The other night the present Mrs. Cyclo and I decided to watch the classic weird Isabella Roselini vehicle, The Saddest Music in The World. It’s a pathos filled art-houser from a few years back concerning the affairs of a literaly legless brewery heiress and her strange friends and features in it’s most iconic scene la Rosellini striking attitudes perched on glass legs filled with beer.
It revived in my noggin an old conversation…what’s the worst record every made? (also it started me wondering if there really are available anywhere in the world leg shaped drinking glasses. There are….here! http://www.fuerstenberg.de/shop/index.php?sid=f414db25bef0f50e5b791b4d08a5a143&cl=details&cnid=p6d4850e05fe9eba1.27043733)
A couple of years back, posting on a message board or discussion group, I started a co-respondence with none other than Lloyd Johnson (the man behind La Rocka! Di Londres amongst others) on this very subject. My contention was, and still is, that the worst thing I ever heard that had been on general release and was mildly successful (and I guess those would be the qualifications) is 1961's “This Pullover” by Jess Conrad.

http://www.jessconrad.com/

Lloyd asserted that Jess had under the assumed name Jimmy Cross recorded the truly appalling “I want My Baby Back” - a 1965 "splatter platter" in the manner of Terry or Tell Laura I Love Her - concerning a man’s refusal to allow his lover’s body to stay in the ground. It starts when a young lovers car crashes into the Leader of the Pack, killing him and the girlfriend. It ends with with the sound of digging, then "Pay dirt!", followed by the sound of a coffin lid creaking open, and the chorus "I got my baby back" as the young man climbs in with his dead bird. According to Mr Johnson this awful platter has been widely accepted as the worst thing ever recorded. But…

…I’d like to put in a word for Pat Campbell's “The Deal”, from his seminal 1969 recording "Just a Quiet Conversation with..." in which a man visits his wife in hospital during the birth of their first child, to be told by the sawbones that his wife and baby are gravely ill and that only one of them will survive the birth, the man must choose. Distraught, our hero enters the chapel and prays to god

As he leaves the chapel the Doc emerges from maternity proclaiming a miracle, baby and mother have pulled through, whereupon our hero collapses, deed. The Doc says,

Campbell had been in the Four Ramblers with Val Doonican. At the time of this minor hit he was a DJ on Radio Luxembourg. We heard nothing like it till Red Sovine's Teddy Bear, in 1976 (which he followed up with the even more maudlin Little Joe in 77, concerning a truckdriver whose dog saves his life. No really).

There is a disc by the Deltones called All I've Got Left (is my Johnny's hubcap), also there's Teenage Cremation, an Australian song about the aftermath of a bloody tragedy and Leonard Nimoy's "unique" version of Where is Love? but we needn't bother with those here...none are worse than the Deal.