archy

Because everybody likes a list
Blender magazine has couple lists of badness up. Everybody has done a worst song list and worst movie list, so let's move on to the 25 Wussiest Artists Ever. As is always the case with such lists, it's limited to major American performers. That's fine, the US has produced more than enough wimpy, lame performers to keep the discussion going untill the bartender announces last call and throws us all out. The Blender writers have included the Mount Rushmore men of Wussy music, Kenny G, Barry Manilow, Pat Boone, and Bread. That's good start.

The list is also limited in time, It has one performer from the fifties, two from the sixties, and the rest from the last thirty-five years. Normally, this would be the point where I would stand up for the rest of recording history by going to the bat for almost every white vocal group of the forties, but instead I'm going to go uber provincial. I came of age just before the golden age of Soft Rock, the long national nightmare which preceded the only slightly longer national nightmare of Disco. I could have constructed the entire list from a four or five year period when I was in junior and senior high school.

As I read the list I nodded in agreement with each nineties boy group included, but found myself shaking my head in amazement at the Soft Rock omissions. "But where's Bobby Sherman and John Denver," I wondered. "You can't have missed Lobo," I cried. I reached the end of the article and looked for extra pages. "What about Rod McCuen and his stupid cake?" I demanded, my voice raising to a howl. "Doesn't Michael Murphy and his dumbass horse Wildfire deserve inclusion?? What is the matter with you people?" Obviously, the seventies were a trying time for me.

Which performers absolutely must be included in your list of the Wussiest American Artists of the Last Half-Century?