See? I told you. Look, I admire anyone who can get up and try to sing in front of others, especially for something as important as a memorial for fallen law enforcement officers. I really do. But for something that important, don't you think that maybe you should just do a quick scan of the words? Maybe even rehearse it once or twice the day before? Carry the lyrics up there with you if you need to. It's OK. I won't think less of you. (Well, I won't think less of you if you read the lyrics and get it right. If you have lyrics written down and you still can't come up with the correct wording? That's odd and I cannot be a party to something like that.) But when you're up there "singing" as if your vocabulary has just been put on "Shuffle" and random words are just flying out of your mouth in a semi-discernible tune? That's exactly how you end up on YouTube and that's exactly how you end up the subject of today's post. And really, those are two things that I don't think many of us would ever strive for.
Congratulations to the Green Bay Packers on a Super Bowl game well played. While I enjoyed the game, I really think that the commercials were not up to par. And if you're going to try to tell me that it isn't about the commercials, well, you'd be wrong. If you're forking over $3 million for a thirty second ad spot, you're supposed to kick it up a notch. But I'm not really here to talk about the commercials. No, I'm here to talk about the national anthem. And I think I shall start out by asking, "What in the what was that?"
See, she appeared (translation: she totally did) to have forgotten the words or remembered the words incorrectly at one point. I only say this because instead of singing "O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming", she came up with "What so proudly we watched at the twilight's last gleaming." Yeah, that's not right at all. She managed to correctly place and sing the words "we watched", but other than that, I had no idea what she was talking about. It's like she kind of took the second line from the anthem "What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming" and kind of mixed it in with what she was supposed to sing. And while she didn't really miss a beat while she sang it, it was still wrong.
It's come to my attention that during the 1970s, America was a flaccid, flaccid nation when it came to our music. What were we thinking? Actually, let me rephrase that. What were y'all thinking? I can't take a whole lot of responsibility for any of it, really. I started out the 1970s being 2 years old and there's rarely anything that you can hold a 2-year old accountable for, much less, responsible.
Let's start with a Number One hit from 1974. Paul Anka sang a horribly sappy song called "You're Having My Baby". I don't get this song at all. Allow me to give you a sample of the lyrics if you're not already familiar with this atrocity. Ahem.... 
Are you kidding me? "The seed inside ya, baby, do you feel it growin'?" What. The. Hell? And those aren't just crappy lyrics. That was a number one song!! What was wrong with this country?! Y'all listened to that crap? Willingly?? 
few days ago when the fabulous Armstrong & Getty were discussing it on their morning radio show. (Download the podcast of their show over at iTunes. These two are fabulous!) "Run, Joey, Run" is a song about a girl who gets knocked up by her boyfriend. The girl's father finds out and gets angry. The girl's father then proceeds (from what I can figure out according to the lyrics) to hit the girl and then get his gun to go daughter-knocker-upper hunting. She tries to warn the boy, the aforementioned Joey, but he doesn't listen. He comes over to her house, the Dad goes to shoot him and the daughter (I believe her name is Julie) jumps in front of him and the Dad ends up killing her. Top of the charts! 
Seriously. What was going in y'all's lives that you wanted to listen to that? Granted, it has kind of a catchy tune and all, but it really gets weird once you start thinking, "What now? A gun? Run? He shot his daughter? What the hell?" I mean, it's really weird.
That's right. Cannibalism. Pop-culture cannibalism. That song made it inexplicably all the way to Number 17 during the year of our Lord 1971. Number 17. How did...? Wait. I need to fill you in on "Timothy" before I go on babbling about how weird this is.
out what the weirdo lyrics were about, it began to demand more airtime and move its way up the chart. When the radio executives began to realize that there was a hit record hidden in this morbidness, they tried to claim, of all things, that Timothy was really a mule and not a person. This was supposed to somehow make the airing of such a song more palatable to the stations and the listeners. I don't know if that worked or not, but the song did make it up to Number 17 that year. I really can't imagine that saying that they ate a mule was going to make the song anymore happy-go-lucky than if it were a person. Don't get me wrong. Eating a mule is much better than eating your buddy. But when it's in a Top 20 song? It's still freaking weird. 
Seriously, what would be your next act after you've had a hit with cannibalism? A polka medley about bestiality? Is K-TEL still around? Are they still producing their 8-track collections of various genres of songs? Hits from the 80s? Things like that? If they are, they need to get on this one right now. They need to come out with "Crap We Used To Listen To - The Seventies". They could have a "Crap We Used To Listen To" for all decades, really. It would be a hit. I'd buy it just for the sheer awfulness of it all. 
