"Worst That Could Happen," The Brooklyn Bridge (1968)

A proto-power ballad with vocals to snatch you bald

Peak: #3 on the Hot 100
Streams: 1.4 million

Are you a male musical theatre performer looking for a ballad that will blow the casting team off their chairs, and possibly out the window in the back of the rehearsal studio? Consider auditioning with “Worst That Could Happen,” a song that lets you express your heartbreak with power notes, key changes, and a full-on kabuki meltdown.

For pure melodramatic power, this record — about a man whose ex is about to marry someone else — is right up there with “I Who Have Nothing.” The excellently named Johnny Maestro wails out his regret like he could die at any second. The horn section and the Pips-esque backing vocalists round out his athletic vocals to make the track just burst with pathos, which is what you want for this kind of story.

And about that story: The singer has always accepted that his woman would leave him, since he cannot settle down. Yet even though he’s sad, he doesn’t pretend he can do anything about it. He swears he’s just not meant to get married.

It’s kind of tragic, really, because if this guy hadn’t locked himself into a playboy identity, then he might be happy. Credit songwriter Jimmy Webb — who also wrote “MacArthur Park” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” — for expressing such a specific point of view so clearly.

Webb’s most savage songwriting move comes at the end. The horns blast a section of Medelssohn’s “Wedding March,” while the backing vocalists croon “never get married” over and over. This is vicious. It’s like this poor guy is actually watching his woman walk down the aisle with another man, while his mean friends taunt him about how he’s gonna be alone forever. No wonder Johnny Maestro resorts to inarticulate wailing!

And I do think Jimmy Webb is responsible for the use of the wedding march, because it’s also in the original version of the song, by The Fifth Dimension. For the Brooklyn Bridge version, though, producer Wes Farrell adds those backing vocalists who remind their buddy he’s meant to die in isolation. Thus, we must credit Farrell for unlocking the song’s full histrionic potential.

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