The Worst 200 Songs, Part VII: #80-61

I must be cruel only to be kind.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, c.1599-1602, III.IV, 178



Oh, love is found in the east and west
But when love is at home, it's the best
Love is the cure for every evil
Love is the air that supports the eagle
It's called love
And it's so un-cool
It's called love
And somehow it's become unmentionable
It's called love
And it belongs to every one of us
It's called love
And it cuts your life like a broken knife 

New Order, 'Thieves Like Us', April 1984 (FAC103)


80. Reef - 'Place Your Hands'
(1996, #6, TM)





DL: Post-Euro '96 Britrock known in its superior form as 'It's Your Letters', sung from the point of view of a man who hadn't passed a solid in a fortnight. Of course, many will clearly dissent.

AN: Quite like this I’m afraid. I find it difficult to be snarky about such unabashed optimism.

JG: I’m sure Gary Stringer thinks he’s being all emotive like Bob Mould by singing like that. But in truth it sounds like a labrador having its testicles sandpapered.

TM: Dull riff, though the vocal irks most: “Oh righ-ah-ht!” This is debased ‘blues’ bellowed with the humility of a Premier League player’s wage packet. Rawk & Roll at fun-point: I conscientiously object!

79. The Fratellis - 'Chelsea Dagger'
(2007, #5, DL)





DL: Worthless, infantile and moronic landfill 'indie' yob-rock that hasn't aged well at all. Conventional old rot that I truly expected to bag a Top 20 placing. Ear-gratingly compressed production too.

AN: I went to New York in 2007 and saw a giant poster of this utterly forgettable band in Times Square. The noughties: what the Jesus Christ happened there?

JG: All The Fratellis ever really had was the football terrace chant from this, and that became tiresome quickly enough. Otherwise, this is just gentrified meat and potatoes pub rock.

TM: Horribly unpretentious bass-line. Lairy chanting. Bullshit about a “blagger!” A desultory evocation of the emptiness of being on the hedonic treadmill; fuck the morals, it’s Made in Chelsea!

78. Foo Fighters - 'All My Life'
(2002, #5, DL)





DL: I really can't bear the overblown bluster of the Foos at the best of times, taking the crunchy power of Grohl's former band and discarding all the angst and integrity from it, and this typifies why.

AN: This is an especially poor effort from a conspicuously terrible band whose popularity has always baffled me. A lame attempt to borrow Queens of the Stone Age’s leftfield kudos.

JG: This is the epitome of former young Turks slipping into an irrelevant, comfortable and slack middle age, but who think they’re still The Shit. Rather than just shit.

TM: Generic rock vocals. While there is more offensive stuff in our list than this, it does exemplify an aesthetic mediocrity. Metal-lite exerts a mystifyingly persistent hold over so many; why?

77. The Mavericks - 'Dance the Night Away'
(1998, #4, DL)

DL: The late '90s swells with records that make me feel nauseous for personal reasons, and the arse-end of high school was a low I'd never wish to return to. This drags me right back. See also Vengaboys.

AN: Novelty shite.

JG: Ubiquitous though it is at weddings and the like, I don’t hate this. It’s not forced. It’s not really all that slick or commercial. That’s not to say I like it much either, mind.

TM: Dire strumathon; a mariachi panto in the aisles of WalMart. The vocalist vacantly, consciously echoes Roy Orbison. This sort of hollow jollity depresses me more than the old Mozzer.

76. Right Said Fred & Friends - 'Stick It Out'
(1993, #4, RC)





DL: 'Deeply Dippy', 'I'm Too Sexy', 'Don't Talk Just Kiss' - all pop genius. This long-forgotten Comic Relief single is the epitome of awfulness however. They would never trouble the Top Ten again.

AN: I’m grateful to Robin for pointing out with his choices just how awful the early nineties could be. I’d forgotten.

JG: Is there a rule somewhere that says all Comic Relief songs must be embarrassingly unfunny, with cringeworthy cameos from BBC stars of the day to boot? This is even worse than Michael Buerk headbanging to 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.

TM: Inexplicable tosh, with Caine impressions and sub-Carry On innuendo. Puerile use of varied talents: Cook, Laurie, Fluff. I like ‘Deeply Dippy’ but this is shite, like this now grimly ironic Newsnight ditty. 

75. Zucchero & Paul Young - 'Senza Una Donna (Without a Woman)'
(1991, #4, RC)





DL: Unwittingly funny drone not miles away from Jimmy Nail's infinitely superior 'Ain't No Doubt'. Self-pitying, sexist snooze-fest that doesn't even make sense in duet form: unless they both had a go.

AN: Some ‘80s kitsch is beyond even the revivalist fetishism of the hipsters. You can’t redeem this.

JG: Dreary. Next.

TM: ‘I changed the world’ with a Knopfler-esque guitar solo! Airy, ’80s sophisto-schmooze. I find it hard to hate the sound of this, but Yello or Art of Noise it is most certainly not. Clunky if not quite as bad as this. 

74. Gym Class Heroes, Ft. Adam Levine - 'Stereo Hearts'
(2011, #3, BB)





DL: God damn you for resurrecting the UK profile of Maroon 5. Gym Class Heroes really do embody the worst excesses of novelty US hip-pop, with a typically imbecilic chorus from Adam Levine. Dreadful.

AN: I mean obviously it’s the Adam Levine parts that make this unlistenable. There are some dreadful voices in the world.

JG: I do welcome the use of turntable crackle on this. It’s years since a big charting hip-hop song had that. But otherwise this is pointless.

TM: Flimsy confection that makes #75 seem a work of unalloyed poignant humanity. “Make me your radio!” Simple-minded, half-hearted and witless: devoid of crucial things like desire and humour.

73. 4-4-2 (Talk Sport) - 'Come on England'
(2004, #2, RC)





DL: Everytime I hear an unofficial football song, the more my soul is charred. Glamour models, TalkSport and a blasphemous cheapening of a Dexy's classic. It's a good job football already has a bad name.

AN: Can’t think of anything more to say about these shit football novelty songs. They’re just shit football novelty songs aren’t they?

JG: One of the great many reasons I’m glad I was living in Canada for the whole of Euro 2004, and wish I could live there during every major international football tournament.

TM: “Like ’66”? Nah. TalkSport demolish a great, overplayed song. Such beery misappropriation makes one mourn the loss of the intense working-class spirit of bands like Dexys. This country’s dream debased.

Because giving 'your all' for 'Engerlund' is what will win us a trophy!

72. Elvis Vs. JXL - 'A Little Less Conversation'
(2002, #1, AN)





DL: Another football-related offering. Overplayed relentlessly to the point of collosal irritation, and sounded like a cheap Fatboy Slim knock off. Adopted by Dubya in 2004 as Republican propaganda too.

AN: Hmm. I can’t actually remember why I chose this. It’s the final nail in the coffin of nineties dance music, I suppose. Big Beat committing suicide.

JG: Fatboy Slim was shite. Absolute shite. So having a second-rate Fatboy Slim facsimile ripping into the fabric of one of Presley’s more interesting songs really corrodes the heart.

TM: Included on an 'Engurlund' footer tie-in compilation. The title becomes an all too literal credo for nihilist nullity. Dreary, B&Q-friendly ‘funk’. Just how dismal is bad dance music?

A little more conversation would generally be preferable, like!

71. USA For Africa - 'We Are The World'
(1985, #1, DL)





DL: Good to have this in lieu of Band Aid. Trite, plodding, embarrassing. Seems even more patronising now the formula's been employed ad nauseum by Cowell and his revolving door of jumped-up semi-finalists.

AN: Profoundly ethically dubious and disastrous in its effects on a global scale. The rich beginning to justify the murderousness and inequality of their neoliberal project by revivifiying nineteenth century philanthropic propaganda.

JG: Controversial choice? To my mind 'We Are the World' (like its Band Aid counterpart) contributed to the misunderstanding of African famine as an act of God, rather than the consequence of poltical decisions made with the West’s backing. Thus, shite song and shite cause.

TM: “We’re saving our own lives!” These histrionics are paradigmatic of how charity has acted as self-help and a boost to sundry musicians' careers. 7 minutes of sanctimony and hand-clapping delusion from the emoting roll-call.

70. LMFAO - 'Party Rock Anthem'
(2011, #1, DL)





DL: This 2011 chart-topper features GoonRock, and I couldn't put it better myself. For every Lana/Gotye there's at least 20 of these in the Top 40 at any time. You can't demand someone to have a good time.

AN: Don’t mind it.

JG: Half Scooter, half Flat Eric: all toss.

TM: Out of the CPR-flecked, windy haze: the utterance “Homeboy!” Tedious, easy chords attend priceless insights like: “We going to make you lose your mind” – why can't a mainstream dance hit be an ode to mindfulness for a change? “Everyday I’m shuffling” – what?

69. Enrique Iglesias - 'Hero'
(2002, #1, TM)





DL: How can so many people have such strange ideas over what constitutes a sincere and heartfelt song? Even by 2002, this had been done to death. Still demands a scrap more respect than Westlife though.

AN: We used to have this album on loop at the Italian restaurant in Hexham where I worked after me A levels. Needless to say I don’t have a lot of time for it.

JG: Shit.

TM: Melodramatic, emotional popular song needs richer embellishments – like Haircut 100’s heart-bursting marimba here. This is entirely redolent of the 9/11 moment – profuse humanity hardening into reaction. 

68. Paul Nicholas - 'Grandma's Party'
(1976, #9, TM)





DL: Oh, go back to much-loved sitcom Just Good Friends, penned by the late John Sullivan. There's no doubt these stupefyingly banal '70s hits deserve their place but I'll not miss having to endure them.

AN: The time signature/phrasing in this is actually quite remarkable. A fascinating piece of music.

JG: Can you imagine attending a party featuring Paul Nicholas and his grandma? I’d be off down the railway line after that.

TM: Capering clowning follows the overdone solemnity of #69. Tragedy followed by farce and all that. This is an equally dismal party prospect as #70 with Nicholas a far too eager to please host.

67. Tenacious D - 'Fuck Her Gently'
(2001, #38 - album, DL)





DL: I once remarked that I didn't think I could ever friends with anyone who liked Tenacious D. I have been proved wrong, but this is neither clever nor funny. Just crass and as hideous as its authors.

AN: Novelty shite. Henceforth I’ll just say NS, I think.

JG: Has there ever been a less funny comedy rock outfit than Tenacious D? This is humour for FHM readers, i.e. cunts.

TM: “Sum lur-u-urve”: this evokes a greasy, beardy, lank-haired hell; human relations reduced to the cash nexus. “That’s fucking teamwork” – this is team-less individualism all the way. Profoundly unlovely.

66. Brian Harvey & The Refugee Crew - 'Lovin''
(2001, #20, TM)





DL: Wyclef barely revisited the UK charts again after teaming up with MDMA hoover Harvey - 'Hips Don't Lie' aside - but re-emerged later as Will.I.Am. The musical equivalent of running yourself over.

AN: This is great.

JG: The musical equivalent of the Quintinshill rail disaster, with Wyclef Jean and Brian Harvey pissing around in the signal box whilst the 6.00am troop special ploughs into the night train from Euston.

TM: After the cringingly unfunny ‘humour’, comes an enjoyably laughable folly. The dispiriting words: “IT’S BRIAN HARVEY!” are followed by an epically tame rendition of the oldest football chant going.

65. Matchbox - 'Midnite Dynamos'
(1980, #14, RC)





DL: You could probably be forgiven for thinking this is Shakin' Stevens. What the fuck was this doing in the charts in 1980? No wonder people sought solace in John Peel and Closer as perfect antidotes.

AN: Sounds like a Dennis Waterman theme tune.

JG: You “only come alive when the old moon shows”? What, you’re werewolves? Well you bloody look like them! Good and night.

TM: Pitiful, limited Americophilia. Its baseness is exacerbated by their performance of it against the backdrop of the Confederate flag. Clapped-out revivalism plus pre-Civil Rights nostalgia: a fucking awful brew.

As far as backdrops go it's...

64. M People - 'Search for the Hero'
(1995, #9, TM)





DL: Wasn't Mike Pickering a key player at Factory Records? You can see how M People were seen initially as a classy, soulful combo yet by 1994 must have been writing specifically for Anodyne Shite FM.

AN: Don’t mind it.

JG: More self-help nonsense that reeks of the post-1979 enforced individualisation of society. This could function perfectly well as something A4e play to the unemployed during 'Employment Skills' training whilst quietly stealing taxpayers’ money.

TM: Actually a relief in context, at least during its PSB-lite intro of warm synths. BUT, a none-more-Blairite exhibit of crassly ‘feel-good’, fluffy materialism. Mere self-help makes islands of us. 

How many consumer products has this song flogged?

63. Simply Red - 'You Make Me Feel Brand New'
(2003, #7, DL)





DL: *Not the most obvious SR single, but by 2003 Hucknall was bludgeoning perfectly acceptable soul standards to death in arrangements that must have pissed off dogs everywhere. A bit like driving too fast over a series of aural speed-bumps. Ooft! Ouch! Fuck! Bastard! Shall I press charges?

AN: Simply Red once walked into the Wellington Pub in Riding Mill causing much consternation amongst the waiting staff who worked there, including my friends Grant Edgeworth and Richard Lognonne, who relayed the information to a rapt audience the next morning at school. “He was wearing fucking leather trousers”, said Lognonne.

JG: Human beings who are “brand new” tend not to have the linguistic capability to sing. How I wish that were the case here.

TM: Pointless mauling of a rather lovely Stylistics song about the redemptive nature of human communion. Needless to say, he’s an affable enough luvvy-socialist. This is just needless. Lasting 305 seconds.

* = I'M BREAKING THE CHARACTER LIMIT JUST FOR SIMPLY RED

62. Paul Anka - 'Having My Baby'
(1974, #6, DL)





DL: This is unsettling, gruesome and worrying enough even when you don't imagine Josef Fritzl singing it, as I am now. As Willy Wonka once offered: "Shush. For some moments in life, there are no words".

AN: Nice keyboard sounds in this. But it’s crap.

JG: Proto-MOR that presages every cynical 'romantic' bastard ever since. Phil Collins must have been taking notes in between bouts of trying to ignore his vocalist dressing up as a fucking tree.

TM: “I love what it’s doing to you”. The “seed”. An automaton-lady appears just to re-iterate Anka’s self-glorifying tripe. It’s odd that this cloying claptrap didn’t cause a drop in Western birth-rates.

61. Brian May - 'Too Much Love Will Kill You'
(1992, #5, RC)





DL: Self-marrying May initially dealt with his post-Mercury grief by re-recording 1988 offcuts and then, in tandem with Roger Taylor, over two decades of attacking the legacy of Queen incessantly in a series of ever-inventive ways. (Could have gone on for much longer)

AN: This statement is factually inaccurate. Love saves you, everyone knows that. An extremely pernicious statement.

JG: I’m sure Freddie Mercury gave his full blessing in his final weeks for his close friend to release this later-period Queen song as a solo single, but the fact is that Brian May just can’t fucking sing.

TM: Would-be profundity from my namesake. Backed by pompous, precious music that we supposedly ought to be in awe of. Pizzicato, inevitably. “You’d sell your soul” – not to Faust but to Lloyd Webber, nemesis of the musical.

The Worst 200 Songs, Part II: #180-161

180. MC Miker G & Deejay Sven - 'Holiday Rap'
(1986, #6, JG)




DL: A further offering of funny foreigners, this time employing that wacky and innocent hip-hop delivery that could not survive the dual-pronged assault of NWA and this exact Madonna-sampling arsegem.

AN: The Dutch haven't produced much of note since De Stijl, have they? Oh, I suppose there was Total Football. That was great. ‘Holiday’ has endless potential for creative re-appropriation, but this makes you regret that it does.

JG: Thick Dutch accents, Cliff-Richard references, misappropriation of hip-hop, “Ring a dang a dong for a holleedai”. What’s not to like?

TM: Sublimely abysmal stuff from Amsterdam rap duo whose “We’re here to stay” was presumptuous. Miker’s beat-box psychosis has only been matched by Rolf Harris; is that the first ‘shit’ uttered on TOTP?

179. Ocean Colour Scene - 'The Day We Caught the Train'
(1996, #4, RC)



DL: In an unprecedented U-turn, I’m maybe disgustingly going to have to admit this is a fine and somewhat timeless Summer tune when disassociated from Chris Evans and opportunistic neo-liberal movements.

AN: Despite my personal affection for this (memories of the first weekend of Euro '96), I can't justify it objectively, politically, ethically, or lyrically.

JG: Despite their many, many critics, Ocean Colour Scene had millions of loyal and faithful fans. Those fans were wrong.

TM: I just can’t board this bleary, laddish locomotive; can’t get with his lairy "ROLL A NUMBER!” bellowing. “I laid my plans in solid rock”: isn’t that the problem? No more rock and roll for you, lad!

178. Adam Faith - 'Lonely Pup (In a Christmas Shop)'
(1960, #4, RC)



DL: Adam Faith's reported last words were ''Channel Five is all shit, isn't it? Christ, the crap they put on there. It's a waste of space''. Surely that's some recompense for this mortifying, twee slop.

AN: Consumerist candy imitating America in the worst possible way. A good looking chap though, Adam Faith.

JG: Whilst fully endorsing the old adage that a dog should not just be for Christmas, that’s not quite how I feel about this record. Roll on 'Little Saint Nick'.

TM: Irksome enunciation of ‘oh so good’. It is a phoned-in recital from future Budgie and malign manager in Stardust. No such life here. Mercifully brief at 104 seconds, which spared it a higher placing.

177. Danny Mirror - 'I Remember Elvis Presley (The King is Dead)'
(1977, #4, TM)



DL: Surely a bizarre, ambulance-chasing sinister parody isn't the most appropriae way to pay tribute to your chosen recently-passed cultural icon? Tacky, cynical and arguably ill-intentioned.

AN: Pop beginning to eat itself. Some might say it recently collapsed on the toilet, covered in excrement, reeking of hamburger.

JG: This is a bit tasteless, no? Imagine if OMD had released a song called 'Bleeding in the Gutter' in February 1981 to the tune of 'Help!'

TM: Mirror was actually the Rotterdam born Eddy Ouwens – responsible for co-writing Teach In’s passable Eurovision winner of 1975, ‘Ding-A-Dong’. This is somewhat less catchy and drearily deferential.

176. Telly Savalas - 'If'
(1975, #1, RC)



DL: Bizarrely, it seemed the world was crying out for a spoken-word Kojak cover version of a Bread track that surpasses infinitely the original's gooiness albeit with more shuddersome threat in 1975.

AN: Consumerist candy imitating America via Greece in the worst possible sense. Telly Savalas somewhat less fetching than Adam Faith.

JG: I actually find this quite admirable, a 50 year old man striking up a Camel Light and huskily cooing his way through this standard. Pisses on Shatner’s 'Mr. Tambourine Man', at any rate.

TM: Wing-collared, follically-challenged actor speaks over sluggish sludge. "And if the world should stop revolving; Y’ know, spinning slowly down to die". Listening to this, I know how the old orb feels.

175. McFly - 'Transylvania'
(2007, #1, TM)



DL: I think that 'Transatlantic' would have been a better moniker given the drawl of messrs Fletcher and Jones. A number one hit whose week in the sun I have no recollection of whatsoever. Passable.

AN: McFly were one of those inexplicably credible shit things about the noughties, like Hollyoaks and Justin Lee Collins.

JG: This starts off promisingly enough, what with its glam rock references, but soon descends into the type of caterwauling shite that only McFly can do.

TM: Infuriating, yelping charade. There are nods to the Beach Boys, Queen and maybe even XTC but it entirely lacks wit or zest. The "sorry if we disagree" bit predicts forthcoming landfill-indie larks.

I HAVE NO TIME FOR WESTERN MEDICINE
I AM CHARLES HAWTREY!

174. Who Cares? - 'Doctor in Distress'
(1985, failed to chart, TM)



DL: Are there any recorded instances of pop videos featuring vocalists cementing their takes whilst not looking like arsecunts? Absolutely horrendous pre-Autotune terror from start to end. Exterminate indeed.

AN: I quite enjoyed this. Car crash kitsch, but interestingly bizarre.

JG: Hard to say how far this over-busy synth-heavy single-issue campaigning helped the cause of Doctor Who during its dark nadir, but I can’t imagine Russell T. Davies was listening.

TM: "Each screaming girl just hoped that a Yeti wouldn't shoot her"! The singer at 1:05 deserves this fate, with a smug Colin Baker. Sub-Hi-NRG farrago, only saved by Ainley and Courtney’s good humour.

"And the Brigadier and the Master! / And a K9 computer...!"

173. Journey - 'Don't Stop Believin''
(1982, #52*, RC)
*Originally and that's what counts 



DL: Perhaps sentimental power ballad that enjoyed a 28-year ascent to the UK Top Ten. Rather than toeing the party line, I'm happy to defend this, though not quite to the hilt. It does plod on a bit.

AN: There are many better power ballads than this. It has what I'd call an "empty hook": mechanistically catchy but devoid of magic.

JG: The US’s own 'Owner of a Lonely Heart'; the sound of prog rock becoming an amazingly worse art-form (MOR). Absolute shite.

TM: Slick, airbrushed and utterly boring ‘anthemic’ rock; wasn’t good enough for 1982’s Top40 – and rightly so. As with your Bon Jovis and your Bryan Adams, a faux-rebellious anthem for complacent youth.

172. Catch - 'Bingo'
(1997, #23, TM)



DL: This senseless appropriation of cheeky, humdrum indie-pop was rudely interrupted during a repeat late-night showing of the ITV Chart Show by some breaking news story or other. It wasn't recommenced.

AN: With retrospect, I'm not sure we as a race ever recovered from this song.

JG: Needlessly complicated arrangement about virginity-loss that tries too hard. I’d rather hear about Rolf Harris’s cherry-popping instead.

TM: DesulTory tosh from the public schools. It presages Scouting for Girls and McFly with its debased 60s harmonies and utterly charmless vocal yearning for "where the films are blue"; posh Askwith alert!

171. Rod Stewart - 'Tom Traubert's Blues (Waltzing Matilda)'

(1992, #6, RC)



DL: "Can I borrow a couple of bucks from you?" No you can't. I can only hope some of those British people packed some Benylin for him to absorb post-this lifeless drag of a Tom Waits rehash.

AN: Never understood Rod Stewart. Or Australians for that matter.

JG: Musically, this isn’t an absolute atrocity by any means. I just don’t know why it exists. What is it for?

TM: Laborious mauling of the Tom Waits song; a bearded Rod milking all of the ersatz emotion he discerns, therefore missing the subtler emotions of the original. The line "no prima donnas" seems ironic.

170. Blue - 'One Love'
(2002, #3, DL)



DL: (I'M LOSING THE WILL TO LIVE HERE!) Cliché-ridden British take on swing-beat totally devoid of soul, emotion, depth and integrity. Not the last time we'll here from the then-ubiquitous combo. A colourless, gaping hole of a song.

AN: I like it.

JG: Tapping into our naive desires for (as Terre Thaemlitz puts it) shared human experience with no reference to social context. Annoyingly, it’s technically proficient enough not to be too hateful.

TM: They walk the city streets like they own them. There are some typically ‘earnest’ boy-band vocal stylings. Not the worst but somehow makes cosmopolitanism seem dull.

169. Tom Jones and Mousse T - 'Sex Bomb'
(2000, #3, DL)



DL: With the seductive power of your average Tory backbencher (Major's cabinet), this grossly unerotic offering of predatory creepiness must have poured thousands into the chastity belt industry.

AN: I tend to look back on the turn of the century as a time when dance culture was still in rude health. This vitiates my argument utterly.

JG: This is just a joke record. Ho ho, let’s get wizened Tom Jones in to sing about sexual desire, hee hee. In a similar vein to mid-1970s Carry On fare.

TM: ‘It’s Not Unusual’ is profound and deathless; this is just disastrous. A sixty year-old’s strained chortling, backed by an approximation of funk that is little more than supermarket raunch.

168. Wheatus - 'Teenage Dirtbag'
(2001, #2, JG)



DL: An inane take on the power-pop of Weezer without the poignancy, charm or eccentricity. 'Teenage Dirtbag' marks one of those rare instances where the underdog doesn't deserve to triumph.

AN: This is an enjoyable pantomime song that stands up well in comparison with, say, The Darkness, who actually made a serious career out of this shit.

JG: For anyone experiencing real Joy Division-esque angst and social isolation as a teenager, this is like Vanilla fucking Ice. Offensive, twee and making light of actual trauma.

TM: I don’t mind this too much, yet gave it a ‘7’ due to the irritating vocal timbre and excessive overplay. "Listen to Iron Maiden, baby, with me": typically retrogressive sentiments from 2001.

167. DJ Jean - 'The Launch'
(1999, #2, JG)



DL: The kind of boring, repetitive and inconsequential Euro-house so typical of a sizeable portion of late nineties/early-noughties commercial dance. If you cut it open it would bleed 'meh'.

AN: I like it. Sort of.

JG: In the mid-90s dance music produced high-charting classics by the likes of Strike and Oceanic. ‘The Launch’ was the gravestone of any such further hopes.

TM: Our first dance music selection; sums up the problems of faceless DJ culture. This is post-human, unlike electronic music where humans and machines coalesce. Living in a satellite fantasy, indeed.

166. Alannah Myles - 'Black Velvet'
(1990, #2, RC)



DL: By my calculations the 2nd tribute to Mr Presley on our countdown, but not as questionable as the first to my ears. Just your usual brooding, hackneyed 'classic' rock hit for your cunting Cadillac.

AN: Some good-ish harmonies here.

JG: To be honest, I have no idea why this middling, average, run of the mill Capital FM staple is in here. Unremarkable, but not a depth-plumber, I wouldn’t have thought.

TM: Power balladry that would well accompany the unhinged, scheming histrionics of Jill Tyrell in Julia Davis’s Nighty Night. Peculiarly late-80s/early-90s but not in the AR Kane, Badalamenti or KLF sense.

165. Madonna - 'Music'
(2000, #1, DL)



DL: Whatever happened to the melodic euphoria Madonna captured so easily up until the early nineties? 'Music' was just one of several examples of Madge bandwagon jumping. Forced, cold and calculated.

AN: This is okay, not offensive for me.

JG: Madonna was interesting when she was taking the lead in tackling various taboos about religion and sex. Here she sounds bored. Still, it’s better than the execrable “W.E.”.

TM: Cynical commercial package that marked a rapid nosedive in quality from the Ray of Light era. ‘Music makes the people come together’. This induces indifference with its conceited video and lyrics.

164. Middle of the Road - 'Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep'
(1971, #1, DL)




DL: Sometimes you just have to be grateful for your date of birth. Were terms like 'twee', 'sickening' and 'nauseating' not in the popular consciousness in 1971? At least it has a tune, unlike #165.

AN: Another pointless novelty song. Although the drums sound pretty good. Doesn't really need critiquing. Or perhaps it does ...

JG: Is it just me, or does this (vocally at any rate) set the template that Abba would strip-mine to such effect? Plus, I know a very different version of the central refrain, but let’s not go there.

TM: Moronically repetitive morsel of music; an exhibit in the case for prosecution of the pop song with its drearily senseless, insert-a-cliché lyrics. They did do better, but this is unforgivable.

163. Ja Rule (Feat. R. Kelly & Ashanti) - 'Wonderful'

(2004, #1, TM)



DL: Neurotic, self-pitying and thinly-veiled celebration of material attainment so associated with this kind of thing, the phrase 'Ja Rule featuring R Kelly' being as appetising as a nail truffle alone.

AN: Does this mark the end of the golden age of r'n'b? It's been all decline in the years since, but this still sounds good to me.

JG: One of a long run of tiresome soundalike RnB songs about bling and gangsters, designed largely for white audiences. Dull production too. Where’s Timbaland when you need him?

TM: It is a long road from Eric B & Rakim and Run DMC to this whining. Ashanti is subordinate; R Kelly is an inevitable malefactor: contribution #2 of 4 in this survey. The millionaire protests too much.

162. Blue - 'If You Come Back'
(2001, #1, TM)



DL: Gone are the days when we could unwind, content in the knowledge that the trite and shallow boy-band ballad was an obsolete form. Thanks, JLS!

AN: See above: I have (a very small amount of) time for Blue, though this is nowhere as good as 'One Love'.

JG: As per ‘One Love’ I know this is poor and over-produced fluff but I find it hard to get too worked up about it. Now I think about it; that makes for a far greater sin than the ‘Holiday Rap’.

TM: For me, more compellingly awful than #170 due to their grandstanding vocal aerobics from 2:08: “I don’t know WHAT TO SAY-E-AY!” This is ‘passion’ with all the clockwork sincerity of stage-school.

161. Hale and Pace - 'The Stonk'
(1991, #1, TM)



DL: The best thing they ever put their name to, from the one-time kingpins of the ITV Sunday night graveyard slot. And you thought May and Taylor only sold legacies down rivers post-Mercury.

AN: I guess this was a kind of nadir, yes.

JG: Hale and Pace were a Sun reader’s idea of edgy comedy. Brian May is a Sun reader’s idea of art rock. Put them together and you have this. I rest my case.

TM: Brian May-helmed abomination, not excused by its Comic Relief status. Dire, ‘honky-tonk’ music; pathetically ‘wacky’ dancing; inane, cretinous lyrics. Dave Gilmour looks thrilled to be involved.

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.