Since it is Halloween, I thought I would do something themed, but everything seems like a predictable cliché. Bobby "Boris" Pickett's The Monster Mash. Michael Jackson's Thriller? I mean come on. Been there, seen that.
That's why today's Music Break Monday is something really scary: The Archies' Sugar Sugar. What is scary about it is that it made it to Number One on the Billboard Top 100 for 1969. It's scary that such great songs as The Rolling Stones Honky Tonk Woman was only #3, and Creedence's Green River and Bad Moon Rising came in at only #35 and #36.
This was 1969. Nixon's first year as president. The War in Vietnam claimed 11,616 American lives in 1969. The word about the terrible My Lai Massacre got published in 1969, and the prime perpetrator, Lt. William Calley, got not no more than a slap on the wrist. October saw the massive and nationwide Vietnam Moratorium war protests.
What's scary is that the most vapid, the most insipid song in the history of music was able to come in at Number One on any list except maybe one identifying the most annoyingly cloying bubble gum music of the last hundred years. And it came from a fuckin' CARTOON SHOW on television, and was performed by working-for-scale studio musicians who no doubt hide cringing under their beds when Casey Kasem plays their retrospective on American Top 40.
So, without further ado, here it is, the Number One song of 1969:
Monday, October 31, 2011
Monday Music Break
Posted by Farnsworth68 at 3:07 AM
Labels: Monday Music Break, The Archis, Viet Nam body count + atrocities
Posts
8 Comments:
Jebus Farn, you just had to go and mention that crap song. It took years for my brain to do a complete erasure, and here you go, booting old neural paths back to life. Ack. I should retaliate and send you some Justin Bieber spam songs.
The Archies should remind those who grew up then that much of our music really, really, sucked.
Thanks, guys.
I TOLD you it was scary.
-- The F Man
When I went back to Vietnam in 2008 for my triumphal 40-year-anniversary tour, I thought that I would kind of "get in character" by listening on my iPod to the music from 1968. Yeah, in retrospect, a lot of "our music" sucked Big Time. I mean really, Honey? Simon Says? Come on.
I ended up listening to much better "oldies", like Carmen and Beethoven's Ninth. True they were not in the "contemporary timeline", but they are much more enjoyable pieces of music.
Times change, people change.
--The F Man
Honey...easily the worst song ever recorded. Bar none.
dn -- on further reflection, I tend to agree with you... yeccch.
--The F Man
I agree Farnsworth, every time the country is in the toilet, we get a wave of corporate-manufactured crap in musical camouflage. I'm pissed I was born too late for punk or experimental rock's heydays...
-WageslaveZ-
Dude, it's never too late to get with the Now... Even though that "now" is now "then"...
Uh, where was I...?
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