I like to pretend to be this big rock-metal-alternative guy, all testosterone and stuff, but in reality there are dozens of songs that are completely cheesy and I really enjoy them. Here’s some thoughts on a few:
David Gates - Super Hits Of The 70S - Goodbye Girl
David Gates, best known for his work in 70’s folk-sappy love song-harmony group Bread, had a breakout one-hitter with this soundtrack title song from a popular 1970’s film by Neil Simon. This formula story-song is actually a better piece of work artistically than the film it was written for, in my opinion.
Phil Collins - Hits - Against All Odds
Another soundtrack song written to formula…and done well. Is it a piece of artistic mastery the likes of which the world will never see again? No. Is it a bit of cultural fluff that skillfully induces emotional connection in the listener to universal archetypes of love and loss? Yep.
Sin ad O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got - Nothing Compares 2 U
Probably one of the most excruciatingly heartfelt performances of a cover song to ever be permanently encoded in magnetic particles. Mainstream popularity, sure. Catchy, poppy groove, yep. And lurking behind the deceptively common facade, a masterful twist by Prince on the world’s oldest story in lyrics that are simultaneously simple, universally relatable, subtly complex, and straightforward. How? Who knows. But it works, and it works well.
Alice Cooper - Welcome To My Nightmare - Only Women Bleed
A sappy, overwrought, clichéd he-man “romance” song filled with all the sappy overwrought strings and flourishes you’d expect from a 1975 arena-rock power ballad. This song – which I recall thinking was related in some way to the mystery my older sister occasionally mentioned in near-whispers called “periods” when I was a little kid – somehow manages to make the horrendous living hell of domestic abuse credibly sound like a love song, and manages to do it with more than a little psychological insight into both sides of relationships hidden carefully in the outré lyrics. Go figure.
Ah yes, “One Tin Soldier,” the theme song of starry-eyed idealists the world over in 1971 or so. The sardonic, cynical, bitchy, and aggressive chorus:
“Go ahead and hate your neighbor/Go ahead and cheat a friend/Do it in the name of Heaven/You can justify it in the end”
just drips with the kind of developed thinking that we saw much more prevalently in the music of the early 90’s than the early 70’s, when even the most laudable social movements and ideals were generally represented by corny slogans and such.
Honorable Mention:
C.W. McCall's - Greatest Hits - Convoy
Must be included on any list like this by common law simply for adding the phrase “eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse micro-bus” to the cultural memory bank.