Top 5 Terrible Songs I Know By Heart Because My Siblings Tortured Me With Their Terrible Musical Taste

A few days ago, a loyal reader named Sally emailed me and asked me to post a list containing "something funny" preferably about my family as her life was in the midst of a deep sucking period and she really wanted to laugh a bit. Ever the dutiful content provider, I am now happy to present  Top 5 Terrible Songs I Know By Heart Because My Siblings Tortured Me With Their Terrible Musical Taste:

1. Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I have a deep love for story songs -- Please Come to Boston, The Collected Works of Harry Chapin, The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia, etc -- but this song is beyond even my wide appreciation for story songs. My brother Lee used to play a lot of Gordon Lightfoot, the result being that I happen to love Sundown, as I think many people might, but I just can't imagine what possessed my brother to keep putting the needle onto this abortion:

Lightfoot is also a great example of what singers looked like before music videos.

2. Helen Reddy, You and Me Against The World. Good christ, Karen played this song like she was earning royalties from it. The odd thing is that it's actually one of two songs Karen played constantly that contained a lyric about going to the circus. There was a lot of Helen Reddy played in the Goldberg home back in the day, which might make one think that I'd be enlightened into the ways of women and not, you know, as I am. Alas. I'm not alone, though, as Kermit the Frog seems to be having some issues in the video below.

3. Melissa Manchester, Don't Cry Out Loud. Karen's second favorite song about circuses and, essentially, the same song as Helen Reddy's song above. I recall sitting on Karen's bed while she played this song over and over again, to the point that I began to wonder if maybe Karen was trying to get me to run off to the circus, like maybe it was all a subliminal message. Frighteningly, Manchester also appeared on the Muppet Show to sing this fucking depressing dirge to bad parenting. What the fuck was up with the dancing puppet people? And the gymnastics equiptment? Cry out loud, girl, cry out loud!

4. Patrick Hernandez, Born to be Alive. This song is my infinity. Lee played it every day, over and over again, and even at 7 I thought the lyric was nonsensical. "We were born to be alive." Yeah, no shit. I would sit outside in the hallway with my dog Sam listening to Lee play this song behind his closed bedroom door and I'd wonder: What is he doing in there? The answer is that he was probably losing his fucking mind. I mean, if you listened to this song, over and over again for what seems like an entire year, you'd lose your mind, too. Eventually he'd leave to go to the Pachinko Palace in downtown Walnut Creek, but the song would still be reverberating through the house, because, you see, it's not often one realizes they were born to be alive.

5. Various Artists, A Shit Load Of TV Theme Songs. Lee used to play TV theme songs constantly. Where your average teenage boy in the 1970s might have been listening to, say, The Ramones or AC/DC or KISS or ELO (though Lee listened to a shit load of ELO, too) or, hell, some Skynryd, Lee was bumping things like, say, Suicide Is Painless, the theme to MASH.

Comments

[Karen dinino]

Complete the trinity: my third always-played circus song was Both Sides Now.

[linda woods]

And, if you listen carefully you will see that all songs pretty much have the same beat as one of the songs I listened to over and over and over: Ten Little Indians
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9W2_1eZXms&feature=channel_page
Since rediscovering Ten Little Indians recently, Karen and I have noticed all other songs sound like it.

[Danny Barer]

My unscientific estimate is that 96% of circus-metaphor pop songs focus on clowns. Three percent focus on high-wire acts. 0.8% focus on trapezes. The rest are about sideshow freaks.

[kim]

I love 4 out of 5 on the list...don't know why I've never heard "Born to Be Alive" - ?

It's my dad's fault I knew so many TV theme songs (he always bought the 45 if there was one available). I oftened wondered as a 10 year old how anyone knew if suicide was painless or not: I mean, who do you ask?

I still love Helen Reddy. But I don't write letters to Parade so I'm not a complete idiot.