No, age has not softened them – they really were that bad. These pitiless earworms will have you humming their ridiculous tunes long after you've closed the browser. That was the point – they were a bit catchy.
Novelty songs have been around since Nobby the Trubador waffled out a new jaunty version of Summer Is Icumen In, but Tin Pan Alley, made them into an art form – there's certainly something about catchy songs, but then there's kitschy songs and just plain bad ones.
The 70s may have been the heyday of the kitschy singles, but they popped up decades before – try a bit of Rosemary Clooney's 1954 hit Mambo Italiano. It may not be a bad song, but it's right up there with Class A kitsch.
Unfortunately, that decade was full of terrible catchy kitsch – try not to like this extraordinary effort:
By the 60s more money could to be made if the right combination of kitsch and beat style caught the public's ear. Snoopy vs The Red Baron is perhaps one of the worst.
Thus, the popular novelty song was born and went on to diversify into other music genre areas. I suppose this all begs the question, what is kitschy? Is a kitschy song necessarily a bad one? After all, we all like our ears tickled. How about this one: catchy tune, tacky kitsch or bad moneyspinner?
The 70s took all this to a new, excruciating level. Try this one first:
I remember particularly hating this piece of nonsense:
The novelty record branched out into other areas – albums and even whole operas based on a theme, for example Rick Wakeman's concept albums, each with increasing titles; The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The 70s also witnessed the birth of the rock musical and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar – nuff said.
Kitschy songs were properly the domain of international (read holiday) music scene. How many blithering idiots clapped along to this childish drivel in family-freindly clubs on the Costa del Sol only the devil and his little bastard demons know. It did so well the Wurzels then regurgitated it as I Am A Cider Drinker (I leave you to decide which cheesy offering is worse).
And whilst we're in Spain, we can blame the entire Iberian peninsula for this particularly nasty disco Eurohit:
Catchy songs crossed the Atlantic quicker than a concord pilot's cocaine snort. Here's a particularly ghastly one you thought you'd forgotten:
And this cheerful blackboard scratching went in the other direction – or did it? It was certainly released here by a junior from a particularly successful and fruitful Mormon family, but does that make the whole American nation culpable? I think so.
Kitsch songs often feature a lot of old people – possibly because the bought record was endowed with magic powers that enabled the transference of syrupy sentiment between the absent family and the abandoned biddy slowly dying in the old people's home. How many lonely Christmases were assumed 'comforted' by the gift-wrapping of There's No One Quite Like Grandma?
Or forgotten Fathers Days for smelly old Grandad?
It wasn't all the domain of the old, oh no, but I would rather tear off parts of my anatomy with a rusty garden trowel than listen to this projectile vomitous more than once:
Of course, dreaful kitschy songs are not wholly the responsibility of the English-speaking music industry. Try this one from by Leon Lai that ran and ran, like a dose of the trots, back in our early years in Hong Kong:
The French have been particularly guilty of providing good cause for the continued employment of the guillotine by sending out enough kitsch to fill a tourine of salmonella-infused snails several times over. In 1977 two millenia of Gallic culture ended with this:
And in a cruel twist, as if to emphasise just how bad things could get, they later added a fifteen-year old to irrevocably turn the UK population into a nation of slathering pedophiles.
And there, overwhelmed by nausea, I must stop. Each year novelty, kitsch and just plain awful songs are released onto a defenceless population and each year they get worse. If you want to add a particularly awful song (there are thousands) then add it in the comment box.
I leave one last ultra-kitschy song, primarily because it is half-redeemed by Lofty's sweet tenor croonyness, and partly-because I bought and still possess a copy signed after a show they gave at the White Rock Pavillion, Hastings in the summer of 1975. Windsor Davies called the 8-year old me, "Lovely Boy!" and I was as proud as punch for the rest of the holiday – and forever more.
Dear God...have mercy...looks like you went to the Mordor of Kitsch, Richard!! :-O Brings back a lot of horrid memories...and stirring up some others too...maybe I'll pay you back one day? ;-)
Posted by: Clive Everill | Saturday, November 16, 2013 at 10:16 AM