Hit '70s Songs With The Worst Vocals

Many remember the 1970s as a decade when groundbreaking rock groups and other musicians were putting out some of their best work, including Queen, David Bowie, Marvin Gaye, and Gloria Gaynor, but there's real selection bias going on here. Of course we remember the best of the best as the decades go on, but can we really argue that a foundational album like Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" is truly representative of an entire decade? Nope. Turns out, the wide-ranging '70s music scene contained many real stinkers. Even if we zero in on vocal tracks alone, and even if we further narrow that field to confirmed hits, there is a smorgasbord of flops, flubs, and blunders to be had.

When it comes to the "worst vocals," there are a couple of categories here that informed our selection. One is rather obvious: plain bad singing. A few such songs can certainly earn their ignominious place here, but there's another variety that's also worth discussing. That would be the '70s track showing passable or even good singing ability, but with lyrical or stylistic choices that are so odd and off-putting that the vocals tumble over into "worst" territory all too easily. While there's room for debate, the tracks that follow are widely regarded as showcasing some of the worst vocals of hit '70s songs.

Perhaps it's surprising to some, but a soft rock tale of a couple of muskrats making a connection hasn't exactly emerged as a classic. Let's mark this one down as a flub for adult contemporary artists Captain & Tennille. Okay, Toni Tennille's voice is quite nice if a little too perfectly suited to elevator music, but the lyrical content of "Muskrat Love" is so utterly strange and downright off-putting that even her singing ability can't save it. Oh, and there's also the synthesizer attempt to make chittering muskrat noises — should we count those as vocals, too? — that further contributes to this awkward mess of a tune.

The song has a comparatively long history, as it was first written in 1972. Captain & Tennille only got their hands on it in 1976, then spun it out into ignominious pop song history soon after. Yet their vision was oddly a hit, reaching the No. 4 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 when it debuted. Indeed, it was popular enough that the Ford administration invited Captain & Tennille to perform at the White House ... in honor of the nation's bicentennial ... in front of Queen Elizabeth II. "I thought they seemed like a fun group!" Tennille told People in 2016, further justifying the event's set list by pointing out that "Muskrat Love" was indeed a hit. She recalled that Henry Kissinger seemed pretty discomfited by the performance (perhaps because the volume was high or he was mulling over that controversial Nobel Peace Prize of his) while Elizabeth herself took a quick nap.

Yes, you may have already heard of "Convoy" and used it for any number of parodies, but it turns out that the original song is itself a parody of novelty songs, truckers, Middle America, and ... bread commercials? Weirdly popular for a minute there, this is a weird mix of the sort of sing-talking that Johnny Cash did pretty darn well ... but singer C.W. McCall definitely doesn't. That style makes the interjections of a peppy choir all the stranger.

Besides selling the image of rebel truckers sticking it to the man, "Convoy" was also selling the image of a singer who didn't exist. You see, C.W. McCall was a character created and sung by Omaha marketing man Bill Fries; an earlier version of C.W. McCall was indeed used to sell bread. We're sure that Fries is a nice-enough person, but a singer he ain't, given that he just sort of rhythmically talks through the affair.

Perhaps that's why the song relies so heavily on jargon-heavy C.B. radio chatter, like that common 10-4 phrase, and the aggressively cheerful choir. Anyway, it was popular enough that C.W. McCall returned again with 1976's "Round The World With The Rubber Duck," which sees the infamous convoy somehow making its way across the Atlantic, crashing through the Berlin Wall, and being very offensive in Japan. As a reviewer in The Kingston Whig-Standard argued, C.W. McCall "has a lot of nerve and his albums are consistent: consistently poor that is."

Given the content, it's strange how "Afternoon Delight" still manages to be utterly anodyne. Maybe that's because, for all of its innuendo-laden lyrics, it was actually inspired by a stuffed shrimp entrée that singer and writer Bill Danoff ate. After chowing it down, Danoff took exception to the fact that the menu deemed it an "afternoon delight," as his then-wife Kathy "Taffy" Danoff explained to an audience back in the day, and the song somehow resulted.

Others have reported that they first thought the tune was some sort of jingle about snacks or dessert, or perhaps a rising beverage competitor to Sunny Delight, speaking further to the oddly neutered sound of the Starland Vocal Band quartet. On other occasions, Bill Danoff also claimed that he wanted to write a fun, cheeky song that wasn't outright raunchy. Yet that hesitancy kind of ruins "Afternoon Delight," which can't quite seem to decide what it is. A saucy, free love-inspired tune? A commercial jingle? Elevator music?

While it was admittedly a hit — Starland Vocal Band is also among the groups that won the Grammy for Best New Artist before promptly disappearing — quite a few critics have since derided it as utter cheese, with repetitive lyrics and technically okay but ultimately bland singing. You can't help but think that, under someone else's purview, a bit more vocal bite could have made this an interesting facet of 1970s music culture, instead of a joke on "Arrested Development" and "Anchorman."

Okay, given that "Disco Duck" was recorded by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots, it's clear no one was really taking this track seriously. But, even if a tune is meant as a novelty song, that doesn't mean it's totally off the hook, especially if it drives you absolutely batty and undermines the sometimes cool, sometimes messed-up history of the disco genre. 

Surely that's the case for 1976's "Disco Duck," which had its genesis in real-life songwriter and D.J. Rick Dees, who was inspired by a guy from his gym who did a wacky duck voice. It was first recorded for a small-time Memphis label, but "Disco Duck" took off and began to get national play. Well, except in Memphis, where it was considered competition and even got Dees fired from one station.

While Dees' personal story seems to have turned out just fine — he's still an active radio D.J. today, in fact, and proudly includes a page about "Disco Duck" on his website — it's harder to say that the track is enjoyable. The whole duck voice thing is reminiscent of that one guy in the office who thinks he's a comedian, but can really only do one bit over and over. The lyrics in which he describes turning into some sort of avian disco man are unnerving (as are the performances in which someone in a papier-mâché duck mask with a chilling expression shuffles around next to Dee).

Sure, there's no denying that Morris Albert's "Feelings" was a genuine hit that landed at No. 2 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart in August 1975. It was also certified gold in the U.S. later that year. But the song is also so achingly saccharine that you may find yourself growing rageful. He's singing about some sort of lost love, fine, but soon enough you might begin to wonder if Morris instead meant to torture you, not unlike if you were stuck with a post-breakup friend in an enclosed space who could really, really use a new hobby to get out of a navel-gazing funk.

You might think that Albert's voice is okay, but the way it's deployed here is so wispy and maudlin that the styling sabotages the whole thing (the tremulous strings and plonky piano backing don't exactly help). Then, there are the repetitive, vague lyrics. By the millionth time you hear Albert warble "whoa-oh-oh, feelings," you may wish to disavow the concept of human feelings altogether.

It did inspire some more heated emotion, as "Feelings" was the subject of a case brought by French songwriter Louis Gasté, who argued in court that Albert basically ripped off his 1956 song, "Pour Toi." Gasté was successful and was listed as a co-writer of the song thereafter, though given the scathing reviews of the song — which continued well into the '90s and beyond — he perhaps shouldn't have been too proud of that accomplishment.