I've read most if not all of Dave Barry's books, but for some
reason had missed DAVE BARRY'S WORST SONGS AND OTHER
HITS . . . now I know why; it apparently never came out as book.
What Dove Audio did was record his original "Bad Song Survey"
columns and then add a long piece about Elvis fans and the tale
of his "Tupperware Song" . . . the compilation rocks.
Barry is sooooo funny, as evidenced by his description of the
voter's choice for Worst Song--in both the Worst Overall and Worst Lyrics
category:
"MacArthur Park," as sung by Richard Harris, and later remade, for
no comprehensible reason, by Donna Summer.
It's hard to argue with this selection. My 12-year-old son, Rob, was
going through a pile of ballots, and he asked me how "MacArthur Park"
goes, so I sang it, giving it my best shot, and Rob laughed so hard
that when I got to the part about leaving the cake out of the rain, and
took so long to bake it, and I'll never have the recipe again, Rob was
on the floor. He didn't believe those lyrics were real. He was sure
his wacky old humor-columnist dad was making them up.
So as to not disappoint readers of this review, here are the other
results . . . the clear runner-up in both categories was "Yummy
Yummy Yummy (I Got Love in my Tummy), performed by Ohio
Express, and coming in a strong third was "(You're) Having My Baby"
by Paul Anka. Honorable mention went to Bobby Goldsboro, who
got many votes for various songs, especially "Honey."
Arte Johnson and John Ritter both did a fine job on the narration
of WORST SONGS.