The Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 1959
1959, like 1958, was a pretty mediocre year for Popular Music. With a full Year-End Hot 100, we have more to cover, meaning that the lists will now be going from Top 5, to Top 10. Also, starting with this list, ties will be used if an artist, for example, had like 2 songs with similar quality and I didn’t feel like wasting multiple spots.
While the year itself was hardly any better for Popular Music, 1959 did put in place a few trends and artists that signaled the slow rising tide in quality that music would undergo prior to The British Revolution. But for now, we’ll be looking at the worst of the worst. First, the Dishonorable Mentions!
DM #1: Baby Talk – Jan & Dean
Peak: #10 Year-End: #95
Novelty and Comedy Music was omnipresent in 1959, and it’ll be on both the Worst and Best lists. “Baby Talk” by Jan & Dean is a lesser evil in the grand scheme of things; for what it’s worth they harmonize well and the melody is solid. This song’s premise is that the narrator is a 5-year-old who is in love with a 3-year-old, which is lowkey kinda funny and makes the title work. A more competent group, like The Coasters, could make this work.
Unfortunately, this song is completely barren of interest besides that fact, the actual lyrics are platitudes at best, and nonsensical at worst. The gibberish hook quickly becomes irritating, and the lack of any interesting twists makes this song feel like a wasted idea more than anything else. At least they have a respectable age gap tho.
DM #2: Travis and Bob – Tell Him No
Peak: #8 Year-End: #60
I only have one gripe with this song, but it’s pretty damning. Basically, this is a song about telling a girl that she shouldn’t accept any romantic advances from another guy, but the narrator offers no actual reason why she shouldn’t. It’s weird because the way it’s presented would make sense if he were her boyfriend, but the implication is that he’s just a guy.
The narrator has no actual authority over her within the song. He’s fine with her going out to the movies with this guy or going out partying, which implies he’s probably at most friend, but the fact that he offers literally no reason as to why she should say no makes him seem irrational.
DM #3: Frankie Avalon – Venus
Peak: #1 Year-End: #4
Of all the Teen Idols, Frankie Avalon is definitely one of the worst, which conversely meant he was ridiculously successful during this time (he had 4 Year-End hits in 1959, and this isn’t even the worst one)! “Venus” is a nothingburger of a song that doesn’t do any of note in its 2:20 runtime. Avalon is an almost comically uncharismatic singer, and I genuinely don’t remember what his singing voice even sounds like. Doesn’t help that the melody is cloying and homogenous with the rest of the Teen Ballad dreck of this era.
He could be worse though, let’s count down…. The Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 1959!!!
10. Carl Dobkins Jr – My Heart Is An Open Book
Peak: #3 Year-End: #19
I want to offer my sincerest apology to Frankie Avalon, this song right here is so basic it makes “Venus” look like Cain’s Jawbone in comparison. You see, that’s the problem with Pre-Beatles Pop Music, it’s all so samey and one-note. What distinguishes this song from the next generic, hwite bread song about love? Absolutely nothing. I’ve got 9 more entries on this list, all of which are substantially more noteworthy and awful than this, and I’m completely over it.
9. Frankie Ford – Sea Cruise
Peak: #14 Year-End: #89
Originally, I put this song on the worst list because I thought it just sounded bad. The mixing here is so genuinely awful that it makes No Answer-Era ELO sound like Dark Side of The Moon by comparison. But once I got to carefully listen to the song (y’know, to my best ability), I kinda realized that this song is also really annoying too. Frankie here sings in a really obnoxious singing voice that I’m not fully convinced is not Blackface, and the melody is really repetitive. Moving on…
8. Annette Funicello – Tall Paul
Peak: #7 Year-End: #76
I know I haven’t had a lot to say about these songs so far, but that’s because being a 2.5/10 song from 1959 usually merits little actual discussions. After this entry, the list will pick up.
Before you ask, yes, I’m not tall, I’m like 5 foot 8…maybe. My problem with this song isn’t because it espouses why having a tall boyfriend is great, my problem is that this song is so insubstantial and worthless as a piece of music that it feels bizarre for it to have become a hit single. It’s too chipper and one-note to be remotely thought-provoking, and nothing about it except its runtime (1:36) is notable. I’ll stop here before I make this review longer than the actual song…
7. Paul Evans – Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Backseat
Peak: #9 Year-End: #100
Alright, the gloves are off. Let’s start with………the first Incel song to ever become a Top Ten hit. Yeah, that’s…uh…gonna be interesting to talk about.
So yeah, the premise of this song is that the narrator is driving his friend(?), Fred, and Fred’s harem of 7 girls around. He keeps trying to pique their interest but they just want to be with Fred. It’s pretty stupid. First, I really don’t like it when songs refer to women as ‘little girls’, especially because it’s implied they’re all the same age. Second, the premise doesn’t even make sense, how would all of them fit in the backseat? I know cars were built different back then, but it still doesn’t make sense. Hell, even the Wikipedia page calls out how stupid the plot is:
What’s weird to me is that this song tries to make the narrator sympathetic, but he really isn’t. Between the subtle contempt in Evans’ singing, and the fact that the narrator himself is implied to be friend who likely just did this to get a girl (my interpretation, but like, he offered to drive around Fred, who probably had a reputation as a playboy anyways), it’s clear that he’s probably just a 1950s Incel.
6. Paul Anka – Lonely Boy
Peak: #1 Year-End: #5
Oh hey, it’s the “You’re Having My Baby” guy 15 years before that was a hit. Nifty. But before he made one of the worst hit songs of all time, Anka was just another teenage heartthrob, and a pretty decent one at that. His other hit from this year, “Put Your Head On My Shoulder”, is like a 6/10. Unlike Frankie Avalon, he’s not an empty nameplate of a singer.
The double-edged sword is that, while Anka has a lot more oomph than Avalon or Carl Dobkins Jr., he doesn’t have great control over his singing voice. On a song like PYHOMS, where the composition encourages a less aggressive performance, that’s excusable, but when he needs to belt, croon, and holler, the end result is…not pretty.
“Lonely Boy” is an unpleasant-sounding song where Anka whines about not having a girlfriend. It’s basically “Venus”, but with the vocals at the very front of the mix instead of the very back. Actually, if you listen closely, you can hear his voice echoing in the recording booth, which I guess is a neat way to depict isolation or whatever but it just calls attention to how amateur the production here is as well.
Anyways, up next, we have our very first tie, Yippee!
5. The Chipmunks – Alvin’s Harmonica / The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)
Peak: #3 / #1 Year-End: #48 / #67
It’s astonishing to me that The Chipmunks as a franchise has lasted nearly 70 years, considering it was kickstarted with two awful songs that are genuinely the same. Don’t be fooled by either the harmonica or the Christmas Tree, these songs are carbon copies of each other. Dave yells at Alvin, Alvin does some dumb shit, Dave yells at Alvin, Alvin gets Simon and Theodore to join in, and my ears begin to bleed.
Even moving past the derivative nature of these songs, they’re just not fun in any way shape or form. The melodies are half-baked, the pitch-shifted vocals are grating, Dave’s yelling invokes my PTSD, and the whole premise is just mind-numbing to me. Maybe it was amusing back then, but time has not been kind to this pointless Hijinks-slop.
4. Dodie Stevens – Pink Shoe Laces
Peak: #3 Year-End: #15
For all the hate modern Pop Music gets for stupid song lyrics, from Benson Boone’s “Moonbeam, ice cream, taking off your blue jeans”, to Sabrina Carpenter’s “That’s that me espresso”, to Taylor Swift’s notorious affinity towards the ‘car / bar’ rhyme-scheme among others, I can only imagine what today’s listening public would feel towards a song like “Pink Shoe Laces”.
This song, sung by an 11 or 12-year-old Dodie Stevens (real name Geraldine Pasquale), is a completely disposable, Hostess Cupcake of a Pop song. It’s just about this guy she’s dating that wears weird clothing and is also lowkey rich as hell too but enlists in the army when war starts, only to get sick and write his will. I’m not sure why they had a literal pre-teen sing a song about being in love with a guy old enough to enlist in the army, for the record.
What kinda irks me is that Stevens’ singing here is really ill-fitting; she seems more happy when he dies than when he was spending time with her, and the chipper, one-note production does nothing but perpetuate this song’s noxious joyousness. Hell, even she didn’t like the song! It’s a shame she didn’t have any success past 1960, because she’s not a bad singer by any means.
3. Edd Byrnes & Connie Stevens – Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb
Peak: #4 Year-End: #37
These last 3 songs were the hardest to rank. They all suck in completely different ways and the only reason why this one is the highest is because I find it to be the least offensive of this terrible trio. Anyways, enough gab about future targets of my wrath, let’s get into it!
This ‘song’ is basically just a skit. The music is more like background noise, and that’s being generous, and both of our ‘singers’ are obnoxious. The main crux of this song is that Edd Byrnes is Kookie Kookson, a character he played from the show 77 Sunset Strip, and Connie Stevens (who was Carrie Fisher’s stepmother, interesting stuff) is some random girl that loves him and wants him to kiss her.
That might sound harmless enough, but both performers are locked-in and determined to be as obnoxious as possible. Stevens says like 2 unique lines total in a voice that can best be described as Disneyland-Core. Meanwhile, Byrnes, doing his character’s voice, speaks using as much slang as he could possibly incorporate into each of his lines. It is remarkably grating and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if this song were secretly propaganda from the CIA to make me hate teenagers from 1959.
The biggest issue is that this song is JUST. NOT. FUNNY! It doesn’t make me feel anything other than the intense desire to listen to something else. Why anyone under the age of like 75 would listen to this is a mystery in its own right. Moving on!
2. Wink Martindale – The Deck of Cards
Peak: #7 Year-End: #71
“The Deck of Cards” is barely a song. I am not exaggerating, flanderizing, or hyperbolizing here, this is barely a piece of music. Reading my thoughts on this song is more of a composition than “The Deck of Cards”. Any music here is to serve merely as a reminder that you are not listening to an audiobook. Really, “The Deck of Cards” is a 4 minute long religious snoozefest. The fact that this is religious is hardly to this song’s detriment because I can hardly think of any way to make the song more interesting, speaking as someone who is not a practising Christian anyways.
But what this song reminds me of more than anything else is those damn AI-generated ads all over YouTube that just preach Christianity at you tactlessly. Wink Martindale is so blandly non-offensive and WASP-y that he makes Pat Boone look like FD Signifier (that’s not a jab at FD, for the record). Also apparently it got the number of days in a year wrong, so yeah, definitely AI.
1. Frankie Avalon – Bobby Sox to Stockings
Peak: #8 Year-End: #70
Hey remember the Dishonorable Mentions when I said Frankie Avalon’s worst hit this year wasn’t Venus… Yeah, about that, we’ve got some nasty shit to unpack here. Let’s not hesitate on the Worst Hit Song of 1959, “Bobby Sox to Stockings”.
Frankie Avalon was a teen idol. Keep that in mind while I inform you that the lyrics of this song are basically the old adage “if she’s old enough to bleed, she’s old enough to bleed”. I mean, the 50s were a different time. Ray Charles couldn’t make a song with the line “she sure knows how to shake that thing” without getting banned from half the nation’s radio stations, but Frankie Avalon can sing about newly pubescent teenage girls and no one bats an eye.
To be clear, I mean no ill will towards Frankie Avalon, he himself was 18 when the song came out and by all accounts seems like a nice guy. He’s been married since ‘63 and was even in Grease. The people I’m angry at are everyone else who actively chose to ship this product out and promote it to his fanbase. Sadly, there will be numerous songs of this ilk to become hit songs over the next 25 years, so I’m in for a long, rocky road. Oh well, what the hell!
