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 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.

32. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - 'One of These Days' (1984)

http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/ootdays.html

Once cited by Paul Morley as one of his favourite short-stories, particularly suitable 'for those with short attention span', this is one of the shortest of shorts I have read thus far; less than 1000 words.

This magical realist author here focuses on a brief episode entirely realistic, but carrying a charge beyond its seemingly modest confines. It contains resonances for me of Harold Pinter's short and harrowing political play One for the Road, and is from the same year of 1984, pivotal in many ways. Pinter's underrated play has grown more timely by the year, with waterboarding, extraordinary rendition and other such pursuits by the US coming to light. As with Pinter's polemic, the country is unspecific, stressing the transnational nature of torture and oppression; they can be carried out by Western governments if transplanted to a 'safe' country. Aurelio Escovar, the 'dentist without a degree', clearly marks this out as being in South America, but it is never made specific, making the point that this could be anywhere.

In this torture scenario, the tables are turned here; the dentist, through line of work, has power over the oppressive mayor, and is able to exact pain through his work, extracting a tooth. There is the chance for a larger revenge on the Mayor, but he does take it, staying true to medical codes of practice. There is not rancour but 'a bitter tenderness' in his voice when he spells out the situation: "Now you'll pay for our twenty dead men".

It all ends on a rather obviously portentous note with the Mayor's statement that the town and himself are practically the same thing. It is a relatively slight vignette, unable to move or shock or point out folly in quite the same way as One for the Road; but then that was a piece of theatre with sets, lighting, actors and forty minutes to play with. This, in its 918 words, has to go down as one of those short-stories that impresses me, but does not inspire; I can see what he is trying to do and it works, to an extent.

7/10