The challenge is to name a totally cheesy “so bad it’s actually pretty good” song from your youth that you know all of the words to and can sing along with. The bigger the cheesy topping the tastier the dish, IMO.
Mine is yodelling English-born returned-Australian-emigrant easy-listening/country singer Frank Ifield and the first of his 3 successive UK #1s from 1962-3. Now aged 79 he is still, surprisingly, active.
At least one fact fiend among us will no doubt already know that he was the first UK-based artist to ever have 3 successive No. 1s. The only previous three-in-a-row chart-topper here was Elvis Presley. Our Australian contingent will probably point out that he was moderately successful “down there” before repatriating “up here” in 1959.
Over to you…
The Archies – Sugar Sugar
That’s not cheese at all. It’s a brilliant pop record.
Just a mention for Rupert Holmes here.
How did I not see this, I feel such a fool…
I really like the first Right Said Fred album. There, I’ve said it. I draw the line at the famous “shirt” song but the rest of it is tip-top quality pop, superbly sung by the splendidly monikered Richard Fairbrass.
I’d post a song but I have the tiniest glimmer of a suspicion that it would be a total fucking waste of time.
Here, have an Up from me.
Oh I say….
Don’t get excited. People who know are saying that an Up from Tony is a total waste of time, too.
Chas & Dave – There Aint No Pleasing You
or are Chas & Dave really cool again?
They are very cool indeed.
Geeerrrrrrrrtcha!
…terribly sorry, I had something stuck in my throat.
cowsun
More rabbit than Sainsbury’s
Rabbit rabbit yap yap bunny bunny.
Years it took me to get towards “passable perfection” (is not perfection, but no one noticed).
And then I discovered beer …
Chas & Dave are most definitely post-cheese.
Disqualified.
“Post-cheese”.
This is great.
Racey – Some Girls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ2GUSQYmfM
Full HD – thank god for that.
There are – or were – two iterations of Racey doing the rounds. Richie Gower’s Racey, and The Original Racey.
And The People’s Front of Racey. Splitters.
Racey also released the original version of Mickey, as Kitty.
https://youtu.be/aLDr5bdAhkc
That is new and very exciting information. Thanks! There is a sub-genre 72-75 of pop bands that (dozens of them) weren’t quite glam but produced a style of pop music that hasn’t been done before or since.
I don’t understand the premise of the thread.
*puts on Boney M record*
Sings ‘I was born in the wagon of a travelling show …’
Abba’s ‘Thank You For The Music’.
I once sang this, backed by a live karaoke band, in a pub in the Wicklow mountains. Part-way through my
murderingperformance of the song, I looked up to see SinĆ©ad O’Connor sitting at a nearby table awaiting her turn on the mic. No pressure, then.Bloody hell! What did SinĆ©ad sing?
You might like to know that Mama Mia 2 is to star Cher.
The great thing about Sinead is that if she took the stage on a karaoke night, you would have absolutely no idea what she would have a go at. It could be anything from La Traviata to Territorial Pissings.
Robert Peston would be good value on the karaoke.
‘Is thisthereal LIFE. . . . . . . is this justfantasycaught IN A LAND. . .slide’
Or James Naughtie.
“Is this the real life, and if it isn’t, what are we to make of it just being fantasy, and if it is, is there no escape from reality, and we might also ask ourselves… oh the music’s finished”
If only Imgurbucketpic was working. I can feel that Peston Sings Brel album cover coming on, not to mention Lyse Doucet’s little-known alt-Americana record.
Kirsty Wark does Berlin Cabaret Songs is a definite possibility. My reasons for this are private.
Chair and a bowler hat?
You’re not thinking of Fiona Bruce, are you?
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/68/e5/9a/68e59ad162a2311c9ffa736e8191d7d3–fiona-bruce-celebrities-in-stockings.jpg
Fiona Bruce, no. Too knowing and cynical. And when she’s reading the news she always looks half-out of her chair, like she’s getting ready to leg it to the bogs the moment the camera goes off her.
Which she might be, I suppose.
Me? No.
Hasnāt Louise Lear on the weather got lovely hands?
I think we need a Kirsty Wark/Fiona Bruce cagefight.
I tell you we must die.
I tell you we must die.
Those aren’t stockings.
FFS
Paxman doing Bohemian Rhapsody would be something to see, I think
“Is this the real life? Minister, can you answer the question, is this just fantasy? Yeeeessssssss…….”
“Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
Will you let him go?
…..and what about these underpants?”
“Bloody hell” is something like what went through my head at the time. SinĆ©ad took a swerve and did something off Sean-NĆ³s Nua. I was a hard act to follow, obviously.
I only did it at all because my two pals had bigger bladders than me, and they rushed over to the band with my “request” slip while I was in the gents. The bastards. I came out of the lav to hear the MC announce “And now we have Steve, all the way from Cambridge”.
I wasn’t aware that I knew all the words but, once I got “I’m nothing special, in fact I’m a bit of a bore” out, the rest came naturally. Insert your own punchline here. I suppose something had sunk in at all those Bjorn Again gigs.
Still, bastards – the pair of them. One went on to become my best man.
….”my two pals had bigger bladders than me” – fuck was this, a medieval banquet?
Nope, just your typical three-blokes-go-into-an-Irish-pub-and-drink-too-much-Guinness Sunday lunch.
Harrumph! If ABBA are cheesy then cheese me up!
*turns to bartender*
“I’ll have a Babybel!!”
Abba are only cheesy on “Waterloo”. Or as far as their hits go, anyway.
Abba were cheesy until Gold in 1992. Then they were cool. History has been rewritten.
You clearly haven’t heard ‘Two For The Price Of One’, Bjorn’s tale of calling up an escort agency and asking for a twofer special
I have an iPod playlist dedicated to this sort of thing. It features, among others,
Billy Don’t Be A Hero
Seasons In The Sun
Matchstick Men & Matchstalk Cats And Dogs
How Can I Be Sure?
Don’t Give Up On Us
What’s Another Year
Power To All Our Friends
But my most favouritist would be Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep. Pure cheese, pure brilliance. Play it feppin’ LOUD!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0nUWQV3ZDE
We had joy.
We had fun.
We had big fat hairy bums.
….ahhh that immortal junior school humour again.
At our school it was
“We had joy,we had fun,flicking bogeys in the sun
But the sun got too hot and the bogeys turned to snot”
And a big UP for Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep
At our school when we beat the local religious schools at football:
We had joy
We had Fun
We had Jesus on the run
All the goals that they scored
Were just a little bit offside
At our school it was “We prefer the original Jacques Brel song!”
“Je veux qu’on rie
Je veux qu’on danse
Je veux qu’on s’amuse comme des fous
Je veux qu’on rie
Je veux qu’on danse
Quand c’est qu’on me mettra dans le trou”
“Bonjour le soleil! Bonjour les nuages! Bonjour les oiseaux!”
‘il est un humide et une mauvaise herbe’
All very well @LesterTheNightfly but if the bogeys were out in the sun they wouldn’t turn to snot surely? Rock hard little cannon balls perhaps but not snot.
A scientist, by Jove!
Fair point Steve.
But in our defence,we were 6 years old and possibly thought the intense heat of a 70’s sun would indeed turn the bogeys into snot.
I have a Moog album of cheese with a version of CCCC on. It is awesome.
‘We stuck scissors up our bum’, surely?
Did you perhaps mean to post this on one of the many “colonoscopy” threads?
Sorry.
āWe stuck scissors up our bum” – Jesus Freaking Christ!!! What kind of school did you go to?! No – please – don’t answer – really –
It was Saint Shover’s Primary – motto: ‘Quae ascendit deveniatur’.
Kippers, GCU. They were kippers.
*wipes brow* – that’s all right, then. Kippers up the bum I can understand. Who couldn’t?
This has become debased.
Whither my innocent and wholesome big fat hairy bum, before piscine and surgical items rendered the whole thing awfully dark and strange?
I think you mean “wither”?
This always reminds me of that Victoria Wood sketch where Julie Walters is telling her that her husband has left her for another woman:
āHad he been seeing her long?ā
āWell he must have, because he said that ātheir songā was Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheepā
I love all of those songs as well.
Off for a few minutes on youTube.
Bit of a problem here: in my teenage years one had to listen through all the crap on the radio to, once every hour, get to the record you really, really wanted to hear. This means I know every word of every song that Frank Ifield and All His Evil Spawn ever recorded as well as every other unhip (ie now adored by Mini) piece of fluff whichever cheesey DJ currently on station decided to play.
Somehow I fell in love in Shirley Abicair, I’ve had years of therapy but the love remains at 100%.
There, I’ve said it
https://youtu.be/C4eTRU9YfJM
No Cheese Content at all. Lovely, lovely song.
HP is right. That is a beaut of a song with little evidence of dairy products.
Cheese? Time for a feta worse than death: Kyrios Roussos in a romantic mood.
The Dutch are famed for their fabulous cheeses and I have just discovered that there is Demis Roussos Museum in Nijkerk in the Netherlands, I rest my case.
You really need an Abigail’s Party clip to go with that, but there isn’t one, only a brainless remix.
This is cheesy, but legitimately one of the greatest records of all time.
It’s not “so bad it’s good”, it’s just legitimately balls-out fucking fantastic, with no excuses required. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a bad egg and unwelcome on my dancefloor.
As the lamented @jim-cain once rightly said, Set You Free is the pinnacle of all human achievement.
There’s no chorus. There is no chorus. It’s cheese without a rind.
Helpfully, Wikipedia has an article entiled ‘List of Music Considered the Worst’ and I am honoured to tell the court that I would choose to listen to the following songs without shame:
The Beatles – Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da
Spandau Ballet – True
Take That- Could it be Magic?
Aqua – Barbie Girl
4 Non Blondes – What’s Up?
Easy – I don’t know why but Morningtown Ride by The Seekers was the first song I was consciously aware of.
Perhaps because it was a ‘children’s’ song although I have also read it referred to the passage of African Americans from slavery to freedom.
I don’t think I’ve heard it since I was a child, and I really disliked it then, because I found it so sad it made me cry. Petula Clark’s ‘Downtown’ had a similar effect.
‘I saw a mouse’
‘Where?’
‘There of the stairs’
‘Where on the stairs?’
‘Right there. A little mouse with clogs on, going clip clippity clop on the stairs’
Oh and the Singing Nuns – Dominique.
But Steve, can you sing “Dominique”? Also you left a “well I declare” out of the other one, didn’t you?
You are of course correct @Mike_H re ‘well I declare’.
Used to be able to sing Dominique but it was countless years ago. Going to go and see if I can find it somewhere and check.
Bubble gum music was insidious. Along with Sugar Sugar I have never got Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep out of my head… last night I heard my mama singin a song. Ooooo weee chirpy Chirpy ….
John Fred & his Playboys-Judy In Disguise. The apex of the sixties.
Was that with glasses ?
Again, a flat-out fantastic pop record with Zero Cheese Content. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
Along with the meatball song and ugly duckling.
That Tom Watson’s hella versatile!
That’s not Tom Watson it’s @DisappointmentBob
Whips out Melodica at 2:25
This. One of the few songs I can sing along to. Takes me back to my parents kitchen on a Sunday evening and me doing the drying up. It seemed it was number 1 forever.
https://youtu.be/krVWqI7sW1E
Leo Sayer is the forgotten cheese at the back of the fridge.
Book of Revelations: ‘And then I beheld the face of evil – it was behind a bad haircut and a soprano saxophone, and it was covered in cheese. And all the world fled in terror…’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SNxj9ahVMc
‘And verily it was that Evil had a Twin and they unleashed upon the world The Beast, whose name was Power Ballad, and all the Earth shook in horror… and then came the key change, and Fresh Hell was upon us all…’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFpbLlBp1GQ
Oh the humanity!
A war crime in a YouTube clip. Whooda thunk?
You know what a crime is? In terms of shape and ergonomics, a soprano sax is probably the best instrument to use as a weapon. With that in mind, in all these years why hasn’t anybody had the common decency to wrestle Kenny G’s out of his evil hands and thrash him senseless with it?
Peace and love, peace and love.
An illustration at the top of this page of what to do with Kenny G and his soprano sax…
https://thedeadkennygs.bandcamp.com/
You might not enjoy their music any more than his, though.
A tad unhygienic.
The sax would obviously have to be destroyed afterwards. What a shocking waste.
I humbly apologies for mentioning Judy in Disguise on the same thread as Bolton and G. I thought cheese was something you liked. There is nothing more horrible or unloveable than this. I shudder to even imagine the kind of person who actually likes it.
Surely this is beyond cheesy?
Have you seen this version?
ššš
If you just listen to this without looking at it it sounds like an SNL skit.
Wowzers!!!
ššš
Bravo Slotbadger!
There is no way I’m clicking that ‘effin link. I have standards
G-elzibub!
F R David was French, and produced this piece of fromage in 1983
There might be espadrilles there but I daren’t look.
Whilst one can always listen to Eurovision ironically, if thatās your thing, I do think this is a genuinely great pop song. I am not mad.
You are not. It was, and is, great.
The woman on the left and the guy at the back appeared in a series of “Coach Trip.”
They were great.
Indeed, when they left (voluntarily, not voted out, if I remember), that particular series went downhill rapidly.
Why? Were they at the top of the Himalayas?
No, they went of their own accord.
My wife’s just been to the Himalayas
K2?
No, she went on her own
My wife’s favourite Led Zeppelin song is that reggae thing on Houses Of The Holy.
D’yer Mak’er?
Mind your own damn business.
My wife likes listening to The Police while we make love.
Andy Summers?
All year round, mate.
He was excellent in Twin Peaks.
Boney M – Rasputin. I still have mucho respect for that song after it became an ear worm for me at the age of six or whatever. Solid production, great groove, great minor/major modulation.
There’s a GCSE History essay in them there lyrics
Up-and-down strings – disco catnip.
After Abba, Boney M were the first band I discovered as a small child. The sleeve of the ‘Take The Heat Off Me’ was profoundly disturbing and unsettling but the music – especially the title track – intoxicating
I’ve never spent much time worrying about what’s cheesy or cool/not cool. Maybe that’s because this is my favourite song (only when it is sung by Ms Ellis-Bextor, mind). I could also have gone for two of my other favourite songs, Silver Lady by David Soul or Fat Larry’s Band’s Zoom.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q5UWPMncNE
I do like Mahdah on the Dharncefloor. Her mum’s a pillock, but she’s not on the records.
Janet a pillock?
(Or as autocorrect would have it a pillow?)
Yes.
I didn’t like Blue Peter. It was for “goody-goodies”. I’d turn over onto ITV and watch weird shit like the Moomins and Mr Rossi.
She was also in Jigsaw.
Probably off her face on booze n drugs – spent most off her time talking to a cartoon jigsaw piece that wasn’t there, having a chat with a flying dinosaur and sharing screen time with a slightly mental mime artist with a phallic nose
Noseybonk! Oh sweet Jesus no! A generation’s childhood nightmare!!
Groovejet remains a belter.
I really liked theaudience too. Any band whose debut single is called I Got The Wherewithal has got to be worth a moment of your time.
theaudience also have a song called Penis Size and Cars.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor is fab and is probably the most popular artist in the Wad household. Even my 7 year old lad has a best of Sophie mix on his iPod touch. If you get the chance to see her live you won’t be disappointed.
“Zoom” is not cheesy. The best-ever last-chance-slow-dance in the annals of disco history. Unless you consider the concept of the disco slow-dance is cheesy. Hmmm…
Zoom is a flat out gorgeous record.
Would have been better if the singer had been supplied with a bucket to hold the tune in.
I love Sophie Ellis Bextor. I don’t think she has a duff single. Me And My Imagination is my favourite – like a hip rewrite of Japanese Boy.
As a child, this song filled my dreams. Strangely, I can still remember the words. There’s no chance of me playing the penny whistle bit, thoughbut.
Memorably described by Bob Stanley as “the brownest record ever made”.
This is also on the Moog album mentioned above. It’s a very weird record tbh.
First record I ever bought – as a present for a friend, who told me someone else had given it to him, so I could keep it.
This doesn’t explain the second record I ever bought…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tvip1zpipE
Mine is probably Two Little Boys. Damn you Rolf Harris
*hangs head in shame*
Finally…
I’m assuming you’re not referring to this version
Whats a matter you
Why you lookin so sad
Its a nice a place
Aaaaah shuddupa your face
Australiaās revenge on the world. Oh and Rolf
This. Total earworm.
But is it cheese, Mike? It’s bland and pleasant, but doesn’t stink. Maybe Mozzarella?
So we have to match up to the Saucecraft Cheesipedia, do we?
All right.
Or
These both test cheese-positive, with added Yewtree flavour in the second.
The former featured in Billy Wilder’s One Two Three – playing it was used to torture a confession of spying out of young Horst Bucholz.
As there appears to have been amendments to lyrics of songs mentioned before I recall the one for this was something on the lines of
‘I’ll never forget the smell of your sweat from under your armpits’
Yes, I saw this particular amendment on Twitter last night during the Easy Listening programme on BBC4.
I chortled.
“I went to the park and just for a lark I pissed on the flowers”
Remember the night you fell in the shite, you had your best suit on,
The one that you got for saving a lot of embassy coupons…
I’ll never forget, your tyre blew out
As you drive down the back straight
Mansell Moments
It wasn’t the grass that tickled your arse
It was my finger..
Rich field of study this, most of them far too rude for a family popular culture forum. “I must have been pissed, the night that I kissed…”
Alt version: I knew I was pissed, the moment I kissed…
Air Supply
Air that I breathe
Schmaltzy, sweet, harmonies in abundance. Massive hit. Still on rotation on a golden / smooth station near you
Totally singalongable
Pretty good actually.
Are you not confusing bands here? The Hollies sang The Air That I Breathe and it is indeed a great song. Air Supply’s big one is All Out Of Love, which is also good, although a little dated. Lost In Love is better, but also a little dated.
I like The Air Supply That I Breathe best.
Yeah my mistake. Can tell where they got their sound from.
Which oneās Tiggerlion?
Bonus points if you can name them all from this board.
ššš
āItalian Garyā is definitely the lead singer.
Moose is the guy with the glasses and the saucy/creepy come on!!
š
Edit. (Moose the Mooche)
No, even he is not sufficiently repulsive. Do you even know the rules of this place?
This is cheese of a diamond-like hardness.
1962 was the year of smelly cheese.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNev1aCEOfU
.
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AihStEi_QeA
.
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LopQBWplHk
On my visits to Waitrose, much though I love a bit of slice of Cheddar, Cheshire or Wensleydale, I am always tempted by the European imports.
Besame Mucho has to be one of the cheesiest chestnuts around. The late, great Cesaria Evora does it proud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esdl_3kKSBk
Antonello Venditti adds an extra creaminess to Mr Finn’s recipe.
After a few glasses of vino, I am ashamed to admit that I can even be tempted by a slice of Joe Church.
Julio Doubleglesias is cheese on a stick. He’s a double cheese, with cheese. He’s the cheese knees. Il Duce Dairylea.
El Mejor Manchego.
El caballero de Cabrales
The Sultan of Stilton, the Lord of Lymeswold!
the Hey hitmaker
The Chief of Cheddar.
The Big Cheese, if you will.
In Swedish, a crooner like Sr Iglesias would be described as a “smƶrsĆ„ngare” which literally means a “butter singer”.
To my delight, I’ve just discovered that the German word is SchnulzensƤnger.
Cue for a song!
You’re on fire in this thread, K! You seem to have an intuitive – and impressively polyglot – grasp of cheese.
I am a sizzling hot, toasted cheese sarnie this morning. Perhaps I need to post more caerphilly?
But Ms Bassey, Shirley?
Jeez, Louise, you got th’ cheez’!
Gobsmacked to get this far down and see no mention of Rupert Holmes
Where do you find this extraordinary stuff, Hubert?
No point in asking, I am just going to enjoy it.
There are few more reliable suppliers of dairy products than crooners.
(I tried to think of some Swedish crooners but failed. Locust, Neela: any suggestions?)
Music that is over the top, making a shameless appeal to the emotions. Corny, bombastic, flamboyant…..
Dean Martin was oozing formaggio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFSv-tq5GAY
In fact he could give Julio Iglesias a run as the Monarch of Manchego
Merry Cheesemas! It’s Charley singing She.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1YipLB-rQQ
What a painful, cruel irony that She is the most listened-to Elvis Costello track on Spotify! A man who has written so many brilliant songs and people want some second hand fromage. Wrong!
Finally, Edith Piaf who had a fair whiff of fromage.
Italy has produced some wonderful crooners
Swedish cheese, as requested, @Kaisfatdad!
Let’s start with this popular cheesy track from Gunnar Wiklund – “Nu tƤndas Ć„ter ljusen i min lilla stad” (I think the little town in question is Ćstersund). Extra cheesy with the spoken intro…but impossible to hate!
And here’s Lasse Lƶnndahl singing “Twist till menuett”, a rather bizarre concept…written by Thore Skogman for Melodifestivalen:
But the ultimate cheesefests from Sweden are by lesser crooners.
Arne “Rosen” Quick singing (you guessed it) “Rosen”:
With another spoken part – probably the cheesiest ever.
And here’s the classic from bandy star Gƶsta “Snoddas” Nordgren – “FlottarkƤrlek”:
Finally (not a minute too soon) the one and only Jokkmokks-Jokke singing “Gulli-Gullan” (ko-ko som en gƶk! Is that the most baffling lyric ever written?) Everyone can sing along with this cheese fondue spa treatment for ears and souls…all together now!
It is easy to see that you are a girl who knows about groceries. That was a fine ostbord you treated us to there.
More herrgƄrdsost rather than gorgonzola perhaps. Swedish cheesemakers avoid the excesses of their continental counterparts!
Strangely no one has really mentioned Eurovision which is a cheese pig out of mammoth proportions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZMV6qCkRnU
Sweden usually keeps the cheese to themselves at Melodifestivalen.
So you want OTT excesses, eh? You’re looking for the drag queens!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOcJchLNq-k
That Swedish man is wearing continental counterpants.
These gents were cheesemongers par excellence.
I may have said this before, but a few years back a version of the LGWMRGH (who never existed in the first place) were still playing working men’s clubs in Cornwall.
To quote Mr Saucecraft:”Thatās not cheese at all. Itās a brilliant pop record.”
Sniffity, I think some of us – you, me, f’rinstance – instinctively know the smell of cheese (Kaisfatsdad proving himself quite the olfactory authority) and some don’t. And it’s not something we can teach. So we’re going to continue to get misguided but well-intentioned suggestions like this, and other pure pop songs that haven’t been even past a dairy produce facility on the bus.
Mmm… my favourite flavour. Hammond cheese!
Here’s a whole side.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9f2WyCZ83_M
Some people have no need for cheese.
The hungriest of mice would not find many morsels to nibble on in the record collection of my pal DuCool. Chez KFD a family of rodents could feast all winter on excessive, melodramatic, over-emotional titbits of cheesy goodness.
When he was in the mood, Uncle Frank certainly had a way with a milk-churn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6al0p7VL6w
I’ve been sketching out a think-piece on this very album for some time! I love it.
Me too.
An affectionate homage to the music of his teen years down at the Del Monte Legion Stadium which is as enjoyable now as when he made it.
You’ve been sketching out a think piece, KFD? I’ll look forward to it.
I was really hoping HP had been referring to the video above this. A thinkpiece on Zygmunt Janowski’s Hammond Pop Party would be aces.
This bolero by Rocio Durcal goes up to 11 on the Cheeseometer. When the Spanish speaking world goes OTT there are no half measures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO3L3YTC8Do
Cheesisimo! I would confess to rather liking it but DuCool would never be seen in my company again.
Incidentally, is there any cheesy classical music? There must be a few dodgy arias.
Moose lives in a very dodgy aria.
A dodgy aria indeed. And a noisy one too. So much so that nobody gets any sleep. Nessun dorma.
I’m aria than you, pal.
There is indeed cheesy classical music. “Land of Open Glory” at the Last Night of the Proms is probably Rennet Meets Curds Ground Zero, but the annual sight of Viennese HochsozietƤt (Best check that German – Ed.) rattling their jewellery and clapping out of time in all the wrong places to the Radetzky March on New Year’s Day is certainly one for us to consider.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYB4c163dJA
Nicely put, Archie. I suspect the Proms can also be prone to go all the whey.
Itās not necessarily the song itself that is the villain of the piece. Many fine tunes have been given a dairy makeover. No songwriter is safe.
For your consideration…
Ricky Wilde (Son of Marty, brother of Kim)
I am an astronaut.
https://youtu.be/raENcEROUOQ
Iām getting a rather baffling reading on my Cheeseometer for this song by the Geno Hitmaker: Cheese or maybe Bananas.
Argh, my eyes!
I have that album and rather like it, but I have to keep it face-down.
I was at the Reading Festival gig. I’ve never taken drugs, but I imagine that’s what a bad trip is like.
I was at Reading too (Blur top of the bill?) but I didn’t feel the need to buy the album!
Like Bingo’s choice above, this is superficially cheesy, but really a great, great pop record
I’m sure you all remember the mid 90s trend of soundtracking hard hitting documentaries with cheesy pop records. Nick Broomfield’s short on the lives of the rural poor in Arkansas is perhaps the best remembered of this brief movement. The collision of desperate images and relentlessly upbeat music is quite striking.
Just been browsing through this thread and Gary’s list of cheesy songs is right on the money.
Seasons in the sun is a real dairy makeover on that very dry, witty Brel song. It’s like taking a dip in a fondue.
That list made me think of Bobby Goldsboro’s Honey. Here was a man who would lay on the cheddar with a trowel and had no qualms about indulging in flagrant sentimentality.
Summer, the first time is another cheese cracker.
One feature of a good cheese song is the use of a cliche. Here we have older, experienced woman takes a blushing, innocent lad and shows him the ropes in her bed. It’s on a par with Norwegian gammalost (old cheese:) an odour I will never forget.
“Honey” should really have been called “Cheese”, you ask me.
“And Cheese, I miss you
And I’m bein’ gouda …”
Bobby Goldsboro is made entirely of processed cheese, too – he was actually a special project of Kraft Foods.
In her bed?
“And we walked for a mile to the sea,
We sat on the sand, and the boy took her hand,
But I saw the sun rise as a man….”
That’s it – I can’t believe anything you say from now on if you can’t even get that right.
*standard social media behaviour mode off*
“I saw the sun rise as a man” means the sun rose in the form of a man, an altogether more troubling experience.
When I said bed, er… I meant the seabed.
OK I confess. I couldn’t listen to the whole thing. I began to get nauseous when the sweat was trickling down her gown and had to dash to the loo to make a call on the big white telephone.
But we should not forget: cheese sells. Honey was the best-selling record on the planet in 1968.
And has been covered by many artists.
And Sugar Sugar was the best-selling record in 1969…thus Nature balanced itself.
Still there have been times where, if music was the economy, there’s almost be a cheese-led recovery in difficult periods.
Bobby Goldsboro’s clothes were specially tailored from muslin to keep him fresh and prevent him from drying out. At night he slept on a wooden platter. He had a pathological fear of cream crackers.
Moose the Mooche has been in many a āGroupā. Here he is singing the uncut version of this slice…
Great choice, Bri. The 20th sexiest song ever according to Billboard. An insanely catchy, cheesy morsel that has really left its mark.
When Ron Burgundy sings it, it becomes a cheese and wine party.
I prefer the Anchorman version. Hey, K – you must have seen The Other Guys? LRB features strongly.
“This music makes me feel like I’m shopping for a training bra.”
Thanks to Bingo’s recommendation, I saw it this summer. Excellent!
As you say below, thespians in a recording studio are likely to result in high dairy content, whether reciting or singing. Ham and cheese belong together.
Never more true than with Mike Flowers Pops led by actor Mike Roberts.
Richard Harris gives it some welly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfpdpUKmmoc
I think you’ve rather let yourself down with that Mike Flowers Pops clip; it’s knowing, ironic, and arch – one of the characteristics of cheese is utter lack of those qualities.
That’s a good point. A true Cheesemeister, like Demis or Julio, does not set out to be cheesy, it’s second nature to them. They take what they do very seriously. Probably true for Goldsboro too but I have little enthusiasm for him.
But if you knowingly, deliberately set out to be cheesy, you will never reach your goal. Post-Modern Cheese is a contradiction in terms.
Having said all that, I still like Powers because he has such an affection both for the style he is re-creating and for the song he is singing. But my Cheeseometer is telling me that his record is synthetic cheese.
Cheese-in-a-can, if you will.
Are you saying that excludes the entire repertoire of Mr B Manilow for being knowing and arch? It’s definitely the full-on fromage. Can’t say it’s come back around the other side to be good though – so bad it stays out there in bad land.
Wait. A. Goddamn. Minute. Are you saying that Manly Barrilow was “knowing and arch”? He was Mr Showbiz Sincerity, nothing fake about him at all. The Mount Everest of Cheese.
More like the Marianas Trench of cheese. How low can you go… limbo dancing under a closed door, f’rinstance. Other opinions etc
Spoken word records have a naturally high cheese content. Here, some asshole reads the Afterword Posting Guidelines to humbling effect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNq_DTmVCWs
Like that bloody record by Kojak where he reads out that Kipling poem. Or summat.
Look what’s under the Xmas tree, What a Yuletide treat! Telly Savalas feat Rudeboy Kipling.
Sorry Declan, but there’s no escaping Xmas on this thread. The season when those who are normally moderate in their consumption of cheddar are crazed, feral and gagging for gorgonzola.
Elvis as Psycho Santa. *shudder*
In reply H P
This is much better than the animation. Mind you, anything is.
“Rotate your tires …”
Spoken word C&W cheese, none more rancid and wormy.
Son, Don’t Go Near the Indians (2:24 if you want to skip the singing, but I don’t recommend it).
https://youtu.be/6iHOS_8K2B8
Tex Ritter, Deck of Cards (dragged kicking and screaming by the poster out of North Africa and into Afghanistan).
And let’s not forget the Talking Cheesemeister himself, Red Sovine.
Mikethep, I salute you! A stupendous trilogy of Country cheeses, with Red Sovines Teddy Bear, quite rightly in the place of honour. An extraordinary song that has such a high sentimentality content it ought to come with a Government Health Warning.
A quick deviation for some synthetic cheese. Red Peters singing one of my favourite Xmas songs which nails spoken C & W cheese.
“Can’t believe we’ve got this far down the thread with no mention of” Rod McKuen. I mean, I haven’t looked that close, so if we have, I hope this wasn’t the clip chosen. Give it up for the Rodster, laze-jem. On this track he actually nods out after reciting some of his deathless verse. Join him in slumberland, as the waves wash over you!
I’ve mentioned it before, but Red used to do Teddy Bear as out-and-out comedy in his live act…an agent told him that if he recorded a dead-straight version, it would a guaranteed rolled- gold hit. He did and it was.
Here, some asshole reads the Afterword Posting Guidelines to humbling effect:
ššš
Well, I’m glad somebody here finds my work mildly amusing.
Following on from the discussion on what actually constitutes cheesy it is not catchiness or even something dripping in sweetness. I guess instrumentals can be cheesy but it seems to be more about the lyrics combined with an overly sweet melody. The lyrics need to be schmaltzy, particularly sentimental.
I will probably surprise the blog both in the song selection and that it comes from a Bobophile like me, but let me nominate Just Like A Woman. Plenty of melody from the get go but those lyrics have always made be cringe.
Aussie journalist Craig McGregor was one of the first to hear the acetates of B.O.B. in Sydney during their 66 tour. He loved the album but described J.L.A.W. as a bit sentimental. Grossman really spat the dummy but I’m with McGregor.
“I guess instrumentals can be cheesy but…”
You clearly haven’t seen my “special” record cases, JW. š
Damn right, Mini! We could do a whole thread on cheesy instrumentals.
Here is a whistlomental from Jack Smith.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQQ5sEOhbjQ
You want instro cheese? Coming right up.
Ariba! šµ
Joe Saraceno produced the Ventures on all their swingin’ hits.
Hmm. Big hits from the 70s, particularly around Christmas, could be a bit whiffy. Grandad, all those ‘orrible Cliff Richards records, the execrable “My Ding-A-Ling” for starters. No, you don’t need to hear them again, nobody does.
Even soft soul could get cheesy. This was a 70s #1
https://youtu.be/HZklwTGZutc
And as Ireland is underrepresented here, The Bachelors from way back (tbf it could have been anything by them)
If I think back, it feels as though the word cheesy probably first entered into my vocabulary when thinking about Frank Zappa. Pinner, where i grew up, was very staid and the only cheese on offer was some rather tired lumps of Cheddar and Wensleydale in the delicatessen in Sainsbury’s. And then, there the Mothers of Invention: confusing, oddly dressed, eclectic, mysterious, hairy and in their poppier moments, cheesy as hell. I was fascinated.
Wowie Zowie
Dog Breath, in the year of the plague
This second part of this one throws in everything.
H. P. wrote a wonderful description of Dog Breath on a thread we had a while back about the Del Monte Legion Stadium. Worth rereading!
“The full minute of delerious Pachuco whooping and cheesy horns before the vocals kick in. The sleazy teen-idol way itās sung, the stoopidity of the woids.The way āLegionStadiumā is forced into the metre. The OPERA SINGER joining in with the chorus. The treated chipmunk chorus. My ship of love is ready to attack! Then some insane time signature jazzbo instrymental bad trip fairground music, finishing with some gorgeous woodwind harmony ā¦ only Zappa. Nobody else. And Iām betting this will still be flat-out funny and jaw-drop beautiful a hundred years from now.”
Well blimey, K! You remembered! Which is more than I did! Zappa certainly used cheese as an ingredient – perhaps a sprinkle of moldy parmesan?
In times of crisis and war, sentimentality flourishes and citizens take solace in cheese.
There’s nothing like a tragic war story to provide the material for a cheesy song.
Stan Ridgway’s Camouflage was a hit in Europe but not in the US. Performed by one of Nashville’s finest it could have been as cheesy as hell but somehow it isn’t. The exception that proves the rule or is my nose letting me down?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXKIBYnM_9Q
“Camouflage” isn’t cheese because it’s a parody of a cheesy spoken-word war story song. Check the lyrics.
That’s probably the reason it wasn’t a US hit. A bit too close to home.
No laughing matter to the staunch patriot flag-wavers. Nor to the reluctant draftees who eventually made it back.
I’m more confused about the meaning of ‘cheese’ than ever.
This thread is still going? Cuh. You are obviously complete cheese fiends. Me? I only like it very occasionally and in small doses, preferably Mrs Kirkham’s, hence Lieutenant Pidgeon.
OK how about this one ?
William Shakespeare ( a Gary Glitter lookalike) featured here before an audience of pre-adolescent kids.
Cheesy title – My Little Angel
Spoken word
Rinky dink melody and chorus.
Only just discovered this song was written by Vanda and Young. Not a career high point I’d have thought. The song was number one in Australia then he got convicted of underage sex. Comments below the clip say he died homeless and penniless in a disused ticket box at a sporting oval. Clinical depression and dodgey psychiatric treatment. Pretty sad.
Under aged sex – she was manager of his fan club, IIRC.
My Cheeseometer blew a fuse and had to be sent in for repairs after being exposed to the Bard of Oz. A super-cheesy slice of pop and a tragic story you could not make up
According to Wiki, he was found in that ticket box and given a helping hand by Lindy Morrison (ex-Go- Betweens drummer) who worked with a company that helped musicians who had hit hard times.
In 1990 My Little Angel was voted the daggiest (quirky but likeable) song of their generation by the listeners of a Melbourne radio station. The word daggy comes from a dag: “a dung-caked lock of wool around the hindquarters of a sheep ā an abbreviation of “daglock”.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dag_(subculture)
I used to work with a man called Dag Smith. He claimed the name was Scandinavian in origin, but we knew better of course.
Shakespeare (John Cave) actually had a pretty good voice as evidenced on his first…errr other hit, also written by Vanda and Young.
This clip is amusing in that Paul Hogan is introducing the song and cant even remember its name.
‘Dags’ are also an architectural feature. They are the vertical pieces which hang down from the edge of a canopy. Railway station platforms often have them; Southern, GWR, LNER etc each had their own style of dags.
As always, you are a mine of fascinating stuff that I am delighted to find out about, GCU. I tried to find a photo of a dag but both the woolly and the architectural kind eluded me.
I do now know though that “rattle your dags” is an old Aussie expression for “get a move on”. The pieces of dried crap around a sheep’s bum would rattle as they ran!
Aren’t you all glad to know that?
How about this. It’s cheesy but great, like a ripe, tangy Ribiola
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODgezpIjR9k
Gorgeous, Chilli.
The Italians do this kind of music so well. Look up their word for crooner and you get a synonym for singer. It is the same thing for them. They have cheese in their blood.
Gary will kill me but I am going to post this beautiful song by Pino Daniele and Giorgia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JS0ejzQVPE
Earlier this week I was Paolo Virzi’s wonderful new film La pazza gioia. The friend I was with complained it was all too Italian: amore! emozioni! bellisima! cornetti! etc. Which was the very reason I liked it and why I like Pino’s song.
Troppo troppo troppisimo!
We have had Anchorman. Here is a morsel of oozing sentimentality from another Anka man. But will his Puppy Love make you want to go for walkies?
They don’t make pop music programs like this any more!
When I was growing up, we had this on cassette – 20 Number One Hits. The songs may or may not have been cheesy when sung as originals, but the Brotherhood of Man made them extra special – a particular joy on car journeys (along with various volumes of the Hooked on Classics series).
I had such fond memories of the songs all flowing one into another that I bought a CD of it a year or two ago – still a pleasure to listen to.
Turns out the Paneer of the United States is a cheese fan. Who knew?
Caution: may induce vomiting.
That was excruciating! I dread to think what Trump would choose for his Desert Island Discs.
Best not to go there.