The book is a few years old, but Dave Barry had published a book called, "Dave Barry's Bad Song Survey," inspired by a column in which he asked his readers to nominate their "worst song ever," and why, followed by two columns in which he published results, and then got so much response from the columns that he ended up writing a book.
"Wreck" made the survey. It was the only Lightfoot tune that did. A woman who obviously has mashed turnip pulp instead of a brain had nominated it saying it features, "in addition to general sappiness and bad rhymes, the line 'As the big freighters go it was bigger than most.'"
1.) I see nothing wrong with that line.
2.) Sappiness? This was addressed in another thread. Nothing GL does can be described as sappy, especially a ballad describing an actual event.
3.) Bad rhymes I'll give her, but let's see her write a better song.
Barry's comment re Wreck--"Talk about your party tunes!" I take exception because "Wreck" is not supposed to be a party tune and does not claim to be one.
I would have expected the length also to be criticized, but it wasn't. Barry later had listed several songs he considered way to long, such as "Free Bird" and "Stairway to Heaven" and of course "In-a-gadda-da-vida," however the heck you spell that. "Wreck" was not listed among songs that were too long. That surprised me, since they'd already knocked it anyway.
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