The Worst 200 Songs, Part IV: #140-121

'There is no surfeiting on gall: nothing keeps so well as a decoction of spleen.'
William Hazlitt, 'On the Pleasure of Hating', 1826, Selected Writings (Penguin, 1970, p.405)


140. R. Kelly - 'Ignition (Remix)'
(2003, #1, DL)





DL: Stupid, shallow RNB dross, but have often wondered if R. previously sang ''It's the original to Ignition''. Yet I am not going to Google it to find out. I'd like to punch this song in multiple organs.

AN: In an era of remarkable efflorescence and vitality for American R’n’B, it was a shame that R. Kelly’s lowest common denominator surrealist adolescent puerility acquired such widespread credibility. The epitome of average: mainstream, mediocre, bloated, boring.

JG: The opening line “now normally I don’t do this” promises much. Sadly, the song then starts.

TM: I liked this at the time, partly out of admiration for its soulful chord-sequences, partly as a wilful liking for mainstream pop. This ‘remix’ now sounds inert and who’s actually heard the original?

139. Craig Douglas - 'Only Sixteen'
(1959, #1, RC)





DL: Yet if I used these lyrics as part of a defence in court I'd be on a register faster than you can say 'name and shame'. Especially if I professed to be the same age as her. Just painfully fluffy.

JG: Is it just me, or is this song actually about grown men grooming under-age girls?

AN: Another of Robin’s choices. I don’t feel qualified to comment really but if he chose this I feel certain it must be a bad thing in all kinds of complicated cultural historical ways.

TM: Plodding, would-be juvenilia and the earliest entry in this esteemed litany. “She was too young to fall in love”. To paraphrase Epic45, I’m getting too young for this sort of insipid crap.

138. Robson and Jerome - 'What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?' 
(1996, #1, TM)





DL: It really irks me to see Cowell lauded as an evil genius, when there's really no skill involved in releasing records on the back of TV programmes. Never found his putdowns witty or insightful either.

JG: Weak pastiche of Jimmy Ruffin’s classic, and one that regrettably set the template followed by The Soldiers today; that’s actors playing soldiers inspiring soldiers playing singers. Ouch, my head.

AN: Another paragon of pointlessness, and a bar against ’90s nostalgia. 

TM: The sound of a nation clutching the comfort blanket close, afraid to make strides into the future. “This land of broken dreams”; like then-PM John Major, they took refuge in dreams of rural retreat.

137. Busted - 'You Said No'
(2003, #1, TM)





DL: Was prepared to engage in some revisionism here, but now I'm listening to the fucking thing, these cod-Americanisms really grate. At least Blink 182 did/do this kind of shit with some wit and irony.

AN: I quite liked Busted’s 'Thunderbirds' tune. Another tune I don’t really have much to say about. It’s shit, obviously.

JG: The Eton Year 11 understanding of what punk rock ought to sound like.

TM: This particular future was a dead-end; a boy-band chasing after the rock ambulance. They present a whiny, brattish mode of masculinity – utterly lacking in charm in its “ME ME ME” lamentations.

Punchable, us?

136. Liz Kershaw, Frank Bruno, Bruno Brookes and Samantha Fox - 'Come Outside'
(1992, failed to chart, TM)





DL: Brookes was deemed a Radio 1 relic when he was just 35, but somehow not three years before in '92 when this alone should have seen him off. Almost endearingly crap in its long-lost, Bruno'd-up shame.

AN: The ’80s vogue for ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ committing suicide in a flurry of risible Major-era celebrity comedy awfulness.

JG: If anyone wants to understand the dark roots of the Matthew Bannister revolution at Radio 1, then look no further than this insipid vehicle for Bruno Brookes’s shatteringly conceit-driven ego.

TM: Two Brunos and two arch ladies defy all aesthetic criteria with a work that is both apocalyptically awful and weirdly enticing. As archaic in its way as #138: “slap ‘n’ tickle”, “bag of chips”.

135. Emerson, Lake and Palmer - 'Jerusalem'
(1973, #2 - album, RC)





DL: I think prog-rock may be pretty much the antithesis of what I look for in music, and this old fart's racket is typical of that which makes me evacuate any environment that it might aurally vandalise.

AN: Prog. Another genre that bored hipster revisionists should have left well alone.

JG: Listen carefully and you can hear the moorings that tied early prog rock to a genuinely grassroots artistic network tearing away as ELP develop into Great Artistes Who Really Mean It. Twats. 

TM: Re-envisioning of Blake’s ‘alternative anthem’ that strips out the dissenting vision. In ELP land, the mills are a threat not to the exploited populace but the picturesque view from the country house.

134. Gary Glitter - 'Dance Me Up'
(1984, #25, TM)





DL: I certainly don't want this on my hard drive. An awful piece of glam-funk regardless of any wider context, though it does help and a violent assault on the senses. Glad I never have to hear it again.

AN: Again, this is the sort of ‘80s kitsch valorised by Shoreditch hipsters, not to mention multiple Zane Lowe-championed bands of 2008-10.

JG: Long past his insouciant pomp, and long before a well-known series of deeply unfortunate events, this is Glitter’s pre-conviction low. 

TM: Horrific display of braggadocio and female objectification. It is okay as ‘he rocks’, says a YouTube commentator in a misguided application of Larkin’s Law. Oh, and the song is sheer, leering shite.

133. The Lighthouse Family - 'Postcard from Heaven'
(1999, #24, TM)





DL: Some records on our chart are there because they are wildly irritating, obnoxious, tacky or moronic. This is just nothing. Boring and empty. Like listening to wallpaper. Mahogany wallpaper at that.

AN: Hmm. The Lighthouse Family were a multi-racial Newcastle band. For that reason I’m willing to forgive them even this.

JG: Mick Hucknall’s most obvious successors were already going through the motions a mere two years into their career. This is flaccid non-pop, and Tunde’s flat, expressionless voice was never exposed to such appalling effect as here.

TM: Typically soporific slush from these favourites of Peep Show’s resident slick and unhinged businessman Alan Johnson. They came from Newcastle, though clearly from Osborne Road wine bar territory.

132. Modern Romance - 'Ay Ay Ay Ay Moosey'
(1981, #10, JG)





DL: Why do people residing in sunnier climes never make records about venturing up to our slate grey, overly built-up and dystopian destinations? I don't really mind this. If you squint, it's Joey Barton.

AN: What must going on a Mediterranean holiday have been like in the ’80s? Not good judging by this. Grudgingly, I admit that neoliberal capitalism may have been responsible for some moderate progress on the lifestyle front.

JG: The emerging New Pop spawned ABC, Scritti Politti and early Spandau Ballet. It also spawned this shite, proving that all pearls contain their kernel of turd. 

TM: A rare misfire from one of pop’s greatest eras; a simpleton’s take on Kid Creole and the Coconuts’ urbane, exotic cosmopolitanism. Here’s evidence that steel drums can sound workaday, not joyous.

131. Toto Coelo - 'I Eat Cannibals (Part One)' 
(1982, #8, TM)





DL: I do like a song I can relate to. Just not this one. At this point the New Wave sound of things must have reached saturation level. Reminiscent of Siouxsie and the Banshees, only completely inferior.

AN: A bad week for '80s excrement, this.

JG: Why the fuck would anyone saunter down to Woolworths and buy this shite when they could have Bow Wow Wow’s contemporaneously magnificent 'Go Wild in the Country' for exactly the same price?

TM: Inexplicable poppycock that has surely been given ‘ironic’ kudos within the context of ‘cheesy pop’ discos. 1982 was great; yet this is, as Carlin argued, an Opportunity Knocks idea of ‘raunchiness’.

130. Coldplay - 'Fix You'
(2005, #4, DL)





DL: How can such a huge sound seem so lacking in soul? Just another example of supposedly universal and all-compassing song-writing that just alienates all that aren't on board. If only Coldplay had bite.

AN: Everyone was fooled by Coldplay back in the day. Everyone. Apart from Alan McGee. Well done that man, inexplicably.

JG: Yes, they’re a pathetically easy target but they hardly help their cause with plodding neo-dadrock like this, do they? Remarkably, most recent offering ‘Paradise’ trumps this in the shit-ness department at every turn. 

TM: The vague sweet-nothings of banal popular song haunted the TV dramas of Dennis Potter; in forty years time this will surely elicit bemusement not fascination. What was that about light igniting bones?

129. Inner Circle - 'Sweat (A La La La La Song)'
(1993, #3, RC)





DL: Don't you just miss the halcyon days of 1993's cod-reggae stampede? Must admit this raises a subtle grin, for those disturbing nostalgic reasons again, but ultimately it makes UB40 sound authentic.

AN: The novelty arse end of early-’90s reggae-inflected pop. At the other end of the spectrum stood Ace of Base, one of the great musical collectives in human history.

JG: Inner Circle came out of the same mid-70s Jamaican reggae milieu as Black Uhuru and slogged away for years releasing multiple albums for little reward, with plenty of personal tragedy along the way. I don’t begrudge them this money-spinning hit, terrible though it is. 

TM: Watered-down, identikit reggae backs crude lyrical sentiments which desperately require some wit. The operative adjective is ‘leaden’. ‘Erotic City’ this most certainly is not.

128. Flo Rida (Feat. T-Pain) - 'Low'
(2008, #2, DL)





DL: I really couldn't give any more of a fuck about this irksome Shawty and the continent-sized club that she frequents any more than I give a fuck about Stranraer. Don't they care that they're generic?

AN: I hated these horrible, horrible R’n’B tunes from the mid-noughties, for which the formula was: tacky 808 drums, synths playing dystopian chromatic empty hooks, and notably nasty misogynistic lyrics. Usher’s diabolical 'Yeah' led the charge.

JG: It’s all a bit sad that R'n'b has become nothing more than a vacuous soundtrack to various dance-based teen movies (Step Up 2 the Streets, in this case), but such is life.

TM: “Like a pornography poster/She showed her”. Tedious ‘booty’ and brand obsession. Its parent album at least benefits from being the only Mail on Sunday ever not to feature the odious Peter Hitchens.

127. Sinitta - 'So Macho'
(1986, #2, DL)





DL: Well, gender roles certainly weren't dead in 1986. There is literally no humanity in this. Although the joke may be on me as I suspect it documents same-sex preferences as well as heterosexual ones.

AN: School disco trash.

JG: Simon Cowell’s first major pop music success, and it very nearly stalled until Iain Burton’s £5,000 loan guaranteed its release as a single. Without this, there might be no X Factor today. Burton, you absolute bastard. 

TM: While hi-NRG was often great, its two envoys in this list so far have been atrocious. While the music adds irony with every orchestra-hit, the lyrical outlook is tiresomely traditional and submissive.

126. Kate Nash - 'Foundations'
(2007, #2, DL)





DL: An admittedly warm and infectious chorus with some magical and delicate production bludgeoned senseless by numerous painful lyrical howlers. Which one's your favourite? “Intelligent input”? “Fit-tah”?

AN: Good call Dave. I wish we’d had more recent stuff on this list so far (probably should have picked more meself). It’s much more worthwhile critiquing stuff that people still like or have recently.

JG: A kind of ITV version of Lily Allen with infuriating longevity; annoying in much the same way that the fact that The Upper Hand is technically Britain’s longest-running sitcom is. 

TM: The video’s studied mundanity fits Nash’s accentuated mockney voice: animated socks, pink and blue toothbrushes; cup-cake feminism par excellence. The “Bitter! [...] FITTAH!” lines define ‘irritating’.

125. Showaddywaddy - 'Three Steps to Heaven'
(1975, #2, RC)





DL: Nothing wrong with the song, but as a cover version it does seem supremely pointless. I can guarantee that there'll be some very important cultural and political reasoning behind this nomination.

AN: Again, Robin Knows. I bet there’s something wonderfully savage about this on Sea Songs somewhere. Have a look.

JG: Like #133, this is failing non-pop by virtue of its total lack of discernible melody. Dave Bartram’s vocals are also strange, as though they had been auto-tuned years before such things were possible. 

TM: As with the landfill indie contingent’s pilfering of Britpop, it is the idiot copyists 15-20 years down the line who deserve maximum ire. Ageing teddy boys may have found solace; I resolutely cannot.

124. Boris Gardiner - 'I Want to Wake Up With You'
(1986, #1, DL)





DL: I think someone played at their wedding reception when I was a toddler and it made me retch even then. I would like 'Come Play With Me' by The Wedding Present as the first dance when I get 'spliced'.

AN: Quite enjoyed this, for some reason. Multicultural London; sweet, pretty lass.

JG: In hindsight, 1986 was a bit like 1976 in terms of the appalling state of the pop charts (and therefore of radio). No wonder raves were only just around the corner.

TM: He had played bass for Lee Perry, yet this is a wimpy frisbee of a record. There are courtly enough sentiments, but few signs of life. ‘This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.’

The video is beguiling, actually

123. Kajagoogoo - 'Too Shy'
(1983, #1, DL)





DL: Number one during my early weeks, but I've never solved the mystery as to why anyone would want to own this song, no matter when it was released. Just an inane, ridiculous chorus that grates terribly.

AN: And this. Fucking hell this is pretty good stuff, vocals and chorus aside. Which is a good portion of the song, allowably.

JG: It would be nice to think Kajagoogoo’s music could inspire me to a wittier riposte than “too shy? Too shite, more like!” But sadly it can’t. 

TM: Redolent of the worst eighties tendencies: Thatcher and machismo, with its Falklands homecoming motif. This lacks the brash, rich palette of Trevor Horn or the ideas of Paul Morley. Just galling.

122. Brotherhood of Man - 'Save Your Kisses for Me'
(1976, #1, RC)





DL: I knew 70s pop was a kitsch load of inoffensive yet somehow sinister arse from another galaxy before we started this project but now I feel this even more so. Maybe Flo Rida and LMFAO aren't so bad.

AN: More novelty tripe.

JG: More lightweight mid-70s escapism during a time of economic crisis. A musical precursor of Michael McIntyre, then. 

TM: Cultural complacency, 70s-style: not a pretty sight. A heftily moustached, wing-collared dullard leads inert dance routines and mouths a mid-Atlantic ode to a three year-old. Dorries would approve.

121. Westlife - 'The Rose'
(2006, #1, TM)





DL: Are there really people out there that are truly moved by this plodding and calculated, insincere guff? This is impossible to like. 'Westlife on auto-pilot'. What an ominous phrase. Lighters in the air!

AN: Westlife must win the title for least defensible boy band. Nothing redeemable about them whatsoever. I mean really nothing.

JG: Do the people who buy this kind of shite actually like it? And if so, why?

TM: 14th number-1 from ‘the boys’, pawns of Simon Cowell in his ongoing attempt to debase pop-culture. As Hazlitt argued, ‘Anyone will be almost sure to make money who has no other idea in his head’.

I HAVE NO TIME FOR WESTERN MEDICINE,
I AM... ANDREW LANSLEY JR.!

The Worst 200 Songs, Part III: #160-141

160. Emmy the Great - 'Mistress England'
(2011, N/A, TM)





DL: Lament to those who ‘dreamed their daughters would marry Prince William’. To paraphrase Bernard Black, “I never thought I’d say this to anyone, but… ‘Get a job’.” Charmless helping of Tory indie-folk.

AN: I’ve written about this elsewhere, and I’d sort of like to move on now. As W.B. Yeats once wrote, “Too long spent hating on risible private school cabaret / Can make a stone of the heart”.

JG: I think this conveys the sheer ennui of celebrity worship around the Royal Wedding quite wittily, if I must be honest. Not something I’d consider a Top 200 contender at all.

TM: A KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON dirge with insipid lyrics about UCAS forms and fairy-tale dreaming. A conservative’s idea of a clever song: ‘keep up appearances’ and genuflect before royalty, plebs!

159. Thurman - 'English Tea'
(1994, failed to chart, TM)





DL: Jangly Conference Britpop lost in the midst of time. Whimsical old relic that almost comes across as a spoof of that particular movement; I believe that The Fast Show's Indie Club band had more bite.

AN: Ha, this is hilarious! I’d never heard it before. ROFL!

JG: The Viva Brother of their age; boring, derivative, banal and with absolutely nothing to say. Takes Blur’s problematic, ironic “anti-grunge” stance far too literally. Infuriating “mockney” vocals too.

TM: “But if you don’t feel very loyal, you can always read about a royal”. ‘Indie’ atrocity that even Britpop laureate John Harris has castigated. No-hopers Shed Seven sound like The Kinks in comparison.

158. Bryan Adams - 'Summer of '69'
(1985, #42, RC)





DL: Can't enjoy this Boss-lite eighties constant now I know it's not named after the year but a Summer in which Adams spent embroiled in the sexual tryst of the same numerical figure. Bad taste in mouth.

AN: Sorry for the second pitiful self-plug of the week, but I said all I really want to say about this here.

JG: Appalling Reaganite re-imagining the late 60s as a time of hangin’ with the boys, chasin’ the ladies and kickin’ back the beers whilst ignoring those bloody peacenik Commies. Bryan Adams was 9 years old at the time.

TM: Played to rigor mortis, if not outright fatality. Can anyone find this invigorating now? As far as the mythologizing of childhood goes, Nas, Laurie Lee and Ariel Pink are infinitely preferable.

157. AC/DC - 'Let There Be Rock'
(1977, #17 - album, AN)





DL: If this is real music, give me disposable, manufactured, exciting and vibrant pop music any day of the week. Dull, repetitious and overlong. Each to their own but I find no depth of emotion in this.

AN: I fucking hated it when people started to canonize boring, macho rock music around about 2002. That’s why I chose this, basically.

JG: Are we seriously including AC/DC in this?

TM: This is ‘Rock’ as a religiose millstone around the neck. Don’t experiment or think for yourself, just believe in the myth and the riff. 1955 wasn’t the beginning and jazz is better anyway. Incessant.

156. Bob Geldof - 'The Great Song of Indifference'
(1990, #15, TM)




DL: If Live Aid was fuelled by a true sense of altruism, then it must be a coincidence that it prolonged the careers of narcissistic bores such as this. Emanates the intimate charm of steaming excrement.

AN: I’ve never listened to this and I don’t want to.

JG: His contemporaries A House did this sort of thing much more effectively (and acerbically) on their sneering, self-loathing 'I Don’t Care'. But they were speaking from a position of obscurity and didn’t have time for Geldof’s tiresome nonsense.

TM: Trifling pomposity from Saint Bob. Of course, writing a Dylan piss-take complete with Irish knees-up buffoonery is just bound to shake people out of their apathy. GIVE ME YOUR FUCKING EAR PLUGS!

155. U2 - 'Angel of Harlem'
(1988, #9, RC)






DL: For me, U2 were at their prime during their halcyon days of icy desolation, and this slice of plastic soul marks their initial shift from what made their sound so unique and into patronising cliché.

AN: U-fucking-2. This is ethically dubious millionaire minstrelsy. And it sounds like shit.

JG: U2 themselves freely admit that this was their most difficult period, and this tentative rock-soul tribute to Billie Holliday hangs uneasily between the two. Still, at least they were having a go.

TM: Earnest bellowing from the messianic one. This is from their tediously ‘authentic’ Real Rock phase, pilfering U.S. signifiers for ballast and lucre. The film is laughable, the saxophones sickening.

154. Avril Lavigne - 'SK8r Boi'
(2002, #8, DL)





DL: Banal faux-rebellion with punk-pop by numbers production. What irks me is the way these Kerrang! emo/metal acts seem to think that they are in any way less manufactured than your average boy-band.

AN: I quite like the key change in this. Marketed confectionary but surely we could’ve picked ‘Girlfriend’ instead?

JG: They called her Average Lavigne, but this is far more criminal than that. She’s just a female Bryan Adams, isn’t she? Harsh, but fair.

TM: I will give any record a chance, but this is irrefutably irritating in its simplistic rhymes and sham ‘rebellion’. By the 2000s, subcultures were effortlessly co-opted by the corporate mainstream.

153. Bus Stop (Feat. Carl Douglas) - 'Kung Fu Fighting'
(1998, #8, JG)





DL: My giddy arse, this is tacky. Like drawing cock-and-balls on the Mona Lisa. There's nothing quite like ad-libbed additional refrains and raps to annihilate your thoughts of smile-inducing originals.

AN: Another pointless novelty record. Ruins a decent original.

JG: The worst of all the great many cynical dustings-off of 70s disco fluff that shone so darkly in 1998. The spiritual heir of this sort of thing is nothing other than the ‘Holiday Rap’. At least that’s funny.

TM: “A kung-fu fighter in the disco!” A very late-90s cheapening of disco, missing the original’s oddity. It enters the sphere of the senseless with the MC’s gormless vocals and moronic chant-leading.

152. Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes - 'Up Where We Belong'
(1983, #7, DL)





DL: Contrary to the belief of the average Digital Spy user, I think the panel agree that both the mainstream and leftfield have faults though it's this kind of drippiness that vindicates the darker side.

AN: Ah, the eighties. They were shit, weren’t they?

JG: A relatively early example of the professional duet in which you can’t ever imagine actual people even thinking the alien, sucrose lyrics; let alone saying them to one another.

TM: Harbinger of many a syrupy film tie-in ballad to come. I have no problem with ostentatious emotion, provided the display avoids the sort of calculation and bombast on pitiful display here.

151. Paul Weller - 'The Changingman'
(1995, #7, DL)





DL: We asked 100 people to name something that sprang to mind when faced with the terms 'tedium' and 'inertia' and they all said 'Noelrock'. Astoundingly, the Mod-father was only 37 at the time, not 129.

AN: By this point Paul Weller’s voice had deteriorated into a geriatric growl. And I’ve always found him to be an especially dislikeable man. Terrible tune.

JG: I’ve always thought Weller needed Buckler and Foxton more than he’ll ever know. This is plodding semi-MOR from a man whose decline into mediocrity closely tracked that of his forebear Steve Winwood. He’s somewhat redeemed himself more recently.

TM: The ‘Mod-father’ lifts the riff from ELO’s superior ‘10538 Overture’ for the purposes of plodding, dad rock. This stodgy blues posturing belies his previous experimentation. “Jaded”? Yes, Paul.

150. Eminem - 'Not Afraid'
(2010, #5, DL)





DL: I listened to The Marshall Mathers LP the other night. It was shocking, sinister and hilariously gripping. How he re-emerged with this whiny, self-pitying, painful shite is beyond me. Retire again!

AN: Slim not operating on all cylinders at this stage. Still, could be worse.

JG: Eminem really has run out of things to say, hasn’t he? 

TM: Entirely lacking the complexity and depth his earlier work possessed. One of the few to diss Dubya in 2004; in 2010, this was just a myopic irrelevance besides The-dream, Kanye, Big Boi and Janelle.

149. Lenny Kravitz - 'Are You Gonna Go My Way?'
(1993, #4, RC)





DL: Hendrix-lite, but evidently I don't like to rock as much I must have previously imagined. One of those songs I feel like defending because of the glory days of Now! albums. Perhaps my last dissent.

AN: See my comments on #157 but substitute “2002” for “1993”.

JG: Like so many artists on this list, I can’t even work out what Lenny Kravitz was trying to achieve here, or why he thought it a good idea. 

TM: The first, and surely not the last, appearance for a justly maligned poltroon. Daft Hendrix facsimile riff; strutting, cocksure lyrics: “I am the chosen, I'm the one / I have come to save the day.”

148. Cliff Richard - 'Power to All Our Friends'
(1973, #4, TM)





DL: I'd put Cliff in the same bracket as Noel Edmonds and Cilla: Santa-like figures in childhood that would turn out to be a right set of arse-knobs upon adult inspection. It's no ‘Wired For Sound’.

AN: Wowzaroo. Words fail me.

JG: Power to the bees? Power to the vine? Power to the Sun (as though it hasn’t got any)???!!! What on Earth is going on here???!!!

TM: Another saviour whose day in this list has come. This Eurovision entry foists happy-clappy Christianity on us; as appealing as his Festival of Light compatriot and mad old busybody Mary Whitehouse.

147. Jamiroquai - 'Virtual Insanity'
(1996, #3, RC)





DL: I remember when it was all about saving the planet rather than arsing around in Ferraris and alighting nightclubs with a cocaine nosebleed. Bono-esque levels of integrity. Somewhat prophetic though.

AN: I have a soft spot for this, but I can see what was awful about it. Cartoon black culture for Trustafarian tossers.

JG: Revisiting this reminds me why I hold Jay Kay is such contempt, with its hackneyed, nonsense lyrics that read like a five year old musing about Aldous Huxley.

TM: This mad hatter’s no Simon Munnery, but rather a ‘quirky’ clown, setting the cause of urban music back several millennia. What whimpering ‘profundity’ at the end; actual inanity, more like.

146. Will Smith (Feat. Dru Hill) - 'Wild Wild West'
(1999, #2, JG)





DL: Smith's early Fresh Prince work is great. It embodies something of an old-school, playful, pre-gangsta sense of innocence that his unimaginative, sample-heavy hits largely selling crap films don’t.

AN: ‘Men in Black’ (tune), was actually pretty good. Not so this.

JG: Suitably “mutton-into-lamb” piece to accompany the overwhelmingly slight, CGI-drenched Barry Sonnenfeld film.

TM: While far from the rich Western vistas of Leone and Morricone, it is relatively inoffensive, disposable product. Mere merchandise, yes, but ‘tis flanked in this list by rather more heinous specimens.

145. Nick Berry - 'Heartbeat'
(1992, #2, RC)





DL: 'Heartbeat' was a magical series in its heyday, with wondrous North Yorks scenery at play plus admirable determination to never reach 1970. Nothing wrong with this. If I rated it badly I'm ashamed.

AN: Actually, maybe things have improved in some ways since 1992.

JG: Suitably dribbling soundtrack to the ITV re-imagining of the early 1960s as a kind of Middle of the Summer Wine rural idyll. Shit, frankly.

TM: Sham nostalgia in place of vivid life. The stridently bland video features the smooth Berry, an anonymous lady and the North Yorkshire Moors in what is little more than an advertisement for combs.

144. King - 'Love and Pride'
(1985, #2, TM)





DL: Other than for nostalgic purposes, there is no reason why anyone should opt to listen to this in 2012; now go back to voicing adverts for box-sets you won't find in shops, as they're fucking rubbish.

AN: Cringe-worthy as this is, I enjoyed it. I mean his voice is dire, but I can’t help but think that any band actually playing funk as competent as this deserves some kudos.

JG: League Two New Pop, not much different in principle from Thurman or Milburn. Utterly inessential in every way imaginable.

TM: Included forsooth for the gangling garishness of the self-styled ‘King’, who fronted a notably monotonous VH1 show in the mid-90s. While the music is okay this upstart was never going to best Prince.

143. The Strawbs - 'Part of the Union'
(1973, #2, TM)





DL: Until the other week, I thought that this was an empowering anthem. I do now realise that in reality it's a total exhibit of snide and condescending shit, and for that reason, I am most certainly out!

AN: What’s the consensus of the irony or otherwise of the lyrics to this? I feel like a response depends on which way you take ’em.

JG: Imagine how much more agreeable life could be today if Thatcher had gone after The Strawbs instead of the National Union of Mineworkers.

TM: This became a favourite at union conferences and picket lines; more fool them, as this is an ironical ‘celebration’. Hudson and Ford sung this with Michael Ancram at the 2001 Tory Party Conference.

142. Peter Andre - 'Flava'
(1996, #1, DL)





DL: If you thought the OK! magazine mainstay had been irksome enough since his time in the jungle, then go back to '96 to experience the worst appropriation of street culture ever. But he loves his kids!

AN: A beautiful piece of music.

JG: Inexplicably popular New Jack Swing-themed number about five years too late. Also remarkably flat-sounding, considering that this is meant to be about living the high life.

TM: Musically, this is far from inept, but it is vocally and choreographically listless. It is a drained, inert culture that treats the likes of Andre with significance rather than sheer indifference.

141. Usher (Feat. Will.I.Am) - 'OMG'
(2010, #1, DL)





DL: Why does pop music become even more shallow and inane during times of economic strain for most normal people? Is this escapism or the gritty reality of having your face rubbed in it? Entirely up 2U.

AN: A clear sign of how commercial R’n’B has (in most cases) declined since the early noughties.

JG: F this S, lol.

TM: The synth is superficially pleasant, but the song is sketchy at best. Usher’s vocals are abjectly foolish. “Never ever has a lady hit me on the first sight”: I don’t wish violence on anyone, but...

The Worst 200 Songs, Part I: #200-181

And so we commence... the rules being: we each write a maximum of 200 characters (including spaces) per entry - as we have 200 entries and to save time and our respective sanities...


200. Queen - 'Don't Stop Me Now'

(released in 1979, reached #9 in the UK Singles Chart, nominated by DL)

David Lichfield: Student disco staple that always marked the depressing realisation you were off home alone to vomit and weep. Queen had many agreeable hits away from the pomp and decadence, this isn't one. 

Alex Niven: A good song at heart but travestied forever by its involvement in a thousand noughties nightclub Cheesefests.

John Gibson: In which Freddie Mercury confuses his supersonic with his superluminal and Brian May sounds bored, like he’s already thinking more about badgers than Queen.

Tom May: While I would’ve chosen a later Queen song, it is tediously over-exposed, with witless metaphors (‘I am a satellite, I’m out of control’) and embodies a hedonism that is oppressive, not welcoming. 

199. Billy Joel - 'We Didn't Start the Fire'
(1989, #7, TM)






 
DL: Not hated enough by me to transcend the lower reaches. Seen as something of a bombastic, novelty track by some, with a meaningless list of cultural milestones intoned over horrific 1980's production.

AN: Don't know it.

JG: Derisory, plodding rip off of REM’s ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’ a year after that fact, as if no one was going to notice.

TM: Fukuyama pop, which devalues History with its smugly random gazetteer of post-war names and events. The nature of the ‘fire’ and America’s supposed fire-fighting are typically, tellingly indistinct. 

198. Peter Gabriel - 'Sledgehammer'
(1986, #4, RC)





DL: With some crass, alarmingly un-erotic innuendo which had largely gone unnoticed by me before ('You can have a steam train, if you'd just lay down the tracks'), this flat behemoth slips in seamlessly.

AN: The sound of everything beginning to go badly wrong.

JG: More famous for its video than the song and rightly so, considering that this is effectively a Bud Light version of the Thornbridge Jaipur calibre Art of Noise.

TM: The clomping, steamrollering cadence of consumerism. Witness the promo’s frenetic inanity; adventures are shrivelled, sold. All the more dispiriting as he had been such a weird English talisman. 

197. Paul McCartney & The Frog Chorus - 'We All Stand Together'
(1984, #3, DL)




DL: A perplexing snapshot of the decline demonstrated by Macca post-Beatles, 'The Frog Chorus' is the worst possible way to be introduced to this one-time icon, and is a legacy-tarnishing exhibit.

AN: Macca, what were you thinking? Although you did sneak some interesting touches into the arrangement...

JG: When we kids at school, we used the central refrain of song two years later to the effect of “bomb, bomb, bomb Libya”. This probably says something, although I have no idea quite what.

TM: Affable fare, if certainly many leagues from the genial absurdity and invention of Ram or McCartney II. It evokes the genteel socialism of E. Nesbit, rather than Ken Loach. There are worse things.

196. Peter Sarstedt - 'Where do you go to My Lovely?'
(1969, #1, DL)



DL: Nothing wrong with a lovelorn pop song, but this pseudo-Gallic portion of never-ending bile could make the most bright-eyed romantic commit acts deemed heinous in all cultures. Discount Jacques Brel.

AN: I like this quite a lot actually.

JG: I think your lovely goes away from your horrible warbling voice, Peter.

TM: A pale appropriation of the then-fashionable French chanson for dubious purposes. Sarstedt is self-satisfied in his cultural citations and presumptuous about she who he interminably objectifies.

195. Dr Hook - 'When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman' 
(1979, #1, DL)





DL: You don't see 1990s chart-toppers sounding as far removed from the present as music like this did even just 11 years or so after release. Lyrically and musically off-putting, with more bad innuendo.

AN: This too.

JG: Middling, inoffensive, tepid, banal – how many words for “meh” do you want?

TM: A slither of boring, self-glorifying paranoia, which yields just as little pleasure as it did back in 1996 when it was inexplicably played by an elderly Maths teacher in class.

194. Bryan Adams - 'Everything I Do'
(1991, #1, TM)

No embedding allowed, as Adams is clearly watching out for projects like this!

DL: At the helm of the chart for a tortoise's lifetime, another tender ballad with all the convincing sincerity of a car park. The sound of Valentine's Night Jeremy Clarkson; even the radio edit drags.

AN: And this is one of my all time faves.

JG: In 1995 Bryan Adams sang a song about permanent debauchery called '18 Til I Die'. Two years later he bought the pub next door and promptly shut it so he could get to bed by 9.30. Tosspot.

TM: Not his nadir, but a deadening weight at the top of charts for four months. The emotive chords are hackneyed; this is stadium friendly, fists in the air fodder, with Claptonite guitar solo to boot.

193. David Bowie & Mick Jagger - 'Dancing in the Street'
(1985, #1, TM)





DL: Not even an unwittingly hilarious video can save this musical form of vandalism. A strong argument for compulsory retirement from the hit parade once one's creative seed has began to run dry.

AN: If you were to try to imagine an antithesis to Martha and the Vandellas in 1965, this would be it.

JG: The video for 'Dancing in the Street' marks the point at which Mick Jagger began his inexorable transformation into a clay animation of himself. Uninspired.

TM: “Okay! TOKYO!!! SARF AMERRRIIICAAAAA!!!!!” They bawl with all the subtlety of artillery and dance with the grace of the Chuckle Brothers. A garish, misbegotten 80s travesty of the Motown original.

192. Atomic Kitten - 'The Tide is High (Get the Feeling)'
(2002, #1, TM)



DL: A cover of a cover, this tacky reworking came complete with an inexcusable, banal new bridge, adonyne pop production and none of the magic exhibited by even the Blondie version. Awful, hen night pop.

AN: Like it.

JG: Tuneless, cynical reworking of Blondie’s middle-of-the-road, cod-reggae nonsense. Perhaps they should have chosen 'Rip Her to Shreds'.

TM: This has an infuriating sheen of utter blankness and blandness. Little to say other than that this reduces one of Blondie’s weaker hits to musical wallpaper, fit to soundtrack ITV holiday programmes.

191. Nizlopi - 'The JCB Song'
(2005, #1, TM)




DL: Cursed to headline tenth tents of free festivals forever, Nizlopi's one chart hit was the somewhat trite acoustic testimony of a bullying victim, from the truant context of his father's vehicle.

AN: The yelping revolution starts here. Middle-class inconsequentialism masquerading as pathos.

JG: Perhaps what’s most offensive about this is that it doesn’t even sound like a novelty/comedy record. No, it sounds like bloody Chet Atkins. Horrible.

TM: Have hated this since the first time I heard its weedy, calculated ‘folksiness’ while browsing in HMV. His voice has all the galling ‘profundity’ of a latter-day Nick Clegg. A ‘top laugh’ ‘boss’? Nah.

190. Ferry Aid - 'Let it Be'
(1987, #1, TM)




DL: If you can separate the good causes from the shite records usually released on the back of them, then it's easy to proudly announce the presence of Sun-backed abominations like this on the rundown.

AN: No clarification needed.

JG: A harsh choice, maybe, but this plodding version of one of The Beatles’ weakest moments does little for the ears. Still, you shouldn’t joke around about the wider circumstances.

TM: An inappropriately stoical response to an avoidable tragedy – sponsored by The Sun, who had given away cheap tickets for the MS Herald of Free Enterprise. Infinitely inane vocal gymnastics and guitar solos.

189. Duran Duran - 'Is There Something I Should Know'
(1983, #1, TM)

DL: Epitomising as they do all that was shallow and soulless about the 1980's, it's no surprise to see the many-Taylored quintet on the chart. One presumes that it's the unfortunate lyric that swung it.

AN: Sometimes, it matters that the people who wrote a song were complete and utter cunts.

JG: Simon le Bon – the most ironically named man in pop. This is terrible, but remarkably isn’t quite as bad as 'The Reflex'.

TM: “You’re about as easy as a NUCLEAR WAR!” We had Edwyn and Clare; Haircut 100 and ABC. Yet we opted for this brash, Thatcherite assault; assertive, finger-pointing bravado and an enduringly bad lyric.

188. Renee and Renato - 'Save Your Love'
(1982, #1, TM)




DL: Oh, get a room. Interestingly the last UK Number One single that completely pre-dates me, and I'm not entirely sure we've seen such a Cornetto advert of a song at the lunacy of the top spot since.

AN: Don't know it.

JG: Perhaps this is how Daily Mail readers imagine European integration at its best – a fat, sweating Italian murdering the art of opera to suck up to a blond from Howard’s fucking Way. 

TM: The success of this typifies how many British people have seen Europe as consisting of little more than sun, sand and ‘funny foreigners’. Renee and Renato make Demis Roussos sound like John Lydon.

187. England World Cup Squad - 'Whole World at Our Feet'
(1986, #66, TM)




DL: Long-forgotten and intolerable 1986 World Cup single and reason in itself for getting New Order in four years later. And a Top 70 smash. Seemingly made up on the spot to an improvised Casio backing.

AN: Thankfully, this sort of thing doesn't happen any more.

JG: Football songs hit a nadir in the mid-80s, right up until the time John Barnes started rapping. There’s no rapping on this one.

TM: A “battle cry” rendered on the cheapest synth imaginable; a “lion’s roar” akin to a cartoon mouse. Kids’ party musical ‘flourishes’. A chorus of footballers. A world away from the ‘Motion’ of 1990.

186. Limahl - 'Too Much Trouble'
(1984, #64, TM)




DL: Another 1980s flop, this time from the man who outgrew Kajagoogoo. I'm hoping for a high placing for his former band's major crime, but this is certainly one for the 'how can anyone enjoy this' pile?

AN: Don't know it.

JG: Limahl’s haircut was once described in the NME as looking like a mullet but the wrong way round. And that’s about as much as can be said for this forgettable, piddling non-song.

TM: Achieving a staggering two places higher than its predecessor in this list, this is a tedious, flatulent eighties effort that I find hard to sit through, inexplicable cricket motif in the video and all.

185. Michael Jackson - 'Cry'
(2001, #25, TM)




DL: Exactly the poor man's 'Earth Song' you'd have expected from all subsequent albums; it's unfathomable that an artist can fall this far from grace creatively regardless of anything other decline.

AN: By this point of MJ's life/career, crying must have felt like something humans used to do.

JG: Jacko in the midst of his ongoing quest to become as irrelevant as humanly possible. A waste of a mountainous talent.

TM: Sickening, maudlin, R. Kelly-assisted shite. I have little to add to what I said here about this self-help peddling dirge. One of the very lowest ebbs of a strange career, epitomising his sad descent. 

 184. Glenn Hoddle & Chris Waddle - 'Diamond Lights'
(1987, #12, TM)




DL: A pretty rubbish record that can surely be enjoyed ironically. Embarrasing and cringe-worthy certainly, but I'd say, all-in-all, the world would be a worse place if we didn't have this to chortle at.

AN: Chris Waddle you mulletted wanker. This is what happens when you betray the Toon.

JG: Written by the genius behind Russ Abbot’s hits from the same period. Sounds more “adult contemporary” than Abbot's 'Atmosphere'. Terrible.

TM: A famous folly, with Hoddle ardent for some desperate glory and Waddle hanging onto that microphone stand like a life-raft. Not on the same detestable level as much of this run-down but worth a place.

 183. Blur - 'Parklife'
(1994, #10, AN)




DL: Forever conjoined to class tourism, political cultural hijacking, inanity and generic compilation albums, 'Parklife' is certainly on my 'don't want to hear ever again' list, but the band are not.

AN: An offensively patronising, pseudo-working-class recitative slapped on top of two-chord oompah-oompah shite.

JG: It sounds cheesy and oh-so-Britpop now, but we have to remember that Parklife is actually an acerbic, angry record, and its 'retro' sound conveys a sense of little changing since the 70s. I like it.

TM: There is a parallel history of Britpop where Blur were as consistently on the mark as Pulp, Disco Inferno and Saint Etienne. They had great material on most albums but also belittling hits like this.

182. Pendulum - 'Propane Nightmares'
(2008, #8, DL)



DL: Why do metal fans like Pendulum so much and almost no other electronic music? Why no drum and bass fans like Pendulum? See also: Skrillex in similar pattern. I can only put it down to that emo vocal.

AN: A nightmare vision of contemporary youth culture.

JG: Metal-drum 'n' bass crossover wank. To be avoided at all costs.

TM: This possesses all the intricacy and nuance of Colin Baker’s cliff-hanger mugging in The Trial of a Time Lord. Rarely has the vocoder sounded as crass or synthesizers as artless. Utter claptrap.

181. Simple Minds - 'Don't You (Forget About Me)'
(1985, #7, RC)



DL: I can certainly see why these 1980s world-straddlers deserve a place in such a countdown, but I would have opted for 'Belfast Child'. Personally, I find this a swooping (bombastic), affable rock epic.

AN: There is absolutely nothing good about this.

JG: Q. What did Jim Kerr say when fending off a bread-wielding Frenchman? A. “Don’t you – baguette about me!”

TM: I agree with Robin’s nomination: shows a similar compromise to #198. Simple Minds were great up to and including New Gold Dream: experimental and melodious. Then came the Hollywood soundtrack swagger.