#45 -- "Mr Roboto" -- Styx

Year: 1983
Chart Position: #3
Last year's Worst Songs position: #14


Rock and rollers are a paranoid bunch. They realize that without rock music, most rock stars would revert to what they were in high school: music department geeks with little social skills, seeking revenge on their bettors by becoming famous. (I'm speaking from experience here.) So the worst possible future they can imagine -- aside from one where they get a day job and Battlestar Galactica goes off the air -- is one where rock and roll is outlawed! You know, by The Man!

This paranoia reached its apex in 1983 with Kilroy is Here, Styx's inane rock musical about a near future where the Moral Musical Majority has banned rock music; it's only hope and savior is Robert Orin Charles Kilroy (yes, that spells ROCK) a former rock musician who...well, I don't want to spoil the plot, but rock and roll is saved in the end. Long live rock! It's a storyline ripped from some kid's Pee-Chee in 1974.

Dennis DeYoung -- Styx's lead singer and the ultimate band-geek-turned-rock-star -- plays Kilroy in the musical, his vibrato-laden tenor straight from choir practice. I've always thought of DeYoung as an American Freddie Mercury, with one big difference: Mercury could rock. DeYoung always sounds like he's auditioning for A Chorus Line. In "Mr. Roboto," Kilroy has escaped from prison dressed as a Roboto guard. "You're wondering who I am," sings DeYoung. No, we know who you are -- you'd be doing Broadway if you knew how to dance.

The song itself is silliness defined -- from the moment DeYoung exclaims "I am the mod-ren man!" you know the song has nowhere to go but Kitschville. Tommy Shaw and the rest of Styx try to keep the song anchored in semi-rock, but DeYoung's theatrics overtake the proceedings completely. By the time he announces "I'm Kilroy! Kilroy! Kilroy!" we're heading for the theater lobby, hoping that Tommy is playing across the street.

Fun Fact: "This comes very close to rock theater, and that's very exciting for us. I feel like we've earned a lot of credibility over the past few years. We don't want to squander it. We want to build on it." -- Dennis DeYoung, 1983.