These Are The Worst No. 1 Hits Of The 1960s

There was a lot of terrific music conceived and released in the 1960s — British Invasion acts like the Rolling Stones, the unrelenting Motown hit machine, and experimental psychedelic rock. But that doesn't provide a full view of the era's breadth, nor does it account for what people were actually listening to and purchasing. The 1960s pretty much set the standard for what stellar pop and rock music could be, and it's a template still followed by mainstream artists today. But much of the songs associated with that era are simply what endured because of their high quality. The '60s songs that nailed the meaning of life, for example, are appreciated and remembered, while many tracks from the era have aged terribly, indicative of what the dark 1960s music industry relentlessly pitched and promoted.

This tension plays out in lists of No. 1 singles of the 1960s. While acts like The Beatles and The Supremes routinely topped the Hot 100, dozens of other artists got to briefly enjoy some time at the apex of American pop. Many of those songs have been forgotten, and rightfully so — as they're absolutely terrible. Perhaps their production techniques are dated, or their lyrics are so ghastly or politically incorrect as to be cringe-worthy in retrospect, or maybe they just can't be enjoyed outside of the '60s, a confusing and tumultuous period. For whatever reason, these are definitely the most awful songs to ever hit No. 1 in the 1960s.

The Battle of Little Bighorn is among the most devastating military defeats in modern history and a truly ugly chapter in the story of westward U.S. expansion. In 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Custer's federal troops in Montana Territory attacked a group of Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux warriors led by Sitting Bull. As many as 100 Indigenous people died along with 268 U.S. troops. Now, doesn't that sound like a great subject for not just a pop song, but a humorous one?

Listening to Larry Verne's "Mr. Custer" today, knowing what Americans did in retrospect about how it turned out, the narrator in the song is absolutely correct in his unwillingness to fight. Yet his absolute terror about dying in what appears to be an impossible battle is presented as cowardice and played for laughs and pity. The audience is allowed into the head of this anonymous soldier as he works through his terror, best expressed through the repeated and whined chorus line, "Mr. Custer, I don't want to go!" Even worse, the 7th Cavalry soldier is presented in a form familiar to 1960s audiences: The ignorant rural yokel, akin to Goofy or Gomer Pyle. Somehow, "Mr. Custer," a song about an innocent pleading with his commanding officer to not die in a battlefield slaughter in a funny voice (and replete with "war cries"), topped the pop chart for a week in 1960.

Probably the most misogynistic song to ever top the Hot 100, "If You Wanna Be Happy" by Jimmy Soul was also the last big moment for a calypso fad that engrossed Americans mostly in the late 1950s. This insidiously catchy 1963 hit has a party atmosphere that deceptively obscures the remarkably sexist and extremely dated lyrics about marriage, beauty standards, and gender norms. The song is actually based on an old calypso tune, bluntly titled "Ugly Woman," and it preserves and ramps up that sentiment.

Soul, formerly of the popular gospel act the Nightingales, exuberantly delivers the message, stated right at the top of the song: "If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life / Never make a pretty woman your wife." It's the narrator's opinion that men should marry unattractive women because they'll never have to worry about other guys hitting on her or her being unfaithful. "If You Wanna Be Happy" signs off on male insecurity and possessive male behavior while also being just gross about women. The advice to marry the ugly so as to preserve the fragile male ego — the power dynamic made uneven by an attractiveness imbalance — is repeated throughout. But it's a spoken word portion between Soul and another man that is to the point and too much: "I saw your wife the other day," Soul says, adding, "Yeah, and she's ugly!" The reply: "Yeah, she's ugly, but she sure can cook, baby!"

The quantifiably popular music of a time and place is a fascinating look into the collective psyche of the people of the era. When looking back at the 1960s, for example, it's shocking that for five weeks in 1968, the No. 1 song in the country was "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro. Remember: This was one of the most volatile and combative years in American political history thanks to Vietnam War protests and a contentious presidential election. Yet the smirking, syrupy ballad spends most of its runtime patronizingly and eye-rollingly reflecting on a woman's obvious mental health issues as silly and immature. The rest of the track laments that same character's death. "Honey" is all about sexism, emotional tourism, and mental health exploitation — and in 1968, this was all considered entertaining.

Over the span of eight interminable verses, Goldsboro wistfully recounts his relationship with a woman named or nicknamed Honey, mocking almost everything she does. She plants a tree, he laughs. She slips in snow, he laughs. "Kinda dumb and kinda smart," he calls Honey, just before he describes her seemingly unexplained crying jags and her apparently hilarious car accident before she just up and dies one day when he's out of the house. Goldsboro's narrator strongly implies suicide, and after the fact, all he can do is lament how lonely he is now and how much he misses his childlike lover.

Jim Morrison, the self-styled poet and unpredictable frontman of The Doors, is held up by appreciative baby boomers as one of the voices of their generation. A boundary-pushing, authority-challenging icon whose music was so groovy and edgy that it completely freaked out the squares. Or rather, the unimpressed, older guardians of the establishment and the old ways. While Morrison and The Doors sometimes churned out legitimately bewildering, weird, and progressive stuff like "Light My Fire" and "Break On Through (To the Other Side)," the band's final No. 1 hit from 1968 is so toothless as to be laughable. "Hello, I Love You" sounds like a combo of forgettable, early '60s crooner-pop by someone like Paul Anka or Bobby Darin and the generic, studio-crafted, tween-marketed bubblegum pop of the early '70s.

Morrison himself sounds bored to tears singing "Hello, I Love You" — muttering and slurring his lyrics as the repetitive, basic melody lulls the audience into a trance. To Morrison's credit, the words are pretty dumb — he rhymes "tell me your name" with "jump in your game," which sounds like cool hippie slang but is actually meaningless and made-up. This song is the sound of the Doors selling out and abandoning all pretense of edginess and weirdness, and it shows that the band maybe never had anything to say anyway — that it only wanted to make short, cliche-driven love songs.

Folk music took a dark turn by the end of the 1960s, and rightfully so, as it was a primary channel for anti-Vietnam War protest songs. The genre's dark acoustic sensibility hit its nadir with this No. 1 hit from 1969 by singer-songwriter duo Zager and Evans. It's a piece of harrowing, dystopian science fiction that aims to wallow in self-pity and to unnecessarily instill fear about the coming state of the world long after everyone currently alive is dead.

As hinted at with that forebodingly apocalyptic Latin subtitle, "In the Year 2525" coldly and systematically rattles off Earth's future history, according to a couple of joyless and humorless nags. Some of it is contradictory, and a lot of it is so silly that it's hard to take seriously. In 2525, humanity may not be around anymore, but if it does last, by 3535, all experiences will be enjoyed in pill form. That will allow humanity to evolve away from the need for teeth and eyes by 4545 because there will be nothing to "chew" and nothing worth looking at anyway. But then, after 9595, when humans have ravaged the Earth in full and humanity is all cried out (despite having been eyeless for thousands of years), everyone dies — until the big twist. "In the Year 2525" was all set in the past, perhaps, as the smug and self-satisfied Zager and Evans muse in this '60s-style acid trip set to music.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.