As far as I am concerned, one of the worst bands that became inexplicably popular is The Judds. I’ve never been able to tolerate their music — the performances are terrible, the session musicians always sound like they want to die, and the songs they choose to sing are insipid. “Why Not Me?” you ask? Maybe because it’s the fact that YOU SUCK.
Granted, it’s difficult to choose just one song to single out as especially bad; this is why this might end up being an occasional feature: The Worst of the Judds. (Or, the Fucking Judds, as I often refer to them.) This time through, since it?s the first time, we might as well go through one of my least favorite hated Judds songs, “Grandpa (Tell Me About The Good Old Days)”.
Part of the reason this song annoys me so is that it’s got that whole “Things were so much better back in the old days!” attitude — not that nostalgia is an entirely bad thing or anything, but it seems odd that they single out a lot of things as Missed that I’d think are actually pretty much awesome. One thing I’ll say nice about the Judds, though, is that Wynonna has put up most/all of the lyrics on her website (also; I have heard that Wynonna is actually a very nice person in real life as well, so don’t take my Judds hatred as indicative of them as people, just their records, which are really, really goddawful), so, I’d like to critique them here for those who perhaps haven’t heard this song, or never paid attention to the words.
Grandpa, tell me ’bout the good old days
Sometimes it feels like
This world’s gone crazy
Grandpa, take me back to yesterday
When the line between right and wrong
Didn’t seem so hazy
The first verse I suppose isn’t quite so awfully bad. The first 3 lines do go back to that vaguely “We’re living in the end times!” type thinking that just drives me up a wall. Although, take a look at the last 2 lines — apparently shades of grey are both bad and a wholly new thing. And I can’t honestly understand why non-black-and-white scenarios are a bad thing. Best I can figure out is that now (accepting their conceit that, y’know, everything was either Good Or Bad in, say, the 1930s or whenever it’d be that she’s singing about as “The Good Old Days”) people actually have to think. So, I suppose it goes to show that “freedom of choice is what you got/Freedom from choice is what you want”. It’s a little strange, though, to see that stated so clearly in a song that’s not by DEVO.
Did lovers really fall in love to stay
And stand beside each other come what may?
Yeah, I agree; it’s really a horrible thing now that people can get divorced when their spouse beats them on a regular basis, or even just fall out of love and end up being miserable together. Whatever happened to that social stigma that ended up forcing people to live with someone they despised?
Was a promise really something people kept
Not just something they would say?
Remember: No one ever, ever lied in The Good Old Days! Lying was first invented in 1968 by those evil, evil, filthy, filthy hippies, along with LSD and Free Love!
Did families really bow their heads to pray?
Damn those hippies who also made religion illegal and made it so hard to actually find anyone religious! It sure is too bad that we live in a country with an atheist president and all sorts of icky things like gay marriage are written into the Constitution as being completely permissible and encouraged!
Did daddies really never go away?
Oh, Grandpa, tell me ’bout the good old days
Man, 1968 was a really bad year, wasn’t it? I mean, first the hippies invent lying, and then they repeal the law that makes it impossible for people to get killed or die when they have children! Damn them! Damn them to hell! Why did we ever listen to them?
Grandpa, everything is changing fast
We call it progress
But I just don’t know
And Grandpa, let’s wander back into the past
And paint me the picture
Of long ago
I don’t really know if it’s progress either; I mean, all those civil rights things, and the idea that women can work and are just as worthwhile as men, giving everyone the vote. That’s not progress; that?s just mucking it up for everyone!
Then the chorus repeats again, and the song ends. And so does this, because I’d like to stop thinking about bad music and start thinking about good music for a while. After all “Now That I Have Everything” by They Might Be Giants just came on my CD player, and that song rules.
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