The other day I went down one of those typical internet rabbit holes exploring lists of “Worst Pop Songs Ever Written” compiled over the years. You’ve seen them, too, at whiles. Many of the usual suspects were in evidence across the spectrum of polls and surveys when I was frittering about; I was already well aware of a number of these sonic abominations: MacArthur Park, (You’re) Having My Baby, Bobby Goldsboro’s Honey, etc., etc.

It might be fun to explore in further detail the abject hideousness of these and other frightful selections at a later time, but for now I wanted to highlight a musical atrocity with which I had never been acquainted. The song is called ‘Timothy’ and it was released in 1970 by a band called The Buoys. ‘Timothy’ reached the Billboard Top 20, peaking at No. 17—the only song by The Buoys to ever chart, so it’s obvious that his gaggle of goofballs never enjoyed the kind of sustained “career flotation” suggested by the name of their band.

Listening to the ear-bleeding, brain-frazzling slice of asininity that is ‘Timothy,’ one is hardly surprised that the band never went much further. Not only is their signature hit colossally repugnant, but they perform it with the sort of stunned, self-disbelief it deserves. What a hack job.

Far more pertinent to this little discussion, however, is the song’s (literal) gut-busting subject matter. ‘Timothy’ is a brief and idiotic shuffle, in which a tatty drum kit helps launch an incongruously perky and almost cheerful guitar riff into a tale of three young boys who explore an old, abandoned mine. The mine collapses upon the three morons (there’s Jeff, the eponymous Timothy, and the unnamed narrator of our saga) and, to put it bluntly, Jeff and the other kid cannibalize Timothy until they are rescued from the mine … with full bellies explicitly described.

The final lament from the narrator of this ghoulish farce concerns the fact that none of the rescuers ever “got around” to finding Timothy.

This, of course, brings up a lot of unanswered questions and conundrums. And I am a questioning spirit.

Presumably the rescuers knew that the three boys were trapped in the old mine, otherwise they would not have bothered to come looking for them, much less establish a complicated rescue operation/excavation in order to set the little bastards free.

Second, given the fact that Jeff (who, early in the song, declares he’d give his soul for a piece of meat) and his pal gorged themselves on Timothy’s flesh after killing him (?), why was there no evidence of the grisly repast once the “light of day” exposed the scene in the mine shaft? Don’t you think there’d be a section of intestine lying around down there? Those things are, like, sixty feet long or whatever. And slippery, they say.

Don’t you suspect that at least one or possibly both of Timothy’s eyeballs would have rolled away in the darkness after Jeff and the other kid cleaved his skull to get at the brain matter? Surely these boys didn’t consume Timmy’s eyeballs. Well, not unless these kids were Greek, in which case they may have followed the tradition of noshing on eyeballs popped or pried out of the Easter lamb’s head.

Did the boys actually consume Timothy—bones, hair, fingernails and all? That seems preposterous. But growing children can put-away astonishing amounts of food.

Did they bury Timothy’s clothing or shove it further down in the dark recesses of the mine? Did they cover-up the blood-soaked area with dirt, like a cat scraping litter over its embarrassing “business” in the box?

Was Timothy a fat and fairly stupid young fellow? This would make sense, given that he was apparently not quick enough to scoot away from the greedy clutches and snapping jaws of Jeff and the other kid, and not smart enough to sense that their hunger was potent enough to make him a prime candidate for lunch in the dark.

Why didn’t the boys just wait awhile before sampling Timothy’s sweetbreads? That entire slew of Thai kids trapped in the underwater cave went days without snacking on each other and, let’s be real: Thai is hard to resist.

The song indicates that there was plenty of water down in that collapsed mine. Why so quick to pounce on Timothy after only an hour or so and then moan and groan about how much they regretted sucking the marrow from his carcass immediately after they were rescued?

Weren’t the parents of these cannibal-brats concerned to hear their offspring locked behind the bathroom door a day later, straining to shit Timothy-turds into the bowl?

“Jeff? Darling, are you having trouble in there? Would you like an Ex-Lax?”

“Leave me alone! I’ll be out in a few minutes, Mom.”

So many unanswered questions and mercurial scenarios are posed by this enigmatic ballad that I feel a sequel-song should be written and disseminated to the public forthwith. Maybe even a prequel song. Or a song written and sung from poor Timothy’s point of view:

They were calling me a fat ass before they led me down

They always treat me like I’m just a roly poly clown

But little did I know that once the mine had caved right in

my buddy Jeff would sink his teeth into my juicy skin

The time is ripe—countless millions have surely been longing for closure all these years. The world owes it to Timothy.

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