The Bad Penny (beta)

These days, trying to get all Americans to agree on something—anything—seems like a fool’s errand. But that sentiment doesn’t speak to an irrefutable truth; it speaks to our embarrassing and shameless lack of imagination, with social media as one of the main culprits.

For example, The Bad Penny is willing to bet that, if 1,000 people living in the U.S. were surveyed and given a multiple-choice test to name the worst lyric ever, in any music genre, from any point in the history of pop music, the end result would be more or less unanimous. The lyric is, has to be, could only be, and always will be: “Doctor, doctor give me the news/ I’ve got a bad case of lovin’ you!”

Robert Palmer, who died in September 2003, was perhaps a very nice man. He might not have had any enemies. His fan base is still intact more than two decades after Palmer’s passing. But dude had so much blood on his hands for claiming the unimaginatively titled “Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor Doctor),” as one his top hits, especially because he didn’t even write the damn thing. Let’s be real: Palmer made the conscious decision to turn that turd of a tune into a hit. And for that reason, he should have been embarrassed and ashamed of himself. Grocery shoppers who have to suffer through that god awful “hit” are the crowd who are most owed an apology—hell, maybe even reparations.