Dreigonix Probably the most badass name ever. Why, would you ever hide it?! Or at least call yourself Captain Dragon? Doesn’t that at least sound better than the boring, bland name of the captain?
I don't think he could've been a very convincing Daryl Dragon; that implies a harder sound that doesn't remind you of 8 mormons with a rightfully forgotten variety show living in a house together. A character from Love Boat, on the other hand? Well, I sure as shit don't plan on watching it, as I'm on a strict "no cornballs" diet, and if the glove fits, wear it.
Fun fact: Terry Kath, the guitar player for Chicago, did not play on this song and was not happy with the direction of the band. He was supposedly going to leave the band and start his own band but he died tragically.
As has been said elsewhere here, the convoy isn't smuggling anything - they grouped together to beat the 55 mph. ("double-nickel") speed limit imposed during the first oil crisis in the 70s. Since nobody liked that, and in the case of trucks they argued the slower speed WASTED fuel (apparently it doesn't, but those studies came later) in addition to adding two hours a day to every eight hours they drove, truckers "put the hammer down" (pushed down the gas pedal) and went 70 or 75 miles an hour like they originally did. The police were ordered to ticket every truck they caught exceeding the 55 mph. speed limit because they pushed the "flow of traffic" to go faster (if you're obeying the 55 mph. speed limit and a truck barrels down on you at 75 mph., are you going to stay in your lane at 55 or speed up?). That's why the trucks started driving in convoys over popular trucking routes, to strain the state highway patrols past their limits - a cop could ticket one truck doing 75 on the freeway, but what do you do when a dozen or more trucks show up at once all doing 75 mph.? They'd need one cop car for every truck, and that's on one highway!
He was known for writing commercial jingles, but I don't think he was responsible for writing any of his hit songs. That's one reason why the song sucks to me. He's just flat-out lying!
My sister’s friend worked the green room at the big arena outside of Chicago. By far the most uppity diva artist she dealt with was Barry Mannilow. The coolest was David Bowie.
@@marteinnreimarsson2441 It’s been years, but she reported that when she asked him if he wanted coffee or tea, etc. he said something like “Do you know who you’re talking to!? Don’t even look at me.” This girl was a sweetheart. How ridiculous.
Ian Hunter is a link between David Bowie and Barry Manilow. David Bowie wrote "All The Young Dudes" for Mott the Hoople, which was fronted by Ian Hunter. Ian Hunter wrote "Ships," which was covered by . . . Barry Manilow.
@@stevenmaginnis1965 So what I'm getting from this is that there's a link between David Bowie and the Presidents of the United States of America, via the latter's cover of Hunter's "Cleveland Rocks".
Ratel.H Badger Damn straight. That's what I've been trying to say. I mean, I've got Anchorman on DVD, and I even liked listening to the version of afternoon delight that Will Ferrell and his friends made. At least they sounded like they were trying, and Will's character was supposed to be a 70's sex symbol, so it made sense he'd make a song like that. And, he's a way better singer too, because he's actually talented, unlike the ugly, untalented losers who made the song originally. That song was made to be parodied. But Anchorman was the only one to do that right.
I love this dude’s analysis. He clearly knows his music and does his research. Even when I don’t fully agree or even familiar with a particular artist, I still enjoy his videos and eagerly await the next. 👍🏽
In a list compiled in 2022, Billboard named "Afternoon Delight" the 21st-sexiest song of all time. Apparently only 21 songs have ever been recorded in human history.
That whole "boogie" thing in the '70s had me confused. Some of the songs said to get up and boogie, others said to get down and boogie. Up? Down? How do I decide? I settled that whole question by embracing punk in 1977.
Disco Duck doesn't sound like Donald Duck, he sounds more like Yacky Duck, that little yellow duck from the Tom and Jerry cartoons, just saying, maybe it's only my opinion.
Not fair to compare The Carpenters to Captain and Tennille. Karen Carpenter had one of the great voices in all of pop music. Yes, they cut some corny songs, but they did far more melancholy stuff like "Goodbye to Love" and "I Need to Be In Love". I'll defend the Carpenters all day. Captain and Tennille would be more comparable to Donny and Marie IMO.
So true! I read a biography about her not long ago, her brother said she always considered herself a drummer who happened to sing. She took up the drums as a kid just to hang out with her brother Richard who was considered the musical prodigy in the family. They formed a jazz trio, and she only sang because the others didn't want to. When they sent out demo tapes, they were turned down by everybody because they were so different than what was going on at the time. Herb Alpert said the minute he heard her voice coming through the stereo with Richard's arrangement, he knew they were something special, he just didn't know if it would sell. The remarkable thing is, she had no vocal training AT All, she wasn't considered the talented one by her family (when they got famous, her mom couldn't understand why she got the attention instead of Richard). Phenomenally talented woman, her death was utterly tragic.
@@davidmonypeny5734 you summed it up perfectly. The mother was all about the brother, and never really supported Karen. Her voice was so beautiful and special...and Karen herself was a silly, goofy, humble girl who never took herself too seriously. I've seen numerous clips of her dancing like a goober, making goofy faces at people, etc. I'm so glad that eating disorderś are much better understood now- I just wish that those around her had stepped up and helped Karen way sooner. Her disorder was triggered by a writer who continually called her "chubby". Nothing wrong with being chubby--- I certainly am! But at no point EVER was Karen Carpenter "chubby". She was always tall and slender, and just absolutely beautiful. Her tragic end breaks my heart to this day.
Yeah, her death just gutted me. You're right in that perhaps the only silver lining was that we now understand more about eating disorders and that's due in large part to her death. I read where a lot of her friends were concerned about her, in this book I read when they expressed their concern to her she'd just say she was trying to lose a few pounds. She was probably in denial and frankly there was not much known about anorexia and bulimia. I also think she would have preferred just to sing behind the drums, as she did when they first started. Her management and Richard convinced her that she was the lead singer and she needed to be seen, nobody could see her behind the drums, so that also added to her body issues. Olivia Newton John was one of her best friends, she got to see Karens goofy side and thought that it was crazy that she thought she needed to lose weight. Plus when all this was going down, she was married to an absolute creep who lied to her about having money and basically leeched off her the whole time. I was around 15 when she died (I kind of listened to them on the sly, it was definitely not cool to be into the Carpenters in the mid '80's!) and their music is as timeless now as it was then.
BTW, the solo album she did that her record company shelved came out a few years ago and it's really not bad. It's a little too disco for me, but she did a GREAT cover of Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years."
Shannon, came out right around the time my Mom had Passed Away after a long horrific battle with Cancer. She was 38, I was 16. I found the song very soothing/calming during those Dark Days.
Oh honey, I'm so sorry. That kind of loss is absolutely devastating. My mother is 76, so I'm trying to spend as much time with her as I can. Whether your grieving the loss of someone as important in your life as your mother, or grieving the he loss of a companion animal (the theme of the song), it can feel like torture. 💔
It's so funny hearing Todd trivialize a song about a dead dog when he himself posts 10+ times per day about his dog Amy. Not saying the song's good, but still lol.
A few years ago, he said that he still hates that song, but now for totally different reasons. I imagine that it either doesn't capture what it's like to lose a pet very well, or more likely, Todd just doesn't want to think about a dog passing away.
My parents and I were listening to the radio the other day and Shannon came on. I told them the story behind it. My mom said "that makes more sense" and my dad turned the radio off and said "I really don't want to listen to a dead dog song."
So apparently Tennille divorced the captain in 2014 after he was diagnosed with a medical condition that cause him to have severe tremors. She blindsided him with the divorce and said she divorced him due to lack of affection while he was in a drugged up state to manage his condition. That bitch! Love Will Keep Us Together, my ass!
Pure gold digging and yet he stuck with her as a “close friend” until he passed a short few years later. Even when she released a memoir trashing him and his legacy. It’s depressing
So frickin' funny! I'm an old guy that graduated highschool in 1976, and Todd has nailed it! Yeah, we did deserve the gas crisis. Thanks Todd for bringing back the good, and the bad, from 1976. It's too bad I threw away that blue leisure suit I wore to grad night, 'cause I now have this yearning to put it on (for the 2nd time, no one in history has worn a leisure suit twice) and to "Get Up and Boogie!"!
It's amazing how much fashion changed in 2 years. I graduated in '74 (We're the best, Say no more! Senior class of '74!) And no one would have been caught dead in a polyester leisure suit. We were still in the generation of ripped bell bottom jeans, floppy hats, and Nehru jackets. And birkenstock sandals. The kids in Dazed and Confused were more like us and they were supposed to be 1976. I went to school in Texas, too, and we would have killed for Aerosmith tickets!
@@KatLover-ou3sw - I had a shrimp-colored leisure suit I wore. My then-girlfriend (later my wife, much later my ex) went through my clothes and threw it out, along with any polyester double-knit slacks she found. We then went and bought chinos-later I started buying cargo pants one I started carrying around a mobile phone and other things in my pockets....
What horrifies me that people went to record stores in 1976 and walked past Station to Station and The Alan Parsons Project so they could pick up the new Starland Vocal Band record.
That is a frightening thought. I actually got the album "Inside Star Trek" and a record of Disney songs that year. I was 11 years old and a nerd from day one... lol.... I didn't know what Afternoon Delight was anyway.
@Gabe Davis 1. It's a joke 2. That was over a year ago 3. People should be allowed to listen to whatever they want, even if the thought of them doing it is horrifying. There's nothing wrong with feeling the wrong emotion about something if you understand that you shouldn't be feeling that emotion and that emotion isn't translated into harmful actions. 4. You can't reasonably not make fun of people who like Starland Vocal Band. It's physically impossible. And if you are someone able to resist the urge, you shouldn't get mad at people for making fun of a band that all critics would agree got way more success than they deserved. 5. I bet you that those people would've loved Station to Station and just didn't know of it at the time, and that's fine. I'm just commenting on how in hindsight the fact that this particular thing happened makes me feel a fucking emotion.
Well, Barry Manilow *did* write the songs that made the whole world sing; "I am stuck on Band-Aid brand, 'cause Band-Aid stuck on me" "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there." "You deserve a break today..."
To be fair, Barry didn't write the last of those jingles, for McDonald's, he just sang on the original commercial. The first two were his compositions.
Afternoon Delight appealed to prepubescent girls. It was a "cute" song. I was one of those girls. I'm sure I have the 45 in my dusty old record case. I also bought a shirt that had "Afternoon Delight" on it! No, I did not know what it meant, but my mom did...and she wouldn't let me out of the house wearing it!
My mom had me listening to her Van Halen CDs when I was a toddler. I would even sing along to “Black and Blue” when I was about four years old, just because those’re my favorite colors. I did eventually realize what the song was about and asked my mom about it when I was a preteen, and she claimed that she had never noticed what the lyrics were, even though being huge Sammy Hagar fans is pretty much the only thing my parents have in common.
This reminds me of one of my best friends, who has a T-shirt of two skeletal hands printed where her breats would be. Although, in this case, she knows 100% what that means, while her mother believes the hands are just hugging her. I'm not that well versed with sex, but even I'm not that naive.
The Starland Vocal Band won a grammy for best new artist beating out Boston. Can you imagine a member of Boston where that first album every song on it was a hit and losing out to Starlight Vocal Band? The horror.
Every song on the album _Boston_ was *not* a hit. And if you ever heard them live you would *not* be impressed. Buuut having made that clear... yeah, to loose to _StarLAND Vocal Band_ can't really be justified.
@@donarthiazi2443 I'd say that the first Boston album didn't have a bad song on it. The hits were good, and the others they play on the radio were also not too bad. But live? No way they were going to reproduce that on stage, considering almost all of the first album was performed by Tom Scholz, except the vocals and some instrumentation by a couple of the other band members. Them losing to Starland Vocal Band was definitely a WTF moment.
Speaking of weird novelty hit songs from the UK, did you know that the Bob the Builder theme song was the number one song of the year in 2001 (I believe)?
MnMsandOreos two number ones as well. After he got the Christmas number one, the next year he had a number one with a cover of Mambo No.5 (making it one of three songs to top the charts twice in the UK with different lyrics along with Do They Know It's Christmas? and Three Lions)
A friend of mine has been a radio producer for 40 yrs. He met Capt and Tennille. The Capt was not as outgoing as she was, but they were both nice people. The Capt was most interested in the equipment in the studio.
Why didn't Todd mention that Toni Tennille' s hair style was worn by everyone from todlers to grandmas . The Farrah Fawcett and the Jennifer Aniston weren't nearly as popular .
i believe you guys are forgetting that pillow talk by Zayn Malik exist or tonight I'm fucking you by Enrique Iglesias (which is arguably way better with the radio version) like yes charlie's song is a big ol boring snooze fest but at least it doesn't feel like a brick being repeatedly dropped on your nuts by Zayn or like one of the dudes from night at the roxbury tried to have a music career
Let's butcher an artists' legacy by referring to one of his songs as him. Let's Marvin Gaye and get it on... you can't MARTIN GAYE anything... idiots!!! I refuse to even try let myself find something nice about the song... I just hate it for its grammatical error!
@TC Fenstermaker Just watching this video again (lockdown is getting repetitive) and I just wondered whether German audiences were randomised, like you could apply to be in a TV audience but the show you got to be the audience for was just pot luck. Those Disco 19xx audiences seem to be full of people you wouldn't expect to flock to a pop music show.
@TC Fenstermaker This is a comedy show, not strictly about the music like other TH-cam music reviewers. He sometimes omits things and gets stuff wrong on purpose for the joke, such as when he pretended he didn’t know what Wicked was to riff on the song Defying Gravity (“are they best friends? Lovers? Rebelling against the government?”)
I swear to god that every time, not some of the time, not half of the time, but ALL OF THE TIME I went into Pizza Hut as a kid in the mid 70's "If You Leave Me Now" always at some point was chosen on the juke box (A few years later it was replaced by "Take It To The Limit"as the always on the juke box at Pizza Hut) In regards to Afternoon Delight, I was 10 years old in 1976. One summer afternoon while in the car with my mom and dad the song came on the radio. So I asked what is Afternoon Delight? My mom, without missing a beat, told me that Afternoon Delight was about having a banana split on a 4th of July afternoon. I bought it because of skyrockets in flight although I did question myself as to why a fireworks display would begin in the afternoon when everyone knows that fireworks displays happen after the sun sets. No matter, I believed what I was told because I wanted to believe in what I was told.
The song Convoy was written to protest the speed limit being lowered to 55mph. The truckers said their trucks used more fuel than if they went 70mph. It was killing the owner/operators who usually had to pay for their own fuel. And this was during the gas crunch 70s. A "cab-over Pete with a reefer on" is a flat fronted Peterbilt with a refrigerating unit on the trailer. (No, I'm not a truck driver, I just pay attention. Oh, and the first CW McCall who recorded Convoy, took his real name back, and started a group called Mannheim Steamroller. And a song that contains this line canNOT be all bad: And eleven, longhaired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus. Those lyrics are classics in the world of American music.
Yup, everything you said is accurate and anyone wondering why truck drivers "were suddenly heros" has zero idea what a shitstorm we'd be in the middle of if truck drivers just decided to stop hauling
You're right that It was a protest song about the 55 mph speed limit that was imposed by the government. But additionally a protest song about governmental intervention in general I think. In addition to the speed limit, it was the highway tolls imposed and the weigh stations restrictions and probably a few other things as well. 1976, best time of my life.
Just to shed a little light on Toni Tennille , she played the electric piano for the Beach Boys on their 1972 tour. I believe, she was the only female member the Beach Boys ever hired. And she sang backing vocals on Pink Floyd's The Wall.
Not sure Toni sang on The Wall, but she was the voice of the woman Pink brought home... "Oh wow, what a fabulous room! Are all these your guitars?" ... "Are you feeling OK?" etc
To their credit, Starland Vocal Band did hire a young comedy writer named David Letterman and gave him airtime on their TV show. (And yes, he's easily the best thing about the show.) And I'm a little shocked that you didn't mention that "Convoy" was turned into a very bad movie ... or that the co-writer of "Convoy" was the guy who turned Mannheim Steamroller into an easy listening money-making machine. But yeah, this is a pretty solid list.
@@DOSRetroGamer, I actually do like "Convoy." I remember taping it off the radio when I was a kid in '76, and I knew it word-for-word. But I wouldn't call it a great song -- it's more of a guilty pleasure song. Yeah, C.W. McCall's rap is cool, but let's face facts: The chorus sounds like it was sung by Up With People.
The Jacksons had a variety show on CBS in 1976. Yes, including Michael. Also featuring a very young Janet, whom many called the best actor on the show. She went on to some TV guest roles (including Willis' girlfriend on "Diff'rent Strokes) before transitioning to music.
In the October 1984 Playboy Interview, Letterman says, of his time on the Starland Vocal Band show, "Of course, back then, no one could have forseen their astronomical success."
As one who was a child in 1976, I want to defend or at least explain Disco Duck. Roller rinks at least around here used to be a lot more common than they are now. Disco Duck was a staple of any big event (like a roller rink party) involving lots of kids younger than 13. I have good memories of it (and to a lesser extent Convoy), but then I'm pretty much the exact age and demographic for those songs. And no they didn't age well and yes I do cede that they were dumb. As for those other eight musical disasters, I got nothin'.
The way Todd feels about Peter Cetera is the way I feel about Michael Buble. Everytime I hear Buble, I'm instantly in a bad mood. His voice isn't bad or anything, it just pisses me off. He seems like the kind of guy that's nice on the outside, but when you get to know him he's a douchebag.
not another theatre trash channel For me, it's Charlie Puth. I'm sure he's a decent guy, but I cannot stand his singing voice. Or his face. I don't know why.
Michael Buble sounds like a sugar-free version of Barry Manilow. His voice doesn't convey anything, it just makes the notes. At least Peter could emote when he wanted to. Chicago started out awesome (and Terry Kath is the greatest guitarists to ever be underutilized), but within a few albums everyone was pulling the message in a different direction. I would say that the VI to VII transition is where things started to fall apart and then once Terry was gone, they were just adrift. 17 was a great pop album, if you don't try to reconcile it with the band behind it. Everything after that is the sound of trying too hard. Look Away?! Really? I could imagine Aerosmith belching that one out.
@droma lloma I'm sure I could figure out why Charlie Puth is detestable. It's as Todd stated multiple times, he's a kid wearing his dad's clothes, who has absolutely NO sex appeal at all, and this is coming from me, a dude who has no sex appeal at all either. But at least I don't go around pretending like I'm the sexiest dude around. And because of the abomination of a song he made with Meghan Trainor, remember(if you've seen Todd's worst of 2015 list, I mean), that's enough reasoning to want to hate Charlie Puth. At least for me.
I loved this! This is the first TH-camr that I (mostly) agree with when it comes to crappy music. And I grew up in the 70s when this garbage was popular. Thanks for giving me a few good laughs, & a trip down memory lane. Some of the songs I did like, but in '76 I was only 11, so most of the time I didn't even know what the songs were about. Once I got a little older I started to understand what sucked & why.
Okay, here is a history lesson about the 70's truck craze, as presented by my mother who was a teenager in that decade. Apparently, truckers were known to be completely reckless drivers. They were trying to evade the cops because they going about 30 miles above the speed limit.
This is true. And also, they were viewed as the "cowboys" of the time. But instead of driving cattle, they were driving merchandise across the country.
ChaleeRenee Really? Truckers were viewed as cowboys of the 70's? I mean, not actual cowboys, but as what the media says were cowboys? I don't have anything against truckers or cowboys though.
@@shawnfields2757 Well, yes. They did view themselves as cowboys, because of instead of running cattle, they were running cargo for the benefit of everyone. It's a metaphor. Or maybe I should say they viewed themselves as cowboys. Cowboys of the open road.
Todd's humor is like his room: kinda dark. Yet, I was laughing a lot as he skewered these bad songs, and I have 45s of some of these songs in a box in my basement!
For what it's worth: Todd later said Rock and Roll Music bumped Shannon off the list because...well, anyone who's seen his Twitter knows how a song about dogs connects a lot more with him now.
@@andrewc.4471 He didn't. He's doubled down on Shannon being terrible on his twitter when people say "u like dogs now Todd, so u must like Shannon!!" and he was like "no". Use twitter search, you can find him ranting about it.
If you want a MUCH better song about a dead dog, check out Sickness Unto You by Trivium. It's about the vocalist having to put down his family dog after being on the road for years and therefore not being around much for her in her final years.
@flmbyz Well, that's 3 good situations to listen to "If You Leave Me Now". And I was thinking Chicago were entirely worthless as a group. But, at least there's Shaun Of The Dead, GTA V, and South Park. I didn't like Shaun Of The Dead for a while because people made fun of me for having the same name as the lead character. But, that was when I was in school. It's one of my favorite movies nowadays.
Shawn Fields Their early albums before their original lead guitarist and bandleader accidentally shot himself are actually pretty fun. Very high-energy big band jazz-inflected '70s rock with a solid grasp of groove and just the right level of cheese. Unfortunately, after the aforementioned Terry Kath died, the band understandably lost a lot of momentum and sold out *hard* by the end of the '70s.
@Gabe Davis OK, now I've seen you post in multiple comments about being ready to harrangue Todd when his dog dies. You're not mentally healthy. Please seek help, for the sake of us all.
It is? I wish id heard it before now. Hearing the first voice of Shaggy from Scooby Doo, screaming out, and I quote: "This is the last god-goddamned time, I want someone to use his fucking brain, gotta hear a fucking song about a fucking dog dying!!" Is hilarious! I replayed that part like 6 or 7 times!
I worked at a small radio station for awhile in the mid '80's and, trust me, we ALL heard it. Remember it was pre-internet, so the fact that it got around to all of us, it was pretty remarkable. Plus we all could identify, because we were all forced to play complete garbage, so it was cool to hear a big nationally syndicated DJ completely lose it.
@@shawnfields2757 it's a legendary outtake - up there with the Orson Welles rant ("it doesn't make any sense! LISTEN TO ME") when he was doing the voice over for a frozen food company and the Bill O'Reilly meltdown that got leaked in the 90s ("Fuck it! WE'LL DO IT LIVE!!"). I had a friend who has gigabytes upon gigabytes of weird outtakes, rants and mistakes from TV and Radio that most people aren't aware even exist.
I straight up lost it when "Disco Duck" came on. Just, laughing to the point of tears in my eyes in 5 AM delirium at the visuals and the fact that the performing group called themselves "Rick Dees and his Cast of Idiots."
They actually were called that. I think even my 9 year old self thought it was stupid and it was EVERYWHERE. I ALMOST want to hear Disco-rilla" now but I WILL NOT put myself through the torture!
I completely understand that song about the dog. There's no. possible. way I could listen to it without crying. Thank God this isn't 1976, I couldn't handle it being played everywhere.
'Only Sixteen' is particularly annoying in my case. My parents were obscenely conservative and when I was a teenager, I was allowed to date, BUT, no joke, the guy COULD NOT under any circumstances be any older than one year from me. Every guy I met, they would first ask him his birth year and if it happened to be 1977+ instead of 1978, then it was bye bye birdie. You have no idea how annoying this was. I got some pretty entertaining revenge, though. I met my husband just after my senior year at high school and I just knew this guy was the one. He was everything I'd always wanted...and he was FOUR years older than me, practically an old lecher in my parents' eyes. I told him the situation and he told me he'd just tell them what they wanted to hear. So we made up the idea that he was just two months ahead of me and of course, that's all my idiotic parents cared about. He could've been a psychotic pervert and they wouldn't have cared, honestly. Luckily, he was a perfect gentleman, we shared the same hobbies and heck, we even spent the next year planning our birthdays together and he attended community college with me under the guise as a freshman like me. Amazingly, it never slipped out. So when we decided to get married, we chose to let the cat out of the bag during the ceremony. We brought in our birth certificates and used these in our vows, declaring our birth years and announcing that it only took four years for God to make his other half. My parents wigged out during the reception and refused to look at us and my dad even called security on my husband under suspicion of pedophilia (I was twenty five) The story has a happy ending, though. With the birth of their first grandchild three years later, they finally forgave us. XD
Crimson Cheetah Me too, but maybe I'm just a sucker for these kinds of romantic comedy sounding relationships because they might give me SOME hope that there's a girl out there, who'll actually like me for me, and maybe want to date me. Instead of believing in cold hard reality. Which sucks. Nice username dude.
Folk didn't appeal to you. Disco was..... well, it was disco. Southern rock was too country. Prog rock seems to require a master's degree in music theory and your parents would need to take out a second mortgage to pay for the equipment. You are pissed off at hippies and just want to kick them in the balls. You have an increasing suspicion that everything your parents told you about how to conform, obey, be a good boy/girl, and join the corporate ladder is BS. You know three cords, barely. Let there be punk.
@@conssuckballs Heh heh. "It wasn't popular because I didn't like it!" Look, like it or not, punk has proved to be one of the most durable genres of rock, just like metal, and it's extremely popular all over the world to this day. Arguably the main influence on rock today is punk and postpunk. By the way, 70s punk was born in NYC.
Bronte by Gotye is another great song about a dog who passed away (Also Todd said later on that he was a bit more sympathetic to this subject matter after getting his own dog)
this is my first time rewatching this video since i got super into the beach boys earlier this year. i still think the shannon segment is pretty harsh and i'm glad todd's writing tends not to get quite so mean anymore but with context i fully understand his frustration with henry gross prioritizing carl's late dog over brian’s dire situation. also that bruce johnston dig is pretty sick, and i may agree with it in hindsight
@@GeraldM_inNC - That's the problem, the Indie of today are just pop music back then and people appreciate it, while there are more innovative Indie music scene going on at the same time in the 70's.
The bagpipes version of "Amazing Grace" actually made it to #11 in the US. The early seventies - after the sixties had burned out but before disco took over - was a strange time for music.
Was watching a video showing every billboard number 1 song of the 70s recently and seriously 90% of everything up until 1975 sounds virtually identical, it’s pretty much all just variations of the theme from Poseidon Adventure. The blandest period of top charting hits outside of the late 80s.
Anyone remember Sister Janet Mead, who charted with a version of The Lord's Prayer in 1974? And for the Bicentennial, the Fifth Dimension recorded a setting of (part?) of the Declaration of Independence? Don't know if it charted, but I definitely remember it got airplay back then.
I was 20 in 76, you can't look at 1976 through 2022 glasses. It was a completely different world. Sure some songs were below par, but they fit the times.
God I remember hearing these nauseating songs every day on the prison bus….er….I mean school bus 🚌 on AM radio. It was like time was literally standing still !! 🤮
I was born in 72. Grew up hearing those songs and they sucked then and they suck now. And you're right they reflected the times. And those times absolutely sucked
@@insertnamehere5809 RIP Terry Kath. Whenever there is a top 100 list of anything, he is on it. Amazingly he also made the top 100 Roman emperors list. Maybe because there weren't that many and they somehow had to fill up the number and Terry Kath absolutely deserves being on any top 100 list there is.
Has anyone ever actually been offended by that word, though? It's always sounded to me like definitive proof that you've run out of insulting words and are now scraping the bottom of the barrel or even have to make up a new word just to insult someone. Literally the only reason it exists is because everyone short of a klansman won't risk losing credibility over saying "f@g." These are the same people trying to make "autistic" an insult because "ret@rded" is now completely socially unacceptable. It's an act of flopsweat desperation by people who are already desperate and pathetic to begin with.
Gabriel Schleifer I don't disagree in theory, but it is alarming to realise how many obtuse right-wingers there are out there blowing their weird tryhard dogwhistles and worse to realise that these people vote and that their votes add up.
@@ConvincingPeople No argument here. It never ceases to shock me just how many people are THAT hateful and bigoted, and yet I still can't help but laugh when I hear someone try to make an abbreviation of "cuckold" sound insulting because it tells me that they're too desperate to be insulting that they can't even do it properly.
The Highbrow Gamer At least we can tell that Starland Vocal Band are using their real voices. And probably real instruments. I feel like that's giving them too much credit, though. :
@kenterminatedbygoogle Agreed. Although, to be fair, I forgot how good "Don't" was. That's my fault though. It's catchy in all the right ways. Difficult to sing along to, but good to listen to. Makes you want to dance. Too bad I can't dance at all though. "Shape Of You" is still a dogshit song. Like Ed Sheeran could really get with a lady that pretty? I know I'M in no position to judge, being as ugly as I am, but I really don't want to imagine him with anyone. That burns my eyes just thinking about it.
@@hiimemily Holy crap, well, Soulja Boy's got them there, so that's like, 1 point in his corner. Also, he had like 3 hits, and made a crap game console, so he has like, 5 points in his favor, compared to these lame dance moms, silently whispering people to boogie. It's so sad, it's laughably bad. And I HATE Soulja Boy! Always have, always will. Even If he solved world hunger or found the cure for cancer, I'd still say he's a talentless hack douche; no matter what. But at least he's got 5 points! Don't spend them all in one place now!
I worked at Walt Disney World in 1976 and 77. Star land Vocal Band played 2 shows a night for like 2 or 3 days. They sang 2 songs you never heard, then Afternoon Delight, followed by confetti and fireworks then me and my crew had like 10 min's to completely clean up. I cringe every time I hear that song.
Regarding #1 - Half of the Starland Vocal Band were the husband wife duo of Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert. Bill and Taffy are best known for writing the original version of 'Take Me Home, Country Roads'. As a duo, they were touring and opening for John Denver. Denver heard the song and decided he wanted to sing it. He collaborated with them and re-worked the song into the version we all know today. Bill and Taffy performed on the studio version (Taffy is the female backing voice you hear) and often performed the song with John Denver over the years.
Fun fact about "Take Me Home Country Roads" was written about a real road in Maryland. Route 117 that started in Montgomery County, went into Fredrick County and into West Virginia, before I-270 was built.
Chicago was great before Terry Kath passed. Check out the live version of Make me Smile on here. Terry could sing and was a killer guitar player. I total agree with you about Peter though
Peter Cetera was a good vocalist and a good bassist before. Kind of like Demis Roussos. Then both discovered the ballads and... well, you guessed the end
(Yes, long. Sorry.) I was a sophomore in high school in 1976, and so in my pop-music-consumer prime (I had a serious fan-crush on a Top 40 DJ who called himself "Wonder Rabbit," if that tells you anything). And 1976 was a sucky, sucky year. We had just lost in Vietnam in an implosion of lies, incompetence, and wasted human lives; the Watergate investigation was revealing ever-lower sewer & sub-basement levels of conduct by the highest officials in the land; the economy was being tanked (as it were) by the previously-piddle-dunk oil sheiks of OPEC; and the vapidly unthreatening Gerald Ford had just handed the presidency over to the earnestly unthreatening Jimmy Carter. Yeah, there were bicentennial celebrations, but it was hard to know just what we were celebrating. That's why at least half of the songs on this list sound like dirges: it was also a dirge-ey kind of year. I found the Captain & Tennille cover of "Shop Around," bad as it was, actually a welcome relief from the other drek polluting the top 40. (Not that C&T can EVER be forgiven for the simpering atrocity of "Muskrat Love" (if only we'd had the International Tribunal in The Hague back then...).) "Disco Duck" was painful in itself, but made worse for li'l ol' Caucasian me by the racial tension underlying the whole "Death to Disco" craze. It was no longer acceptable to openly say bad things about black people, but (as long as you didn't mention its origins) you could rail on about a type of music unmistakably rooted among them. I mean, seriously, a bunch of white people rallying around a bonfire & burning things associated with black people? Does that remind you of anything at all? "Convoy." My mother, a country girl and country music fan, bought the album. "Convoy," awful as it was, was far & away the best song on it. Todd, the lyrics do make sense when translated from the CB lingo - puzzling them out and then congratulating yourself for having done so was the best thing about the song. And, yes, it was about evading the authorities; but with perfectly innocent loads, as detailed in those CB-enese lyrics. Todd mentioned the fuel shortages, which drove gas prices up and hit long haul-truckers very hard. The way to get your best gas mileage in a big rig is to start once, hit a steady speed well above the then-national speed limit of 55 mph, and stay there as long as possible. Each stop for a weigh station, mandatory rest period, etc hits truckers hard, right in the wallet - and that's without all the tolls, highway usage fees, and so on. Get a convoy of 20 or so trucks and it's too big too stop, especially if the lead truck is hauling explosives. Also, respect for authority was at a death-valley-level low, authorities like Richard Nixon and William Westmoreland having gone to great lengths to un-earn our respect. Vietnam vets especially had good reason not to give authority figures anything more than they already had, and many truckers were indeed vets. All this made evading "The Man" close enough to good clean fun to be the subject of a chart-topping country hit. 1976... there is not enough money in the universe to pay me to relive those halcyon days of my youth.
Oh, don't apologise! This is awesome. I love personal recollections of things that give the historical context behind popular stuff, and while I kinda knew/could guess most of the stuff you said here, there were definitely some interesting details I didn't know. (And SPEAKING of disrespect for authority...hello from 2017 America! (waves)) Also especially interesting to hear more about the trucker culture, because my dad was a trucker himself for DECADES. Including, yes, during this time period. Did he ever get on the CB and try to evade Smokey? Weeeellll...it's unlike him, but he _was_ all about pinching pennies... (He grew up in the Depression!) I was _technically_ around in 1976? but I was most likely seeing how my ring-stacking toy tasted and crawling around after the cat. It's the very tail end of the decade I have any pop memory of, and then, mostly just the kid stuff. _My_ "halcyon days of teenage youth" included the early '90s (which still makes me WAY older than most people reading this)--in which, among other things, a wimpy weaksauce president was getting us involved in a war in Asia which had nothing to do with us... ... Huh. At any rate, at least the GOOD music of '76 _was_ actually good--which is not something you can say for all the years Todd's done a retrospective on.
I remember that year as being really weak musically. Oh, some songs stood out, such as those by certain British musicians. They helped make this year a little more bearable. But so many songs of this year was stupid or sentimental dreck.
I mean, is Convoy a good song? No. Todd's a bit harsh (worse than Disco Duck?), but its not good. But, in most years (as in, years that aren't at the level of 1976 or 1984), I'd probably put Convoy low on a bottom 10, if at all.
@@Volvagia1927 I loved Convoy. But I was 8. But since little kids were as likely to buy a 45 as anyone else, it helps explain how crap like "Convoy", "The Streak" or "Disco Duck" became hits. It does not, however, explain "Afternoon Delight". That one's all on you, adults. I didn't even know what sex was.
1. I'll agree to disagree over "Shannon". I love that song. 2. Daryl and Catherine- The Captain and Tennille- were husband and wife. The Carpenters were brother and sister. A&M almost jumped the shark with them. They hardly promoted the Carpenters, but they were the act that kept Alpert and Moss in business 3. America covered "Muskrat Love" in 1973, three years before TC&T. 4. "If You Leave Me Now" sold by the shipping container load in many countries and was the #1 song for the year. 5. Shel Silverstein also drew a lot of the cartoons that appeared in 'Playboy' magazine. 6. You'll really hate Doctor Hook's "More Like the Movies" and some of their other super schmaltzy songs. 7. Charlene's "I've Never Been to Me" was released in 1976. That's invariably voted the worst pop song of all time. 1976 was over 45 years ago. My aching back!
While 'I've never been to me' was bad, it still wasn't as bad as the choices on this list and did not stay in the charts long enough nor get the airplay to get super-annoying.
Shel also wrote for Johnny Cash. He was widely known for his children's books and songs, and in addition to drawing cartoons for Playboy, he provided written material as well. One of my favorites was 'Rosalie's Good Eats Cafe', which he also illustrated. Mr. Silverstein is deeply missed.
I actually loved most of these songs. I even once named a cat after Mandy. I also considered naming one of my kids Shannon and my sister actually did. Now Disco Duck on the other hand …. When you mentioned sending shivers up the spine that was the song I thought of
Yeah but Disco Duck was just plain fun. I may be wrong but I never saw that song as taking itself seriously, it was a lark in the same vein as some of the songs by Ray Stevens.
The death of a family member that just happens to be four legged with fur has nothing to do with the aesthetic qualities of a bad song. For some people that may be the only companionship they had in years. If the song is insipid, it's insincerity stands on it's own lack of merit.
True, people who haven't had pets of their own don't understand how humans can develop strong bonds with them. I've had 3 dogs die on me and each time was heartbreaking. That song still sucks but I feel sorry for him nonetheless
I thought you were quoting this in response to our current gas shortage then I saw the date of the quote…. I wonder if you knew about COVID yet when you wrote this comment.
My senior class ('77) was cool. Our class song was Stairway to Heaven. The side of the 70's he presented is an embarrassment to the legends being born. Junior High - not so much: 8th grade class song for the formal was Precious & Few.
I'm a trucker and I would occasionally play Convoy but only for kicks. My take on the song was the truckers banning together in frustration over many seemingly pointless regulations. From my own experience, though frustrating, non of the regs. were pointless. As for Afternoon Delight... yeah I loved it. I know that a lot of people didnt, but the arrangements just worked for me. And yeah I would blast Afternoon Delight while driving my big rig 😉
Convoy captures a spirit of working class solidarity and camaraderie in a decade that saw several major strikes in the industry, from the Teamsters strike of 1970 to the Independent truckers of 1979. It's a goofy song on the surface, but is actually poignant when listened to in the full historical context, beyond the CB fad. Carter broke labor's back during the strike of 79 and Reagan dealt the death blow with the air traffic controllers. Convoy was a song about people from all walks of life-- including "long haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus"-- standing up against authority. Before it became cool to lick boots. 10-4
But, in the case of truckers, the solidarity was against the national 55mph speed limit. Imagine pre-speed limit when you could run across parts of the middle of nowhere at speeds close to 80 while making a good living being paid by the mile. Suddenly, the next day, you were making a third less money while keeping all the fixed costs of running a business.
And the two couples who comprised Starland were both divorced by the early 80s. Apparently, their afternoon delights were not enough to keep them together.
My favorite part of the video was when he was shitting on your extremely essential job, thanks for what you do, if it wasn’t for you guys we wouldn’t get the things we need, this guy clearly doesn’t get that with his “who wants to be a trucker comments” 🙄
I was a high school senior in 76... I agree with all of your list except for "if you leave me now" - I love that song... I got dumped in 76 and enlisted right after graduation... That song meant a lot to me then...
Honestly the case I would make for Michael Bolton is his comedy song work. The ballad he did for the IRS on Last Week Tonight always makes me laugh and I really enjoyed his song Jack Sparrow with the Lonely Island.
This list is gold! Couldn’t agree more with the critiques, EXCEPT for “Convoy.” All I can say is, “You had to be there in ‘76 to catch the vibe of this song.”
I WAS there. I was a kid in '76 and even had my own CB radio in my room. And I STILL couldn't figure out why we were making heroes out of the guys delivering dog food and tampons to the grocery store...
You have my sympathy & Todd's, I'm sure...The Maria-Oasis comment flashed me back to1974, just imagine being the DJ on duty late at night @most influential radio station in the World 102.3 WHFS, when the phone rings and the dude on the other end says..."Hey I'm Bill from Bill & Taffy..so excited to hear that Barry Manilow has a new record called "Mandy" will you spin it??.. I told him coming up right after Nilsson's "Breaking my heart" Bud!.. they don't talk to me to this day!!!
Sad but surprising fact - Starland Vocal Band (which did Afternoon Delight) actually got a six-week variety show on CBS because of that one hit (think there were 2 other minor hits from that album) - David Letterman was one of the writers. Hard to believe that a one-hit wonder can just get handed a show. Btw, whenever I think of Afternoon Delight I can't help thinking of that scene in Arrested Development when Michael and his niece start singing the song at karaoke and you can tell when it hits them what the song it about
@@jollyjohnthepirate3168 Ah couples that play in the same band - almost a guarantee that they will break up (but sometimes we get great songs out of it, i.e. Fleetwood Mac and The Mamas and the Papas)
Could listen to you play Rhiannon all day rather than hear the crap you featured. You are excellent and really funny. Please do more of your deep dives into the past worst/best of whatever year, though the worst are always funnier!
Make Me Smile was one of their best songs! Written by the trombone player, James Pankow. I don't think the band would have taken this "soft turn" if Terry Kath hadn't accidently shot himself
@@michaelgallagher3640 I never meant any disrespect to Terry Kath. I have a dry and morbid sense of humor and sarcasm runs in my veins. I LOVED Chicago and still do. Both with Terry: (Colour my World, Saturday in the Park, 25or6to4, Feeling Stronger Every Day, Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is, Just You and Me) and after Terry: (If You Leave Me Now, Hard to say I'm Sorry, You're the Inspiration and more). I honestly believe Peter Cetera carried the group well, even with all the ballads (Although, it did get a little hard to tell Chicago from Air Supply and Bread during that time). I am sympathetic towards the way he died (I had a near miss once myself with a roommate being careless and waving a gun around that he thought was empty and almost shot me in the same manor. Fortunately, when the gun went off it was pointing upwards towards the ceiling. Scared the hell out of us both). I did take your advice though and watched a fantastic documentary about Terry Kath. I'm not sure if you've seen this particular one but here's the link anyway th-cam.com/video/f7egJTtz10E/w-d-xo.html It not only tells his story and how he got Chicago started but also of Terry's daughters quest to locate one of his signature guitars. Very much worth the watch.
"If you leave me now" was constantly on the radio in 1976. There's nothing wrong with the song. There's a few sucky songs in there but perhaps what you're missing is the experience of having lived 1976.
Starland Vocal Band did have their own summer variety show. It introduced a young comedian to American audiences. David Letterman. One step back. Two forward.
Woah! I can't believe Todd has officially been running this channel for 47 years! This dude deserves a medal...
Todd is a time lord and he doesn't really talks about it because he doesn't want to show his age / power.
can’t believe peter cetera really sang “uwu no baby please don’t go” in if you leave me now
UwU no pwease dont go🥺
I can't unhear that now. Thanks.
@@fish4814 I can unhear it, though.
I also hear that ever since I heard of UwU .
Thanks I hate it
Fun fact: the captains real name is Daryl Dragon. Why the hell would you need a stage name?
+Mike White
That... is SO badass.
Dreigonix Probably the most badass name ever. Why, would you ever hide it?! Or at least call yourself Captain Dragon? Doesn’t that at least sound better than the boring, bland name of the captain?
Fun Fact Toni Tenille sang backup vocals on Pink Floyd's "The Wall"
@Leftmont Rimose No offense dude, but you should've been more specific.
I don't think he could've been a very convincing Daryl Dragon; that implies a harder sound that doesn't remind you of 8 mormons with a rightfully forgotten variety show living in a house together. A character from Love Boat, on the other hand? Well, I sure as shit don't plan on watching it, as I'm on a strict "no cornballs" diet, and if the glove fits, wear it.
Fun fact: Terry Kath, the guitar player for Chicago, did not play on this song and was not happy with the direction of the band. He was supposedly going to leave the band and start his own band but he died tragically.
I think this is the first "fun fact" I've ever seen that ends with "but he died tragically"!
Not much of a fun fact, to be honest. 😅
True story he died after jokingly putting a pistol in his mouth and reassuring his nervous friend “don’t worry it’s not loaded”. It was in fact loaded
Not Fun at all.
@@TheHappyHonu more of a "sobering fact", I'd say
As has been said elsewhere here, the convoy isn't smuggling anything - they grouped together to beat the 55 mph. ("double-nickel") speed limit imposed during the first oil crisis in the 70s. Since nobody liked that, and in the case of trucks they argued the slower speed WASTED fuel (apparently it doesn't, but those studies came later) in addition to adding two hours a day to every eight hours they drove, truckers "put the hammer down" (pushed down the gas pedal) and went 70 or 75 miles an hour like they originally did.
The police were ordered to ticket every truck they caught exceeding the 55 mph. speed limit because they pushed the "flow of traffic" to go faster (if you're obeying the 55 mph. speed limit and a truck barrels down on you at 75 mph., are you going to stay in your lane at 55 or speed up?). That's why the trucks started driving in convoys over popular trucking routes, to strain the state highway patrols past their limits - a cop could ticket one truck doing 75 on the freeway, but what do you do when a dozen or more trucks show up at once all doing 75 mph.? They'd need one cop car for every truck, and that's on one highway!
This video is funny in hindsight considering Todd is now the kind of person I imagine would write a song about his dog dying.
I'm just waiting for his "My dog died" post on Twitter so I can say, "Oh boo hoo the doggie's dead, I'm a 12 year old girl!"
@@JimmySteller Oh I know, I wouldn't actually do that. Todd didn't @ Carl Wilson when he said that so I wouldn't do that to him.
not you - He would kill your cat and nail it to the door. :-)
Remember, Peter Cetera killed Todd's dog...
Felix Brown Bryan Adams did. It wouldn’t be posted online, Adams would sue
Irony: Barry Manilow did not write the song "I Write the Songs."
He was known for writing commercial jingles, but I don't think he was responsible for writing any of his hit songs. That's one reason why the song sucks to me. He's just flat-out lying!
@@waynechapman9823 most of them no. I think he wrote Copacabana and Could It Be Magic, but not most of them like Mandy and I Write The Songs
One of the Beach Boys wrote it for him.
Bruce Johnson from the beachboys wrote that Song for Barry Manilow.
My sister’s friend worked the green room at the big arena outside of Chicago. By far the most uppity diva artist she dealt with was Barry Mannilow. The coolest was David Bowie.
That sounds so right to me
@@marteinnreimarsson2441 It’s been years, but she reported that when she asked him if he wanted coffee or tea, etc. he said something like “Do you know who you’re talking to!? Don’t even look at me.” This girl was a sweetheart. How ridiculous.
Ian Hunter is a link between David Bowie and Barry Manilow. David Bowie wrote "All The Young Dudes" for Mott the Hoople, which was fronted by Ian Hunter. Ian Hunter wrote "Ships," which was covered by . . . Barry Manilow.
@@stevenmaginnis1965 What are you? Six Degrees of Barry Manilow? Ha ha ha! That is pretty crazy trivia!
@@stevenmaginnis1965 So what I'm getting from this is that there's a link between David Bowie and the Presidents of the United States of America, via the latter's cover of Hunter's "Cleveland Rocks".
"I hate this man's voice. It resonates at just the right frequency to piss me off." this is my favorite statement todd has ever made
"Peter Cetera Killed My Dog"
See, I always thought that hating somebody voice like that was a bit harsh, until I realise that Henning May's voice pisses me off in the same way.
For me, it's Fran Drescher's insufferable nasal whine, so I get it.
Highly underrated
That’s how I feel about AC/DC.
I just recently heard Afternoon Delight on a commercial in 2015.
More proof that marketers are not human beings.
+helios5868 Afternoon Delight is where most of the suck from 1976 went. Think of it as the musical equivalent of a toxic dump site.
Rachel J Can't we just agree that in either case, that song is godawful?
The only good use of Afternoon Delight was in Anchorman
Ratel.H Badger Damn straight. That's what I've been trying to say. I mean, I've got Anchorman on DVD, and I even liked listening to the version of afternoon delight that Will Ferrell and his friends made. At least they sounded like they were trying, and Will's character was supposed to be a 70's sex symbol, so it made sense he'd make a song like that. And, he's a way better singer too, because he's actually talented, unlike the ugly, untalented losers who made the song originally. That song was made to be parodied. But Anchorman was the only one to do that right.
@@shawnfields2757 What about "Good Will Hunting"?
I love this dude’s analysis. He clearly knows his music and does his research. Even when I don’t fully agree or even familiar with a particular artist, I still enjoy his videos and eagerly await the next. 👍🏽
In a list compiled in 2022, Billboard named "Afternoon Delight" the 21st-sexiest song of all time. Apparently only 21 songs have ever been recorded in human history.
No way. It's literally the weird incest karaoke in Arrested Development 😂
late comment but i just checked this list and good lord. captain and tounille is at 8th place and WAP doesn’t even crack the top 40 while LMFAO does
@jamess3781 WAP isn’t really sexy, just gross
@@jamess3781WAP isn't really a sexy song. A funny one, but too over the top sledgehammer-subtle to really be turned on by.
That whole "boogie" thing in the '70s had me confused. Some of the songs said to get up and boogie, others said to get down and boogie. Up? Down? How do I decide? I settled that whole question by embracing punk in 1977.
In the words of George Michael "You gotta get up to get down". (Lyrics of Fast Love)
Disco Duck doesn't sound like Donald Duck, he sounds more like Yacky Duck, that little yellow duck from the Tom and Jerry cartoons, just saying, maybe it's only my opinion.
Oh, right….because Punk had all their sh_it together, huh? LOL! And I love Punk.
@@thathawaiiandude787 What can I say? It made my chakras spin. That's all I ask of music.
Lol priceless comment my friend
Not fair to compare The Carpenters to Captain and Tennille. Karen Carpenter had one of the great voices in all of pop music. Yes, they cut some corny songs, but they did far more melancholy stuff like "Goodbye to Love" and "I Need to Be In Love". I'll defend the Carpenters all day. Captain and Tennille would be more comparable to Donny and Marie IMO.
Yes! And for what it's worth, Karen Carpenter was a crazy good drummer. Just a wildly talented, beautiful lady surrounded by toxic people.
So true! I read a biography about her not long ago, her brother said she always considered herself a drummer who happened to sing. She took up the drums as a kid just to hang out with her brother Richard who was considered the musical prodigy in the family. They formed a jazz trio, and she only sang because the others didn't want to. When they sent out demo tapes, they were turned down by everybody because they were so different than what was going on at the time. Herb Alpert said the minute he heard her voice coming through the stereo with Richard's arrangement, he knew they were something special, he just didn't know if it would sell. The remarkable thing is, she had no vocal training AT All, she wasn't considered the talented one by her family (when they got famous, her mom couldn't understand why she got the attention instead of Richard). Phenomenally talented woman, her death was utterly tragic.
@@davidmonypeny5734 you summed it up perfectly. The mother was all about the brother, and never really supported Karen. Her voice was so beautiful and special...and Karen herself was a silly, goofy, humble girl who never took herself too seriously. I've seen numerous clips of her dancing like a goober, making goofy faces at people, etc. I'm so glad that eating disorderś are much better understood now- I just wish that those around her had stepped up and helped Karen way sooner. Her disorder was triggered by a writer who continually called her "chubby". Nothing wrong with being chubby--- I certainly am! But at no point EVER was Karen Carpenter "chubby". She was always tall and slender, and just absolutely beautiful. Her tragic end breaks my heart to this day.
Yeah, her death just gutted me. You're right in that perhaps the only silver lining was that we now understand more about eating disorders and that's due in large part to her death. I read where a lot of her friends were concerned about her, in this book I read when they expressed their concern to her she'd just say she was trying to lose a few pounds. She was probably in denial and frankly there was not much known about anorexia and bulimia. I also think she would have preferred just to sing behind the drums, as she did when they first started. Her management and Richard convinced her that she was the lead singer and she needed to be seen, nobody could see her behind the drums, so that also added to her body issues. Olivia Newton John was one of her best friends, she got to see Karens goofy side and thought that it was crazy that she thought she needed to lose weight. Plus when all this was going down, she was married to an absolute creep who lied to her about having money and basically leeched off her the whole time. I was around 15 when she died (I kind of listened to them on the sly, it was definitely not cool to be into the Carpenters in the mid '80's!) and their music is as timeless now as it was then.
BTW, the solo album she did that her record company shelved came out a few years ago and it's really not bad. It's a little too disco for me, but she did a GREAT cover of Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years."
Shannon, came out right around the time my Mom had Passed Away after a long horrific battle with Cancer. She was 38, I was 16. I found the song very soothing/calming during those Dark Days.
I liked it too
Oh honey, I'm so sorry. That kind of loss is absolutely devastating. My mother is 76, so I'm trying to spend as much time with her as I can. Whether your grieving the loss of someone as important in your life as your mother, or grieving the he loss of a companion animal (the theme of the song), it can feel like torture. 💔
In the 80s I knew a girl named Shannon. One year instead of a birthday, she had a death-day, with a fake funeral. This was the theme song.
The first ever song was “Ow my foot!” Sung by a caveman who accidentally dropped a rock on it.
Hell of a banger. 😆
And Barry wrote it
Ah, I see someone's seen History of the World Part 1.
@@DarthUmbra 👍
The birth of the hard rock genre
It's so funny hearing Todd trivialize a song about a dead dog when he himself posts 10+ times per day about his dog Amy. Not saying the song's good, but still lol.
At least she's his dog. Gross never met Wilson's Shannon.
@@AzraelNewtype0079 Does that matter? If you sympathize with someone who’s lost someone dear, it doesn’t make a difference.
A few years ago, he said that he still hates that song, but now for totally different reasons. I imagine that it either doesn't capture what it's like to lose a pet very well, or more likely, Todd just doesn't want to think about a dog passing away.
My parents and I were listening to the radio the other day and Shannon came on. I told them the story behind it. My mom said "that makes more sense" and my dad turned the radio off and said "I really don't want to listen to a dead dog song."
Never kill the dog is not a movie trope for nothing.
Casey Kasem was your dad?
DEAAAD PUPPIEEES AIN'T MUUUCH FUUUN
@@skatscan Oh cool! The original voice of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo was your dad? Good to know. What was he like, as a person?
@@annnee6818 Why is it a trope? I mean, I'm not condoning dog killing, I'm just wondering why that would be a trope.
So apparently Tennille divorced the captain in 2014 after he was diagnosed with a medical condition that cause him to have severe tremors. She blindsided him with the divorce and said she divorced him due to lack of affection while he was in a drugged up state to manage his condition. That bitch! Love Will Keep Us Together, my ass!
Pure gold digging and yet he stuck with her as a “close friend” until he passed a short few years later. Even when she released a memoir trashing him and his legacy. It’s depressing
@@thatguyfromak5190 WELL that whole situation is just, awful.
Jesus that's terrible. Poor Captain!
How that's awful
Sounds like Roger Waters learned something from Toni Tennille in 1979!
So frickin' funny! I'm an old guy that graduated highschool in 1976, and Todd has nailed it! Yeah, we did deserve the gas crisis.
Thanks Todd for bringing back the good, and the bad, from 1976. It's too bad I threw away that blue leisure suit I wore to grad night, 'cause I now have this yearning to put it on (for the 2nd time, no one in history has worn a leisure suit twice) and to "Get Up and Boogie!"!
It's amazing how much fashion changed in 2 years. I graduated in '74 (We're the best,
Say no more!
Senior class of '74!)
And no one would have been caught dead in a polyester leisure suit. We were still in the generation of ripped bell bottom jeans, floppy hats, and Nehru jackets. And birkenstock sandals. The kids in Dazed and Confused were more like us and they were supposed to be 1976. I went to school in Texas, too, and we would have killed for Aerosmith tickets!
I kick myself for donating my husband's
orange leisure suit to charity. It was a classic.
i did in '77! Could not agree more!!!!
@@KatLover-ou3sw - I had a shrimp-colored leisure suit I wore. My then-girlfriend (later my wife, much later my ex) went through my clothes and threw it out, along with any polyester double-knit slacks she found. We then went and bought chinos-later I started buying cargo pants one I started carrying around a mobile phone and other things in my pockets....
What horrifies me that people went to record stores in 1976 and walked past Station to Station and The Alan Parsons Project so they could pick up the new Starland Vocal Band record.
Alan Parsons Project is amazing!!!
That is a frightening thought. I actually got the album "Inside Star Trek" and a record of Disney songs that year. I was 11 years old and a nerd from day one... lol.... I didn't know what Afternoon Delight was anyway.
Imagine the fking dissapointment
Oh boy! I can't wait for the new Starland Vocal Band record! *After record* I- oh. Oh god no.
@Gabe Davis 1. It's a joke
2. That was over a year ago
3. People should be allowed to listen to whatever they want, even if the thought of them doing it is horrifying. There's nothing wrong with feeling the wrong emotion about something if you understand that you shouldn't be feeling that emotion and that emotion isn't translated into harmful actions.
4. You can't reasonably not make fun of people who like Starland Vocal Band. It's physically impossible. And if you are someone able to resist the urge, you shouldn't get mad at people for making fun of a band that all critics would agree got way more success than they deserved.
5. I bet you that those people would've loved Station to Station and just didn't know of it at the time, and that's fine. I'm just commenting on how in hindsight the fact that this particular thing happened makes me feel a fucking emotion.
Todd pre-Amy has a very different view on dogs.
He also just used to be more of a too cool for feelings edgelord
Well, Barry Manilow *did* write the songs that made the whole world sing;
"I am stuck on Band-Aid brand, 'cause Band-Aid stuck on me"
"Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there."
"You deserve a break today..."
To be fair, Barry didn't write the last of those jingles, for McDonald's, he just sang on the original commercial. The first two were his compositions.
More like "I write the songs that make the ad agencies sing."
And ironically, Barry Manilow didn’t write “I Write The Songs”, Bruce Johnston did.
@@michaelbarbour9827 who was....wait for it....a Beach Boy...yet another connection for this list
Give your face something to smile about with Stridex.
Afternoon Delight appealed to prepubescent girls. It was a "cute" song. I was one of those girls. I'm sure I have the 45 in my dusty old record case. I also bought a shirt that had "Afternoon Delight" on it! No, I did not know what it meant, but my mom did...and she wouldn't let me out of the house wearing it!
My and my bestie had no clue 🤣
My mom had me listening to her Van Halen CDs when I was a toddler. I would even sing along to “Black and Blue” when I was about four years old, just because those’re my favorite colors. I did eventually realize what the song was about and asked my mom about it when I was a preteen, and she claimed that she had never noticed what the lyrics were, even though being huge Sammy Hagar fans is pretty much the only thing my parents have in common.
This reminds me of one of my best friends, who has a T-shirt of two skeletal hands printed where her breats would be. Although, in this case, she knows 100% what that means, while her mother believes the hands are just hugging her. I'm not that well versed with sex, but even I'm not that naive.
All I think about with that song is Arrested Development
The Starland Vocal Band won a grammy for best new artist beating out Boston. Can you imagine a member of Boston where that first album every song on it was a hit and losing out to Starlight Vocal Band? The horror.
Every song on the album _Boston_ was *not* a hit. And if you ever heard them live you would *not* be impressed.
Buuut having made that clear... yeah, to loose to _StarLAND Vocal Band_ can't really be justified.
@@donarthiazi2443 I'd say that the first Boston album didn't have a bad song on it. The hits were good, and the others they play on the radio were also not too bad. But live? No way they were going to reproduce that on stage, considering almost all of the first album was performed by Tom Scholz, except the vocals and some instrumentation by a couple of the other band members. Them losing to Starland Vocal Band was definitely a WTF moment.
@@fordid42
Good comment.
I hated Boston, they sounded like fifty people singing, but I can’t rem remember the star band , sorry for hating but I had to share my yuck Boston
@@donarthiazi2443 I have heard them in person and they rocked!
Speaking of weird novelty hit songs from the UK, did you know that the Bob the Builder theme song was the number one song of the year in 2001 (I believe)?
MnMsandOreos two number ones as well. After he got the Christmas number one, the next year he had a number one with a cover of Mambo No.5 (making it one of three songs to top the charts twice in the UK with different lyrics along with Do They Know It's Christmas? and Three Lions)
MnMsandOreos I was born that year and I loved that show when I was a kid lol 😂
As well as the theme to TeleTubbies. Bob the Builder was a big hit in Aus as well.
it only makes sense that the bob the builder theme was a number one hit the year i was born. my whole existence is sheer clownery.
Eww
I really don't want to think about those people having sex, especially when that man is smiling at me like that.
A friend of mine has been a radio producer for 40 yrs. He met Capt and Tennille. The Capt was not as outgoing as she was, but they were both nice people. The Capt was most interested in the equipment in the studio.
As I understand it he was autistic
Why didn't Todd mention that Toni Tennille' s hair style was worn by everyone from todlers to grandmas . The Farrah Fawcett and the Jennifer Aniston weren't nearly as popular .
From what I read, it sounds like he was autistic to a certain degree. Their marriage was very one-sided unfortunatley.
"Never before has there been a sex song this unsexy"....Oh Todd...Just wait until 2015 when Charlie Puth unleashes "Marvin Gaye" to the world...
He said BEFORE, not after.
i believe you guys are forgetting that pillow talk by Zayn Malik exist or tonight I'm fucking you by Enrique Iglesias (which is arguably way better with the radio version) like yes charlie's song is a big ol boring snooze fest but at least it doesn't feel like a brick being repeatedly dropped on your nuts by Zayn or like one of the dudes from night at the roxbury tried to have a music career
I will forever stand by Ignition by R Kelly being the least sexy song ever. I do not want the toot toot, R Kelly. Do not give me the beep beep.
Let's butcher an artists' legacy by referring to one of his songs as him. Let's Marvin Gaye and get it on... you can't MARTIN GAYE anything... idiots!!! I refuse to even try let myself find something nice about the song... I just hate it for its grammatical error!
And we can even add "Shape Of You" to the mix.
a) I was 10 in 1976. I liked Get Up And Boogie.
b) That's a German audience. They always look like that.
@TC Fenstermaker That crowd even slept on Boney M. 😤😤😤ingrates
@TC Fenstermaker Just watching this video again (lockdown is getting repetitive) and I just wondered whether German audiences were randomised, like you could apply to be in a TV audience but the show you got to be the audience for was just pot luck. Those Disco 19xx audiences seem to be full of people you wouldn't expect to flock to a pop music show.
@TC Fenstermaker Oh no, someone doesn't know every single detail about a random German show? How scandalous!
@TC Fenstermaker This is a comedy show, not strictly about the music like other TH-cam music reviewers. He sometimes omits things and gets stuff wrong on purpose for the joke, such as when he pretended he didn’t know what Wicked was to riff on the song Defying Gravity (“are they best friends? Lovers? Rebelling against the government?”)
I swear to god that every time, not some of the time, not half of the time, but ALL OF THE TIME I went into Pizza Hut as a kid in the mid 70's "If You Leave Me Now" always at some point was chosen on the juke box (A few years later it was replaced by "Take It To The Limit"as the always on the juke box at Pizza Hut) In regards to Afternoon Delight, I was 10 years old in 1976. One summer afternoon while in the car with my mom and dad the song came on the radio. So I asked what is Afternoon Delight? My mom, without missing a beat, told me that Afternoon Delight was about having a banana split on a 4th of July afternoon. I bought it because of skyrockets in flight although I did question myself as to why a fireworks display would begin in the afternoon when everyone knows that fireworks displays happen after the sun sets. No matter, I believed what I was told because I wanted to believe in what I was told.
Todd eventually dedicating a full episode to Disco Duck makes me happy.
those who do not learn from history (Chicago) are doomed to repeat it (Maroon 5)
😂
They actually weren't bad for the first five albums or so. But then Terry Kath shot himself, which I think of as the night Chicago died. (Too soon?)
@@kenterminateddq5311 nah Imagine Dragons always sucked they had one good song and that is it
@@dadoctah Maroon 5 weren't bad for their first three albums either.
truth
The song Convoy was written to protest the speed limit being lowered to 55mph. The truckers said their trucks used more fuel than if they went 70mph. It was killing the owner/operators who usually had to pay for their own fuel. And this was during the gas crunch 70s.
A "cab-over Pete with a reefer on" is a flat fronted Peterbilt with a refrigerating unit on the trailer.
(No, I'm not a truck driver, I just pay attention.
Oh, and the first CW McCall who recorded Convoy, took his real name back, and started a group called Mannheim Steamroller.
And a song that contains this line canNOT be all bad:
And eleven, longhaired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus. Those lyrics are classics in the world of American music.
I totally agree. Convoy rocked, and still rocks. Thanks for the lesson on its meaning.
Yup, everything you said is accurate and anyone wondering why truck drivers "were suddenly heros" has zero idea what a shitstorm we'd be in the middle of if truck drivers just decided to stop hauling
we had the 45 as kids - thanks for putting your foot down, so to speak, on this one, good buddy
i did not know that "convoy" was a protest song
You're right that It was a protest song about the 55 mph speed limit that was imposed by the government. But additionally a protest song about governmental intervention in general I think. In addition to the speed limit, it was the highway tolls imposed and the weigh stations restrictions and probably a few other things as well. 1976, best time of my life.
Just to shed a little light on Toni Tennille , she played the electric piano for the Beach Boys on their 1972 tour. I believe, she was the only female member the Beach Boys ever hired. And she sang backing vocals on Pink Floyd's The Wall.
she also was on background vocals for Stephen Still's Manassas album
Shocking !!
Not sure Toni sang on The Wall, but she was the voice of the woman Pink brought home... "Oh wow, what a fabulous room! Are all these your guitars?" ... "Are you feeling OK?" etc
@@johngeoffrion4590 yes she also sang on the album
@@paisleybabee You are correct. And that wasn't her talking either, that was Trudy Young. My bad.
To their credit, Starland Vocal Band did hire a young comedy writer named David Letterman and gave him airtime on their TV show. (And yes, he's easily the best thing about the show.)
And I'm a little shocked that you didn't mention that "Convoy" was turned into a very bad movie ... or that the co-writer of "Convoy" was the guy who turned Mannheim Steamroller into an easy listening money-making machine.
But yeah, this is a pretty solid list.
You didn't like Convoy??
@@DOSRetroGamer, I actually do like "Convoy." I remember taping it off the radio when I was a kid in '76, and I knew it word-for-word. But I wouldn't call it a great song -- it's more of a guilty pleasure song. Yeah, C.W. McCall's rap is cool, but let's face facts: The chorus sounds like it was sung by Up With People.
@@TheHappyHonu I don't really care about the song, I was surprised how anyone could dislike the movie 😃
The Jacksons had a variety show on CBS in 1976. Yes, including Michael. Also featuring a very young Janet, whom many called the best actor on the show. She went on to some TV guest roles (including Willis' girlfriend on "Diff'rent Strokes) before transitioning to music.
In the October 1984 Playboy Interview, Letterman says, of his time on the Starland Vocal Band show, "Of course, back then, no one could have forseen their astronomical success."
As one who was a child in 1976, I want to defend or at least explain Disco Duck. Roller rinks at least around here used to be a lot more common than they are now. Disco Duck was a staple of any big event (like a roller rink party) involving lots of kids younger than 13. I have good memories of it (and to a lesser extent Convoy), but then I'm pretty much the exact age and demographic for those songs. And no they didn't age well and yes I do cede that they were dumb.
As for those other eight musical disasters, I got nothin'.
@@ignatiusjackson235 There's no intellectually honest defense of Disco Duck, which makes Convoy look like Pachelbel's Canon by comparison.
I WAS 6 YEARS OLD IN '76. I REMEMBER YOU SHOULD BE DANCING, LET 'EM IN, ROCK N' ROLL MUSIC, AND YOU'RE MY BEST FRIEND.
Pachelbel’s Canon? You mean the song that was very near to being forgotten in history until someone turned it into the wedding song?
I was a teenager then, and if people don't understand what Disco Duck was quacked up to be, that's their loss.
@@GerardPerry Pachelbel Canon isn't exactly a masterpiece, so not sure what you're saying.
“I am music, I wrote disco duck”
I wrote girls like you
@Tee Wew28 Disco Duck is a better song than We Built this City.
@Tee Wew28 I know it was a joke. My point still stands.
"I am music, and I wrote Afternoon Delight".
@@theman4884 I like We Built this City
The way Todd feels about Peter Cetera is the way I feel about Michael Buble. Everytime I hear Buble, I'm instantly in a bad mood. His voice isn't bad or anything, it just pisses me off. He seems like the kind of guy that's nice on the outside, but when you get to know him he's a douchebag.
His Douchbagyness really comes out in his cover of Santa Baby
not another theatre trash channel For me, it's Charlie Puth. I'm sure he's a decent guy, but I cannot stand his singing voice. Or his face. I don't know why.
Michael Buble sounds like a sugar-free version of Barry Manilow. His voice doesn't convey anything, it just makes the notes. At least Peter could emote when he wanted to. Chicago started out awesome (and Terry Kath is the greatest guitarists to ever be underutilized), but within a few albums everyone was pulling the message in a different direction. I would say that the VI to VII transition is where things started to fall apart and then once Terry was gone, they were just adrift. 17 was a great pop album, if you don't try to reconcile it with the band behind it. Everything after that is the sound of trying too hard. Look Away?! Really? I could imagine Aerosmith belching that one out.
@droma lloma I'm sure I could figure out why Charlie Puth is detestable. It's as Todd stated multiple times, he's a kid wearing his dad's clothes, who has absolutely NO sex appeal at all, and this is coming from me, a dude who has no sex appeal at all either. But at least I don't go around pretending like I'm the sexiest dude around. And because of the abomination of a song he made with Meghan Trainor, remember(if you've seen Todd's worst of 2015 list, I mean), that's enough reasoning to want to hate Charlie Puth. At least for me.
For me it's Adam Levine and that douchebag from Train.
I loved this! This is the first TH-camr that I (mostly) agree with when it comes to crappy music. And I grew up in the 70s when this garbage was popular. Thanks for giving me a few good laughs, & a trip down memory lane. Some of the songs I did like, but in '76 I was only 11, so most of the time I didn't even know what the songs were about. Once I got a little older I started to understand what sucked & why.
You’re the same age as my dad lol
Okay, here is a history lesson about the 70's truck craze, as presented by my mother who was a teenager in that decade. Apparently, truckers were known to be completely reckless drivers. They were trying to evade the cops because they going about 30 miles above the speed limit.
They still do! I'm a swamper and every trucker in the crew I work with all speed like crazy.
This is true. And also, they were viewed as the "cowboys" of the time. But instead of driving cattle, they were driving merchandise across the country.
ChaleeRenee Really? Truckers were viewed as cowboys of the 70's? I mean, not actual cowboys, but as what the media says were cowboys? I don't have anything against truckers or cowboys though.
@@shawnfields2757 Well, yes. They did view themselves as cowboys, because of instead of running cattle, they were running cargo for the benefit of everyone. It's a metaphor. Or maybe I should say they viewed themselves as cowboys. Cowboys of the open road.
@@shawnfields2757 The 1970's truckers craze was directly proportional to the Interstate Highway act of 1956.
"If I squint my ears" I'm using that now.
5:21 Wow Shaggy just dropped two F bombs and a GD bomb. Zoinks.
+kenterminatedbygoogle Cause the guy speaking in that clip Casey was the original voice of Shaggy from Scooby Doo
And he was talking about a dog dying XD GODFUCKING DAMMIT SCOOB
Don't forget he was in superfriends as Robin the boy wonder
Cliffjumper's really miffed that he got dispatched to the boonies because the kid thought the car that hit his dog was a Decepticon.
Todd's humor is like his room: kinda dark. Yet, I was laughing a lot as he skewered these bad songs, and I have 45s of some of these songs in a box in my basement!
“She was only sixteen,”
“FBI OPEN U-“
“But I was seventeen,”
“Oh, nevermind,”
Well at least it wasn't the Waffen SS busting in on some Nazi kid.
He was a lying he was really 59
callmecarson drama
For what it's worth: Todd later said Rock and Roll Music bumped Shannon off the list because...well, anyone who's seen his Twitter knows how a song about dogs connects a lot more with him now.
I know this is an old comment but where did he say this, I'm genuinely curious in finding it
@@andrewc.4471 He didn't. He's doubled down on Shannon being terrible on his twitter when people say "u like dogs now Todd, so u must like Shannon!!" and he was like "no".
Use twitter search, you can find him ranting about it.
@@medes5597 Huh! Was not aware. Thanks!
@Gabe Davis A great sentiment does not a good song make.
I live less than a mile from the studio where Disco Duck was recorded.
Ah yes the holy land.
You have been chosen... To cleanse that tainted temple... With f i r e
Cool.
Disco duck probably killed disco?
Should be a Superfund site
If you want a MUCH better song about a dead dog, check out Sickness Unto You by Trivium. It's about the vocalist having to put down his family dog after being on the road for years and therefore not being around much for her in her final years.
Great song, I recommend Bronte by Gotye. Beautiful song that brings me to tears.
While about a dead cat,type o negatives bloody kisses is also great
I can't hear 'If You Leave Me Now' without thinking about how Butters is constantly singing it to himself on 'South Park.'
Or Trevor Phillips crying to it in GTA V.
I can’t help but picture Spike Jones leaping away from a car exploding from a missile launcher (Three Kings).
Brigit Bryner Lol 😂
@flmbyz Well, that's 3 good situations to listen to "If You Leave Me Now". And I was thinking Chicago were entirely worthless as a group. But, at least there's Shaun Of The Dead, GTA V, and South Park. I didn't like Shaun Of The Dead for a while because people made fun of me for having the same name as the lead character. But, that was when I was in school. It's one of my favorite movies nowadays.
Shawn Fields Their early albums before their original lead guitarist and bandleader accidentally shot himself are actually pretty fun. Very high-energy big band jazz-inflected '70s rock with a solid grasp of groove and just the right level of cheese. Unfortunately, after the aforementioned Terry Kath died, the band understandably lost a lot of momentum and sold out *hard* by the end of the '70s.
Todd mocking Shannon is really funny now that Todd loves his dogs.
To be fair though, the music and that fucking horrible falsetto make the song sound extremely lame. it sounds like a parody of a sad song.
@Gabe Davis OK, now I've seen you post in multiple comments about being ready to harrangue Todd when his dog dies. You're not mentally healthy. Please seek help, for the sake of us all.
That Casey Kasem outburst is fricken legendary.
It is? I wish id heard it before now. Hearing the first voice of Shaggy from Scooby Doo, screaming out, and I quote: "This is the last god-goddamned time, I want someone to use his fucking brain, gotta hear a fucking song about a fucking dog dying!!" Is hilarious! I replayed that part like 6 or 7 times!
I worked at a small radio station for awhile in the mid '80's and, trust me, we ALL heard it. Remember it was pre-internet, so the fact that it got around to all of us, it was pretty remarkable. Plus we all could identify, because we were all forced to play complete garbage, so it was cool to hear a big nationally syndicated DJ completely lose it.
@@davidmonypeny5734 Good to know, thanks. And, have a great day/night.
@@shawnfields2757 it's a legendary outtake - up there with the Orson Welles rant ("it doesn't make any sense! LISTEN TO ME") when he was doing the voice over for a frozen food company and the Bill O'Reilly meltdown that got leaked in the 90s ("Fuck it! WE'LL DO IT LIVE!!"). I had a friend who has gigabytes upon gigabytes of weird outtakes, rants and mistakes from TV and Radio that most people aren't aware even exist.
Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars...to pet your doggie in heaven.
Rest In Peace CW McCall. No doubt putting the hammer down in heaven
8:30 You will never hear Todd say those words again after 2015
He literally gave one song he liked from him and it wasn't even a soft rock song.
Fight the real enemy.
Bryan Addams may not be WORSE than Peter Cetera, but he’s definitely BLANDER.
I straight up lost it when "Disco Duck" came on. Just, laughing to the point of tears in my eyes in 5 AM delirium at the visuals and the fact that the performing group called themselves "Rick Dees and his Cast of Idiots."
I'm pretty sure that Todd was the one who called them Rick Dees and his cast of idiots. Still funny regardless.
@@shawnfields2757 they're referred to as such on Wikipedia too... Maybe Todd is affecting Wikipedia?
@@TheScorpionStrike Maybe. Either way, they're idiots.
They actually were called that. I think even my 9 year old self thought it was stupid and it was EVERYWHERE. I ALMOST want to hear Disco-rilla" now but I WILL NOT put myself through the torture!
David Monypeny Wow. They were seriously called Rick Dees and His Cast Of Idiots? Well, points for being self-aware.
Peter Cetera kinda sounds like the Adam Levine of the 70s and 80s.
James McKenzie Maybe, but Levine was at least good at one point in time. Peter Cetera was NEVER good. And also, ugly and had a creepy face.
Nah, Levine's even worse. At least Cetera sounds like a human. Adam just sounds like a malfunctioning vocaloid.
Was Cetera as overexposed and oversaturating the charts like with Adam?
@@leetorry Yup. Very much so. I dunno if he had the same douchey persona, though.
@@WobblesandBean Are you referring to Adam or Cetera? After watching the Chicago documentary I have mixed feelings for Pete that Bowie lookin mofo.
I completely understand that song about the dog. There's no. possible. way I could listen to it without crying. Thank God this isn't 1976, I couldn't handle it being played everywhere.
'Only Sixteen' is particularly annoying in my case. My parents were obscenely conservative and when I was a teenager, I was allowed to date, BUT, no joke, the guy COULD NOT under any circumstances be any older than one year from me. Every guy I met, they would first ask him his birth year and if it happened to be 1977+ instead of 1978, then it was bye bye birdie. You have no idea how annoying this was. I got some pretty entertaining revenge, though. I met my husband just after my senior year at high school and I just knew this guy was the one. He was everything I'd always wanted...and he was FOUR years older than me, practically an old lecher in my parents' eyes. I told him the situation and he told me he'd just tell them what they wanted to hear. So we made up the idea that he was just two months ahead of me and of course, that's all my idiotic parents cared about. He could've been a psychotic pervert and they wouldn't have cared, honestly. Luckily, he was a perfect gentleman, we shared the same hobbies and heck, we even spent the next year planning our birthdays together and he attended community college with me under the guise as a freshman like me. Amazingly, it never slipped out. So when we decided to get married, we chose to let the cat out of the bag during the ceremony. We brought in our birth certificates and used these in our vows, declaring our birth years and announcing that it only took four years for God to make his other half. My parents wigged out during the reception and refused to look at us and my dad even called security on my husband under suspicion of pedophilia (I was twenty five)
The story has a happy ending, though. With the birth of their first grandchild three years later, they finally forgave us. XD
+Jennifer Ellison
Aww...! I hope you and your husband have a wonderful life together. ^__^
It's been wonderful. I think my dad is still a little bitter over it, but amazingly enough, mom actually laughs about it now. :D
Nice story
I love this story!
Crimson Cheetah Me too, but maybe I'm just a sucker for these kinds of romantic comedy sounding relationships because they might give me SOME hope that there's a girl out there, who'll actually like me for me, and maybe want to date me. Instead of believing in cold hard reality. Which sucks. Nice username dude.
This video should be subtitled "Why Punk Rock Happened".
Folk didn't appeal to you.
Disco was..... well, it was disco.
Southern rock was too country.
Prog rock seems to require a master's degree in music theory and your parents would need to take out a second mortgage to pay for the equipment.
You are pissed off at hippies and just want to kick them in the balls.
You have an increasing suspicion that everything your parents told you about how to conform, obey, be a good boy/girl, and join the corporate ladder is BS.
You know three cords, barely.
Let there be punk.
@@conssuckballs Lol. It's still one of the most popular and influential genres in the world.
@@conssuckballs Heh heh. "It wasn't popular because I didn't like it!" Look, like it or not, punk has proved to be one of the most durable genres of rock, just like metal, and it's extremely popular all over the world to this day. Arguably the main influence on rock today is punk and postpunk.
By the way, 70s punk was born in NYC.
@@conssuckballs Epic comeback, bruh.
Okay, that song at number 10 sucked but why can't you write a song about your dead pets? Brian May of Queen wrote a song about his dead cats.
PassiveSmoking which one? From what album
Yeah, but Brian May was a genius. Henry Gross... not so much.
Bronte by Gotye is another great song about a dog who passed away
(Also Todd said later on that he was a bit more sympathetic to this subject matter after getting his own dog)
yeah but all dead all dead slaps
Because who is that song for exactly lol
this is my first time rewatching this video since i got super into the beach boys earlier this year. i still think the shannon segment is pretty harsh and i'm glad todd's writing tends not to get quite so mean anymore but with context i fully understand his frustration with henry gross prioritizing carl's late dog over brian’s dire situation. also that bruce johnston dig is pretty sick, and i may agree with it in hindsight
I can't listen to pop music today, but I can listen to the "best" and "worse" of the 70's still. All subjective.
There's a lot of good Indie music today, in fact, these past 20 years, but it never gets played on the radio or TV and nobody knows it exists.
@@GeraldM_inNC - That's the problem, the Indie of today are just pop music back then and people appreciate it, while there are more innovative Indie music scene going on at the same time in the 70's.
@@inisipisTV Today's Indie music bears little resemblance to contemporary pop, which is why it never gets played on the radio.
Exactly! Many of today's pop songs in the 21st Century are so lame and stupid. What's even worse is the rap and hip hop crap.
@@LindaNickelLittleLinda Have you actually listened to enough from the last 20 years to actually form a legitimate opinion?
The bagpipes version of "Amazing Grace" actually made it to #11 in the US.
The early seventies - after the sixties had burned out but before disco took over - was a strange time for music.
Prog Rock would like a word with you...
Was watching a video showing every billboard number 1 song of the 70s recently and seriously 90% of everything up until 1975 sounds virtually identical, it’s pretty much all just variations of the theme from Poseidon Adventure. The blandest period of top charting hits outside of the late 80s.
@@TheBlackQueen And funk and reggae
Anyone remember Sister Janet Mead, who charted with a version of The Lord's Prayer in 1974? And for the Bicentennial, the Fifth Dimension recorded a setting of (part?) of the Declaration of Independence? Don't know if it charted, but I definitely remember it got airplay back then.
@@MrRyan-wu4jx i was born in 76 and some of earliest memories were of how awful that some of the songs were
I was 20 in 76, you can't look at 1976 through 2022 glasses. It was a completely different world. Sure some songs were below par, but they fit the times.
thanku .. i was 13 myself and this music was everything :) ..at the time
God I remember hearing these nauseating songs every day on the prison bus….er….I mean school bus 🚌 on AM radio. It was like time was literally standing still !! 🤮
Same here. And you are exactly right.
I was born in 72. Grew up hearing those songs and they sucked then and they suck now. And you're right they reflected the times. And those times absolutely sucked
Exactly.
The real tragedy of Chicago is that, on their first two albums, they were an incredible band.
I fully agree. I saw them open for Hendrix at the Oakland Auditorium. They eventually morphed into sappy pablum.
Totally though when he says they sold out I think he might be recognizing that
25 or 6 to 4 is still a banger
@@insertnamehere5809 most songs really
@@insertnamehere5809 RIP Terry Kath. Whenever there is a top 100 list of anything, he is on it. Amazingly he also made the top 100 Roman emperors list. Maybe because there weren't that many and they somehow had to fill up the number and Terry Kath absolutely deserves being on any top 100 list there is.
Additional Fact regarding "Convoy": It was co-written by Chip Davis, founder of Mannheim Steamroller a few years earlier.
"could you not think of any other insult that rhymes with duck"
4chan found it and its not fun
Yeah, that little joke got a bit awkward after 2015.
Has anyone ever actually been offended by that word, though? It's always sounded to me like definitive proof that you've run out of insulting words and are now scraping the bottom of the barrel or even have to make up a new word just to insult someone. Literally the only reason it exists is because everyone short of a klansman won't risk losing credibility over saying "f@g." These are the same people trying to make "autistic" an insult because "ret@rded" is now completely socially unacceptable. It's an act of flopsweat desperation by people who are already desperate and pathetic to begin with.
@@gabe_s_videos I absolutely agree with this, and it's why I kind of love the word
Gabriel Schleifer I don't disagree in theory, but it is alarming to realise how many obtuse right-wingers there are out there blowing their weird tryhard dogwhistles and worse to realise that these people vote and that their votes add up.
@@ConvincingPeople No argument here. It never ceases to shock me just how many people are THAT hateful and bigoted, and yet I still can't help but laugh when I hear someone try to make an abbreviation of "cuckold" sound insulting because it tells me that they're too desperate to be insulting that they can't even do it properly.
"What the hell, Beach Boys? Where's the quality control??"
A line I kept rehearing all through that TrainwRecord episode.
That one is hilarious!!!! 😂😂😂😂😂
I like “the layers of suck on this song are unbearable”😂😆🤣
As a radio DJ for over three decades, I must admit “the polar opposite of funny” is way too often perfectly accurate.
Which is worse, Afternoon Delight or Let's Marvin Gaye and Get It On?
Honestly "Marvin Gaye" is infinitely worse, at least "Afternoon Delight" isn't relying on prior source material to attempt to elevate it.
The Highbrow Gamer At least we can tell that Starland Vocal Band are using their real voices. And probably real instruments.
I feel like that's giving them too much credit, though. :
@kenterminatedbygoogle Well I liked Castle on the Hill...
@kenterminatedbygoogle Agreed. Although, to be fair, I forgot how good "Don't" was. That's my fault though. It's catchy in all the right ways. Difficult to sing along to, but good to listen to. Makes you want to dance. Too bad I can't dance at all though. "Shape Of You" is still a dogshit song. Like Ed Sheeran could really get with a lady that pretty? I know I'M in no position to judge, being as ugly as I am, but I really don't want to imagine him with anyone. That burns my eyes just thinking about it.
Let's Marvin Gaye and Get It On is worse, no comparison.
These songs, no matter how cheesy, are still good songs and appreciated by many.
You know, it says something when freaking Soulja Boy had more words in the average song of his than the Silver Convention.
"hop up out of bed, turn my swag on" well i'll be goddamned, that's nine
@@hiimemily Holy crap, well, Soulja Boy's got them there, so that's like, 1 point in his corner. Also, he had like 3 hits, and made a crap game console, so he has like, 5 points in his favor, compared to these lame dance moms, silently whispering people to boogie. It's so sad, it's laughably bad. And I HATE Soulja Boy! Always have, always will. Even If he solved world hunger or found the cure for cancer, I'd still say he's a talentless hack douche; no matter what. But at least he's got 5 points! Don't spend them all in one place now!
I worked at Walt Disney World in 1976 and 77. Star land Vocal Band played 2 shows a night for like 2 or 3 days. They sang 2 songs you never heard, then Afternoon Delight, followed by confetti and fireworks then me and my crew had like 10 min's to completely clean up. I cringe every time I hear that song.
Well, the speed limit was lowered in the 70s, so that's how truckers got into the news
One member of the Silver Convention looks like she could be a Kristen Wiig SNL character.
Regarding #1 - Half of the Starland Vocal Band were the husband wife duo of Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert. Bill and Taffy are best known for writing the original version of 'Take Me Home, Country Roads'. As a duo, they were touring and opening for John Denver. Denver heard the song and decided he wanted to sing it. He collaborated with them and re-worked the song into the version we all know today. Bill and Taffy performed on the studio version (Taffy is the female backing voice you hear) and often performed the song with John Denver over the years.
Fun fact about "Take Me Home Country Roads" was written about a real road in Maryland. Route 117 that started in Montgomery County, went into Fredrick County and into West Virginia, before I-270 was built.
@@gamergirlkayla199 I used to work for a company on Clopper Road, which is part of Rt. 117; that road is not nearly so "country" nowadays.
@@CliffordtheOrangeCat This true, not until you get passed the "REAL" Boyds, MD. Then it is country road.
Doesn't make Afternoon Delight anymore delightful.
I got a correspondent who also knows Bill Danoff.
Chicago was great before Terry Kath passed. Check out the live version of Make me Smile on here. Terry could sing and was a killer guitar player. I total agree with you about Peter though
Hell's yeah!
Chicago died when Terry Kath died
Peter Cetera was a good vocalist and a good bassist before. Kind of like Demis Roussos. Then both discovered the ballads and... well, you guessed the end
(Yes, long. Sorry.)
I was a sophomore in high school in 1976, and so in my pop-music-consumer prime (I had a serious fan-crush on a Top 40 DJ who called himself "Wonder Rabbit," if that tells you anything). And 1976 was a sucky, sucky year.
We had just lost in Vietnam in an implosion of lies, incompetence, and wasted human lives; the Watergate investigation was revealing ever-lower sewer & sub-basement levels of conduct by the highest officials in the land; the economy was being tanked (as it were) by the previously-piddle-dunk oil sheiks of OPEC; and the vapidly unthreatening Gerald Ford had just handed the presidency over to the earnestly unthreatening Jimmy Carter. Yeah, there were bicentennial celebrations, but it was hard to know just what we were celebrating.
That's why at least half of the songs on this list sound like dirges: it was also a dirge-ey kind of year.
I found the Captain & Tennille cover of "Shop Around," bad as it was, actually a welcome relief from the other drek polluting the top 40. (Not that C&T can EVER be forgiven for the simpering atrocity of "Muskrat Love" (if only we'd had the International Tribunal in The Hague back then...).)
"Disco Duck" was painful in itself, but made worse for li'l ol' Caucasian me by the racial tension underlying the whole "Death to Disco" craze. It was no longer acceptable to openly say bad things about black people, but (as long as you didn't mention its origins) you could rail on about a type of music unmistakably rooted among them. I mean, seriously, a bunch of white people rallying around a bonfire & burning things associated with black people? Does that remind you of anything at all?
"Convoy." My mother, a country girl and country music fan, bought the album. "Convoy," awful as it was, was far & away the best song on it. Todd, the lyrics do make sense when translated from the CB lingo - puzzling them out and then congratulating yourself for having done so was the best thing about the song. And, yes, it was about evading the authorities; but with perfectly innocent loads, as detailed in those CB-enese lyrics.
Todd mentioned the fuel shortages, which drove gas prices up and hit long haul-truckers very hard. The way to get your best gas mileage in a big rig is to start once, hit a steady speed well above the then-national speed limit of 55 mph, and stay there as long as possible. Each stop for a weigh station, mandatory rest period, etc hits truckers hard, right in the wallet - and that's without all the tolls, highway usage fees, and so on. Get a convoy of 20 or so trucks and it's too big too stop, especially if the lead truck is hauling explosives.
Also, respect for authority was at a death-valley-level low, authorities like Richard Nixon and William Westmoreland having gone to great lengths to un-earn our respect. Vietnam vets especially had good reason not to give authority figures anything more than they already had, and many truckers were indeed vets. All this made evading "The Man" close enough to good clean fun to be the subject of a chart-topping country hit.
1976... there is not enough money in the universe to pay me to relive those halcyon days of my youth.
Oh, don't apologise! This is awesome. I love personal recollections of things that give the historical context behind popular stuff, and while I kinda knew/could guess most of the stuff you said here, there were definitely some interesting details I didn't know. (And SPEAKING of disrespect for authority...hello from 2017 America! (waves))
Also especially interesting to hear more about the trucker culture, because my dad was a trucker himself for DECADES. Including, yes, during this time period. Did he ever get on the CB and try to evade Smokey? Weeeellll...it's unlike him, but he _was_ all about pinching pennies... (He grew up in the Depression!)
I was _technically_ around in 1976? but I was most likely seeing how my ring-stacking toy tasted and crawling around after the cat. It's the very tail end of the decade I have any pop memory of, and then, mostly just the kid stuff.
_My_ "halcyon days of teenage youth" included the early '90s (which still makes me WAY older than most people reading this)--in which, among other things, a wimpy weaksauce president was getting us involved in a war in Asia which had nothing to do with us...
...
Huh.
At any rate, at least the GOOD music of '76 _was_ actually good--which is not something you can say for all the years Todd's done a retrospective on.
I remember that year as being really weak musically. Oh, some songs stood out, such as those by certain British musicians. They helped make this year a little more bearable. But so many songs of this year was stupid or sentimental dreck.
I mean, is Convoy a good song? No. Todd's a bit harsh (worse than Disco Duck?), but its not good. But, in most years (as in, years that aren't at the level of 1976 or 1984), I'd probably put Convoy low on a bottom 10, if at all.
As someone who was born in 1988, this was awesome to read!
@@Volvagia1927 I loved Convoy. But I was 8. But since little kids were as likely to buy a 45 as anyone else, it helps explain how crap like "Convoy", "The Streak" or "Disco Duck" became hits.
It does not, however, explain "Afternoon Delight". That one's all on you, adults. I didn't even know what sex was.
1. I'll agree to disagree over "Shannon". I love that song.
2. Daryl and Catherine- The Captain and Tennille- were husband and wife. The Carpenters were brother and sister. A&M almost jumped the shark with them. They hardly promoted the Carpenters, but they were the act that kept Alpert and Moss in business
3. America covered "Muskrat Love" in 1973, three years before TC&T.
4. "If You Leave Me Now" sold by the shipping container load in many countries and was the #1 song for the year.
5. Shel Silverstein also drew a lot of the cartoons that appeared in 'Playboy' magazine.
6. You'll really hate Doctor Hook's "More Like the Movies" and some of their other super schmaltzy songs.
7. Charlene's "I've Never Been to Me" was released in 1976. That's invariably voted the worst pop song of all time.
1976 was over 45 years ago. My aching back!
Ohhh...that last line. Ouch. 😳
While 'I've never been to me' was bad, it still wasn't as bad as the choices on this list and did not stay in the charts long enough nor get the airplay to get super-annoying.
I remember her name as toni tenille
@@debstawecki6843 Her full name is Catherine Antoinette Tennille.
Shel also wrote for Johnny Cash. He was widely known for his children's books and songs, and in addition to drawing cartoons for Playboy, he provided written material as well. One of my favorites was 'Rosalie's Good Eats Cafe', which he also illustrated. Mr. Silverstein is deeply missed.
Wait? "Fly, Robin, Fly" is a real song? I thought that was a song made up for The Lego Batman Movie!
Jacob Hill You mean, it’s NOT?
yup, played all the time on pop radio.
It sounds like it fits a children sang it so yeah me too thinks it fits
Since I'd only ever heard of the song because of this video, I was quite surprised when the local cinema played it before Rise of Skywalker.
It was a number one hit
I actually loved most of these songs. I even once named a cat after Mandy. I also considered naming one of my kids Shannon and my sister actually did.
Now Disco Duck on the other hand …. When you mentioned sending shivers up the spine that was the song I thought of
Yeah but Disco Duck was just plain fun. I may be wrong but I never saw that song as taking itself seriously, it was a lark in the same vein as some of the songs by Ray Stevens.
@@slactweak that I agree with
The death of a family member that just happens to be four legged with fur has nothing to do with the aesthetic qualities of a bad song. For some people that may be the only companionship they had in years. If the song is insipid, it's insincerity stands on it's own lack of merit.
True, people who haven't had pets of their own don't understand how humans can develop strong bonds with them. I've had 3 dogs die on me and each time was heartbreaking. That song still sucks but I feel sorry for him nonetheless
I mean it'd be one thing if it was his own dog but that he wrote it about someone else's is kind of weird
Todd changed his mind about that song after one of his dogs passed away. He still hates it, but understands why someone would write a song after them.
“You people bought this? You deserved your gas shortage.”
Took me out 😂
I thought you were quoting this in response to our current gas shortage then I saw the date of the quote…. I wonder if you knew about COVID yet when you wrote this comment.
Well the people who voted for China Joe get what they are getting now!
Bit nobody deserved Jimmy Carter.
@@clviolette This years gas shortage is nothing compared to the mania that happened in 1976
@@kellyalves756 , 1976 was just a blip compared to Nixon and the 1973 OPEC gas shortage.
I graduated high school in 1976. It was difficult to live through being a metal fan
My senior class ('77) was cool. Our class song was Stairway to Heaven. The side of the 70's he presented is an embarrassment to the legends being born.
Junior High - not so much: 8th grade class song for the formal was Precious & Few.
1980 and progressive rock.
Also class of '76 not all was bad 🤔
@@cherylb5680 Another '76er here -- I remember it fondly!
@@gretchenlittle6817 Where did the time go?!
I'm a trucker and I would occasionally play Convoy but only for kicks. My take on the song was the truckers banning together in frustration over many seemingly pointless regulations. From my own experience, though frustrating, non of the regs. were pointless. As for Afternoon Delight... yeah I loved it. I know that a lot of people didnt, but the arrangements just worked for me. And yeah I would blast Afternoon Delight while driving my big rig 😉
Convoy captures a spirit of working class solidarity and camaraderie in a decade that saw several major strikes in the industry, from the Teamsters strike of 1970 to the Independent truckers of 1979. It's a goofy song on the surface, but is actually poignant when listened to in the full historical context, beyond the CB fad.
Carter broke labor's back during the strike of 79 and Reagan dealt the death blow with the air traffic controllers. Convoy was a song about people from all walks of life-- including "long haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus"-- standing up against authority. Before it became cool to lick boots. 10-4
Yeah, it’s a whole epic journey. The little convoy slowly turns into the mighty convoy. Very well put.
But, in the case of truckers, the solidarity was against the national 55mph speed limit. Imagine pre-speed limit when you could run across parts of the middle of nowhere at speeds close to 80 while making a good living being paid by the mile. Suddenly, the next day, you were making a third less money while keeping all the fixed costs of running a business.
@Thomas Bell You polled a lot of truckers?
@Thomas Bell my mom worked night as a waitress at the 76 Truck Stop on 95 in CT. She was otherwise a church lady. She had a cb radio. She nad
10-4
I won’t stand for this slander against Convoy, the song still bangs to this day.
Ill never forget my brother singing that when we passed a bunch of trucks on our trip to Florida.
Without songs like Convoy the punk rock rebellion may have never happened, so I guess I can be thankful, in a perverse way.
Love convoy
Facts
Schmuck rhymes with duck...how about Disco Schmuck
And the two couples who comprised Starland were both divorced by the early 80s. Apparently, their afternoon delights were not enough to keep them together.
🥁 bum da tass
As a trucker ( 30 years in the industry)I laughed so hard at the CW McCall review I had tears coming down my cheeks.
Which cheeks?
This song has my dad’s birthday in it lol
My favorite part of the video was when he was shitting on your extremely essential job, thanks for what you do, if it wasn’t for you guys we wouldn’t get the things we need, this guy clearly doesn’t get that with his “who wants to be a trucker comments” 🙄
The really funny part is "Convoy" would be perfect to play over the speakers in Ottowa right now!
@@ronlawrence5021 yep! Maybe if the government plays that on repeat in downtown Ottawa they’ll leave lol
I was a high school senior in 76... I agree with all of your list except for "if you leave me now" - I love that song... I got dumped in 76 and enlisted right after graduation... That song meant a lot to me then...
you were lucky it was 76 and not 66
Wow, this was 40 years ago...
No, this video came out in 2015. *rimshot*
1976-40=1936
Honestly the case I would make for Michael Bolton is his comedy song work. The ballad he did for the IRS on Last Week Tonight always makes me laugh and I really enjoyed his song Jack Sparrow with the Lonely Island.
Jack Sparrow is the only Bolton song I’ve heard so I actually think he’s great haha
@@AndrewBehm I think what takes it over the top for me is the fact he dressed up for the video in drag and went all out.
This list is gold! Couldn’t agree more with the critiques, EXCEPT for “Convoy.” All I can say is, “You had to be there in ‘76 to catch the vibe of this song.”
I WAS there. I was a kid in '76 and even had my own CB radio in my room. And I STILL couldn't figure out why we were making heroes out of the guys delivering dog food and tampons to the grocery store...
I was there, it was fad, over. Weird times.
I had the 45 of convoy and Rockford files theme
Afternoon Delight makes my skin crawl. I was 17 when it came out. It is even more horrifying now that I saw the singers perform it...🤢
You have my sympathy & Todd's, I'm sure...The Maria-Oasis comment flashed me back to1974, just imagine being the DJ on duty late at night @most influential radio station in the World 102.3 WHFS, when the phone rings and the dude on the other end says..."Hey I'm Bill from Bill & Taffy..so excited to hear that Barry Manilow has a new record called "Mandy" will you spin it??.. I told him coming up right after Nilsson's "Breaking my heart" Bud!.. they don't talk to me to this day!!!
Sad but surprising fact - Starland Vocal Band (which did Afternoon Delight) actually got a six-week variety show on CBS because of that one hit (think there were 2 other minor hits from that album) - David Letterman was one of the writers. Hard to believe that a one-hit wonder can just get handed a show. Btw, whenever I think of Afternoon Delight I can't help thinking of that scene in Arrested Development when Michael and his niece start singing the song at karaoke and you can tell when it hits them what the song it about
Have seen* the singers perform it...
So much for all the afternoon delight going on......both couples divorced.
@@jollyjohnthepirate3168 Ah couples that play in the same band - almost a guarantee that they will break up (but sometimes we get great songs out of it, i.e. Fleetwood Mac and The Mamas and the Papas)
Fun fact: almost all the clips used are from german TV reruns of old german hit-parade shows. Todd had to dig deep for this Video.
Could listen to you play Rhiannon all day rather than hear the crap you featured. You are excellent and really funny. Please do more of your deep dives into the past worst/best of whatever year, though the worst are always funnier!
EXACTLY. Todd was my best discovery during 2020 pandemic, I am a forever Todd fan.
I'll admit I enjoy disco music. One of my favorite music groups in general is The Bee Gees. I also find the genre to be a favorite of mine as well.
Chicago changed so much after they brought on David Foster. The loss of Terry Kath really hurt them.
💯 brother
Make Me Smile was one of their best songs! Written by the trombone player, James Pankow. I don't think the band would have taken this "soft turn" if Terry Kath hadn't accidently shot himself
@@csthompson9785 Too funny. Speaking of funny, saying someone "accidentally" shot themselves is like saying Kurt Cobain tripped over his shotgun 🤣😂😅🙂
@@iambossco ...look up his story
@@michaelgallagher3640 I never meant any disrespect to Terry Kath. I have a dry and morbid sense of humor and sarcasm runs in my veins. I LOVED Chicago and still do. Both with Terry: (Colour my World, Saturday in the Park, 25or6to4, Feeling Stronger Every Day, Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is, Just You and Me) and after Terry: (If You Leave Me Now, Hard to say I'm Sorry, You're the Inspiration and more). I honestly believe Peter Cetera carried the group well, even with all the ballads (Although, it did get a little hard to tell Chicago from Air Supply and Bread during that time). I am sympathetic towards the way he died (I had a near miss once myself with a roommate being careless and waving a gun around that he thought was empty and almost shot me in the same manor. Fortunately, when the gun went off it was pointing upwards towards the ceiling. Scared the hell out of us both).
I did take your advice though and watched a fantastic documentary about Terry Kath. I'm not sure if you've seen this particular one but here's the link anyway
th-cam.com/video/f7egJTtz10E/w-d-xo.html It not only tells his story and how he got Chicago started but also of Terry's daughters quest to locate one of his signature guitars. Very much worth the watch.
"If you leave me now" was constantly on the radio in 1976. There's nothing wrong with the song. There's a few sucky songs in there but perhaps what you're missing is the experience of having lived 1976.
My mum loves "If You Leave Me Now."
Yeah Todd is being a hater here cuz he hates Chicago and everything they stand for.
I LOVE Chicago, and Peter Cetera
Perhaps what your missing is the fact that not everything ages well.
@@Genevieve1023 Lol. Okay
Starland Vocal Band did have their own summer variety show. It introduced a young comedian to American audiences. David Letterman. One step back. Two forward.