By now, you’ve probably gotten used to my lengthy intros for these worst list entries, but I’m keeping this one short because you all knew this next song was going to be on this list.  I knew, at least a year before taking the challenge, that this was going to be high on the list.  Your mom knew it was going to be on this list.  And your six year old nephew, who hasn’t heard a single song from the seventies in his life besides “Stairway To Heaven” and “Stayin’ Alive,” knew this song was going to be on the list.  So let’s try to understand, for the 5,364th time, how on earth a song about muskrats in love made the Top 5.

“Muskrat Love” – Captain & Tennille

#4 peak (5 weeks, November 20-December 18, 1976)
#89 year-end, 20 weeks on chart (14 in 1977)

Do you really need me to explain this next one?  I mean, it’s the first bad song from 1977 anyone brings up.  It’s the one song from the year everyone highlights as one of the worst songs of the seventies, and you’re probably shocked I didn’t copy everyone else and put this piece of trash in the 1977 maximum security prison.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t hate “Muskrat Love” as much as everyone else. 

First off… (long sigh)… Daryl Dragon and Toni Tennille.  The Captain and Tennille.  When I was preparing this entry, I was planning on highlighting them as not the worst act of the seventies as everyone says, but rather an aggressively mediocre act.  Like, I’d rather listen to Nickelback than Captain and Tennille, but I’d put the Captain a step above Hinder or Theory Of A Deadman.  Then I re-listened to their hits and… oh God, they suck.  I’m sorry.  There’s no nice way to put it.

I mean, were any of their hits good?  What was their best, the following year’s “You Never Done It Like That” or 1980’s smash “Do That To Me One More Time”?  Because the rest of their hits are awful.  If you look up the definition of “mediocre” in the dictionary, their all-world conquering hit “Love Will Keep Us Together” immediately begins playing.  But that’s nothing compared to the slew of hits from 1976’s Song Of Joy, which is both their most successful album and home their worst collection of hits.  First up from that record was “Lonely Nights (Angel Face),” and that song is insanely repetitive and basic.  I finally listened to their infamous cover of The Miracles’ “Shop Around,” the second single from the album, and holy crap does it suck.  Everyone brings up Tennille’s wine mom singing performance, but then there’s the Captain’s ridiculous keyboards blaring laser sounds in the second half.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Storm Troopers and their superior weaponry blew up his keyboards the following year.  So already The Captain And Tennille were having a horrible and undeserved run of success with Song Of Joy when they released “Muskrat Love” as their third single, and proved they could possibly, in fact, get worse.

I don’t think I need to explain why this song’s premise is so bad, it’s right there in the title and everyone who has covered this song has beaten it to death that it’s now a horse that’s been cremated and dumped into the lake of fire.  But it’s my job, so I press on.  “Muskrat Love” is about two actual muskrats, named Sam and Suzie, who are in love.  Here’s one thing I have to say about this premise:  It could have worked.  Five years earlier, Michael Jackson had one of his first solo hits “Ben,” which is also literally about a rat.  But that song works, because you can listen to the song and not think it’s about a rat.  It can just be a song about friendship, about trusting someone, because there’s nothing in the song that explicitly states that it’s about a rat.  But you can’t do that with “Muskrat Love.”  It’s clearly stated in the song that both of our characters are muskrats.  Aside from the obvious regarding why on Earth we are supposed to sympathize with gross rodents that infiltrate your house and eat and ruin everything in your kitchen, there are some… pointless lyrical details.

And they shimmy
Sam is so skinny

Nobody cares what a muskrat’s build is.  Why do we care that Sam is skinny?  What else do you have for us, Sam is muscular?  Man, that’s a creepy thought.  A muscular muskrat.  Yuck.

And they whirl and they twirl and they tango
Singing and Jinging a Jango

This… this is just gibberish.  “Singing and jinging a jango.”  There are dances called the twirl and the tango, but there is no such dance called the jango.  I looked it up, and the first page of Google has nothing relating to the “jango” as a song or dance as implied in the song.  Not only is “Muskrat Love” a hideous premise, but there was so little effort put into the song’s lyrics that they stuck with “Jinging a jango,” a term that does not exist outside this song.  And secondly, “jinging?”

Even excluding those awful lyrics, this is still an embarrassing, horrendously cheesy song in the writing department.  The lyrics listed just sound so cringeworthy in the rhyming department, and you can just tell how embarrassing this song would be to sing.  Forget “Sexy And I Know It,” THIS is the song you force your lowly Freshman frat boy to sing while he runs around across Newing College at Binghamton or University Heights in Buffalo wearing nothing except a pair of red socks.  Just listen to these:

Sam says to Suzie, honey would you please
Be my missus
Suzie says yes with her kisses

Muzzle to muzzle, now anything goes
As they wriggle
Sue starts to giggle

I have no words.  Even if this song was about… I don’t know, humans, this would still be terrible.  Kissing someone rather than saying “yes?”  Giggling for no reason?  I’m done with these lyrics.  They’re terrible.

Now for some backstory.  “Muskrat Love” was written by Texas country-folk singer Willis Alan Ramsey, who recorded it as “Muskrat Candlelight” on his only studio album in 1972.  Yeah, I can see why he wasn’t as successful as the Sex Pistols or New Radicals.  A year later, for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, America (the band) recorded it for their third album Hat Trick.  Even the legendary producer George Martin couldn’t stop his clients from performing a song with an obviously flawed premise about a romance with muskrats.  The America version of “Muskrat Love” has some pretty acoustic guitars, effective electric pianos, and gorgeous harmonies… and it still sucks.  No matter how good you make this song sound, there’s the huge problem that you’re singing about muskrats with inane lyrics like “jinging a jango.”  Keep in mind, too, that this was the band whose most famous song includes the lyrical poetry of “There were plants and birds and rocks and things” and “The heat was hot.”  But just like how the snow was cold, there is pretty much no way to make “Muskrat Love” sound good.

So already The Captain And Tennille were facing an uphill battle involving the two climbing a cliff in the Himalayas when they took the song and incorporated it into their live act.  But not only did their version also suck, it topped all the previous versions in terms of awfulness.

Let’s start with Toni Tennille’s performance.  Since I am a horrible singer myself, let me assert that I am not irritated by Tennille’s singing voice.  I am irritated by the way she uses it in the song.  Everyone has lined up to take shots at Tennille, claiming that she sounds less like a professional singer and more like that embarrassing mom who ruined your favorite song at karaoke.  Well, quite frankly, I’d take that Tennille any day over how she performs this.  For “Muskrat Love,” Tennille is quieter and more impressed by the subject matter, unlike her earlier hits where she sounds so excited by it.  The entire vibe I get from her performance is that she’s one of those lame music teachers who’s singing to kindergartners.  Like, her entire performance is the equivalent of “listen here, children!  Isn’t it so exciting that muskrats Sam and Suzie are in love?”  It’s not endearing, it’s just creepy.  Combined with the Captain’s inoffensive electric pianos, the entire song has a presentation of a children’s show, as if it’s trying to be Sesame Street or The Backyardigans.  Well, “Muskrat Love” is even worse than all those kids songs you thought were lame, for three reasons I can think of.

1. Even the Disney Channel knew better than to sing a song to kids about muskrats in love.
2. Have you listened to some of the songs that were on Sesame Street?  For being a kids show, Sesame Street had some cool jams.  “The Word Is No” is a killer 80’s pop song about the word “no,” and even some of their song parodies that made pop songs like “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me” by The Miracles, “Slide” by the Goo Goo Dolls, and especially their friendship-themed parody of “Two Princes “ by the Spin Doctors more kid-friendly were pretty clever.  “Muskrat Love” only wishes it had the songwriting smarts of those songs and parodies.
3. NONE OF THESE KIDS SHOWS WOULD, IN THEIR WILDEST DREAMS, MAKE A SIMULATION OF MUSKRATS MATING.

I’m not kidding.  The Captain and Tennille built on the song’s premise by adding random, painful keyboard noises that are supposed to simulate the muskrats in love.  What are they doing?  Are they kissing?  Are they nibbling at each other’s noses?  Are they – dare I say it – doing it like they do on the Discovery Channel?  Whatever they’re doing, it’s an absolutely terrible and outrageous idea for The Captain and Tennille to simulate the sound of muskrats in love, because it’s so high-pitched, off-putting, and inconsistent with the rhythm of the song that it becomes the most horrifying musical moment of the year (well, except for number one).  After several background effects of the muskrats throughout the intro and verses, we get nearly FOURTY SECONDS OF MUSKRAT MATING EFFECTS.  Not five.  Fourty.  I don’t blame you if you can’t get through this part without plugging your ears until Tennille’s voice mercifully comes back.  And to top it off, this is how the song ends, with the catastrophic percussive muskrat effects playing into the song’s fade out.  I feel bad for whoever bought this as a 45, because as a bonus, the single ended with a locked groove.  This meant that the only way to stop those freaking muskrats was to turn off the record.  We burned disco records at the end of the decade, but not this?

Some songs that are listed as among the worst songs of the seventies, like “Summer Nights” from Grease and “I Write The Songs” by Barry Manilow, are not good but are nowhere near as bad as everyone says.  But “Muskrat Love” deserves every ounce of hatred it gets.  It truly is as bad as advertised, from its laughably terrible premise to its ridiculous presentation and those ear-destroying keyboard noises (yes, music is too strong a word for those muskrat effects).  And to all the people stunned that this isn’t in the top slot, don’t be fooled by the fact that I put this at number 2.  It truly is one of those songs you have to hear to believe how bad music can get, and to be honest, re-listening to this song while putting this list together made me have second thoughts about my picks.  We’ll get to what could possibly be worse soon, but “Muskrat Love” had no reason to exist.  Whatsoever.

Wait a minute, I’m getting one more note…

Before its release as a single in 1976, the Captain & Tennille performed “Muskrat Love” at a dinner honoring Queen Elizabeth II at the White House. 

……………………………………

HOW COULD YOU LET THESE HACKS PERFORM THIS SONG AT THE WHITE HOUSE?!  GERALD FORD YOU HAVE THE WORST TASTE IN MUSIC EVER!  NO WONDER I VOTED FOR CARTER!  HOW COULD YOU PERFORM THIS FOR THE QUEEN YOU MOTHER-

(technical difficulties, please stand by)

UP NEXT: Before we go over the worst song of the year, let’s go over the long list of dishonorable mentions.

SOURCES

“Muskrat Love by Captain and Tennille.” Songfacts 2022. Web. 30 June 2022 https://www.songfacts.com/facts/captain-tennille/muskrat-love.

Windeler, Robert. “Year of the Dragons.” People 18 October 1976. Web. 30 June 2022. Information gathered from Wikipedia.

IMAGE SOURCES

Single cover from Wikipedia

Photo of The Captain and Tennille from NPR

GIF of Monica screaming from Friends. GIF from Giphy.

America “Muskrat Love” single cover from Discogs

Photo of a muskrat from Live Science