To his credit, Sonny seemed aware of this. He was always self-deprecating, much like professional baseball player-turned-sit com star/all-around cheerful fella Bob Uecker. (In an episode of the Golden Girls, Bono appears alongside actor Lyle Waggoner as a pair of suitors competing for the affection of Dorothy; in one back-and-forth, he says, "Oh, insults from Lyle Waggoner, huh? How many gold records do you have?" to which his rival responds, "None, I was never married") He didn't seem particularly talented in any regard but everyone seemed to go along with him anyway. He wasn't much to look at but he had a cheeky personality. If Ringo Starr was the ultimate lovable loser in showbusiness, Sonny was just a notch below.
I have a soft spot for people who make the most of their fame and seem to appreciate every second of it. There may not be a better example of this that Sonny Bono. There's just one small problem and that's his one solo hit being an absolute giant pile of suck.
Well, let me walk that back ever so slightly, since you'll no doubt see the score below which isn't the absolute lowest of the low — even if it isn't too far off. Sonny does his best to sell it and I imagine he knew that what he was selling wasn't worth a damn. Doing his best Bob Dylan impersonation, he oversells the vitriol rather than hamming it up. Since he was already driving into the skid by inviting everyone's derision in "Laugh at Me", he should have gone the whole way by playing up the joke while he was at it. In an outtake from their Party! project, The Beach Boys took a wack at it. To his credit, singer Mike Love — an individual with far less charm than Sonny — plays up the humour, giving an over-long intro (taking Sonny's "I want to say it for Cher" bit and stretching it out to cover Al, Carl, Denny, Brian, Bruce and Glenn) and doing a deliberately lame Dylan. Silly but that's the way it should be.
If Mike Love of all people could make it into a lighthearted joke then Sonny Bono could've done the same. And, hey, for all I know that is indeed what he was going for but somehow I doubt it. As I've already said, the man had a sense of humour and was not above taking the piss out of himself. (On a Sonny and Cher live album, he introduces "Laugh at Me" with the line "I'll do a medley of my hit") But this just sounds like the sneering straights had gotten to him and his hippie clothes. Either that or he fancied his chances for solo stardom and didn't want to ruin it with a comedy number, even though I prefer his chances had he released recordings of song parodies and skits. I probably wouldn't have found it funny myself I think that potential audience would have been out there.
People may have been laughing at Sonny Bono but there's not much chance they found this effort all that amusing. Not only does he manage to do a poor impression of Dylan, he somehow even succeeded in making "Laugh at Me" far more excruciating than anything the former Robert Zimmerman ever put to tape. If a pop song by Sonny Bono of all people isn't engaging and isn't funny then what we are doing here?
Yet, it caught on enough to give him a number one hit in Canada while also making the Top 10 in the US and UK. His newfound fame alongside Cher would've no doubt helped and "Laugh at Me" does smartly latch onto the contemporary folk boom. The man knew when to jump on a bandwagon and he was clever enough to know how to flood the market. While "Laugh at Me" was climbing the Canadian charts, it was joined by a reissue of an earlier Sonny and Cher single from 1964 that didn't initially do much. After just one week of his solo excursion at number one, she would be right there with him on top. For good or bad, the beat went on and on and on...
Score: 2
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