Chris Cagle is a modestly successful country singer who’s managed to chart a few singles since 2000. “I Breathe In, I Breathe Out” was a #1 hit in 2001. There’s…
J.A. Bartlett
102 Articles
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J.A. Bartlett
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On October 24, 1970, Led Zeppelin III blased onto the Billboard 200 album chart at #3. The next week, it knocked Santana’s Abraxas from the #1 spot and remained there…
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J.A. Bartlett
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Is there anything more lovely than the voices of little children in song? Most things, actually. At World’s Worst World Headquarters, we did not bother looking up from our Super…
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J.A. Bartlett
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My first radio was a green plastic box with a giant dial and tubes inside. I didn’t care that it got only AM—it got WLS, the Top 40 giant from…
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J.A. Bartlett
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(Stay with me on this one. I think I can make the case.) Even though some people believe that profanity is a linguistic copout or the sign of a failed…
J.A. Bartlett
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[youtube id=”nM_BJrgRs2E” width=”600″ height=”350″] Sweet mama this is one great album. Released at a moment when everybody knew that Creedence Clearwater Revival was pretty damn good, Cosmo’s Factory managed to…
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J.A. Bartlett
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Hell yes, I read your comments. And you asked for it: this week’s installment of World’s Worst Songs stars “Sequel” by Harry Chapin. But first a bit of historical perspective….
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J.A. Bartlett
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At a distance of more than 40 years, we forget how big Blood, Sweat & Tears was at the turn of the 1970s. Their second, self-titled album spent time at…
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J.A. Bartlett
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Good storytelling involves not only what you leave in, but what you leave out. What’s left out is what makes Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe” so compulsively listenable over…
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J.A. Bartlett
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Years ago, I worked at a radio station in small-town Illinois. An on-air discussion about Woodstock prompted one of the sales reps to collar me in the hall afterward. “I…
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J.A. Bartlett
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Wait, what? Chicago’s third single, “25 or 6 to 4,” was released in the summer of 1970, and it is flat awesome. It proves just how hard a horn band…
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J.A. Bartlett
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“I’ll finish you all now! You’ll pay!” So said Paul McCartney to Ringo Starr when Ringo tried to convince Paul to hold his solo album release so it wouldn’t conflict…
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J.A. Bartlett
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Kenny Rogers scored solo hits beginning in 1977, but many of his early singles seemed to exist out of time. They sure didn’t sound like anything else on the radio…
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J.A. Bartlett
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It must be great to be Paul McCartney. All that fame, all that money. And it must be terrible, too, because you have to compete with Paul McCartney, and a…
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J.A. Bartlett
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This is the final edition of World’s Worst Songs before Christmas, so here are a few short takes on three reviled holiday records, all involving animals, all of which you…
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J.A. Bartlett
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Their long musical partnership has been good to David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash. During the period when they added Neil Young to the group, it was very good…
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J.A. Bartlett
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After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Laura Miller wrote a brilliant essay called “The Kitschification of September 11,” which appeared in Salon in January 2002. Miller discussed the blizzard of sentimental…
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J.A. Bartlett
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Dan Fogelberg’s wuss-rock holiday epic “Same Old Lang Syne” is the foundation stone upon which World’s Worst Songs is built. In the Olympics of Suck, it’s Michael Phelps. I have…
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J.A. Bartlett
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Several songs on Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water seem so perfect it’s as though they must always have existed. Surely the title song, “El Condor Pasa,” and “The…
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J.A. Bartlett
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Between now and Christmas, World’s Worst Songs will single out some of the season’s ickiest perennials, starting with a song that has nothing to do with Christmas, but which gets…
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J.A. Bartlett
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In 2003, Eric Boehlert (now at Media Matters) wrote an essay for Salon called “The Greatest Week in Rock History” in which he proposed that the week of December 20, 1969,…
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J.A. Bartlett
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Thanksgiving, the first American holiday and arguably the most unique, doesn’t get much respect anymore. It’s been reduced to a mere speed-bump on the way to Black Friday. Apart from…
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J.A. Bartlett
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Certain albums in this series present a particular challenge, as we’ve noted before: What can one say that’s fresh about some of the most famous albums ever recorded? For that,…
J.A. Bartlett
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And now, a list of songs: “Everyday People” by Sly and the Family Stone “Dizzy” by Tommy Roe “Love Theme From ‘Romeo & Juliet’” by Henry Mancini “Sugar Sugar” by…
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J.A. Bartlett
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What would an English edition of the Band have sounded like? Eric Clapton wondered, too. And in 1969, he set out to form one, but without much confidence that it…
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J.A. Bartlett
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Hollywood has been making Batman movies more-or-less continuously for a generation now, going back to 1989 and continuing through this past summer’s The Dark Knight Rises. The 1989 Batman was…
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J.A. Bartlett
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In 1953, Johnny Cash wrote “Folsom Prison Blues.” Fifteen years later, on a weekday morning in January, he played a legendary concert there, which resulted in one of the most…
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J.A. Bartlett
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It has been suggested to me that I include “Come Sail Away” by Styx in this feature. But “Come Sail Away” is actually a perfectly fine record. It’s got everything…
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J.A. Bartlett
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The changing mores of the 1960s eventually reached far beyond popular music. Motion pictures abandoned the production codes that had ruled since the 1930s and for the first time, the…
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J.A. Bartlett
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You think finding a different bad song to write about every week is easy? That there’s no psychological price to be paid for this assignment? That no harm is done…
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