The Worst Hit Song of All Time

Bobby Goldsboro mocks a kinda dumb dead girl.

I’m not the type of person who gets a kick out of pop artifacts that are “so bad, they’re good.” At least most of the time. This applies to music in particular.

I’m sure I could write lousy song lyrics myself if I had the inclination. I couldn’t write good ones, mind you, but I’m absolutely convinced I could crank out some first-rate crap.

Music is just too significant a part of my worldview for me to get a buzz from an embarrassing song. I might laugh and shake my head in dismay when I hear one, but then I’m moving on. Once is enough. I’d rather spend my time contemplating ambitious, emotionally charged music, unless it’s something that’s intentionally driven by primordial, four-on-the-floor passion, like choice Little Richard or a big, dumb Ramones rocker.

I live safe in the knowledge that there’s tons of garbage available for consumption, with more being generated every single second of every single day. This is still America, after all, even if we’re teetering on the edge of star-spangled End Times.

There’s piles of shit out there, in other words, but I don’t have to listen to it.

Still, there’s one formerly popular song that’s so dumbfounding in its ineptitude, it manages to stop me in my tracks every time I hear it. And I clearly remember its potently bizarre mix of abuse and treacle oozing from the TV and radio during my very early childhood.

This is no mere “Horse with No Name,” either, full of pseudo-profound hippie poetry and tortured syntax. And it’s not “The Streak” or “Disco Duck,” which were novelty tunes designed to be laughed at, even though they weren’t funny.

This is a different thing altogether, an apparently serious piece of work that’s disheartening on so many different levels; listening to it can be an ass-backwards spiritual experience.

Let me introduce you, then, to The Worst Song Ever Recorded By A Cognizant Human Being Here On Planet Earth. Ladies and gentlemen, I offer for your blanching perusal...

“Honey,” by Bobby Goldsboro.

It’s kind of unfortunate that Goldsboro, who was an amiable enough TV presence back in the day, has to have his name forever welded to “Honey,” since it was written by a shockingly successful tunesmith named Bobby Russell. Russell actually won a “Best Country Song” Grammy for “God Didn’t Make Little Green Apples” in 1969, and several years later wrote Vicki Lawrence’s hyper-melodramatic murder hit, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.”

He didn’t write the Hollies’ “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” though, which was the work of Bobby Russell. I mean, a different Bobby Russell. Don’t go giving him too much credit.

Anyway, Goldsboro’s rendition of the purportedly touching “Honey” knocked Otis Redding's “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” out of the number one spot on the Billboard singles chart back in April of 1968, a cataclysmic event that verged on Vietnam War-style inappropriateness.

But so go the vagaries of popular taste, which is to say, even in the Sixties, millions of people could be twits.

---

Where to begin? I guess we’ll just let Bobby sing it for you, then get down to business. Please grab some furniture to steady yourself.

As ghastly as “Honey” is lyrically, its strings-and-angelic-choir arrangement is practically a velvet painting that’s been converted into sound waves.

Jumpsuit-wearing Elvis at his most pilled-up would have passed on this one, and not just because it wouldn’t have looked right for him to do karate chops during the instrumental passage.

“Honey," in a nutshell, is the ceaselessly medium-tempo story of a man and his One True Love, an apparent woman-doofus who, given her husband’s not altogether kind descriptions of her, is irritating as hell.

Then she dies.

---

Get out your scalpels. Time to dissect this thing.

Somewhat surprisingly, Russell's lyrics kick off with a lesson in horticulture.

See the tree, how big it's grown
But friend it hasn't been too long
It wasn't big
I laughed at her and she got mad,
The first day that she planted it
Was just a twig

Borderline unintelligible, right out of the gate. “It hasn’t been too long it wasn’t big?” You mean it used to be small? “The first day that she planted it was just a twig?!” How many other days did she plant it? Did she dig it up and replant it over and over again? And since when is a day a twig?

Then the first snow came and she ran out
To brush the snow away
So it wouldn't die
Came runnin' in all excited
Slipped and almost hurt herself
And I laughed till I cried

This seems like an unbalanced relationship at best.

In the first verse, the guy needlessly laughs at her for planting a tree in the front yard, thus pissing her off. Now she falls and almost cracks her head, and he laughs again, this time until he cries.

Nice. It runs completely counter to the gloppy string arrangement. But nice.

She was always young at heart
Kinda dumb and kinda smart
And I loved her so
And I surprised her with a puppy
Kept me up all Christmas Eve two years ago
And it would sure embarrass her
When I came in from workin' late
'Cause I would know
That she'd been sittin' there and cryin'
Over some sad and silly late, late show

Boy, they sure cry a lot around this house.

So now, Mr. Warmth bought her a widdle puppy, and that goddamn dog kept him up all fucking Christmas Eve!! Two years ago, and he’s still bitching about it.

I also like that she’s mortified because he sees her getting caught up in an old movie, like this is some kind of sin. But what do you expect? She’s “kinda dumb and kinda smart.” I’m sure he had a fit when that dog he bought her peed on the rug, too.

And honey, I miss you and I'm bein' good
And I'd love to be with you if only I could

Hmm. Interesting. Maybe a restraining order?

She wrecked the car and she was sad
And so afraid that I'd be mad
But what the heck

Though I pretended hard to be
Guess you could say she saw through me
And hugged my neck

That was close. That last line could have just as easily segued into “grabbed her neck.” Still, even with him dismissing the fender-bender, the vibe is almost dreamily judgmental.

I came home unexpectedly
And caught her cryin' needlessly
In the middle of a day
And it was in the early spring
When flowers bloom and robins sing
She went away

More with the crying. But at least she finally wised up and got her ass out of there.

Note the overall rhyming scheme: “Big” and “twig.” “Die” and “cried.” “Heck” and “neck.” “Spring” and “sing.” The ongoing repetition of single-syllable words makes the song sound like a prolonged jingle, like you're being sold house paint.

One day while I was not at home
While she was there and all alone
The angels came
Now all I have is memories of honey
And I wake up nights and call her name

Wait a minute! She really went away! Like “not coming back for her clothes” went away! (This, as you might expect, is where the choir takes off like Wagner on a budget.)

Now my life's an empty stage
Where honey lived and honey played
And love grew up
And a small cloud passes overhead
And cries down on the flower bed
That honey loved

By now, with both the lyrics and the music building to a crescendo, it’s hard not to feel like the mushrooms are kicking in.

No specific cause of Honey’s death is given. It’s unlikely she keeled over from sudden spinal meningitis while he wasn’t around—note that the guy’s constantly coming and going at odd hours, which leads me to believe he’s getting some on the side—so I’m voting for a fistful of Quaaludes.

Dig how he returns to the first verse at the end, then the song fades out, as if he’s endlessly reeling his story off in a bar, the Ancient Mariner clutching a bottle of Old No. 7.

I’d lay money that dog’s now tied to Honey’s tree, and he pours Ol’ Roy dog chow—the dry kind—straight on the ground when he feeds it.

---

I bet you didn’t see this coming!

Here’s a photo of Keith Richards doing what I like to call his “Keith Richards Thing,” where he’s either seconds away from dropping dead or is about to hop on yet another Lear jet to Cape Verde.

Having just raked Bobby Goldsboro over the coals for the amusement of others, I’ve decided to give him his well-earned due here at the end.

Rather incredibly—better make that extremely incredibly—Goldsboro taught Keith Richards how to play an indispensable Jimmy Reed blues guitar lick that Keith could never figure out! And the world now knows this for a fact because Richards told us about it in his acclaimed autobiography, “Life,” in between a string of not very convincing excuses for years of selfish-junkie bad behavior.

I’m not a guitar player, but for those of you who are, here’s how Richards describes it. When Reed played the V chord in the key of E on his records, it gave off “a haunting refrain, a melancholy dissonance.”

He contends that Reed, a magnificent bluesman who was worshipped by the Stones, got away with playing variations on the same song for years on end because of this chord.

Try as he might, Richards (and, it seems likely, his then-bandmate, Brian Jones) could never figure out exactly what Reed was doing with the V chord. But one day in the mid-60s, Richards was on a package-tour bus with Bobby Goldsboro, who started out as a guitarist playing behind Roy Orbison.

Wait. What?!

When Richards mentioned his Jimmy Reed Dilemma to Goldsboro, Bobby set him straight.

Richards claims Goldsboro said, “I spent years on the road with Jimmy Reed,” even though I can find no proof of this anywhere on the Internet. But that’s not the important part.

What’s important is that Goldsboro explained to Keith, again in Keith’s words, “At the five chord, instead of making the conventional barre chord, the B7th, which requires a little effort with the left hand, (Reed) wouldn't bother with the B at all. He'd leave the open A note ringing and just slide a finger up the D string to a 7th. And there's the haunting note resonating against the open A."

When Keith voiced his shock at how simple this was to pull off, he again claims Goldsboro replied, “That’s it, motherfucker. You live and learn.”

Now, to say the least, Bobby Goldsboro does not seem the “That’s it, motherfucker” type. But if he was, he sure blew it by not dropping some choice f-bombs into “Honey!”

He could have turned the whole thing around in just a couple of words! Imagine Jimmy Reed throwing in an altered V chord and rocking out on it!

Too late now, I guess.