1950 Singles: If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake / When Love Happens to You - Eileen Barton

 If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake / When Love Happens to You - Eileen Barton

Why included: Best Sellers In Stores Billboard #1 hit in April 1950 for 2 weeks

A-side: If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake

Listen, as much as I have a distaste for this sort of pop music, a lot of it can be listenable if you simply lower your expectations. For the most part, pre-Beatles pop rarely reaches the lows that pop-punk or nu-metal hit simply for having a level of decency as a product of its era, and many of its songs have a hook or two to at least keep you somewhat occupied. Really, it ain't all that bad, especially since this type of music inspired plenty of great artists that would start trickling in towards the end of the decade.

However, this is a prime example where no cutting of corners can make me actually find this song tolerable AT ALL. This melody and lyrics are so unbelievably idiotic that I am shocked that anyone would have allowed this to move past the demo stage. It might have been somewhat less excruciating if there was some actual humor to this recording, but no, Eileen totally is unaware of how moronic the song is and her vocal performance is basically like watching your drunk, dimwitted sister-in-law "bust out da moves" on the dance floor during your family reunion. Some people may think I am being too harsh on such a "cute" song, and maybe I'm giving too much flack to a composition with such iconic, clincher lines like "I'd hired a band, grandest band in the land." Yet, it violates my intelligence in such a brutal way that putting it on one more time might bring me to the brink of cardiac arrest. I cannot quite grasp the mass cognitive decline required to allow this to stay on the charts for fifteen fuckin' weeks, but PLEASE, no one record any more nursery rhyme-level songs if you don't have LaVern Baker behind the mic.

B-side: When Love Happens To You

Normally, I would be pretty harsh on something so overproduced and overly sentimental, but believe me, once you have sat through the A-side, this B-side gives your brain a chance to recover. It's just a generic and bland sort of dreary pop song, though I wasn't expecting much from this B-side anyways.

Verdict: NOT recommended

Instead of restating the obvious, I would rather talk about who were the ones responsible for this being a hit. Was it because it was really that catchy and entertaining? I have my doubts about that. I would rather put my money that plenty of guys had the hots for the cute blonde singer who sang in a seductive voice about how she would "bake a cake for you" if you arrive at her front door. That's the only way I can explain it, or maybe people were just perplexed how a contraction like "I'd've" could even exist. Whatever it is, it makes it easier to sleep at night thinking that it was for non-musical reasons this was such a success back then.