DID you spend hours at school murdering songs on the guitar or recorder, or just by singing them? Here are some teachers’ favourites you’d rather kill yourself than ever hear again.
When I’m Sixty-Four
Your guitar group tutor didn’t give a shit, not only picking one of the Beatles’ worst songs, but also something age-inappropriate that no eight-year-old could relate to or enjoy. It would have been more fun if they’d taught you Helter Skelter while explaining the Charles Manson killings.
Close Every Door
Whatever your view of Andrew Lloyd-Webber (eg. tedious musical bastard) he did at least work with talented, usually classically trained, singers. This mournful tune from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat becomes far worse when sung by 20 out-of-tune, squeaky-voiced seven-year-olds. ‘Children of Israel are never alone,’ claim the lyrics. They f**king would be if they sang this.
Michael, Row the Boat Ashore
This bland African-American spiritual is about the Archangel Michael helping slaves across the River Jordan. No one bothered to explain this and you just thought it was about a boat with a leak. The original lyrics are in slave patois (‘row de boat ashore’ and worse) so if you learnt it in the 70s, just be thankful they didn’t make everyone black up for the school concert.
Three Blind Mice
The nuclear option of recorder tunes. It’s hell listening to a solitary child practising this, so there are probably interrogation/torture applications for massed children with descant recorders grimly puffing out the three shrill, repeated notes, all out of time with each other. The cold, condensed spit that dribbles out of the end is not something you’d want to be waterboarded with either.
I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing
A 1972 hit for the New Seekers, who rejigged their Coca-Cola jingle I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke, but cutting-edge stuff relative to other songs you learned at school in the 80s. The lyrics were puke (‘I’d like to build the world a home / And furnish it with love’) but at least it was from within the last two decades. Your music teacher will be very old now, but maybe still discovering hot new bands like Yes.
Frère Jacques
You replaced ‘sonnez les matines’ with ‘soggy semolina’, an act of unfunniness that shames you even now. A very, very boring song on all levels, it’s about a friar who oversleeps and has a painfully simple chord progression. Obviously that’s necessary for children starting to learn the guitar, but this is taking it too far. Teach them F# and they could play Bodies by the Pistols.
A truly terrible folk song
Chances are it was something like Paddy Works on the Railway, a lengthy dirge giving a year-by-year account of archaic railway construction practices: ‘In eighteen hundred and forty-one / My corduroy britches I put on / My corduroy britches I put on / To work upon the railway / In eighteen hundred and forty-two…’ etc. F**k you and f**k your poor career choices, Paddy.
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
This school music lesson mega-hit can be sung in a round, although it’s advisable not to with a bunch of caterwauling primary school children. It’s yet another very out-of-date song, and probably only so well-known due to Bing Crosby covering it in 1961. Interestingly it was on his album 101 Gang Songs, which clearly meant something different then and does not feature bitches, hoes or AKs.
