The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1958

 

The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1958

Hey guys, it’s Fire from Fire’s Flaming Hot Takes here back with another retro year-end list!! Today we’ll be counting down the top 10 worst hit songs of...1958?

Y’all are probably thinking “okay Fire, I get that you like making retro year-end lists, but why pick such a random year like 1958?”. And uh...I’ve been thinking of making lists for this year ever since I started blogging way back in 2021. It’s still a personal goal of mine to have looked at every year-end list in the history of the Hot 100 to acquire a deep knowledge of the history of popular music. I just never really got time to plunge through the depths of history until now. So, why not start with the very first year in the history of the Hot 100? The Billboard Hot 100 chart was created in August of 1958 and was a chart that measured all metrics of a song’s consumption and compiled it into an all-encompassing chart. Billboard did track songs’ popularity on smaller charts before 1958, but those charts only looked at one specific metric like best sellers in stores or most played by jockeys. Prior to August of 1958, there was no definitive standardized chart that measured all facets of popularity. Now, obviously, the Hot 100 has never perfectly reflected a song’s actual cultural impact (and arguably still doesn’t), but it’s still the closest thing we’ve got to a real-time snapshot of what people were listening to. And let me tell you, the year-end list for 1958 is a mess. I saw someone compare it to 2010 in how the charts were sharply split between appealing to the younger generation (with rock in 1958 and the club boom in 2010) and the older generation with easy-listening gunk. But I honestly don’t think even that does a great job of showing the sharp split there was in 1958’s popular music; I’m saying even individual artists were riding that dividing line on the A-sides and B-sides!! Like you listen to a record you bought from the store and go “oh, this is a nice piece of traditional pop” and next thing you know you are hit with sharp whiplash right into a rockabilly banger that’d probably frighten your parents. Moreover, because they only had about half the tracking period they usually would to compile the year-end list, this year-end list is only 50 songs long (at least if you group the A-sides and B-sides as one entry like Billboard did back in the day), which probably was the right call. What’s hilarious though is that they didn’t even bother breaking ties, so there are two #50s. But what’s especially notable is how both sides of that musical split produced some gems and stinkers, which overall kinda balanced things out to being a decent year for pop music. It’s nowhere close to being the best year I ever looked at, or even the best year of the early Billboard years, but it’s not precisely a bad year either.

So with that, my criteria for this list. The songs eligible must’ve landed on the year-end list for 1958. That’s it, no repeat qualifications because this is literally the first year-end in Hot 100 history. I was thinking of expanding the pool of songs to include any song that charted in the top 40 in 1958 like YouTube music reviewer Lyzette G did because the YE list is much shorter this time, but that’d be fucking with the continuity and validity of what is considered a hit in the early Billboard years and quite frankly that’d take too much time to put together so I’m sticking with my basic rules. With that, let’s get started with some dishonorable mentions!!

DM #1: Jody Reynolds - Endless Sleep (YE: #41, PEAK: #5)

This song wasn’t completely dead on arrival. It feels like it’s trying to be the 1958 version of HARDY and Lainey Wilson’s “Wait In The Truck” where the narrator saves a girl in danger. But say what you will about “Wait In The Truck”, there was one reason it worked for me and didn’t just feel like some fantasy by a teenage boy. And that was the fact that Lainey Wilson actually played the girl in need of help in the song, she provided another perspective to HARDY’s story. On “Endless Sleep”, Jody Reynolds’s deep voice has a really smug attitude to it as if he’s priding himself on saving his girl in a way that suggests “yeah, I saved my baby and now she’s mine”. It certainly doesn’t help that the production isn’t very good either. It’s got rockabilly guitars that sound like they just took Nyquil and are going into an endless sleep themselves. There’s no groove to this and it really only highlights that Jody Reynolds doesn’t have a very good voice. Yeah, it’s time to put this melatonin of a song into the grave, where it belongs.

DM #2: The Crescendos - Oh Julie (YE: #47, PEAK: #5)

Can I just say “snooze” and leave it at that? There’s no energy to this song at all, it's just so overwhelmingly slow and lumbering and the vocals don’t sound particularly invested. Yeah, not much else to say here, it’s not awful, but it crosses the event horizon of being mediocre and lands a spot on this list.

DM #3: Bobby Darin - Splish Splash (YE: #38, PEAK: #3)

1958 was a particularly big year for goofy novelty songs, this is squarely in that territory, being a song literally about having a party in the bathtub. And there might be more going on in this song, but I’m sorry, the humor just doesn’t land for me. The rock and roll groove is remarkably solid but I think that might be to this song’s detriment, if anything. Something about the groove just tells me that the song itself isn’t in on the joke, like it’s taking itself seriously. I don’t know, maybe if I was actually alive way back then, I would understand the humor behind this, but at least for me, this doesn’t work.

DM #4: The Diamonds - The Stroll (YE: #48, PEAK: #5)

Okay, what the fuck is up with that shitty sounding horn? It’s a shame because the rest of the song is actually quite solid. The production is pretty smooth with the jazzy accents and it sounds like pretty nice music for going on a stroll. But I’m sorry, that horn sounds so awful against this production, it sounds like an elephant trying to blow its trunk through a tube and single handedly drags what could’ve been a good song to just being mediocre at best.

DM #5: Elvis Presley - Don’t (YE: #3, PEAK: #1)

As far as white performers interpreting black music for white audiences go (that really shouldn’t have happened in the first place), Elvis Presley was certainly a very talented guy and far from the worst guy who did what he did in 1958 - stay tuned - and while the B-side to this, “I Beg Of You” was actually pretty good, “Don’t” is an incredibly sleepy song that, while elevated from being outright bad thanks to Presley’s deeply passionate singing, doesn’t have a single interesting bone in its body. And I can’t be the only one who feels turned off by Presley saying that if he wants to hold this girl and kiss her, she shouldn’t say “don’t”, right? Presley’s sincerity certainly redeems this, but not quite enough to save this from a spot on this list.

Let’s get our ineligible dishonorable mention out of the way now...

IDM: The Ames Brothers - Pussy Cat (YE: N/A, PEAK: #17)

I only found out about this song’s existence after watching Lyzette G’s worst list for 1958. And I knew that I had to listen to this song if only to see if it was truly bad enough to warrant covering here. And let’s start with some thinly veiled praise first. The production isn’t terrible, there’s a decent doo-wop groove, and the Ames Brothers are certainly trying their hardest to sound charming. But no, it’s the lyrics that just irk me out. This song centers around an 8 year old boy falling in love with a literal 1 year old baby, and not in like an “awww cutie pie baby” kinda way either. You know what? I think it’s best to analyze this with some math. Try your best to keep up with my calculations:

“I was eight years old

When I fell in love and

And it seems like yesterday

Down the old mill road

In a pretty house lived

Some folks not far from me

And they had a child

Only one year old”

Got that? Boy starts out 8, girl starts out 1.

“Well, the years went by

And I grew quite tall

For I shot up like a vine

And I used to watch old Pussy Cat

Till she reached the age of nine”

Girl is 9, boy must be 16 because 8 + (9-1) = 16.

“Well, there she stood

Like a pretty rose and

My goodness, how she'd grown

But the sparkling eyes

And the turned-up nose

Looked the same though

Years had flown”

Okay, no specific numbers are mentioned here, but let’s use some basic reasoning. If the girl’s face was still recognizable after years, we can deduce that the girl is now maybe 16. 16-9 = 7, 16+7=23. Then they get married. So if you’re following the calculations I deduced, this is about a boy who fell in love with a baby at the age of 8 and then married her while she was still a minor, and all of a sudden the guys here constantly nicknaming the girl “pussy cat” and describing her skin as “milky skin with silky fur” feel super predatory. And the “wink wink nudge nudge” attitude throughout just makes my skin crawl. The fact that this was a top 20 hit on the Hot 100 in 1958 honestly scares me. At least the best thing we can say now is that this song has largely been forgotten. In case you couldn’t tell, if this had made the year-end, I would’ve put it straight at #1 on this list and I wouldn’t have even hesitated.

Alright, onto the list proper...

10...But back to Elvis Presley....

10. Elvis Presley - Don’t Ask Me Why (YE: #49, PEAK: #34)

“Don’t Ask Me Why” was the B-side to “Hard Headed Woman”, which is a pretty great song (it may or may not appear on my best list, all I’ll say) and it’s such a downgrade from that track. It’s a very sleepy piece of traditional pop where the production certainly sounds very graceful but is still pretty clunky thanks to the percussion which feels like it’s trying to go for a waltz cadence and just doesn’t stick the landing at all. Presley’s delivery doesn’t even feel all that impassioned or sincere to me and what we’re left with is a completely forgettable pile of mush. It’s not bad, but it’s still very mediocre, mediocre enough to sneak onto the top 10 proper. Next!

9...But you know what? At least Elvis had bass in his voice!...

9. Jimmy Clanton - Just A Dream (YE: #26, PEAK: #4)

“Just A Dream” is a song about heartache after a breakup. And that’s not even close to the reason this song made this list, tons of great art has been made about heartache following a breakup, up to the present day. No, the reason this song falls flat for me is Jimmy Clanton, he’s got no bass in his delivery and it paints him out to be a little kid. Clanton was 19 when this song was released, but his delivery could’ve easily made him pass as being 13. This doesn’t sound like a man devastated after a breakup to me, it more reads like a 13-year old upset because he got grounded after sneaking out past curfew. Snore. Maybe I should go to bed and convince myself that this song is just a dream.

8...But at least Jimmy Clanton was trying harder to sell his song than this…

8. Jack Scott - My True Love (YE: #40, PEAK: #3)

As with “Don’t Ask Me Why”, “My True Love” is a downgrade of a B-side in comparison to its A-side. “Leroy” is a pretty good song, but “My True Love” is a very boring slog that tries to be a sincere and heartfelt love letter to Jack Scott’s partner but Scott sounds really disinterested and it feels like the choir accenting the song with the line “my true love” is trying to do what Scott can’t do here and yet even they sound lifeless and if anything, they undercut any intimacy that could be created. It’s not helped by the random switch to a spoken word monologue that feels like something that even Sam Hunt would reject. It also really doesn’t make things any better that Jack Scott dips into his throat voice to try backing up the choir. It really only succeeds in highlighting the fact that Jack Scott isn’t a great singer. I prayed to the lord to send me a good song and he sent me a bore of a song from hell below. Next!!

7...So you remember back with “Don’t” when I said “As far as white performers interpreting black music for white audiences go, Elvis Presley was certainly a very talented guy and far from the worst guy who did what he did in 1958 - stay tuned”? Yeah, you know who’s coming....

7. Pat Boone - April Love (YE: #45, PEAK: #1)

I mean spoilers, but Pat Boone will be appearing on this list a LOT, he’s deservingly arguably one of the most infamous figures to have ever worked in popular music. While Elvis interpreted black music for white audiences while clearly showing talent as to not completely shit on the origins of the music styles he was appropriating, Pat Boone was emblematic of the stiffest, most tasteless, and whitest possible cultural appropriation. Boone doesn’t sound like he’s singing this song because he admires the musical styling, he sounds like Elvis from Temu with all the passion of a 5th grade student who doesn’t care about the history lesson. This was Pat Boone’s “best” hit this year, but this still isn’t anywhere near good. Forget April love, give this song the December cold, like it deserves.

6...But now finally we’ve reached the point in this list where I actively start disliking the songs. And back to awful vocals...

6. Little Anthony And The Imperials - Tears On My Pillow (YE: #34, PEAK: #4)

This has all the raw emotional passion of a mouse whose cheese got stolen. Really, my main problem with this song is Little Anthony’s vocals; he sounds like he inhaled a helium tank before recording his take, and him being young at the time doesn’t really excuse him in my eyes; he was SEVENTEEN when this song was released!! There are points in the song where he sounds like the Alvin & The Chipmunks version of himself!! Yeah, there are tears on my pillow from me wincing at this guy’s voice. Next!

5...But back to annoying novelty songs...

5. David Seville - Witch Doctor (YE: #4, PEAK: #1)

Truth be told, I first was familiarized with this song when a YouTuber I watch regularly used the scatting on the hook to scambait. I almost left this song off this list for the sake of it having a very slight soft spot for me because of that, but then I heard the actual song for the first time. This really landed so high on this list for a rather simple reason, the chipmunked scatting gets grating in record time and when they aren’t chipmunked it loses any novelty it might’ve had. This song is about how apparently the narrator won over his girl by consulting a witch doctor who...I guess told him to act like a monkey? Yeah, this isn’t funny more than it is really damn annoying. This is a bad Cartoon Network reject of a song. Maybe the witch doctor should get sued for malpractice and get driven out of town.

4...But say what you will about “Witch Doctor”, at least there was a clear direction the song was going!!...

4. Laurie London - He's Got the Whole World in His Hands (YE: #18, PEAK: #2)

This song makes me believe that maybe 13 year-olds should be banned from making music. Even the poster child for bad teen popstars, Justin Bieber, did better than Laurie London when he broke through in 2009!! Early Bieber, even at his dumbest and silliest, was just trying to be a teen pop singer making stupid pop songs without a bone in their bodies, “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands” just meanders with no direction. He’s got the whole world in his hands, and what? Is he buckling from too much pressure? Is he God? He’s carrying the little bitty baby, the whole wide world, you, and me all in his hands, and then what? And if this is about God, which upon researching it seems to be the case, at least most other Christian music bothered to have more going on in the production, even at its most sedate and bland!! Not this acoustic guitar shit that sounds like something even Jason Mraz would’ve rejected!! It also doesn’t really help that I just can’t stand Laurie London’s voice, his British accent is really distracting and his overwrought singing makes it feel like he’s trying to explicitly say “Ay, look at me, I’m a Bri’ish kid making a Christian song!! Ain’t that silly?”. So yeah, if he’s got the whole world in his hands, maybe it’s time we jump ship and settle on Mars.

3...But let’s get to by far the worst novelty hit of 1958..

3. The Royal Teens - Short Shorts (YE: #35, PEAK: #3)

Like “Witch Doctor”, there was really only one element of this song that sunk it down to being so high on this list, the call-and-response thing they were going for might’ve had potential, but the girls who are saying “we wear short shorts” just sound so bored and irritating and that makes the redundancy of the phrase “short shorts” just all the more flagrant. And if there’s a joke here about “short shorts”, it doesn’t land at all for me. Also The Royal Teens have no chemistry with the girls they’re doing the call-and-response gimmick to. This entire song is just a bad gimmick that barely even registers as a gimmick. So what two songs are worse?

2...Gonna do the last two songs together because not only are they by the same artist, but they are the A-side/B-side of each other!! And quite frankly, y’all should’ve seen this coming...

2. Pat Boone - A Wonderful Time Up There (YE: #25, PEAK: #10)

“A Wonderful Time Up There” embodies everything that made Pat Boone such a hateable artist, taking the whitest possible aspects of pop music and cranking that white factor up to an 11. It’s so obnoxiously chipper in presentation and it really sounds like something that’d soundtrack a white family’s drive to church on Sunday. Any remote darkness or flavor is sanded off in favor of this whitewashed pile of shit. And upon researching a bit more, this song is a really irritating cover of a gospel song called “Gospel Boogie”, as if you needed an additional piece of evidence why Pat Boone was a terrible artist!! He strips “Gospel Boogie” of all its character to make this whitewashed garbage. I don’t particularly like that song very much but it at least sounded more respectable than this turd! This is so white that it’s actively irritating. It’s “Honey I’m Good” by Andy Grammer if you made the psychotic smile in Andy’s voice even more psychotic. But now what about the song I called the worst hit of 1958?

1. Pat Boone - It's Too Soon To Know (YE: #25, PEAK: #10)

Oh god, you know, for as much as “A Wonderful Time Up There” might be more irritating, “It’s Too Soon To Know” honestly offends me more. The original “It’s Too Soon To Know” by The Orioles is considered by some to be the first ever rock and roll song, a deeply impassioned R&B ballad where the vocalists give deeply soulful performances. It’s too slow for my tastes, but I have to respect the talent The Orioles brought to it. And then Pat fucking Boone covered it, stripping the song of all soul for this gentrified whitewashed cultural vandalism. Pat Boone makes this unbearably boring and nothing here was done for the sake of any artistic thought. This song, more than anything, is why Pat Boone is a terrible fucking artist and the best thing we can say is Pat Boone’s “legacy” as an artist has been thoroughly lost to the sands of time at best and utterly tarnished and aged like milk at worst. “It’s Too Soon To Know” by Pat Boone: the absolute WORST hit song of 1958!!

And that’s the worst list done!! Next article should be the best list for this year! Stay tuned for that and until then, if you have predictions for that list or your own lists of the worst hit songs of 1958, please comment them below!! I’m eager to read them. And until the next list, the Spotify playlist with every song on this list is linked right here and remember to keep it Fire!