Last night I posted Hole’s repulsively propulsive “Retard Girl,” but in the morning I felt badly about it. The bad taste in that song is really bad taste, and while I think (hope) the point is not just the shock, I didn’t want to be so associated with it so I clawed it back. If you want to hear it you can search Google for it. The music is powerful, the lyrics make me cringe.

So tonight, thinking about bad taste, I came upon this song that Divine originated, but did not write. It’s a total disco track and obviously Divine embodies bad taste with grand (and big) style. What surprised me was that the song is one I know from the cover done by the Scottish post-punk pop band The Vaselines, who covered it some years later. Their version isn’t that much different, though they look nothing at all like Divine and don’t play disco instruments.