seventies survival, first cuts

Posted on June 15th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.

[I am listening to the top 1000 singles of the 1970s (as determined by Billboard) on shuffle play on my mp3 player, and gradually weeding out the songs I don't want to hear anymore.]

The first batch of songs to fall:

1. "Star Wars/Cantina Band" by Meco
I'd rather listen to this than the John Williams theme, but I'd rather not listen to either one.

2. "You Take My Breath Away" by Rex Smith
A Heartthrob Hit. No reason to listen to this generic piece of wimpery again.

3. "I Found That Girl" by the Jackson 5
I think it's a measure of the Jackson 5's huge popularity that this b-side got radio play, because there's nothing distinctive about it (and I love their best songs).

4. "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett
Even by the degraded standards of popular novelty songs, this song is too awful to waste words on.

5. "He Don't Love You (Like I Love You)" by Tony Orlando & Dawn
Fails even to rise to the catchy level of their best schlock.

6. "Dark Lady" by Cher
I'm surprised this doesn't get more consideration in lists of the worst pop songs of all time. It has ludicrous fake gypsy music, but is about a fortune teller in New Orleans. It has a cliched key change. It has an incredibly dumb melodramatic story, delivered with a poor simulacrum of earnestness by Cher. It has a revenge gundown. It has astonishingly bad lyrics. Here is a sampling, all grammar, bathos, triteness, and pointless wordspinning per the original:

On the backseat were scratches from/
The marks of men her fortune she had won

[...]

I followed her to some darkened room/
She took my money, she said "I'll be with you soon"

[...]

Dark Lady played back magic till the clock struck on the twelve/
She told me more about me than I knew myself

[...]

Then she turned up a two-eyed jack/
My eyes saw red but the card still stayed black

[...]

Then I remembered her strange perfume/
And how I smelled it was in my own room!

[...]

The next thing I knew they were dead on the floor/
Dark Lady would never turn a card up anymore

That's some of the worst writing in the history of pop music. It's not just bad, it's semi-literate. There is some amusement value to the song -- the way Cher sings "strange" and "perfume" and "caught her", for instance -- but not enough to make me want to sit through it again.

7 comments.

Robert

Comment on June 15th, 2007.

Interesting, would love to hear what you consider talented music..Dark Lady, Still one of my favorites, remember the first time I heard it, and the day I purchased the Album....

RJ Johnson

Comment on June 15th, 2007.

I think any song released in the early to mid-70s was required by law to have a key change in the bridge. Disco, I think, killed that as many songs had not bridge (who says disco wasn't good for something?).

I think there were scads of bad lyrics in the 70s. "The Night Chicago Died" by Paper Lace featured this memorable couplet:

And the sound of the battle rang
Through the streets of the old east side

The "old east side" would have to be old enough to predate glaciation.

Geography seemed to be a fascination in the decade, too. Vicki Lawrence turned her fame as Carol Burnett's side kick into one-hit fame with "The Nights the Lights Went Out In Georgia"; John Denver scored big with "Rocky Mountain High"; Elton John gave us "Philadelphia Freedom" and Barry Manilow kept busy with both New York City ("Avenue C", "New York City Rhythm") and the Atlantic Seaboard ("Weekend in New England").

As for Cher, let's be fair: while "Dark Lady" was a piece of tripe, "Half-Breed" may have been the lowest of the low, parading her Indian geneology around in a Bob Mackie headress and gown.

ethan

Comment on June 18th, 2007.

You don't hate "Dark Lady" until you've heard it come on the jukebox in a gay bar. Especially in a gay bar NAMED AFTER IT.

Otherwise, I really like early Cher.

Robert Legault

Comment on June 18th, 2007.

Um, excuse me, but "Monster Mash" is from the early 1960s. And it's not as good as its obscure follow-up "Monster Swim." I thought this was all 70s songs?

Scraps

Comment on June 19th, 2007.

It was revived in the 1970s.

Jacob Davies

Comment on June 21st, 2007.

Scraps, you crack me up. I wonder if you can also give a rough count of the number of times you had to hear a song before you killed it (although that might be into advanced accounting procedures).

Scraps

Comment on June 21st, 2007.

It's funny that you ask! I was in fact going to keep track of how many times a song played before I cut it, but after keeping track for a little while I decided it was too much of a pain in the ass.

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