Let's Enjoy Some More Transcendent Badness

The question arose as to the difference between mere badness, and transcendent badness. I think this video may help to illustrate the difference:



First, let's consider the song: "Billy, Don't Be A Hero." I hope that we can all agree that this is a pretty bad song. But the first step in its favor of becoming transcendently bad is the fact that, bad as it may be, you hear it one time and you're pretty much sunk for the rest of the day. You hear it in the car radio on the way to work, and good luck trying to think of any other song that day. So essentially, you're forced to consider, even confront, the song.

Now, lay on top of the song, the name of the band: Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods. What exactly is a Heywood, anyway?

Now let's consider the performance. Now, in all fairness to Bo and the boys, this clip may be evidence of nothing more than a bad syncing job when someone decided to post this on You Tube. But for the sake of argument, let's pretend that this was the band performing on American Bandstand, sometime in the spring of 1974, and that Bo (actually, I'm not even sure Bo was the lead singer, but no matter) just did a really crappy job of lip-syncing - something that occurred pretty frequently on the show.

And finally, just take a gander at those outfits. The icing on the cake, the piece de resistance, the final ingredient which clearly punts "Billy, Don't Be A Hero" out of the realm of the merely bad, and into the land of Transcendent Badness.

Enjoy! (Or not.)

More Badness!

I'm in the mood for some more transcendent badness, and of course there is no better example of that than the legendary "Run, Joey, Run."

The video, as billed, is indeed corny, but the important thing here is the song. This song is so melodramatic that it makes Meat Loaf look subtle.

Transcendent Badness

There are great songs, there are good songs, and there are bad songs. And then there are the songs that are so bad - so patently awful - that their awfulness transcends mere considerations of "good" and "bad."

Such a song is "Honey," by Bobby Goldsboro. Now, I have a confession to make - back around the same time that I was enjoying my first Beatles album, around the same time that I was really getting into Creedence Clearwater Revival, around the same time I was loving "Honky Tonk Women" on the radio - I thought Bobby Goldsboro was one of the coolest dudes on the planet.

But as you can see from the video below, "cool" is not really a word that can be applied to "Honey." There is hardly a verse in the entire song that is not worthy of ridicule; yet, it goes so far beyond what one would usually consider "bad" that it comes out the other side, and can be enjoyed on its own terms.

And so in the first of a series that I'll be calling "transcendent badness," songs that Leonard Pinth-Garnell could truly enjoy, I am proud to present Bobby Goldsboro, with "Honey."