Worst 200 Songs: A Readers' List

So... which songs did we miss, which maybe ought to have been in the reckoning? Here is a list of suggestions from our readers...


John Lowther: Bryan Adams, Sting & Rod Stewart - 'All for Love' (1994, #2) [ed. - how did we forget this monstrosity!?]





Steve Webster: Gwen Guthrie - 'Ain't Nothing Goin' on But the Rent' (1986, #5) 





Paul Simpson: Bob Geldof - 'Silly Pretty Thing' (2011, #146!) ('truly woeful' 'Haha, I'd forgotten about the ludicrous video')





Paul Simpson: Status Quo - 'The Oriental' (2002, #15 - album) ('It's obscene')





Paul Simpson: Francis Rossi - 'Faded Memory' (2010, Did not chart)





'In March 2009 Rossi decided that his distinctive trademark ponytail of the previous 35 years should be cut off. The ponytail was subsequently won by long-time Status Quo fan Sharon Littleton in a competition organised by The Sun.

Rossi was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours.'

Robin Carmody: Star Turn on 45 (Pints) - 'Pump up the Bitter' (1988, #12)





Nick Davidson: Starship - 'We Built This City' (1985, #12)





Richard Oram: Dodgy - 'Good Enough' (1996, #4) [Ed. - was actually nominated by Robin Carmody but didn't quite make the Top 200!]





Chris Loach: The Cheeky Girls - 'Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum)' (2002, #2)





Pauline May: Clinton Ford - 'Old Shep' (1959, #27)





Pauline May: Charlie Drake - 'My Boomerang Won't Come Back' (1961, #14)





Damian Robson: Terry Jacks - 'Seasons in the Sun' (1974, #1)





Jack Roberts: Cast - 'Walkaway' (1996, #9) ('unbelievably dreary tosh')

Jack Roberts: Counting Crows - 'Mr Jones' (1994, #28) ('god-awful lyrics')

"Sha-la-la-la-la-la-lah!" FUCK OFF!

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 V: #120-101

120. Typically Tropical - 'Barbados'
(1975, #1, TM)





DL: More borderline racist and embarrassing novelty tripe, once again documenting the 1970s plight of Brits abroad. just as bad as the Vegaboys hit that it inspired. Mercifully, this no longer happens.

AN: Is there something recoverable in the communitarian aspect to this, the call and response, the singalong element? Just playing Devil’s Advocate. Obviously I don't like it really.

JG: Typically Western staging of a troubled Third World state (as was) as the usual island paradise. Later revived by the Vengaboys to inform us that they were going to eat pizza.

TM: It wouldn’t be half as annoying if the singer didn’t adopt the cod-Caribbean accent, auditioning to be Sting seemingly. That 70s synth sound is grating, rather than charming as it can often be.

119. Bobby Goldsboro - 'Honey'
(1968/75, #2 - both times, RC)





DL: Gooey dreck that makes 'Seasons In The Sun' sound like 'I Know It's Over'. Thinking about 1970s pop makes me feel so very tired. A constant in these kind of lists, and quite rightly so. Make it stop!

AN: I’d never heard this before. When it started up I was ready to defend it as Bacharachian orchestral kitsch. But then the chorus spectacularly failed to happen. Not good. A Westlife antecedent.

JG: This is completely forgettable easy-listening fluff, somewhat enlivened by the curious line: “I impressed her with a puppy.” 

TM: Treacly ballad, monotonous enough to make ‘Windmills of Your Mind’ sound as adventurous as Nick Nicely’s ‘Hilly Fields (1892)’. “Guess you could say” such vapid smugness deserves a neck-wringing.

118. Kenny Loggins - 'Danger Zone'
(1986, #45, DL)





DL: One of my nominations and a staple of free CDs from the Daily Star circa 2004. Selected on the grounds that I couldn't imagine why anyone would possibly want to own it. Cinematically short of epic.

AN: Republican gym pop rock fuck.

JG: If you think about it hard, the individual elements (a continuous pulse-like rhythm, lots of synth bits, muted guitars) almost have something of Can or Neu! about them, but recalibrated for heinous Reaganite celebrations of jingoist toss.

TM: I resent the infernal persistence of these sort of films and this species of chugging, airbrushed 80s rock. Transformers: the Movie is nostalgic viewing for me and its music is at least enjoyably ludicrous.

117. Reverend and the Makers - 'He Said He Loved Me'
(2007, #16, DL)





DL: Laughably simplistic social commentary from the man who must have been dragged through several hedges backwards clinging onto the Arctic Monkeys’ coat-tails. Educated enough to lyricise better too.

AN: 2007 was a dark time for music. But then again, so is 2012. Will somebody please just do something good? It’s getting fricking desperate in here.

JG: Middle class types playing on their “northernness” to get away with writing some utterly ignorant Jeremy Kyle shite about chavs whilst having no more idea of such demographic environments than George fucking Osborne.

TM: Embarrassingly dire ‘northern’ vocals and sneering faces. The self-styled ‘The Reverend’ is a chancer, who claims to be influenced by John Cooper-Clarke. Evidence that Sheffield music is not always great.

116. Simple Minds - 'She's A River'
(1995, #9, TM)





DL: A world away from their innovative early work, this arrogant drone marked their last real dent into the hit parade. Even U2 did this kind of stadium synth-rock more convincingly. Sounds like cocaine.

AN: I had this on a tape of the Radio 1 Top Ten countdown in the early weeks of ’95. This was a lowlight. Human League’s ‘Tell Me When’ was also on there: an underrated little gem of a tune.

JG: She’s a river??? What the fuck does that even mean??? That you sit next to her and smoke doobies till you’re blue in the face???!!! No wonder she fucked off. 

TM: Clattering bunkum, with a U2 likeness and inexplicable Buddhist monk motif in the video. Once they had travelled; by 1995 their terminus was Stadium Rock gigs and lengthy features in Q magazine.

Hi, I'm Khalid from infamously masterly Dr Who
adventure 'Time Flight', walking a tightrope

115. Tina Turner - 'The Best'
(1989, #5, AN)





DL: Can't say it's one of my favourites, but for an omnipresent late 80s soft-rock track, it does its job. Can't see much in it actively worth loathing. It's just there and it's not going away soon. 

AN: My choices were shit, weren’t they?

JG: I usually enjoy this song more if one completes the time-honoured trick of exchanging the word for “you” for “I” and vice versa.

TM: It’s hard to overstate the prevalence of this bathetic, overblown song in 1990-95: music for bland, kitchen unit magnates. It was SAFC chairman Bob Murray’s favourite and a perennial at Crosby-Buxton era games.

114. N-Dubz - 'I Need You'
(2009, #5, DL)





DL: The very moment I heard "Facebook" name-dropped into the chorus of this, I decided I had dropped out of Radio 1's demographic. Light as an excuse for persistent online stalking too. "Bang bang shoes"?!

AN: An awful-sounding tune from a band with the most awful-sounding name in pop history.

JG: This is just an advertorial for Facebook, right?

TM: Petty, gormless anthem for misogynist stalkers: “I been searching all over Facebook”. “And that’s why we call them bitches” – pots calling kettles black and all that. Plus: silliest hat since #147.

113. David Gray - 'Babylon'
(2000, #5, DL)





DL: If you're missing faux-hippy Jo Whiley's tenure at the above station, don't, unless you sadistically enjoyed having boring, prematurely middle-aged singer-songwriters like this pounded into the ears.

AN: I vividly remember being 16 and hearing Jo Whiley (who I saw as a sort of female John Peel) hyping this up on Radio 1 in 2000 and thinking, hang on, something has gone badly wrong here. This was a seminal moment in the bourgeois incursion into the “indie” centre-left.

JG: OK, the man can sing, but seriously, how is this excessively cosy shite any different to nonsense like Des’Ree’s notorious 'Life', only masked by a slightly more refined lyricism? Music for pre-9/11 “End of History” bores.

TM: It’s my ‘5’ rating that keeps this out of the Top 100. The opening is surprisingly wistful and evocative; then the familiarly dismal chorus enters – so odious! He is also culpable for this utter calamity.

112. Tottenham Hotspur FC - 'Ossie's Dream (Spurs Are On Their Way to Wembley)'
(1981, #5, JG)




DL: This looks, sounds, and feels much more than thirty-one years old, featuring traditional football song platitudes that no one would ever actually say, not even pundits. But laugh at the funny Argie!

AN: Ossie Ardiles. Fucking hell.

JG: There was a whole generation of novelty football songs like this that in hindsight look like understandable attempts to create a happy image to counter the pockmarks of hooliganism and racism afflicting the Beautiful Game at the time. Still, none of the others feature Ardiles reading “in the cup for Totting-ham” off an autocue.

TM: Mild enough compared with a few of the football horrors to come in this list. Yet this is a tired, scarf-waving musical knees-up that even the most die-hard mockney wannabe could not rehabilitate.

111. Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin - 'Separate Lives'
(1985, #4, DL)





DL: If you take some of his songs on face value (excuse the pun) then some of Collins' work is fairly agreeable pop. Not even the U.S. R’n’B community can defend this, though. Like an egg throwing a strop.

AN: Phil Collins. Fucking hell.

JG: Every bit as turgid as only something associated with the dreaded Phil Collins can be. Nashville non-entity Marilyn Martin ended up as a realtor and therefore contributed to our current economic misery just as she previously contributed to our cultural misery. 

TM: Power Ballad exemplar featuring the receding one on auto-pilot, accompanied by Martin’s showy melisma. As far as separation songs go, not a patch on Peter Hammill’s Over. Not the last we’ll see of PC.

110. Kula Shaker - 'Tattva'
(1996, #4, RC)





DL: Sometimes you wish The Beatles had not bothered going to India after all. 'Strawberry Fields'-looting cod-mysticism that was somehow not even their worst crime. Hinduism via Sky Sports and Carling.

AN: I don’t really mind Kula Shaker. The thing is, they used to get slapped down and ripped to shreds in the NME and Melody Maker, so you could just treat them for what they were: a sort of sixties pantomime. Fast forward to the noughties and Noel Fielding is hailed as a comic genius; no one bats an eyelid.

JG: Of the many atrocities committed during the Britpop era, the entire catalogue of Kula Shaker ranks among the worst. Tenth generation facsimiles of various ’60s radicals with the ink so worn it’s impossible to know what any of it might once have meant. 

TM: Retro-rock with ludicrous mystical frills. Clemency for Mills’s ‘youthful indiscretions’ with the far-right would be more feasible had he not polluted our auditory senses with this unmitigated drivel.

109. Billy Ray Cyrus - 'Achy Breaky Heart'
(1992, #3, RC)





DL: I've got a theory about MOR Country rock: it's fucking shit. Like most genres that happily live outside of the mainstream UK charts, it takes a novelty record to enter the popular consciousness.

AN: Fakey mediocre shit.

JG: Another easy target, but this is the kind of easy-going depoliticised noddy country music (a music that began life as a folk music of dispossessed poor people) that is Republican through and through. At least the Dixie Chicks came to understand the connection.

TM: Cocksure country-pop from a vain specimen of traditional masculinity. If this isn’t bad enough he is also notable for allowing George W. Bush to use another of his songs as his 2000 campaign anthem.

108. Rod Stewart - 'Every Beat of My Heart'
(1986, #2, RC)





DL: Another mid 1980's power ballad with a heroic and patriotic sentiment. What commercial radio stations piped into wagons were invented for. Makes one think of amorous builders getting their oats.

AN: I’ve already expressed total incomprehension of the Rod Stewart aspect of life. This doesn’t change my view.

JG: Everything that is regrettable about patriotism – cloying sentimentality, the de-contextualisation of “national” signifiers (bagpipes in this case) and the screening out of real (Real?) social problems. All whilst living in tax exile.

TM: Absurd, bombastic Tartanry, with the Londoner Stewart bellowing: “Here’s one Jacobite!” Some of the most idiotically parochial lyrics ever, shouted out against a clattering 80s backdrop. Hell.

107. Fast Food Rockers - 'Fast Food Song'
(2003, #2, TM)





DL: Easy target, but about as funny as receiving a County Court Judgement on your birthday. Moronic to the point of nausea and more so when it was inescapable. Really, who pays good money for this stuff?

AN: I mean, this is a kids song isn't it? I find it hard to criticise this sort of thing without making vague gestures at the “infantilisation of culture” or something equally tendentious.

JG: An advert for various unethical food outlets performed by photogenic types who have clearly never been within 25 miles of any such establishments. Post-ironic in a bad way.

TM: As ‘amusing’ and appetising as an evening’s date with Andrew Lansley trying to sell his health reforms to you – if more coherent. It doesn’t exactly give Yeats or Donne a run for their money with its symbolic imagery.

106. Kaiser Chiefs - 'Ruby'
(2007, #1, DL)





DL: A pub rock 'indie' band that were in the right place at the right time; it was horrifying to see the expensive video and crisp Stephen Street production values applied to something so undeserving.

AN: People are talking now about a Britpop/nineties revival but the Kaiser Chiefs are proof that it never went away. The Vaccines are just the Kaiser Chiefs with less interesting arrangements aren’t they?

JG: Their early singles were at least faintly amusing, but Kaiser Chiefs had well run out of steam two years on with this boring song about unrequited love. Not exactly ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’, is it? 

TM: “Due to lack interest”: the Chiefs show admirable foresight of their own deserved obscurity today, with their sole utility as a punch-line for all too obvious gags about the 2011 ‘England Riots’.

105. Black Eyed Peas - 'I Gotta Feeling'
(2009, #1, DL)





DL: King of a thousand Prozac electro-urban anthems, its lyrical themes are utterly depressing in that we're stuck with hearing this at any major social event we ever attend during the rest of our lives.

AN: Good call Dave. Empty hooks running riot.

JG: The prospect of devil-may-care hedonism has rarely sounded so joyless.

TM: Liked this initially when I heard it: though that was before it gained context. Relentless airplay has worn away some of its appeal, but I still wouldn’t put this anywhere near a Worst 200 personally.

104. Brotherhood of Man - 'Figaro'
(1978, #1, TM)





DL: Tacky and tasteless as the Seventies efforts that have plagued our chart so far are, it's terrifying to imagine what the era has in store for us as we progress. An insultingly inferior ABBA pastiche.

AN: Novelty trash. Quite like the wah-wah guitars though.

JG: This is just embarrassing holiday music from the era when the Costa del Sol was a novelty. The roots of ‘Macarena’ and ‘The Ketchup Song’ can be found right here.

TM: Asinine simulation, nay, assassination of Abba’s daft but wonderful ‘Fernando’. This lothario lacks even the vaguest revolutionary credentials and this “magic” “Romeo” just seems a bit of a creep.

103. Nick Berry - 'Every Loser Wins'
(1986, #1, TM)





DL: Funny how few soap operas have attempted to release singles on the back of an in-house band since 1986. I defended 'Heartbeat', this I cannot. Precedent for many solo soap star pop careers, however.

AN: Wow, this is pretty bad. I reckon there’s probably a degree of global consensus straddling race/religion/creed about this.

JG: Quite apart from Berry’s flat voice (which required extremes of reverb, the Auto-tune of its day), the message of this song is complete Thatcherite toss. Because if every loser wins, then those that never “win” must therefore be undeserving incompetents who aren’t self-reliant enough, etc. 

TM: Garrulous piano tinkling does not disguise a rather dull song. Road / love metaphors, illuminating light in tunnels and pearls of existentialist wisdom: “Nothing is certain in a changing world”.

102. Viva Brother - 'Darling Buds of May'
(2011, failed to chart, TM)





DL: This inspired our project, and is a laughable failure in terms of a supposed ‘resurgence’ in meat-and-potatoes indie-pop. Note the stolen 'Some Might Say' passage. Britpop is not coming back! Capiche?

AN: British art really is terrible right now right across the board isn’t it? Just risible.

JG: Kagouls? Check. Button-down shirts? Check. Boring non-entities playing at being lads? Check. Roaring commercial success? Un-check. Viva Brother – the new Heavy Stereo.

TM: Astonishing that this hasn’t quite made the Top 100! “IT. IS. WHAT. IT. IS!” This derisory, strutting shite should live in infamy as a cautionary tale for all budding British ‘guitar-bands’. Laughable!

'Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now'

101. Staind - 'Outside'
(2001, #33, JG)





DL: Nu-metal was fucking horrible, but when its key players slowed down the tempo to show off their sensitive sides, the results were scathingly bad. How is this not monotonous? Charmless, ugly music.

AN: Ha. This cheered me up.

JG: Self-pitying, disempowering shite that aims low by simply asserting that all those beautiful people are just ugly and unhappy inside too. But postmodern capitalism rewards superficiality and plasticity. Shallow people are pleased with themselves. This, shockingly, is why you are unhappy. Dig deeper and the insights will start to come. 

TM: The dirge-friendly grain of his voice affronts almost as much as Lee Newell’s. Recently and somewhat aptly, a new Staind track entitled ‘The Bottom’ appeared on the Transformers: Dark of the Moon soundtrack.