Every so often, a truly talented artist drops a truly bad song.  My original favorite band, Weezer, once decided that “Can’t Stop Partying,” a club pop song where 39 year old Rivers Cuomo begged for Patron and pretty girls surrounding him, was a good idea.  Lou Reed, the genius behind The Velvet Underground, and Metallica, arguably the most popular metal band of all time, made “The View,” a song about idolizing someone who actively despises you and how James Hetfield has apparently transformed into a table.  And both Brian Wilson and Mike Love decided, separately, that rapping about hot women was worth a shot on “Smart Girls” and “Summer Of Love.”  Unfortunately, as you would expect, legendary acts releasing bad songs is not a new thing.  Enter Nat King Cole.

“Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days Of Summer” – Nat King Cole

#6 peak
#70 year-end

Before you tell me what a jerk and monster I am for placing Nat King Cole for a worst list, let me just say that I like a lot of his songs.  His Christmas songs, such as his renditions of “The Christmas Song” and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,” are some of the few Christmas songs that don’t cause me to have PTSD during the holiday season.  Furthermore, I may have room on my best list for “That Sunday, That Summer,” his other song that made the year end list.  But “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days Of Summer” charted higher, because life’s not fair.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way:  This song sounds incredibly hokey.  It’s quite literally about packing up snacks to go out to the beach.  That’s it.  There have been many good songs about mundane subjects over the years, but preparing for a picnic is not one of them.  And then we get an unpleasant sight in the first verse: 44 year old Nat King Cole raving about bikini babes.

And on the beach you’ll see the girls in their bikinis
As cute as ever but they never get them wet

Who thought Nat King Cole, the classy easy listening singer, commenting on scantily clad women was a good idea?  Before you call me a prude for calling this out, this could have worked.  This same year, Roy Orbison – the operatic pop star himself – scored a hit song with “Mean Woman Blues,” where he too succumbs to a sexy woman by objectifying her.

She got unruly lips
She got shapely hips

Shapely hips.  As in… she’s got a big butt.  Roy Orbison likes big butts.  And he cannot lie.

But that song worked, in part because Orbison references the woman’s body in the least upfront way possible.  You need a certain type of persona to pull this off.  Nat King Cole isn’t a Fred Schneider robotically narrating a “boys in bikinis” beach scene gone wrong in “Rock Lobster,” and he certainly isn’t Gunther, the symbol of love himself, in 99% of the work he’s released.  Hearing this part gives me uncomfortable, Mike Love in “Summer Of Love” vibes.  I just imagine that when the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer arive, Nat ditches his block and heads to A1A Beachfront Avenue. Also, I’m pretty sure packing your things for a picnic on the beach will not impress these bikini-clad ladies.  Just saying.  If you’re a woman and you fell in love with your man when he packed a lunch for a day at the beach, leave a comment and let me know.

Then we get more unpleasantness of love on the beach, with Nat King Cole announcing that when you go to the beach, “you’ll see more kissing in the car than on the screen.”  I… I doubt it.  I don’t think you’d see that much kissing in real life when stacked against films.  Also, saying that going to the beach for romance beating going to a drive-in ignores the fact that many people went to the drive-in during this time period specifically because they could get away with tons of love-related things they couldn’t get away with in other public settings.  Just… don’t be like Danny Zuko at a drive-in.  Seriously.

Adding to that, there is a set of excruciating wolf whistles in the background for all the raving about kissing at the beach.  Played by slide whistles, I might add.  Not only are they annoying, but they drown out the rest of the instrumentation when they arrive.  These whistles don’t make the scene cute, it freaks me out.

This song was a miscalculation.  It changes the vibe from extremely innocent to overly idealized on a dime, and this type of subject matter is not in Nat King Cole’s wheelhouse.  And not only is this song frustrating to listen to since it wastes the talents of a great singer, it’s also kind of sad.  This is because “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days Of Summer” was Nat’s last hit song before his death less than two years later in 1965 from lung cancer.  The fact that this song, not one of his Christmas songs or the aforementioned “That Sunday, That Summer,” was the last taste we got from him really stings.  Nat was better than this.

UP NEXT: The melodrama over a breakup begins at #7.

IMAGE SOURCES

Album cover from Amazon

“Mean Woman Blues” single cover from Medialoper

Photo of Nat King Cole from MPR News