Elvis Presley – "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck" (1958)

Won’t you wear my ring around your neck

To tell the world I’m yours, by heck

Is that the worst rhyming couplet ever written?  

If you ask me, it's the leader in the clubhouse.

*     *     *     *     *

Elvis Presley recorded a lot of terrible music – including today’s featured song.

Keep in mind that Elvis died when he was only 42.  Can you imagine how much more bad music he could have recorded if he had lived another 10, 20, even 30 years?

Elvis in 1957

Leonard Pinth-Garnell never reviewed “Wear My Ring Around Your Neck,” but here are a few quotes from Bad Performances that could be used to describe that song:

– “Stunningly bad!”

– “Monumentally ill-advised!”

– “Perfectly awful!”

– “Couldn't be worse!”

– “Exquisitely awful!”

– “Astonishingly ill-chosen!”

– “Really bit the big one!”

Elvis in 1976

Unlike Elvis’s previous ten singles, “Wear My Ring Around Your Neck” didn’t make it to #1 on the Billboard “Hot 100.”  It peaked at #3.

*     *     *     *     *

You younger 2 or 3 lines readers may be confused by the title of this song.

Fifty or sixty years ago, a high-school senior who was “going steady” with a girl might give her his class ring to wear as tangible proof of his affection.

If he was a hulking gridiron star and she was a dainty cheerleader, his ring would be far too large for her fingers.

Not what Elvis was suggesting

One way around that problem was for the comely young lass to put the ring on a chain and wear it around her neck.

That is what Elvis is asking his beloved to do in this song.

*     *     *     *     *

Click here to listen to “Wear Your Ring Around My Neck.”

Click on the link below if you’d like to order the song from Amazon: