As a quick recap, here are the songs we’ve discussed so far.

#10: Nino Tempo and April Stevens get lost in their “Deep Purple” dream.

#9: Bobby Darin is not “The Reason I’m Living.”

#8: “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days Of Summer” sure inspired the worst in Nat King Cole.

#7: “It’s The End Of The World” because Skeeter Davis went through a breakup.

#6: “I Wanna Be Around” when Tony Bennett faces heartbreak.

#5: Skeeter Davis “Can’t Stay Mad” at her no-good boyfriend.

#4: “If You Wanna Be Happy,” don’t listen to Jimmy Soul.

#3: I “Still” don’t like Bill Anderson’s early attempts at rapping.

#2: Steve Lawrence’s biggest hit needs to follow its own advice and “Go Away.”

#1

Look.  As much as I raged at the previous nine songs on this list, there is one thing I can say about them.  All of them, regardless of how they failed, had elements that could have worked.

“Deep Purple” is a cover of a song that was good.  Bobby Darin was a good singer.  Nat King Cole was a good singer.  “The End Of The World” had a good melody.  “I Wanna Be Around” had decent instrumentation and Tony Bennett is a good singer.  Skeeter Davis is a good singer.  “Still” and its melody could have worked with an actual verse and better subject matter.  “If You Wanna Be Happy” was catchy and it tried to be funny.  Even if you made “Go Away Little Girl” right, I’m saying if you did it right – as in, get an actual kid to sing it and tone down the instrumentation – it would have at least been better.  All of them had potential.  But the song I chose for the worst song of the year, from its music, to its songwriting, to its very existence – is completely unsalvageable.

I first learned of this song while doing research for the year-end list, going through Nerd With An Afro and Pop Goes The Year and their lists for the worst songs of the year (spoiler: it’s on both lists, but not at number one).  When I heard this song, I immediately knew that this song was bad.  And when I woke up the next morning, I read backstory on the song and especially the man responsible, and this song did one kangaroo hop over the competition and emerged as the front-runner.

Drum roll please.  The number one worst song of 1963 is…

Ladies and gentlemen, buckle up, because we’re about to go on one rough ride through the Outback.

“Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” – Rolf Harris

#3 peak
#84 year-end

Fun fact: I’ve always wanted to go to Australia.  Thanks for giving me a big reason never to take the trip down under, Aussies.

Rolf Harris was an Australian-British entertainer, who performed a variety of gigs ranging from comedian to reporter.  In 1960, during his second stint as an Australian resident, he recorded the initial version of “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport,” and three years later it finally became a hit.  It was his only hit song, and quite frankly, he didn’t deserve any of the success it got.  Just think of all the great Australian music artists we’ve had over the years… The Bee Gees, AC/DC, Men At Work, Midnight Oil, Silverchair, The Vines, Wolfmother, most recently Tame Impala… and this was the first Australian song to become a hit in America.  Sorry for the obvious joke, but it has to be said.  “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport”: Australian for “bad song.”

Right off the bat, we have a problem before we get into the song.  The title.  “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport?”  Think of the songs we have had throughout pop music history that have had great song titles.  “Stairway to Heaven” has never been my favorite song, but it’s a great title.  The subject of the song is climbing up to the highest of highs.  “Smells Like Teen Spirit?”  Great title.  It’s like a call for revolution.  “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” sounds as if Rolf Harris was telling everyone, “Tie me up, have my kangaroo go down in a crouching position, play sports!”  This song title seriously sounds like he’s trying to say three different things at once, and it just sounds so awkward rolling off the tongue.  OK, so it actually means he’s telling a friend “sport” to tie down his kangaroo, but the fact that the song title is this unusual is a bad omen.

But maybe I’m taking too much into the title.  There have been several very good songs with really stupid or funny song titles.  Fall Out Boy’s anthemic and powerful opening to their magnum opus From Under The Cork Tree is entitled “Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued.”  One of the songs on the Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, an essential album from my youth with no filler whatsoever, is called “Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But…”  And finally, The Dandy Warhols’ underrated 1997 delight Come Down features a glorious ode to the King of Kings entitled… “Hard On For Jesus.”  What about Jesus made you so sexually aroused?  His beard?  The point being, if the song is good, we can forgive the stupid song title.  So let’s take a deep dive into… “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport.”

Let’s start off with the instrumentation, where we are immediately presented with one big problem.  Instead of featuring drums, the entire song’s percussion, which also doubles as the dominating instrument in the song, is an instrument invented by Harris himself entitled the wobble board.  For those unfamiliar with this abomination to the world of music, the wobble board makes a “wobble” sound based on how the instrumentalist waves it back and forth.  And let me tell you, the wobble board SUCKS.  It sounds horribly unstable, as if it’s about to split off and break in two.  Adding to it, whenever it is used, you can’t focus on any of the other instruments, because it makes such an off-putting noise.  In my journeys as a music fan, I’ve heard the wobble board on one other song, “It Is ‘He’ (J’ai Sri Krishna)” by George Harrison, the concluding track to his much-maligned album Dark Horse.  And that song sucks too, partially because of the wobble board.  Other than that, there are some bass notes played on a cello, and a single acoustic guitar that sounds as if it was cheaply manufactured, and the song uses the same basic E-A-B chord progression for THE WHOLE FREAKING SONG.  If you can play this, congratulations.  You have first month guitar student skills.

Then we get to the lyrics.  “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” is about an Australian stockman who is lying on his deathbed, issuing his final orders to his associates before he takes his terminal breath.  That could be interesting.  But the lyrics are so minimal and bare it makes the song sound half-finished.  The lyrics just consist of commands by the stockman to his friends, and the rhyme scheme isn’t even consistent.  Some of the instructions do rhyme:

Take me koala back, Jack
Take me koala back

But then other lyrics do not rhyme. 

Mind me platypus duck, Bill
Mind me platypus duck

And then there are other lyrics that sound as if they were intended to rhyme, but don’t.

Watch me wallabies feed, mate
Watch me wallabies feed

This entire song doesn’t even sound like it was by an Australian.  Even more than “The Night Chicago Died” by Paper Lace, a song by a British band failing to explain Al Capone and his effects on the city of Chicago, “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” sounds as if it was written by a foreigner who had never been to Australia, but had Australia thoroughly explained to him.  I can just imagine the thought process: “What are animals that live in Australia and aren’t known for being anywhere else?  Um… kangaroos, platypuses, and wallabies!  There!  Put them in the song!  And also, what instruments are Australian?  Oh!  The didgeridoo!”

That brings us to the chorus, which is…

Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down
Tie me kangaroo down, sport
Tie me kangaroo down

ONE.  LINE.  The chorus is played seven times in the song (six in the current version, we’ll get into why that is next).  That makes for a total of: 28 uses of the phrase “Tie me kangaroo down” in three minutes.  To quote Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek for the thousandth time: “WOW.”

And that lends itself the obvious question: why are you tying down your kangaroo?  Why does he deserve to be punished, and unable to move again?  Did he bite you?  Eat your food while traveling through the Outback?  Let him be free, or ask one of your many friends in the song to adopt him.  He doesn’t deserve his fate.

So, yeah.  “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” is awful.  The musicianship and production is ramshackle, and the lyrics are first draft levels of bad.  But you’re probably asking yourselves now how this song is worse than all the terrible relationship songs we went through earlier on this list.  Well, say what you want about those songs… at least they’re not racist.

Let me A*os go loose, Lou
Let me A*os go loose
There’s of no further use, Lou
So let me A*os go loose

Yeah.  For all you unfamiliar, that censored word above is the first three letters of “Aborigines.”  You know… the native Australians.  The first three letters of “Aborigine,” may I remind you, is an ETHNIC SLUR.

This isn’t like the hip hop scene nowadays, where we still have debate on why and how the N word is used based on race.  There is no argument here, the word is being used by a white guy to list the Aborigines as a lesser people.  And this passage also begs the question, you had slaves in 1960?  A century after slavery was pretty much dying?  What the heck is your problem?  Great to know that we weren’t the only country who poorly treated their native citizens.

I mean, they did remove this verse and corresponding chorus from standard versions of the song in the 2000s.  So the full-length racist version is not available on Spotify.  But you still have to remember it was the full-length version, with this verse, that charted in 1963.  Plus, it’s still out there on YouTube (which is particularly baffling considering… uh… some things I’ll bring up shortly).  And it’s easy to tell which version is racist, because it’s 20 seconds longer than the standard version being used today.  So all you have to do is read the track times.  Uggggghhhhh.

I don’t have any more words for this awful song.  “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” has no redeeming qualities.  Thankfully, the song was Rolf Harris’s only hit, and it’s not well remembered in America today, with barely over a million streams on Spotify.  So this song has been forgotten, and I’m pretty sure we’ll never hear of this Rolf Harris guy again-

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Go screw yourself, Rolf Harris.

And for the final argument I hear – that I can’t just throw Harris under the bus because of his legal issues when I listen to Michael Jackson and Rick James.  I’m not playing that card this time.  “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” is a one-note song with irritating instrumentation, repetitive lyrical content, and a dated sound even by 1963 standards.  And the fact that the song was written and performed by the 6ix9ine of his day is the final nail in the coffin for why this song not only deserves its fate as a forgotten single, but also as to why it should never be touched again.  “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” is the worst pop song of 1963.

SOURCES

Thomas, Athol. “In Western Australia This Week: Card Falls Wrongly For Country Party.” The Canberra Times 12 December 1964. National Library Of Australia. Web. 21 May 2022 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/107514782/.

Switzer, Renee. “Rolf’s Lyrics ‘A Sign Of The Times.’” The Age 7 December 2006. Web. 21 May 2022 https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/rolfs-lyrics-a-sign-of-the-times-20061207-ge3qci.html.

Walker, Peter. “Rolf Harris Jailed For Five Years Nine Months For Indecently Assaulting Girls.” The Guardian 4 July 2014. Web. 21 May 2022 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/04/rolf-harris-jailed-indecent-assault-young-girls.

IMAGE SOURCES

Single cover from Wikipedia

Image of Rolf Harris playing the wobble board from The Irish Times

Image of a kangaroo from Thoughtco.com

GIF of Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek from Saturday Night Live. GIF by Tenor.