10 Songs That Got Stuff Completely Wrong
8. The Night Chicago Died - Paper Lace
Looking back on the past years of the charts, it's easy to look at the '70s through rose tinted glasses. After all, this was the decade that gave us the genres of disco, hard rock, glam and some of the most epic musical moments out of those respective genres. Then again, this was also the decade of leisure suits, Afternoon Delight, and the scourge of AM radio fluff that came with the Night Chicago Died.
Granted, it's not hard to see what Paper Lace were trying to do here, having a big singalong song complete with a story about Al Capone's siege on the Chicago police force. This seems to be one of those gritty tales pulled out of a Law and Order episode...as long as you don't take time to look at the gory details.
Even though most songs take you a hot second to realize that they don't make sense, this lyric sheet faceplants right out of the gate by saying that the narrator's daddy was a cop "on the east side of Chicago." Not a bad idea to set the scene...until you realize that the infrastructure of Chicago doesn't have an East side, instead being just Lake Michigan. As much as this was meant to be a doofy kind of story song from a wannabe Three Dog Night, you're really stretching when you're trying to pass off the east side when it's underwater.