By Bobby Peacock a.k.a. TenPoundHammer
With its cheesy "dog" metaphors beaten into
oblivion (including "throw me a bone" twice) and its off-key shouted
vocals, this one is just painful to listen to. Orville Reddenbacher has made product
less corny than this. (Fun fact: One of the writers of this song has no other
entries on BMI.)
"Black Velvet" by Robin Lee
I actually liked this song until I heard the original by
Alannah Myles. Then I realized that Robin Lee's version is just a cheap karaoke
knockoff with none of Myles' smoldering passion. Why didn't Atlantic Records
just release Myles' version to country radio instead of this version that's
watered down to the point of losing all its flavor?
"Breathe" by Faith Hill
Overwrought, overplayed pop sludge without any flavor,
country or pop. I was never the biggest Faith Hill fan, but this is the point
where she pretty much lost me for good. Literally the only good thing to come
of this was my favorite Cledus T. Judd parody, the absolutely hilarious
"Breath."
"Butterfly Kisses" by Bob Carlisle
Another bombastic, strident CCM entry with an overly
saccharine set of father-daughter lyrics. What makes this even worse is that,
while Carlisle's version is utterly unlistenable, the Raybon brothers somehow
managed to salvage it by the strength of Marty Raybon's voice alone. Can you
believe this is the same guy who wrote "Why'd You Come in Here Lookin'
Like That?"
"Daddy's Little Girl" by Kippi Brannon
Not bombastic, not strident, not CCM, but still overly
saccharine father-daughter lyrics. This song has one of the most disjointed
meter and rhyme schemes imaginable. Even its timeline is off -- it jumps from
little girl to wedding, then back to teenager. At least Kippi had a good
voice, but she just never really managed to match it with anything worthwhile.
"Dancin', Shaggin' on the Boulevard" by
Alabama
Overly repetitive melody that goes nowhere. Verses that are
too damn long. Excessive name-dropping at the expense of a story. The whole
album proved that Alabama can't pull off any soulfulness whatsoever (okay,
"Sad Lookin' Moon" was good). If you want this song done right, just
listen to "Tar Top."
I took "American Boy" by Eddie Rabbitt off this list
because I felt it was sincere enough. This, on the other hand, is just a
clueless right-wing anthem shouting at Saddam without knowing what he's talking
about ("take your poison gas, stick it in your sassafras"?!). I feel
that this laid the ground work for all the MURICA songs that came out after
9/11. It's basically the "Iraq and Roll" of the 1990s, except easier
to find.
"Don't Laugh at Me" by Mark Wills
One of the frontrunners in the late 90s-early noughties
"Chicken Soup for the Soul" movement. Saccharine and manipulative as
all get out, this song did nothing but infuriate me even then with how
over-the-top it was. And I was "a little boy with glasses / the one
they call the geek" at the time it was released.
"Easy as 1, 2, 3" by The Spurs
Never heard of this one, huh? Well, it got to Top 20 in
Canada. Literally the only place you can listen to it is the lead singer's
Soundcloud (
https://soundcloud.com/user-897794179 ). Cheap bar-band sound, clashy and off-key
lead vocals, dopey lyrics, and a husband-and-wife duo that nobody remembers. I
get why CanCon laws exist, but man did they turn up some stinkers now and then.
"Forever Love" by Reba McEntire
Reba tries to get her Celine Dion on and misses big time.
That's really all I can say, because every time I listen to this song, I forget
it again about 10 seconds later.
"Holes in the Floor of Heaven" by Steve
Wariner
Another song with a saccharine metaphor that's easy to,
forgive the pun, poke holes in. If there are holes in the floor of Heaven, does
that mean the angels will be constantly falling through the holes and
crash-landing back on Earth? Why do the writers of these kinds of songs never
think their metaphors through?
"How Do I Live" by LeAnn Rimes or Trisha
Yearwood
Just like any other Diane Warren song, this is just cliché
after cliché. How do I live, how do I breathe, I can't go on without you, blah
blah blah, I've heard this exact song 600 times before. Unlike "Butterfly
Kisses" above, I feel that neither singer is able to rescue the material
in any way and both versions just come across as flat and dull.
"I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" by Mark
Chesnutt
The one exception to the Diane Warren rule is "I Don't
Want to Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith, because come on, it's freaking
Aerosmith. But giving a hard-rock song to a honky-tonker like Mark Chesnutt is
one of the most mismatched cover songs this side of the Oak Ridge Boys doing
"Seven Nation Army." Chesnutt sounds uncomfortable and heavily Auto-Tuned,
and just plain doesn't work. And to his credit, he admits this was a mistake.
My 2000s list has a lot of Martina-bashing, I know. This one
I hate for the opposite reasons: her twee, childish lisp (supposedly based off
how the demo singer sang it) is unbearably cutesy, and actually makes me wish
this song had been a belt-fest for a change. Also, if your hook is just
"baby, I love you", you might wanna try just a little harder.
"I Will Stand by You" by Corbin/Hanner
Corbin/Hanner's "Work Song" is one of my favorite
lost treasures of the 90s. But this is just a syrupy and uninspired pop love
ballad that sounds like a very, very poor-man's Bryan Adams. I guess I should
have expected some cheese from one of the guys who wrote "Lord, I Hope
This Day Is Good", but man was this ever a letdown after something so
enjoyable as "Work Song."
"It's Your Love" by Tim McGraw featuring
Faith Hill
Yet another cheesy, boring, cliché love ballad the likes of which
propagated in this era. As the song that celebrated their marriage, I never
understood why it was just a backing vocal and not a full-fledged duet. That at
least might have given it some dynamic, but instead it just feels dull, with no
spark whatsoever in the lyrics or performance.
"Kiss the Girl" by Little Texas
I like The Little Mermaid. I like the songs from The
Little Mermaid. I even like Little Texas. But doing such a lifeless and
dull take on such a colorful and catchy song? No thanks. I suppose it could
have been worse: they could have tried to mimic Sebastian the crab's accent...
"Love Can Build a Bridge" by The Judds
That cheesy, overwrought metaphor (walk all the way across
the desert to give someone a crumb of bread) sets the bombastic and hyperbolic
overtones for the rest of the song. (Also, how do you "whisper love so
loudly"? After a certain volume level, it's not whispering anymore.)
Didn't we leave this kind of overly cheery feelgood cheese back in the 70s?
"Mama's Little Baby Loves Me" by Sawyer Brown
Sawyer Brown at their most insipid. Take the obvious mama's
little baby/daddy's little girl tropes and do nothing with them except
establish that mama's little baby loves you. (Also, danger/saving is not a
rhyme.) I gotta give credit where credit is due: I thank god that Mac McAnally
discovered these guys and salvaged them.
Damn it, Bob Carlisle, I didn't want you to be on here twice.
But yeah, he came up with this doofy joke of a song full of good ol' boy tropes.
Daddy works the farm, Mama works the Dairy Queen, the narrator wears a Stetson
and kissed Mary Lou Macadoo behind the barn. Oh, and let's not forget that
pitiful hook, "I'm a redneck son of a redneck son." Just another one
of the dregs of the "hat act" era.
"Romeo" by Dolly Parton and Friends
Not one, but four women slobbering hornily over Billy Ray
Cyrus. How did Kathy Mattea, Pam Tillis, and Mary Chapin Carpenter -- three
women who rarely if ever went for the cheese factor -- get roped into this? It's
actually quite hilarious in how God-awful it is.
"Somebody Slap Me" by John Anderson
A runner-up to Miss Oklahoma who likes chili and does her own
plumbing, huh? Could you get any more cartoonishly corny? This was the last
single written by the legendary Bob McDill, and the last top-40 hit for John
Anderson to date. What a way for both to go out.
Ray Stevens is one of my childhood favorites. But this is
just flat-out offensive: it uses the Oriental riff, women singing "ah
so", and the "Japanese mix up L's and R's" pronunciation to
drive home an over-the-top message about the influx of Japanese content in the
US in the early 90s. It all seems too straightforward to be satirical, and
judging from his political material in the 21st century, I fear there may
actually be a racist old man under the comedic exterior.
