But it suffers from a very early-Seventies belief that love should be uncomfortably touchy-feely, like your creepy uncle. ("And every time that we... oooooh!") This in itself might not have made "Lovin' You" so embarrassing, nor would Minnie's jaws-of-life, I-hear-the-voice-of-spring vocal crescendos have hurt quite so bad. But God! The birds! The constant twittering of birds! Why the birds?!
9. Rick Dees & his Cast of Idiots, "Disco Duck (pt.1)"
(one week, October 16, 1976)Dees was, at one point, the most popular DJ in America (behind Dick Clark, if you count him, and definitely Casey Kasem). But it's not thanks to this horrid excuse for a novelty, which finds Dees at a disco somehow, for some reason, morphing into Donald Duck. It's just an excuse to do a voice, anyway, which is also why a still-living Elvis (impersonation) shows up near the end. But there's not much of a song here, just some morning drive-time hellishness.
10. Rupert Holmes, "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)"
(three weeks, December 22 - 29, 1979, January 12, 1980)Rupert was the pen behind the Buoys' ode to cannabilism "Timothy," so he knows how to get your attention. But this oily story song sounds like a hairy lounge lizard rubbing your arm at the singles bar. Rupert decides to leave his girl, places an ad in the paper, shows up for a one-night stand and finds... his girl, who was also looking for some strange. And no one's angry about it. Yet. (Wait till she goes all Lorena Bobbitt on him later.)
