It’s too early to determine the feel-bad hit of summer of 2025, although I have a feeling Morgan “I’m the Problem” Wallen will have something to do with it. Instead, I will stop waiting for a government grant to subsidize my research and present you, cherished New Times reader, my pioneering research on this subject for free. Let’s turn the clock back to 1955, the beginning of the Rock era, and work our way to the present day to name at least one bummer from every summer. Maybe before your time, but your mother, who made you, was busily mixing all this ill-will into your DNA.
1955: Pat Boone – “Ain’t That a Shame”
Issues: misappropriation, living with an obsessive-compulsive corrector
It’s hard to feel bad whenever Fats Domino is singing, even when it’s about crying a tempest of tears, but hearing the whitest of white men mangle this song and simultaneously take it to number one must have been a galling experience for all Blacks, especially knowing that same OCC guy really thought it should be recorded as “Isn’t That a Shame.”
1956: Elvis Presley – “Hound Dog”
Issues: Zoomorphism, male chauvinism
There have been 16 songs in the 21st Century that spent 12 or more weeks topping the charts that I have never heard out in the wild more than once. Before 1992, “Hound Dog” spent the most weeks at number one, and it was eleven inescapable 1950s weeks, when there were fewer options for digesting music. Think how bad it must have been for people who suffer from being compared to animals to know the newly crowned King of Rock and Roll called some poor lassie a dog and then chastised her for never catching a rabbit and having his supper ready.
1957: Jerry Lee Lewis – “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On”
Issues: Neurodegenerative diseases, substance abuse withdrawal, dystonia, anxiety, excessive caffeine consumption, habitat loss
All these tremor-troubled listeners couldn’t have been reassured by The Killer, who compounded their anxiety by not being totally sure who had the chicken and whose barn it was in.
1958: Sheb Wooley - “The Purple People Eater “
Issues: Xenophobia, astrophobia, cannibalism
This novelty number one concerned a space alien whose skin color was unique enough that any oppressed minority group could rally against him without fear of retribution, especially one that digests people without any discrimination. But according to Wooley, this Purple One’s only reason for coming to Earth was to play rock and roll. Which someone could have easily used as a rallying cry against the Purple People Eaters, who are coming here to steal musicians’ jobs.1959: Johnny Horton – “The Battle of New Orleans”
Issues: Traumatophobia, cruelty to animals
By 1959, there would be no living survivors of this 1814 battle to suffer traumatic summer disorders by hearing Johnny Horton sing about it. Even so, opening old war wounds to secure a summer number one could not have been a feel-good moment with our ally, the British. Especially troubling to animal lovers was the verse where an innocent alligator was converted into munitions by powdering his behind and stuffing his mouth with cannonballs.
