A local radio station, KFOG, hosts a daily show called 10@10. It is put together by one of the station’s DJs and plays 10 hit songs from one year and airs at 10 AM/PM. It also contains some commentary, quotes, speeches, lines from movies or TV shows from the year of the day. It’s a hoot and I tune in when I can. Today’s show was an ode to Thanksgiving: the Top Ten Turkeys. A Turkey was defined as a song which is incredibly stupid, but nonetheless is actually a good song. Sounds like an oxymoron, huh? The DJ contrasted a Turkey from a Guilty Pleasure (songs that you are embarrassed to admit that you enjoy, such as anything from the BeeGees or Abba) or a Hit From Hell (self-explanatory, but personified by many hits in the 70′s such as Having My Baby, recorded by Paul Anka). After catching some of the tunes and seeing the set list, it seems that a Turkey has incredibly stupid lyrics, but excellent instrumentation. In fact, perhaps the artists should have just shut up and played. Here’s the set:
1. Kool & the Gang – Jungle Boogie
2. Chumbawamba – Tubthumping
3. Mah-Na-Mah-Na
4. Trio – Da Da Da (I Don’t Love You, You Don’t Love Me, Aha Aha Aha)
5. Focus – Hocus Pocus
6. Vapors – Turning Japanese (Best Turkey of Set!!)
7. Lipps, Inc. – Funky Town
8. Blue Swede – Hooked on a Feeling
9. Dexy’s Midnight Runner – C’Mon Eileen
10. Tony Basil – Mickey
The best Turkey of the set was decided by vote from Fogheads (yes, they really use that term) who email or blog in their vote.
Any other nominations from the blogosphere?
November 23rd, 2005 at 5:12 pm
Trio – DaDaDa but the original German version for extra stupidity/cleverness.
November 23rd, 2005 at 6:02 pm
On a whim I went looking and found an MP3 of Turning Japanese.
You’ll probably want to use CTRL F to find it.
November 23rd, 2005 at 6:12 pm
Anything by Jim Steinman.
November 23rd, 2005 at 7:29 pm
Come On, Eileen is a great song. The lyrics are nowhere near as goofy as Tubthumping. However, the video was completely bizarre. Dancing around a desolate cityscape wearing ill fitting overalls.
The song was a hit while I was at CERN doing my thesis research and I heard it on the radio, but I didn’t see the video until years later. I was stunned.
November 23rd, 2005 at 7:38 pm
Speaking of closet ABBA loving people, why would someone go see Mamma Mia?? The world’s number one musical?? Tix cost anywhere from $33US to $185EU around the world and selling out???? WTF???
November 23rd, 2005 at 8:22 pm
“Kingpin” by Wilco
“Won’t back down” by Tom petty and the heartbreakers
“Orange Crush” by REM
“Stand” by REM
any They Might be Giants song.
“tubthumping” tries to kill my soul, though. Perhaps it’s just the flashbacks to when it was on the radio nonstop during high school. I remember being highly inspired by a local radio station taht ran an ad that essentially went:
“I get knocked down…”
BANG BANG
STAAAAAYYY DOWN.
I loved that commercial
November 23rd, 2005 at 9:38 pm
Um, how is “Mickey” a good song?
November 24th, 2005 at 12:06 am
Spyder, I must admit, I am a closet Abba fan (hey, I was 17 and impressionable when Dancing Queen came out…) and have seen Mamma Mia twice! Loved it and would go again if opportunity allows. I have also seen Saturday Night Fever on stage – loved that too….
Kevin, I quite agree with you about Mickey. To me, that is a hit from hell.
November 24th, 2005 at 12:48 am
I’m tempted to agree with Aaron, but I’m not quite sure. Bat Out of Hell is both cheesy and genius, but it might not be cheesy enough to attain true Turkey status.
Mickey was just horrible, and Come On Eileen was pretty good, I agree.
Surely something by Styx or Electric Light Orchestra should make the list. (Otherwise my youthful musical tastes will end up having no redeeming value at all.)
November 24th, 2005 at 12:59 am
Aaron & Sean, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights was pure genius. A fond memory from my youth is when the girls from my college dorm floor gathered in a circle in the space between the elevators and did a dance routine/parody to the above mentioned song as Boozin Susan cranked it from her stereo….ah – the good old days! That was before I was a physics major. Certainly not respectable behaviour for a physics major.
November 24th, 2005 at 1:17 am
Steinman probably fits more into guilty pleasure generally, but, really, can you get any more cheesy than the music video for “Total Eclipse of the Heart”?
Or “I Would Do Anything for Love, but I Won’t Do That”?
Sheer brilliance.
November 24th, 2005 at 1:25 am
“Sweet Emotion” by Aerosmith.
Generally horrible is anything by hairspray metal bands from the 1980′s, such as:
- “Talk Dirty To Me” by Poison
- “Cherry Pie” and “Heaven” by Warrant
- “Up All Night … Sleep All Day” by Slaughter
- anything by Faster Pussycat
- “Girls Girls Girls” and “Too Young To Fall In Love” by Motley Crue
- “Monkey Business” by Skid Row
- “Poison” and “Hey Stoopid” by Alice Cooper
- “Still Of The Night” by Whitesnake
- anything by David Lee Roth
- anything by Winger
- “Round And Round” by Ratt
- “I Wanna Rock” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister
- “Shot of Poison” by Lita Ford
- “Cum On Feel The Noize” by Quiet Riot
- “Paradise City” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” by Guns’N Roses
(One of my ex-girlfriends from that time use to listen to all that hairspray metal music all day. It drove me up the wall! I’m surprised I still even remember most of these turkey song titles.)
November 24th, 2005 at 1:25 am
Being a Swedish expat, I am proud to see that our productive music industry appears not once, but twice in this post. Now if only Ace of Base were from Sweden instead of Switzerland…
But I gotta add a favorite turkey as well: Breaking The Law by Judas Priest. The video is hilarious too.
November 24th, 2005 at 1:30 am
Okay – I just retrieved my Bat Out of Hell album (yes, vinyl!) and played Paradise full blast while singing at the top of my lungs. Twice. My neighbors will never look at me the same way again and it’s all your fault.
November 24th, 2005 at 1:43 am
So, does intentionally very stupid but good still count?
Pretty much anything by The Darkness, then. I’m fond of “Growing on Me”, myself, but “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” certainly works, to.
November 24th, 2005 at 11:04 am
Oh yeah, The Darkess! The video for “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” was cheesily brilliant. A spaceship with a boudoir, an outrageously fake space monster, ripping guitar solos — what else could one want?
November 24th, 2005 at 8:54 pm
How did “Turning Japanese” make that list? It’s the second best song about masturbation that I know of (“Pictures of Lily” by The Who being #1). Silly list.
November 24th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
Karma Chamaleon…. ugh wait a minute. qualifies for incredibly stupid but its not actually that good.
November 25th, 2005 at 1:19 am
Henry– I prefer “Blister in the Sun” to “Turning Japanese”
November 25th, 2005 at 2:39 am
Turning to a slightly different genre(country)…Achy Breaky Heart has got to be on the list…..
November 25th, 2005 at 2:21 pm
Waa? No Rasputin by Boney M?
You know you want it…..
No! I got it in my ears now? Help!
November 25th, 2005 at 11:56 pm
Having spent an hour or two in a Barnes and Noble today, I’m going to use this comment thread as a brief vent.
To all those people who incessantly play Christmas music in their stores:
Stop it.
stopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopit
STOP IT
Please?
Pretty please?
I don’t know if I can take a month of this.
November 28th, 2005 at 10:48 am
Henry – I have to put “Longview”, “She Bop”, and “Turning Japanese” above “Pictures of Lily”. Well, to each his own.
November 27th, 2006 at 3:32 am
[...] Thanksgiving is over, and most of us in the U.S. have had our fill of turkey leftovers fixed in various ways – but there is one more set of turkeys to swallow. The annual list of Top Ten Turkeys. As compiled by KFOG, a Bay Area radio station, on their popular 10@10 morning program. A KFOG turkey is a song that is truly stupid, you know better and yet you actually think it’s a good song. Despite your best efforts, you end up humming it in the car. Generally the instrumentation is decent, but the lyrics are a problem. Here is this year’s set: 1. Boys Don’t Cry – I Wanna Be A Cowboy 2. Clarence “Frogman” Henry – Ain’t Got No Home 3. The Vapors – Turning Japanese 4. Baltimora – Tarzan Boy (voted best of set) 5. Trashmen – Surfin’ Bird 6. Blue Swede – Hooked On A Feeling 7. They Might Be Giants – Istanbul (Not Constantinople) 8. The Monkees – Gonna Buy Me A Dog 9. Chumbawamba – Tubthumping 10. Toni Basil – Mickey [...]