If my shiny eyes look sad,The band is Kaleidoscope and the album title is "Tangerine Dream," released in 1967. There are 2 bands from that era called Kaleidoscope, which isn't surprising at all. It's a very obvious psychedelic choice for that time (when The Beatles sang "Look for the girl with Kaleidoscope eyes"). "Please Excuse My Face" is by the British Kaleidoscope:
Please excuse my face,
Blushing, smiling through the tears,
Please excuse my face,
I feel dead, I'll hide myself away,
I'll think of you, through crystal eyes I pray...
I don't remember this album, even though I was a big fan of the psychedelic music of the time. Oddly, I remember "Tangerine Dream" as the name of a 1990s retro-psychedelic band. (Am I imagining that? It doesn't Google well.)
Anyway, if you know a douchier recording than "Please Excuse My Face," tell me about it in the comments, and maybe we can put this question up for a vote.
Posts
102 comments:
We built this city, MacArthur Park, Seasons in the snow, These hoes ain't loyal, Her name is Rio, Nasty boys, and anything by Taylor Swift or bon Jovi.
I remember "Tangerine Dream" as the name of a 1990s retro-psychedelic band. (Am I imagining that? It doesn't Google well.)
Tangerine Dream is a German synth band that's sort of run the gamut from Psychedelia to Art Rock to Industrial. They've been around since 1967, reportedly founded several months before the Kalidescope album.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangerine_Dream
Kodachrome
They also had a song called "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." A cute play on the letters of their favorite recreational substance.
Cat's in the Cradle by Harry Chapin. Blechh. I hear it once a year, each time I go to my dentist.
A while back Dave Barry nominated that cake out in the rain song
There's The Paupers 1966 song "If I Should Call You by Some Name."
If I call you by some name
That perhaps is not your name
Will you try to understand
That I never had it planned
But at times my thoughts do slip
And her name comes to my lips
And I'll call you by some name
That perhaps is not your name
Anything by Flo Rida or rappers in general is douch-ey.
"Sometimes When We Touch"
Tangerine Dream was a good band, their sountrack for the Roy Scheider movie "Sorcerer" based on Walter Wager's "The Wages of Sin" is very good.
Please excuse my cock is a pretty douchey song that I just made up.
If I started listing douche songs, I'd be writing for hours.
Tangerine Dream also did the soundtrack for "Risky Business." Definitely more remembered from the '80s.
I nominate Air Supply - All Out of Love (or Phones Don't Make Good Pillows):
I'm lying alone with my head on the phone
Thinking of you till it hurts
Since you have a University ID, I don't think you are allowed to use the term "douchiest". Better stick to the more neutral enema variations.
Tangerine Dream also did the soundtrack for a bad, but cult favorite, movie of the 1980s, "Legend." Tom Cruise is the lead, with Mia Sara (Ferris Bueller's girlfriend) as the damsel in distress, and Tim Curry as Satan, or at least a devil character bad guy. Yes, it is as bad as it sounds. Director is Ridley Scott. He said he was trying to do his own version of LotR. Didn't quite work.
Brian Ferry and Jon Anderson (lead singer of Yes) supplied two vocal tracks. The soundtrack is a classic of 80s prog/synth rock excess.
Richard mc... thanks for that interesting and surprising info on TD and Sorcerer. I did not know that and I like the movie a lot and to this day remember how it sounds.
Douchy song: "Tonight's the Night" by Rod the Mod. Normally he's OK, but that one is a clunker.
I don't think you're allowed to use the word "douchy" anymore.
The Association - Cherish.
You don't know how many times I've wished that I had told you
You don't know how many times I've wished that I could hold you
You don't know how many times I've wished that I could
Mold you into someone who could
Cherish me as much as I cherish you
Mold you? That sure went from pathetic to creepy quick. The first word of the next line is "perish." Along Comes Mary is just as bad, if not worse.
I used to think "Flowers and Beads" by Iron Butterfly was a pretty douchey song from that same era.
"Yummy yummy yummy, I got love in my tummy...."
Does rap count as music?
MacArthur Park and Cherish were in the charts for many agonizing weeks. What about Eve of Destruction? Don't Cry for Me, Argentina. In the Year 2525. Young Girl, get out of my...blah...Up, Up and A Way-Ay-Ay in my beautiful balooon...
My emo students are going to love this. Thank you Althouse, you have brought sadness and despair to needy emo kids.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
We have a couple of dozen words to indicate the bad, the banal, the bathetic, the sentimental, the kitschy, the schmaltzy, the maudlin, the mawkish, etc. But we only have a couple of words to designate something that is contemptible in a particularly male way.
The migration of the meaning of douchey from the latter to the former adds little to the former and subtracts a great deal from the latter.
I don't understand how you're using "douchey" here. I would say, trying to be as uncharitable as I can, that the song is: fey, precious, simpering, self-absorbed, self-deprecating, silly, adolescent, overblown, possibly ill-conceived... Is "douchey" as you use it just a synonym for "lame"? Because to me that word implies an aggressiveness and vulgar boorishness that I can detect no trace of in this song. (Which is not the greatest self-deprecating lovelorn psych-ballad ever perhaps, but not unlike many others of the time, and I kind of like it.)
Here is the anthem of a true douche, channelled by Mark Knopfler.
Where Do You Think You're Going?
Where do you think you're going
Don't you know it's dark outside
Where do you think you're going
Don't you care about my pride
Where do you think you're going
I think you don't know
You got no way of knowing
You got no place to go
I understand your changes
How long before you reach the door
I know where you think you're going
I know what you came here for
And now I'm sick of joking
You know I like you to be free
Where do you think you're going
I think you'd better go with me, girl
You say there is no reason
But you still find cause to doubt me
When you ain't with me girl
You're gonna be without me
Where do you think you're going
Don't you know it's dark outside
Where do you think you're going
Don't you care about my pride
And now I'm sick of joking
You know I like you to be free
Where do you think you're going
I think you'd better go with me, girl
What about "Arthur's Theme(The Best That You Can Do)" from 1980? That was on the radio all the fucking time
So douchey is a synonym for "on the radio all the time" now? Color me lexicographically befuddled. What's the OED say?
killjoy
noun
a person who spoils the pleasure of others
Synonyms drag, grinch, party pooper, spoilsport, wet blanket
Related Words fuddy-duddy, goody-goody, Goody Two-shoes, old maid, stick-in-the-mud; defeatist, Jeremiah, knocker, pessimist; complainer, crab, cynic, grouch, grump, sorehead, sourpuss, whiner; bore, downer, drip
Bobby Goldsboro's "Honey" is a contender. Though - quoting from Dave Barry's Bad Song contest, which covers this territory pretty well - "Honey" is tolerable if you imagine the angels that came to take Honey away were Hell's Angels.
Oh no, you're right about Honey.
Killjoy Kate.
Althouse needs to contact Pandora. If someone gave "Please Excuse My Face" a thumbs up, there is a 15-year-old girl somewhere who has done a lot of acid and is in need of medical attention.
Jay -- No charge.
What about songs that were so douchey they sorta transcended the moment
into a glorius nirvana? You know, like, Red Rubber Ball and Knock Three
Times on the Ceiling.
Running Bear, Wolverton Mountain, Teen Angel, Endless Sleep, and dozens of others that were the only option back when all we had were the Top 40s stations. This thread is awakening memories of pain, as opposed to painful memories.
Supposedly Friedkin (IIRC) heard some TD music after "The Exorcist" and said that had he known of them, he would have chosen them for the soundtrack (Oldfield didn't exactly suck). Don't care much for the later TD, but their stuff from the 70s is quite good, if you're into that sort of thing (3 guys, mostly synthesizers, tape loops and such) The live album "Encore" is a personal fave. Played their shows with the house lights on and no light show. Friend saw them around then, said each guy sat in front of a "command center" of oscilloscopes, keyboards, computers, various electronic devices, they couldn't even see each other while performing.
Bob R. You should have made it clear that I'm not allowed to agree with you.
I was never quite sure if MacArthur Park was on the level. It was so overproduced and the lyrics were so awful that I thought it was some kind of put on. It's definitely douchey, but you have to consider the possibility that it's a clever parody of douchey songs. If it were truly douchey, Celine would have done a cover......,,,,Has teenage death music gone down the memory hole? "Tell Laura I Love Her" was about a high school kid who perishes in a flaming auto because he wants to rescue Laura's high school pin from his wrecked car. That was extremely douchey and absolutely sincere........ In the field of classical music, Sarah Brightman really spreads the nozzle. It's tough to make Mozart sound douchey, but she succeeds.
I thought the group was called Tangerine Dream.
Bill @ 5:12 PM is correct. The douchiest song is "Sometimes When We Touch":
You ask me if I love you
And I choke on my reply
I'd rather hurt you honestly
Than mislead you with a lie
For who am I to judge you
In what you say or do
I'm only just beginning
To see the real you
[Chorus]
And sometimes when we touch
The honesty's too much
And I have to close my eyes
And hide
I want to hold you till I die
Till we both break down and cry
I want to hold you till the fear in me subsides
I"Run Joey , Run by David Gates, lead singer from bread , where father shoots boyfriend but misses and hits pregnant daughter.
I"Run Joey , Run by David Gates, lead singer from bread , where father shoots boyfriend but misses and hits pregnant daughter.
It came up today on my "Jennifer Juniper" station on Pandora
I think I see the problem!!
Anything by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, but especially "Young Girl (Get Out My Mind)" and "Lady Willpower."
Holy smokes those were bad songs. Gary Puckett had a voice like bull moose.
I hated The Association with a passion that mere words cannot express but girls loved them and if you took a girl to one of their concerts she might get all romantic and let you touch her tits afterward.
So, I liked them for that.
I guess I am the only person who turns up MacArthur Park when it comes on. Plus I tried to write this comment in Comic Sans MS.
+10 for the Sorcerer soundtrack. There was about 15 minutes of Tangerine Dream music only before the start of the movie when I saw it in a mostly empty theater at the time of its release. The music was on the film reel, as you see occasional film blips and scratches on the screen.
Muskrat Love.
Anything by Mungo Jerry.
Taken most literally, the prize winner might be "Coca-Cola Douche" by The Fugs.
Billy Don't Be a Hero.
'Honey' is redeemed by the Austin Lounge Lizards' parody/mashup "Shorty's Gal / Honey", the last track on the album 'Lizard Vision'. As they explain in the spoken intro, they "never dared to record it before because they couldn't think of non-offensive enough lyrics". It's a delight to hear where different members of the live audience recognize the source.
Here are the lyrics:
"Well, I woke last night at midnight
to the sounds of truckers gruntin' in the room next door.
All that pokin' and a'strokin'
I cold tell them boys was smokin' with that two-bit whore.
So much sin and walls so thin,
I listened 'til my ears were red and rough and sore.
Then I got up in my birthday clothes
and grabbed my trusty rubber hose, I meant to score.
She said her name was Laura
and she'd come from Bora Bora just a while back
Left her friends and all her kin
to travel with a serviceman to Hackensack.
But she found she was a lona'
so she moved out to Ozona to the Truck Corral,
And she found herself a pimper,
a stout fellow with a simper, now she's Shorty's gal.
And honey, I miss you,
And I'm feeling crude.
I'd love to be with you,
and do something crude.
And then one day the angels came
and took my Laura far away, so I believe.
Even though I never wrote or called,
I don't think it was fair at all for her to leave.
So I lie here in the gutter
and occasionally I mutter her name sweet and low.
Golly gee, I really loved her,
even though I never cared enough to tell her so.
And honey, I miss you,
And I'm feeling crude.
I'd love to be with you,
All alone in the nude."
But you need to hear it to get the full effect.
"BE MINE FOR CHRISTMAS"
https://youtu.be/T_8rVJ_ENaY
Least douchy song: Cakewalk Into Town.
Feeling.
Tangerines Dream's music was used in the soundtrack to a porn flick from the 80s.
"Every Breath You Take" by The Police. Douchey, or just a stalker anthem?
There's a lot of songs from this era (and to be fair, most any era) with lyrics that don't bear close examination.
> If you can't be with the one you love,
> Love the one you're with
A couple of Beatles references:
Creme tangerine and montelimat...
Tangerine trees and marmalade skies... (already referenced earlier in the thread)
And Led Zeppelin's song Tangerine:
Tangerine, Tangerine, Living reflection from a dream...
But what is montelimat, anyway?
"Sometimes When We Touch"
I agree with Jeff and Bill. Skin-crawlingly horrible.
Anything by REO Speedwagon, but especially "In My Dreams".
"Unbreak my Heart" by Toni Braxton?
"MacArthur Park" is an ironic masterpiece.
Wikipedia has a long and informative entry for Tangerine Dream, which was founded in 1967 and has been one of the most prolific musical collaborations anywhere since, having released over 100 studio albums and done the original scores for over 30 films. They basically created the "electronica" genre of music. If you've seen a film with a synthesizer sound track, I'll bet you it was Tangerine Dream.
You guys are getting caught up in sappiness and cheesiness. These are not the same thing as douchiness.
Bryan Adams' "Run to You" is without question the douchiest song ever recorded.
The song is a man proclaiming what an absolute piece of human garbage he is and acting like it makes him super cool.
Elenore by the Turtles
Elenore, gee I think you're swell
And you really do me well
You're my pride and joy, et cetera
I am on the bed, meandering through a crossword puzzle, and Jessica Alba is on the same bed, rhythmically clipping her toenails, Clip Clip Pause, Clip Clip Pause. We are listening to the local Oldies Radio Station when England Dan & John Ford Coley's "I'd Really Love To See You Tonight" tweedles through the speakers.
I briefly acknowledge the song, then return to my crossword, when I realize Jessica has stopped clipping her toenails and is listening, transfixed.
"I won't ask for promises
So you don't have to lie
We've both played that game before
Say I love you, then say goodbye
I'm not talking 'bout moving in
And I don't want to change your life
But there's a warm wind blowing
the stars are out and I'd really love to see you tonight"
As the song continues her eyes begin to slowly brim with tears, and her face gently shades from wistful to bittersweet: it is speaking to her Soul, in a way no words can describe or articulate. She is transfixed, suspended in time, so I do not speak a word: I nod knowingly, then proceed to fuck her in the ass.
As I am fucking her in the ass the next song plays: Rupert Holmes' 'Escape (the Pina Colada Song)."
"If you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain
If you're not into yoga, if you have half a brain
If you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape
I'm the love that you've looked for, write to me, and escape"
Jessica is biting at her pillow when she begins to laugh, a girlish giggle.
"What" I ask.
"Well," she says, turning back to look at me, "You're fucking me in the butt and he is singing about 'Pina Colonics'."
I do not know if she is serious or not. With Jessica I often have this confusion.
I am Laslo
@Kate Powell - I was just welcoming you to the killjoy club. Membership has its privileges.
It does Google well....
Try Bing occasionally.
http://tangerinedream-music.com
@ Roughcoat:
"I hated The Association with a passion that mere words cannot express...."
I like the Association's big hits, ("Cherish," Windy," "Along Comes Mary," etc.), but if you hate them, wait until you see this grating and affected band self-intro at their Monterey Pop festival appearance!
Well, if we're going to be strict about the definition of "douchey", then we must allow "We've Got Tonight" by Bob Seeger on the debate stage.
Earnest Prole:
Re: Mark Knopfler's "Where Do You Think You're Going?"
You're right, the lyrics are awful. But the guitar work is beautiful, making this one of my favorite songs. Knopfler is right up there with Clapton as a guitar god.
All of us robots agree.
The question "what is the most annoying song in the world" is completely subjective and not all that interesting. Some of the songs mentioned here are genuinely cringeworthy for one reason or another ("Sometimes When We Touch") while some are works of compositional genius (which doesn't necessarily make them less annoying, "Macarthur Park" being a prime example in that category.)
Way more interesting to me is the meaning of the word "douchey" which for most on this thread (if not Professor Althouse herself, her meaning remaining mysterious) seems to be: simply bad, cringeworthy, mawkish, insipid. I've never heard it used in that sense before seeing it in this post.
To me "douchey" conjures: Andrew Dice Clay, frat guys being obnoxious when they pick up girls, that kind of thing. But for ya'll it seems to conjure: Stuart Smalley, Hallmark Cards, Oprah, Dances with Wolves, etc., and maybe just sentimentality per se. Is Oprah "douchey"? I don't think so, but do you? Anyway, in that sense, I guess I'd nominate "We Are the World".
Was a strict definition of "douchey" actually offered? Professor Tweedledum Stompy-Foothouse likes words to mean what she wants them to mean, from moment, assuming she can keep track. As Pirsig's teacher said "quality is (just) what you like," ISTM that douchiness is just something out hostess doesn't like. What makes douches? Music? Lyrics? Voices?
But without further analysis the Stewart Potter Award for What I Know Is Wrong When I See It must go to that young man with the guitar in Animal House. "I gave my love a cherry..." Thank you John Belushi, for saving us from the next verse.
On the other hand, it occurs to me it could just be a "female thing". I had a female friend who used to use the term "douche chills" to refer to things that made her cringe, obviously a reference to the Summer's Eve experience that I as a man have never and could never share. Maybe the path to "douchey" meaning "cringeworthy" runs from there rather than from the (to me) more familiar locus of "douchebag" and its derivatives as a colorful derogatory metaphor for an obnoxious male.
To make Sometimes When We Touch even worse, he's singing to his father!
@ Jeff re "Where Do You Think You're Going?"
Agreed. I'm not putting down the song one bit. Knopfler creates a douchey, contemptible character, much as he does in "Money for Nothing" (you may remember the debate over whether authors may create literary characters who use homophobic slurs).
If douchey now means lame then surely Andrew Gold's "Thank You for Being a Friend" makes the top ten.
In the cheesy psych category of Professor Althouse's original example, I think it'd be hard to beat "Paisley Teddy Bear" by the Hello People ("my paisley teddy bear and me, we sit up in the tree, askin the bees what's happenin...") The fact that they're wearing clown/mime make-up adds to the effect. I happen to think it's great, but then I like "Please Excuse My Face" (which really is a splendid conceit for a song, if not-so-wonderfully executed here; Sammy Cahn could have made it shine.)
https://youtu.be/Jixd5vh78-c
Blogger M. Helmet said...
I had a female friend who used to use the term "douche chills" to refer to things that made her cringe
Douche chillllll!
Great. To even intelligently respond to this post, if that is at all humanly possible, I need to come up with a firm definition of "douchey." I had been so happy with my lot in life to use "douchebag" as a general purpose insult, but, no, we had to get all Noah Webster on me. Fine.
As I now consider such linguistics, it dawns on me that I use the term "douchebag" for specific types of jackass. The first consists of men of dubious intelligence (they can be intelligent but do not express it) who care deeply about their looks and physical possessions, treat women as either playthings and/or things to argue with, have large egos, and do everything to express themselves as shallow human beings. Common species of this type are drunken (and sometimes sober) frat boys, cast members of Jersey Shore, the baser forms of the gym rat, and the like. The second set are similar except they swap out the idiocy for passive-aggressive smugness combined with daunting ignorance and hypocrisy: the arrogant fool. Common variations include sports announcers, journalists, and politicians. Bill Clinton is a douchebag of this sort. Brian Williams is a douchebag.
If I were to choose a song based on that definition, the first one that comes to mind is "College Girls (Are Easy)" by Jesse Jaymes. More or less the drunken frat boy anthem. The female equivalent would be "Mr. Personality (Because You So Ugly)" by Gillette. Gillette is a near perfect stereotype of the douchebag's girlfriend.
Now, if we are defining this as whiny sentimental music that just hurts to listen to, which I would normally describe as "emo," "Feelings" by Morris Albert is my standard. As a person who happily listens to "MacArthur Park," "Sometimes When We Touch," and The Association's best known tunes, "Feelings" is just painful. It is the one song where I get the sense that the singer wants to commit suicide and I really wish he put down the microphone and pick up the razor blade already.
Static Ping in the second graf captures precisely the semantic field that "douchebag" and its derivatives have in my understanding of the term. Cast of the Jersey Shore pretty much nails it.
Using one of these derivatives to denote sentimentality or a cloying quality comes out of left field, which is why I speculated it must have some different derivation, perhaps more directly related to the actual mechanics of outdated feminine hygiene products. I cannot see any sense in which this mawkish, self-deprecating flimsy little psych ballad of misery shares anything at all with the Jersey Shore "vibe".
Confusing assignment, Professor!
Regarding MacArthur Park, there's a terrific live version by Glen Campbell with Jimmy Webb on some Country Music show (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZINUEmXGWhI). Glenn does an amazing guitar solo! Webb wrote quite a few hits for Glenn: By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Wichita Linesman)
Morer so
Tangerine Dream has been around in some form since the late 60s. They could be best known for the soundtrack to "Risky Business". They are probably long-lived enough, and just influential enough to have a Wikipedia entry...
"Macarthur Park" is properly seen as an attempted entry in the auteur "art-pop" lists, cf. Jacques Brel, Serge Gainsbourg, Walker Brothers, Lee Hazelwood, et al. The performance on the original hit recording misfires badly but the song itself is something of a high water mark in American pop composition and is arguably Jimmy Webb's most ambitious, unique, and accomplished lyric. It's certainly his most audacious work. It's not an icon of American pop, hated as it is by many, for nothing. That Glenn Campbell performance gets the song across much better, obviously. Nothing "douchey" about it, in any possible sense.
Tangerine Dream, the band, also did the soundtrack for a James Caan movie, Thief.
And Althouse has never heard of the band Klaatu, if she wants douchy.
From Wikipedia: "Hope, released in September 1977, is the second album by the Canadian progressive rock group Klaatu. It is a concept album, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, about the sole survivor of an arrogant race of beings, who warns space travellers of hazards in the last days of his life."
I bought it from a $1 album bin in 1978, played it once in my college dorm room, was roundly ridiculed by my room mates, and consigned it to the trash chute in the dorm.
Even my album of Haitian Voodoo Chants had a more emotional response: my music major roomie, later the conductor of the Boston Pops, took that one out back, broke it into pieces, and used lighter fluid to burn it beyond any chance of zombie recovery.
"Billy, Don't be a Hero", Paper Lace
"When I Need You", Leo Sayer
Killjoy
I'm partial to the German version. Lagerfeuerauspinkler!
"Disco Duck" Rick Dees
I love album covers like that from that era, when the group looks into the camera with intensity and meaningful sensitivity and depth.
"All By Myself", Eric Carmen
Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight".
Ted Nugent's Wango Tango has to be a candidate for douchiest tune ever.
"Toast and Marmalade for Tea" by Tin Tin a song that actually made the BillBoard Top 100 chart in 1971. IMHO checks all the boxes to qualify as douche-y
click if you dare: https://youtu.be/rVYANgoipVY
The two consecutive posts around 8:30 AM bring up an interesting question. What exactly is douchey? Althouse seems to be going for insipid in her example. And we know that there is at least an hour's worth of infomercial material in that catalog. It reminds me of the awful metal ballads, and Butthead once remarked that they do this "wuss music" so they can get chicks (because playing all headbanger material isn't going to get it done, apparently). And if that's main the reason for the awful "wuss music," then I guess it could be douchey. Certainly a different way of getting there than Wango Tango, anyway.
Why does anyone ever say "douchebag" and its variations at all? Obsolete. Archaic.
I think my mother had an actual one. Yeah, circa 1960, when I would have noticed it hanging in her bathroom and asked about it.
"To keep clean" she said, as if women were unclean.
In college some of the boys called other guys who were real jerks "douchebags".
On behalf of my mother I was offended. I thought it was a slur against women.
So why would you say "douchey"? Vulgar chic? If you need better words we could work up a list. Maybe some other commenters would oblige with some shit.
I've always assumed "douche" was a phonetic rendering of "Duke," the douchiest school on the planet. I reckoned the "sh" pronunciation of "k" was a Carolina affectation.
Hot Chicks with Douchebags, brah!
Post a Comment