Some songs just should have never been released, for one reason or another. Maybe their lyrics are awful, maybe their makers have explicitly said that the songs themselves should never have come to be. Either way, they made it to the airwaves anyway. And the following 1980s hits might just be some of the worst offenders. Though, I won’t judge you if you like one or all of these old school tunes.
“Don’t Stand So Close To Me” by The Police (1980)
The Police dished out a few pretty creepy songs, including the hit tune sung from the perspective of a stalker, “Every Breath You Take” from 1983. But I have to say, “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” takes the cake. This song is about a teacher who has fantasies about one of his own young female students. And it has some major ick factor. Sting himself says that he refuses to play this particular song live anymore.
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“[In] the current climate, I don’t sing that live,” Sting said in 2023. “People with a sort of puerile sensibility will say, ‘Oh it’s about you.’ And of course it’s not, but it’s an interesting situation.”
“We Built This City” by Starship (1985)
Fans of 1980s music might know this song from one of its co-writers, Bernie Taupin. He has famously worked with Elton John for most of his career. Unfortunately, it looks like Taupin is not a fan of “We Built This City” by Starship either, or at least its final form. Neither were many retrospective critics of the song. Audiences also tend to hate it today.
“The original song was a very dark kind of mid-tempo song, and it didn’t have all this ‘We built this city!’” said Taupin. “It had none of that. It was a very dark song about how club life in L.A. was being killed off and live acts had no place to go. It was a very specific thing. A guy called Peter Wolf – not J. Geils Peter Wolf, but a big-time pop guy and German record producer – got ahold of the demo and totally changed it. He jerry-rigged it into the pop hit it was.”
“Jack & Diane” by John Cougar (John Mellencamp) (1982)
A lot of people love this song. It’s John Mellencamp’s most beloved tune, and it spent four whole weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart. And yet, Mellencamp regrets even making it. This heartland rock tune makes it to our list of songs that should never have been released, namely because its maker seems to think so.
“‘Jack & Diane’ was a terrible record to make,” said Mellencamp in a print interview for Classic Rock Magazine in 2008. “When I play it on guitar by myself, it sounds great – but I could never get the band to play along with me. That’s why the arrangement’s so weird. Stopping and starting, it’s not very musical.”
Photo by Jennifer Pottheiser / Courtesy of Disney