Yes, the 1970s are a rich and fecund morass of pop effluvia . . . fecund like a compost heap. But recent efforts to identify the “worst ever” rock song from that decade are kind of hampered. The problem is the “rock” adjective; kind of limiting, since it pretty much demands some kind of Rocking Out passage or a Killer Riff movement or some such signature rock and/or roll moment of released tension roaring out of a Marshall stack with a mess of distortion and whatever other effects can bolster its assaultive power. A lot of the very worst pop songs aren’t really “rock” songs, nor are they rock and roll songs; they’re more like tuneless power ballads with saturation-level-high-fructose-corn-syrup-sweetening and extra bombast.
Some candidates:
1. Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Meat Loaf.
Yes, it is tempting to just list all the tracks on Bat Out Of Hell and leave it at that. But while accurate, that’s way too easy. This one song distills everything rotten about that record in one gooey, distasteful wad. Here are all the ingredients of enduring crapulence: too long, too many molto pretensioso “movements,” that stupid baseball play-by-play/seduction montage sequence two-thirds of the way through and the oh-so-clever “prayin’ for the end of time” twist at the finale. It’s like just one crappy rock song wasn’t enough; Jim Steinman had to write four and then mash them all together into one painfully swollen lump from which there was — and remains — no escape.
2. It’s Still Rock ’n’ Roll To Me. Billy Joel
Sure, everything Billy Joel ever recorded was overly calculated, labored, dishonest, faked schmaltz. But this thing is like proto coot-rock, or something. Some guy born too late and without the compositional chops to be Irving Berlin, who didn’t understand the rock idiom sufficiently to write three-chord stompers was so unsettled by “New Wave” or whatever the hell you want to call that late ’70s/early ’80s pop mutation that he wrote a cranky, dyspeptic sneer-fest about his inability to understand it. And it wasn’t even funny.
3. Lonely Boy. Andrew Gold.
Not a bad hook, I’ll grant you. But the lyrics suck what little enjoyment might result from the cheap but satisfying riffing out of the enterprise. Boy is born (on a summer’s day, 1951). His parents vow to take care of him, and do. Two years later, kid sister. Boy sulks for 16 years, until the winter of 1969 when he leaves home, screeching vituperation at his — no doubt — utterly baffled parents. Sis gets married, has child. Where exactly is the tragedy here or the trauma that would’ve made Mr. Gold such a tragically lonely boy?
4. I’ve Never Been To Me. Charlene.
The title of the song makes it look like an postally abbreviated statement: I’ve never been to Maine. The song itself makes a lot less sense than that. “I’ve been undressed by kings / And I’ve seen some things / That a woman ain’t supposed to see.” We’re never told what it is that women undressed by kings aren’t supposed to see, and I’m just as glad.
5. The Night Chicago Died. Paper Lace.
But the thing that never made any sense to me about this was the first line: “Daddy was a cop / On the east side of Chicago.” East side of Chicago? Isn’t that Lake Michigan? That ridiculous mistake almost salvages the song, because it suggests a cop from a 1930s Warner Brothers B movie dog-paddling and looking for gangsters. “Alright, O’Malley, enough of your shenanigans. Even if Capone’s running bootleg liquor across the lake, you’ll not catch him by swimming. Now dry off and go find me some racketeers.”
