World’s Worst Songs: Neil Young’s “The Dock of the Bay”

Neil Young Speaks at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductions, 2011 (Getty Images/Michael Loccisano)

Here at World’s Worst World Headquarters, I confess to taking pleasure in my work, sometimes. (I am ashamed at how much I enjoy the way Dan Fogelberg fans defend their man from slights, and it makes me want to smack him around even more. It’s one of the many things I will have to answer for on Judgment Day.) But today’s entry gives me absolutely no pleasure at all.

In my world, Booker T. and the MGs are gods, and I have a deep and abiding respect for Neil Young. But in 1993, these two talented entities combined to lay a hideous egg: their version of Otis Redding‘s “The Dock of the Bay.”

The MGs are fine on the record, really. The problem is with Young, whose wheezing harmonica sits atop the MGs understated groove like a poorly-fitting gown on a supermodel. His vocal is thin and frequently off-key, but his worst offense involves the lyrics. I don’t care that he sings “I left my home in Canada / Headed for the Frisco Bay” or “10,000 miles I roamed / Just to make this dock my home.” What I care about is that he repeatedly sings “Sittin’ by the dock of the bay / Watching the tide roll away.”

It’s one of the most famous lyrics in soul music, Neil: “sittin’ ON the dock of the bay.” It is not “sittin’ BY the dock of the bay.” If you are sittin’ BY the dock of the bay, you are in the parking lot along with the people who are waiting to unload their boats. Only when you are stittin’ ON the dock of the bay can you properly watch the ships roll in and watch ‘em roll away again, rest your bones, or waste some time.

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