The Worst Song Of All Time

A few years ago, I did a list on Facebook of “The 200 Worst Songs of All Time”. Now, let me preface the rest of this by saying I’m no music expert, like, say, my uncle and cousins and some of my friends who have actual musical talent. But, I did spend a couple of decades in radio playing and listening to all kinds of music and I’ve continued to listen to all kinds of music ever since. And, as a result, though I’m no expert, I do know dreck when I hear it.

Dreck, by the by, doesn’t have an address. Like good quality music, you can find it anywhere, in any genre, and any when, during any time period. All types of music have their share, and any time period you care to examine has its share as well. But, it says here that no decade had as much as dreck as the 70s, which hosted a perfect storm of refuse that often turned the charts into a stinking morass of moldering, festering, unlistenable waste. In fact, there was so much bad music in the 70s that even the splatter platter era of the late 50s and early 60s can’t measure up…because the 70s could call the splatter platters with a big teen tragedy hit of its own (“Run, Joey, Run” by David Geddes) and raise it…disco.

Today, of course, disco has a reputation somewhat south of Charles Manson’s, which is unfair, because, again, like in all genres, there were worthy disco songs. (And, I have zero idea how there hasn’t been a documentary about Andrea True to this point…but, I digress.) Despite the quality sometimes evident in songs like True’s “More, More, More”, the near-complete dominance disco established, albeit briefly, led to lots of horrid stuff being tossed onto the air and charts and to a vicious backlash that nearly obliterated the form and made poison out of many of the acts associated with it, including the prime offenders, the brothers Gibb (who, by 1987, couldn’t get a song played on U.S. radio despite the fact that it was a number one hit all over the world). But, disco was far from the only offender and farther from the worst, because, this was the 70s, and horrid stuff was everywhere.

The 70s had Bread, which dropped 13 singles onto the charts. Thirteen. The 70s had Lobo and stuff like “I’d Love You To Want Me” and “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” (made all the worse by the fact that my best friend always sang “me and you and doggy doo” whenever he heard it). The 70s had bad Olivia Newton-John (“Please Mr. Please”), worse Olivia Newton-John (“Have You Never Been Mellow”), and seriously? Olivia Newton-John (“Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina”????), but not worst Olivia Newton-John (“Physical”). The 70s had Blue Magic (cranking the sap meter to 11 with “Side Show”). The 70s had a “Beautiful Sunday” (thanks, Daniel Boone) and an “S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y NIGHT!” The 70s had Helen Freakin’ Reddy hitting number one three times (“I Am Woman”, “Delta Dawn”, and “Angie Baby”) while also assaulting our ears with other top ten hits like “Leave Me Alone” (gladly), “Ain’t No Way To Treat A Lady” and “You and Me Against The World” (no, just you). The 70s had Anne Murray in the top ten four times (“Snowbird”, “Danny’s Song”, “You Won’t See Me” {if only I didn’t hear you} and “You Needed Me”, which hit number one), and, blessedly, nowhere near the top ten with a cover of “Day Tripper”.

The 70s had whining. You couldn’t turn on the radio in the decade without hearing whining by guys like Kenny Nolan (“I Like Dreamin’”), Stephen Bishop (“On and On”), Gilbert O’Sullivan (“Alone Again”), Bobby Goldsboro (“Honey”), and Randy Van Warmer (“Just When I Needed You Most”, with a high-pitched, drawn out “yooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuu” that only dogs can hear.). And, speaking of dogs, in the 70s, we didn’t just have splatter platters involving teenagers. We had a dog splatter platter (“Shannon”) and even a horse splatter platter (“Wildfire”). Cats somehow made it out of the decade scathed only by their association with that raging nutjob Ted Nugent (“Cat Scratch Fever”).

The 70s had bad songs that asked questions like “Do You Wanna Make Love?” by Peter McCann, “How Do You Do?” by Mouth and McNeal, “Which Way You Going, Billy?” by the Poppy Family, and “Julie, Do Ya Love Me?” by Bobby Sherman, copies of which were featured as cutouts on the back of cereal boxes. And, speaking of Sherman, the 70s had bad songs by teen idols. Leif Garrett was made for dancin’ and his records were made for Frisbeeing against walls. Shaun Cassidy “Da Doo Ron Ron”ed his way onto the charts, and, of course, David Cassidy led the Partridge Family there with “classics” like “I Think I Love You”. We had all and sundry iterations of Osmonds with Donny, Marie, and various groupings of family members polluting the charts. And, talking of families, we had The DeFranco Family and “Heartbeat, It’s A Lovebeat”. (Just that title makes me want to take a sledgehammer to a radio.)

The 70s had the Captain and Tennille. Hitting the top ten. Seven times! (“The Way I Want To Touch You”, “Lonely Night (Angel Face)”, “Shop Around” “Muskrat Love” {which actually contains the lyrics “Muskrat, muskrat candlelight”}, “You Never Done It Like That”, “Love Will Keep Us Together”, and “Do That To Me One More Time”, with the latter pair having hit number one.) The 70s had Tony Orlando and Dawn in the top ten five times including three number one hits (“Candida”, “Knock Three Times”, and “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree”.)

The 70s had The Starland Vocal Band (“Afternoon Delight”), who remained the worst winners ever of the Grammy for “Best New Artist” until Milli Vanilli. The 70s had Hot (“Angel In Your Arms”), Toby Beau (“My Angel Baby”), Wayne Newton???!!! (“Daddy, Don’t You Walk So Fast”) Paper Lace (“The Night Chicago Died”), Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods (who ripped off Paper Lace’s “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” and rode it to a huge hit I can still remember a neighbor girl listening to with tears in her eyes, almost certainly for the wrong reason), Robert John (“Sad Eyes”), Mary MacGregor (“Torn Between Two Lovers”), Paul Nicholas (“Heaven on the Seventh Floor”), Clint Holmes (“Playground In My Mind”), Alan O’Day (“Undercover Angel”), Debby Boone (“You Light Up My Life”), Brazilian pinhead Morris Albert (“Feelings”), Vicki Lawrence (“The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia”), David Soul trying to sing (“Don’t Give Up On Us”), and Terry Jacks turning a great Jacques Brel song into a steaming heap of elephant dung (“Seasons In The Sun”).

Those were the 70s my friends, horrid songs everywhere you turned. And, that makes what I’m about to say all the more amazing. The worst song recorded in that decade is not only worse than all the tunes I’ve listed above, it’s exponentially worse. The song in question is “I’ve Never Been To Me” by Charlene. And, the first time I heard it, which was in the 80s (yes, I said it was a 70s song, and it was, stick with me), I sat slack-jawed thinking, “This could not possibly be worse.” But. I was wrong.

See, what I was hearing in the 80s was an edited version of the song. That version had been released as a single in 1977 and stiffed badly as did two other singles from Charlene’s debut album with Motown, “Songs of Love” (aka “Tunes From The Ninth Layer Of Hell”). The album itself didn’t sell, either, and, as a result, the label released Charlene and she left the music business, eventually moving to the UK, marrying an Englishman, and going to work in a candy store. (No, I am not making this up.)

The story would certainly have ended there had it not been for the villain of the piece, Tampa DJ Scott Shannon, who, depressed over a recent break up with his wife, began playing “I’ve Never Been To Me” on his show, presumably to make others suffer like he was suffering. Listeners loved it. Shannon was a former Motown employee and he contacted the company president, Jay Lasker, and told him about the hit potential of the song. Lasker then proceeded to track down Charlene, and, instead of attempting to have her extradited back to the U.S. to face felony charges of crimes against music, called her personally and re-signed her to the label with plans to re-release the single. In the mean time, stations had begun playing the original single release, the edited version. But, things got worse, and quickly.

Motown decided that the version of the song to be re-released would not be the Motown single, which was contained on “Tunes From The Ninth Lay…” er, “Songs of Love”, but Charlene’s original version, from her debut album for Prodigal Records called “Charlene”. Said version, which had been recorded and released in 1976, differed from the Motown single in one significant way…it contained an absolutely cringe-worthy spoken monologue that might be the worst thing ever recorded in the history of mankind. Toss this into a song that already does things like rhyme “exploring” and “whoring” and you’ve got something that calls for a worldwide effort at collecting all recorded evidence for immediate and total destruction in a medical waste incinerator somewhere.

Now, fast forward to 2017. There I was, with the XM Radio on rolling across the Sewickley Bridge when I heard the familiar strains of “I’ve Never Been To Me”. I reached for the dial and stopped. After all, I hadn’t heard the song in over 30 years. Perhaps it was not as bad as I remembered. So. I listened. And realized that my memory had actually candy-coated that sucker, because it was even worse than I’d previously thought. Again, exponentially worse. So bad, in fact, that if you placed the second-worst song in the history of mankind at any point on the surface of the planet and then transported the Keck Observatory, complete with mountain, to that spot and used one of the Keck telescopes you still could not see “I’ve Never Been To Me” from there even though its vileness burns with the heat of a hundred thousand “Seasons In The Sun”s!

As for Charlene, she’s been married twice, has three children, and is now living in California again. She’s nearing 70, and, I imagine, is, like most of us, in a public place from time to time. And, when people walk past a figure they most likely see as grandmotherly, I’m sure they pay little notice…since they could not possibly imagine the heinous crimes against humanity’s auditory senses that innocent looking woman committed in an earlier life.