The Professor Of Rock ROASTS "Kokomo" and Mike Love In Latest Video

[guitarfool2002]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw1a-5-ZM0w

Video just released to Adam's 1.4 million subscribers. Somewhere over certain parts of the world you can probably see a bat signal in the night sky. Watch the comments section. 

I've got my beer and popcorn ready. 

[Zenobi]

Kokomo is a catchy, harmless, totally forgettable little ditty. It also gathers Mike's strengths and his cringe aspects in one neat, perfectly commercial package. The worst song ever is not, nor could ever be, given the relentless horrible slop the "music" industry is throwing at our poor ears. It does not even rank among the 10000 worst song, nor it is among the 10000 best. It is surely an enduring "meme", whatever it may mean or entail.

[BJL]

Say what you will about Mike Love, but Kokomo is an undeniable hit that achieved its iconic status organically because people heard it and liked it. It's also full of beautiful little musical touches (the combination of tinkling steel drums, accordion, and dobro (played by Ry Cooder!) that defines the musical texture of much of the song does the old Brian trick of combining unusual instruments to create a single effect). Terry Melcher absolutely knew how to produce a record. It has absolutely stellar vocal performances by two of the most iconic lead vocalists of all time. And yea, it's corny, syrupy, and silly, but it's not really formulaic. There aren't really many (any?) other songs that sound much like it. The bass vocal as both hook and verse trick the song pulls is not something very many acts have managed to imitate successfully. It has a sort of spiritual kinship with someone like Jimmy Buffet, but it doesn't actually *sound* anything like a Jimmy Buffet song.

I'm not saying it's a masterpiece on the level of the band's work from the 60s, obviously. But in my opinion, the idea that it's formulaic dreck has nothing to do with the song itself and everything to do with Mike Love's million other horrible choices about how to present the band to the public in the 80s and 90s.

[Rocker]

Say what you will about Mike Love, but Kokomo is an undeniable hit that achieved its iconic status organically because people heard it and liked it. It's also full of beautiful little musical touches (the combination of tinkling steel drums, accordion (played by Van Dyke Parks), and dobro (played by Ry Cooder!)

Added something 

And I agree, "Kokomo" is a very good, catchy little pop song. No, it's not earth-shattering but neither is it anything to be ashamed of. "Somewhere near Japan" is more interesting to me and has more substance but I guess they did that song because of the "exotic"-sounds-formula "Kokomo" had established and rather than for anything else. But what a great record it is.

[guitarfool2002]

I think part of the reason why both "Kokomo" and "We Built This City" by Jefferson Starship get tagged or meme-d as the "worst song ever" so often is because they're so far removed from what those bands used to be and what they used to represent to their fans. Or people simply don't like the songs. But there's a certain emotional weight to beloved 60's era bands that makes their total shift to 80's pop sonic sensibilities even more egregious to the fans. "This is the same band who did Pet Sounds?" "This is the same band who did Surrealistic Pillow?"...stuff like that. For the record I feel the same personally about Chicago. I can barely listen to anything they did after Terry Kath died, a lot of that because I love those first 3 Chicago albums so much and the Cetera ballads just don't cut it or sound anything like what the band was going for on those early albums.

[MyDrKnowsItKeepsMeCalm]

Agree with both the positive and negative comments in this thread. I actually grudgingly kinda like Kokomo, if you promise not to tell.

At the 2012 BBs reunion show, stranger than fiction but I remember seeing a lot of *young* women in the audience going completely nuts for this song in particular.