Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Worst Songs of the Decade

While I'm still compiling my "Best of" lists for the year/decade, I took a few minutes this afternoon to recall some of the worst songs of the 2000's. A selfless act to be sure. These songs were inexplicable hits at some point during the past 10 years, for reasons that continue to baffle me. I tried to have a good balance of rock/pop/rap but alas, most lean toward the rock persuasion, for good reason. Without further adieu:


Dishonorable Mentions
Shaggy - Angel
Smashmouth - I'm A Believer
Both of these songs are remakes, so I am showing them some mercy and leaving them off this list. I have half a mind to put them at the top of the list for completely shredding any tender thoughts I had concerning the source material, but it's the holidays, and there are plenty of other songs to round out this list. Here's the video for I'm a believer in case you mistakenly thought it was "catchy".



10. Simple Plan - Perfect/I'm Just A Kid/Welcome to My Life
This is the start of a trend. For especially insufferable artists, I took the liberty of lumping together all of their songs. I may be unfairly lumping the entire creation of the Emo genre on Simple Plan's skinny shoulders, but I really don't care. The nasally whine and the temper-tantrum lyrics in all of these songs are embarrassing to listen to, and I don't know how the band themselves can perform these songs with a straight face. Especially now, since they are all over 30.



9. Follow Me - Uncle Kracker
"Uncle Cracker is a great name son, but I just think we need to make it a little edgier for the kids. I don't know, could you pull out some vowels, or slip a Z in somewhere?"

"I could swap the C in Cracker for a K. That could add some style without sacrificing the core phonetics"

"PERFECT!"

This song is WORSE than the name, if you can fathom that.



8. Nickelback - Hero/Photograph
You knew it was coming. No self-respecting music fan can make a "Worst" list without shoehorning Nickelback in. Nickelback had so many hits this decade, it was hard to narrow it down to only two songs. Thankfully, I was able to calibrate my ears in time to tune most of their new songs out, but not before these these two songs embedded themselves into my frontal love. Everyone knows (and loathes) "Photograph", but you may not recall the song "Hero" from the Spiderman soundtrack. That, my friends, is what YouTube is for.  Enjoy. Or not.



7. Hinder - Lips of An Angel
New year, new god-awful "rock" "love" "song". Whoa, that's a lot of quotation marks, but they are all appropriate. I don't know when this song came out, or how popular it was, but the fact that it has 14,000,000 views on YouTube tells me enough. If an alien spacecraft picks up an FM transmission of this song, they will almost certainly obliterate our planet. I don't blame them.



6. Sheryl Crow - Soak Up The Sun/First Cut is the Deepest/Picture

When you make Kid Rock look talented, you need to cut your losses and pack it in.



5. Puddle of Mudd - She Hates Me
From the Uncle Kracker school of spelling comes Puddle of Mudd. Make no mistake about it, while the music video makes this song look playful and tongue-in-cheek, these men are completely serious, as evidenced by the gnarly guitar solo. Let this be a lesson to you kids. Even if you look slightly like Kurt Cobain, and sound vaguely like Kurt Cobain, you are NOT Kurt Cobain.



4. Hoobstank - The Reason
Someday my grandchildren will ask me how I could stand idly by while a song like The Reason climbed to number TWO on the Billboard charts, and I'll have to pretend I can't hear them.
cc


3. James Blunt - You're Beautiful
A wise man once likened James Blunt to a singing seagull. If only it were so simple and you could feed him a couple Alka-seltzers and he would explode. Or maybe leave a couple plastic six-pack rings around so he could strangle himself. Sadly, we just have to hope that he succumbed to hypothermia at the end of the music video.

Note: The comments above are in jest, except those about it being a terrible song
Music Videos by VideoCure


2. Soulja Boy Tell'em - Crank That
If you know me, you know I love rap. Which means that this song must really be something for me to place it so high on this list. Well, it is. It is everything terrible about rap. Terrible beat, terrible lyrics, terrible hook. Just a mess of a song, from an untalented hack. But what do I know, this song was a hit. Mims- This Is Why I'm Hot is terrible also, but I forgot about it until just now. Darn it.


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1. Crazytown - Butterfly

Without question, the worst song of the decade. Zero redeeming qualities. Laughable in every way. And that's BEFORE you see the music video.

1 comment:

  1. Ok take two....I love that Crazy Town song and always will! Something is just so catchy about it...can't put my finger on it :) Does this mean we can't be friends?

    ReplyDelete