Ashley Hamel stepped up to the mic, her ukelele pressed tightly to her torso. She smiled out into the audience, drawing cheers from the back of the cavernous room.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, addressing the crowd in a low, drawl-kissed voice. “We are the most powerful beings on this earth, with the power of insight, the power of love, the power of intuition, the power of insight, and the power of … smell.”
The audience laughed, a feeling that something wonderful and just slightly off-color was coming. And it was: with little pause, Hamel channeled her inner Riskay, glanced up at the twinkling stage lights, and launched into an extraordinary cover of “Smell Yo Dick.”
Lucy Gellman Photos
Her performance, winner of “Best In Show — Worst Song Ever,” was just one of the highlights Friday night at the Ballroom at the Outer Space in Hamden, where the New Haven Theater Company (NHTC) presented its first annual Worst Song Ever contest to a delighted audience of close to 60. Over two hours, nine acts competed for the titles of “Best in Show,” “WTF!?,” “Most Faithful Cover” and “So Bad It’s Good,” assigned by judges Seth Adam, a local musician, transit czar Doug Hausladen and WNPR sound engineer and part-time superpower Chion Wolf.
“The Worst Song Ever is a great example of the commitment of our company to not only produce high-quality theater, but also offer entertainment experiences that are engaging, fresh, and fun for the New Haven community,” said Christian Shaboo, member of the NHTC who is performing in Rachel Axler’s Smudge this week. “While this event was not our first venture into non-theatrical experiences — although most of the performances and performers offered some amazing theatricality — it was certainly one of the most successful of its kind. I think we’ve got ourselves an exciting annual event!”
Bad music, it turns out, goes deep. As the night — and several people’s vocal cords — unraveled, the contest raised legitimate questions.
Like: is Korn’s “A.D.I.D.A.S. (All Day I Dream About Sex)” as bad as everyone remembers, or does the song really have a much deeper and more intimate message, as Mara and the Dead Batteries (Laura Klein) suggested during her performance?
Or is the mark of a terrible song that it is picked up and covered by Barry Manlow, as “It Never Rains in Southern California” was? The New Haven Review’s Bennett Lovett-Graff, progenitor of “Listen Here,” thought so.
What level of terrible personhood can we realistically learn from terrible musicians? According to the night’s winner of “Most Faithful Cover,” Meredith Rose, quite a lot — at least if the terrible musician is Canadian teenage heartthrob Justin Bieber.
Or Robert Fullerton’s take of “Feelings,” which won him the “So Bad It’s Good” prize of the night?
Perhaps most controversial: Is the Beatles’ lauded “With A Little Help From My Friends” actually a terrible song, as John Russell offered?
Maybe so. Marketed as a fun event — to which it met and exceeded the description — the contest was also so much more than that, a meditation on how we indulge around our guiltiest pleasures in the presence of dear friends.
”I was asked to judge voraciously every musical act that came in front of me … tonight we were kind of blown away. Nine out of nine were tremendous to watch, nine out of nine tried hard … while playing the worst songs in the history of mankind,” said Hausladen after the event.
“This is a terrible song,” added Hamel after the event. “And I had a lot, a lot of fun.”
