Colin Gibb’s Agadoo may ‘doo’ your head in, but is it really the worst song of all time

After Colin Gibb, singer with Black Lace, died at the start of June, many of his obituaries pointed out that Q magazine had once named Agadoo the Worst Song of All Time.

But is it? Agadoo is, of course, dreadfully catchy. But if catchiness were the sole criterion for dreadfulness, then any number of tunes would be outlawed, from Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head to ravel’s Bolero, which consists of the same bars repeated over and over again for a full 17 minutes.

At least Agadoo lasts for only three minutes and nine seconds, which makes it 13 minutes and 51 seconds less irritating than Bolero.

Having spent 40-odd years singing the song, Colin Gibb seemed to have grown to relish its capacity to annoy: in his last few shows, he would cheerfully remind audiences that it had once been voted the worst of all time.

Many more illustrious performers have grown to loathe the music that made them famous. few tunes remain fresh for those doomed to play them night after night.

Rachmaninoff wrote his famous Prelude In C-Sharp Minor when he was just 19 years old. forty years on, he was still obliged to play it at every concert.

‘Many, many times I wish I had never written it,’ he complained. One critic noticed that Rachmaninoff’s distaste for his own Prelude was all too evident. Whenever he played it, ‘he flung it at the audience like a bone to a dog’.

In our own day, Liam Gallagher, seldom a ray of sunshine, has never stopped complaining about Wonderwall, the song that made Oasis famous.

‘I can’t f***ing stand that f***ing song. every time I have to sing it I want to gag,’ he was already grumbling, as long ago as 2008.

Another crosspatch is Grace Slick, lead singer with Starship, who has described their We Built This City as ‘the worst song ever’. Her verdict continues to upset its lyricist, Bernie Taupin, who attacked her in his recent autobiography for ‘trash-talking’ the song that gave her group its biggest hit.

On the other hand, Taupin isn’t over-enthusiastic about the song himself. ‘Do I like the song? It’s a moot point. If I hadn’t written it, no, but I did, so I stand by it. It’s been good to me and my family . . .’

Talking of songs that have been good to the family, what did the late Queen Elizabeth II think of the National Anthem?

She was, by all accounts, pretty indifferent to music, so perhaps it never bothered her. As tunes go, it is both catchy and dreary, a rare and unfortunate combination.

It shadowed her wherever she went: every time she stepped off an aeroplane, greeted a foreign leader, or entered a theatre.

On state visits, she would hear it played at least once a day, often more. No one in human history can have heard it more frequently, though she was also the only person in the world barred from joining in.

The National Anthem may be boring, but perhaps its funereal dullness prevents it from being irritating. It’s the opposite of chirpy, and eventually, it’s their compulsory chirpiness that makes catchy songs so grim.

‘Agadoo doo doo, push pineapple, shake the tree, Agadoo doo doo, push pineapple, grind coffee’.

But what if you don’t feel like pushing pineapple, whatever that may involve?

There are few things more dispiriting than being forced to have a good time.

A lot of people, John Lennon among them, have found Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da the most irritating of songs by the Beatles. Yet it is also the most cheery.

Might there be a link between cheeriness and irritation? Don’t Worry, Be Happy by Bobby Mcferrin, similarly optimistic, sent one critic into a spiral of depression. ‘It’s difficult to think of a song more likely to plunge you into suicidal despondency than this,’ he noted.

Was he being unfair?

I can think of several gloomy, self-pitying songs that fulfil the same function more effectively. I would happily listen to Agadoo on a loop rather than be forced to sit through Another Brick In the Wall by Pink Floyd, Working Class Hero by John Lennon or Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now by the Smiths.

All together now: Agadoo, doo doo . . .