Four Legitimate Top 40 Hits (That Had No Business Being Top 40 Hits)

One of the many interesting things about the Internet:

How easy it is to discover modern and trendy ways to call total strangers terrible names. For example:

Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a particularly passive-aggressive little sobriquet: you do not want to be called a “gatekeeper.”

Sure, I get the idea that you shouldn’t self-appoint and exclude people from a club or some other organization, just because of your own arbitrary position. It’s that, “Who died and made you boss?” kind of a thing.

And I know from experience: that when it comes to artistic endeavors, opinions are like spleens: everybody has one.

Sorry for the watered-down edit, Kayla. I’m trying to keep this article family-friendly.

Now, I don’t want anyone to think that I’m some sort of a musical snob. At my peril, I like almost everything. Or at least, part of everything. Or a bit of everything. Or, one tiny granule amidst the surrounding dreck in everything.

And there you go. A perfect example of how I try to see the glass as half full, as opposed to broken and shattered into perilous shards, strewn all over the café floor. So: with no malice or prejudicial judgment, other than my own befuddlement:

Let’s have a look, and a listen to this puzzling-pourii of recordings that have a lot of (or sometimes only a smidge of) redeeming value – and remain a mystery as to how they ever managed to crack the Top-40.

And because we all enjoy a little formality, we will ask someone to deliver an Opening Invocation. Maybe somebody’s sister… Oh, wait – what luck! An actual Sister!

The Artist:
The Singing Nun

The Recording:

With apologies to Frankie Valli: In late December, back in ’63, Jeannine Deckers was the one having a very special time. In the most pious of ways, of course. Better known as The Singing Nun, her acoustic ode to a cute little French boy named Dominique somehow got serious airplay. And rose up the charts, spending four weeks at Number One.

And… I’m fooling no one. That’s no nun, son. That’s Debbie Reynolds. She played The Singing Nun in the movie of the same name.

Why It Had No Business Being In The Top 40:

But Sukiyaki was a sprightly and melodious pop song. Dominique, on the other hand, was decidedly not. No orchestra, no percussion, no band. Just your everyday gaggle of nuns singing as nuns do: Very quietly.

Sister Janet Mead aside, it’s not the kind of thing you see every day. Thousands of rockstars, balladeers, singer-songwriters, and hardscrabble musicians of every stripe have tried, and have failed. But perhaps via divine intervention, Sister Jeannine had a hit.

A Nun At Number One. Praise be. Wrap your wimple around that.

I’ll say this: it certainly is a catchy tune. It’s almost like an up-tempo lullaby, isn’t it? And now that you’ve had a nice little nap: Let’s go as far as humanly possible in the other direction…

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The Artist:
Bloodrock

The Recording:

You can just picture the band meeting up before the big gig, inside a smoke filled VW microbus:

• “Hey, which one of these names are we going with for our new rock band, man?”
• “I say it should be something introspective. Something that’s evocative of our music, man.”
• “GREAT idea, man! Like, you know, ‘The Beach Boys!’ “
• “Yeah, man, ’cause, like, they hang at the beach! And they sing about the beach, man!”
• “But let’s be clever about it. Nothing too obvious. We wouldn’t want to get stereotyped, man…”

{and, scene.}

Why It Had No Business Being In The Top 40:

I’m not really sure… maybe let’s peruse the lyrics together for a clue:

Laying here looking at the ceiling
Someone lays a sheet across my chest
Something warm is flowing down my fingers
Pain is flowing all through my back

Hmm. Arthritis? And, a… runny nose? Poor guy. A bad day, for sure. Hope it doesn’t get worse.

I try to move my arms and there’s no feeling
And when I look I see there’s nothing there
The face beside me stopped, it’s totally bleeding
The girl I knew has such a distant stare

I can anticipate your question. And the answer is: “Yes. It absolutely gets worse from there.”

This is not your mother’s Tell Laura I Love Her. It’s not a romantic, idyllic, inspirational teen death song. When it started to get some airplay in Bloodrock’s native Texas, it slowly caught on in other parts of the country. For young radio listeners, the record was a lot like the accident that it described: gruesome, yes… but you just had to look.

It was shocking to hear D.O.A. on the radio. But for one person, it was therapeutic. Guitarist Lee Pickens, who shared the songwriting credits with the other plasmarockers, explained:

Social scientists tell us that people, notably adolescents, often subconsciously seek out situations in order to confront their fears. It’s why little kids “like” to be scared, and teenagers do risky things. It steels them for the inevitable trials, tribulations, and frightening things that happen to us all.

And for that reason, as well as the Lee Pickens rationalization of D.O.A., I’ll stop making fun of this record and give the songwriter the benefit of the gory doubt.

You may have noticed that this is the very spot where I regale you all with a crackling lead-in line for the next entry. Believe me, I tried. But all I’ve got is: “What the holy hell…????

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The Artist:
Think

The Recording:

Forget what I said a few ‘graphs ago about finding something to like about every song. This might be the worst thing I have ever heard.

In all of it’s ham-fisted, terrible stereo-panning glory, Once You Understand starts out with an acapella vocal, intoning, “Things get a little easier, once you understand.” Just to make the premise crystal clear to the extremely unfortunate listener, this lyric will be repeated about 237 times over the next four minutes and two seconds.

I’ll be expecting you to get a haircut by Friday!
Forget it, Dad. That won’t change anything!
Forget nothing! You’ll do as I say – as long as you’re living in my house!

In the spirit of equal opportunity, Darling Daughter and Mom are going at it, too:

Are you sure no one kept you company tonight while you were babysitting?
What’s that supposed to mean?
Just curious…
Admit it, Mom, you don’t trust me!

I feel bad for the neighbors. And for myself, for listening this far. This festival of cringe descends into implied bigotry by Mom, and more jabs from Dad – until the background music suddenly stops stone-cold, and Pops gets his payback, of sorts.

Why It Had No Business Being In The Top 40:

Because it’s pandering and it’s contrived and it’s awful in every possible way. The end.

More? OK.

How in the world could something like this be greenlit? My theory: Back in 1971, society was all about pitting the youngsters against the oldsters. It was that era’s version of, “OK boomer.“ They actually had a Madison Avenue-esque branded name for it: “The Generation Gap.”

Student protests, smoking pot, and the like were what we would do to antagonize The Man. All the while, remembering that The Man was usually the person in control of The Car Keys.

And then, someone figured out how to monetize the angst. Once You Understand, in all of its hideousness, sold a pretty fair amount of records, I’m guessing to moody teens. It made it up to Number 23 – which means that someone got paid.

If you can stand listening to the rejects from the Hair chorus auditions, as well as the insistence to continually raise the key on nearly every “verse,” you’ll finally reach the end. And then, my wish is that you, the tortured listener, will never suffer the nightmarish earworms that have haunted me since 1971, every time I… wait for it… think of this record.

Since I want to get this article done by my self-imposed deadline, I am finishing this at 2 o’clock in the morning. And it’s just occurred to me that I forgot to eat dinner. I’m starving. I’m gonna go get a snack, folks. Go on ahead without me. I’ll just queue up the next – wait… WHAT?

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The Artist:
The Buoys

The Recording:

The story behind this song is so over-the-top that I’m not even sure I believe it. But then again, it comes straight from the songwriter’s mouth, so let’s play along.

Let’s say you have been writing songs for about a year, and not much is happening. You might be willing to do just about anything to make it. You come across a band from Pennsylvania who call themselves The Buoys, and somehow convince Scepter Records to play ball. They agree to release one – and only one- single.

In the author’s words:

“So I write this lyric: ‘Timothy, Timothy, where on Earth did you go?’ It’s about three boys who are trapped in a mine with water but no food for maybe a week. When they’re pulled free, they don’t remember what happened, but they know they’re not hungry. One of them is missing, and that’s Timothy. We record this on the weekend and I don’t think about it again.”

“It did better than we intended it to do. It was supposed to just start the controversy, instead it actually was a hit.”

“They played the song originally because it had a nice rhythm, kind of like a Creedence Clearwater Revival feel. It was catchy enough, but then they’d hear what the song was about and say, ‘We can’t be playing this, it’s about cannibalism!’ and they’d pull the song off the air.”

“Well, all you have to do is tell a teenage kid that he shouldn’t be listening to something because it’s disgusting and vile and loathsome, and he’ll demand it. Stations were playing it, kids were clamoring for it, it would move up the charts, then the station would pull it, the kids would clamor more and some other station would go on it to satisfy that demand. It just kept going up the charts.”

Why It Had No Business Being In The Top 40:

Oh, it’s hard to say. Perhaps maybe, oh, I don’t know… The cannibalism?

However, (except for poor Timothy,) all’s well that ends well. As some of you may already know, that struggling songwriter turned out to be a huge success with novels, Tony-winning Broadway plays, Emmy winning TV shows, and his own Number One hit.

What pairs well with a nice rack of Timothy?

That’s it for now. More to come…

…If and when the hypnotherapy sessions can successfully eradicate the Think Record from my cerebral cortex…

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