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 VIII: #60-41

The lateness of this week's comments is due to, well, life. John was away at All Tomorrow's Parties over the weekend. I was with friends at Richard Herring's performance at the Stand Comedy Club in Newcastle last evening. Herring was a quick-fire and yet subtly wise presence, considering the subject of love and relationships with a carefully balanced dichotomy between the realist's scathing cynicism and the humanist's warm romanticism.


60. The Automatic - 'Monster'
(2006, #4, DL)




DL: 'Wacky' wank. If there is to be a resurgence in charting UK guitar music, you can guarantee that it would be even more banal than this. How does anyone relate to this song? Daft shouty boy is icing on cake.

AN: Another tune that reminds me of Justin Lee Collins, Hollyoaks, and the mid-noughties nadir of human existence

JG: The whole “Britpop II” thing really was a waste of everyone’s time, wasn’t it?

TM: Overhyped ‘zaniness’ from these ‘indie’ paddlers down the mainstream, as expressed in the tiresome video. Such dumb, meaningless lyrics: the human brain’s demise “through misuse, through misuse”.

59. Marty Wilde - 'Donna'
(1959, #3, RC)




DL: Standard late-1950s schmaltz of the type that must be on its way to extinction as generations die away. With a bit of luck Radio 2 might be listenable by the time I get to 65. This old 45 can do one.

AN: In a few isolated cases, the attempt to make something that will sell results in pop genius. More often, sadly, it results in hollow pastiche. This epitomises the latter trend.


JG: What a load of crooning toss. It’s shameful that the raw energy of rock and roll ended up in schmaltzy rubbish like this. No wonder The British Invasion bands sounded like the second coming.

TM: Lachrymose crooning without an ounce of sincerity from the South Londoner who took his stage first-name from the Paddy Chayefsky-scripted film. However, he did write ‘Jesamine’ and spawned Kim.




58. Shayne Ward - 'No U Hang Up'
(2007, #2, DL)




DL: Don't want to say too much as I hear his family can be a bit tasty but this reminds me of baltic mornings at HMV York, Xmas 2007 in just a t-shirt, alternated with 'Bleeding Love' on constant rotation.

AN: One of the ways that the whole X Factor thing has become so terrifyingly hegemonic is that it’s so difficult to critique. I mean, there’s just nothing there is there? Strikingly similar to the Marty Wilde in that sense.

JG: Is this just about those 090 numbers I see advertised in the back pages of tabloids? I hope so.

TM: Smug emoting from this designer slap-head, with a video that verges on soft-porn. Unappealing in its self-satisfied solipsism; take your “No U Hang Up kind of love” and learn some basic humanity.

57. Elton John & Kiki Dee - 'True Love'
(1993, #2, RC)




DL: Funny how you don't hear this as often as 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart'. Elton is one of those tabloid aristocrats who has actually composed a number of agreeable mainstays, but this makes ears vomit.

AN: Increasingly, I think it’s not really the right-wing idiots that make the world such an awful place but the wealthy liberals who grow fat on exploitation while making blasé gestures at philanthropy and bien pensant post-sixties ethics. Or, put another way, Elton John is a cunt.

JG: Amazing to think that in the 1970s Elton John was an outré, exciting performer responsible for such great songs as 'Benny and the Jets'. In contrast, 'True Love' is little more than the sound of a bulge spreading around a middle-aged belly.

TM: For me, one of this list’s most heinous ballads. A Casio aided and key-change abetted mass of treacly, saccharine ghastliness. Two old pros grandstand, with little enthusiasm and nothing to say.

56. Eiffel 65 - 'Blue (Da Ba Dee)'
(1999, #1, DL)




DL: The late 1990s really were a miserable time for me, and like The Mavericks, revisiting this leaves me profoundly gloomy. Just tacky. No redeeming features. I think the 90s just ran out of steam by the end.

AN: Quite enjoyed this at the time purely because it’s so fucking weird. Hallucinatory Euro dalek pop. Its release did coincide with some teenage experiments with magic mushrooms, which might have had something to do with it.

JG: Remember when the KLF wrote that book about how to become a star? You can hear the embers churning about the breeze right here.

TM: Can’t be worse than #57, but: a rare piece of less than enjoyable euro-pop. It possesses a certifiably exasperating tune and a total blankness – from the shell-suited singer to the animation.

55. Wet Wet Wet - 'Love is all Around'
(1994, #1, DL)




DL: Luckily, the '00s gave us far superior long-standing chart toppers ('Crazy', 'Umbrella') to the 1990s. Jarvis's 'I hate Wet Wet Wet' TOTP message was the perfect gesture. No wonder people fell for Oasis.

AN: Yeah this is shit. Everyone knows why. It took people longer to realise that Richard Curtis was even more insidious as a cultural influence though, eh?

JG: Number 1 for about a year in 1994. Here, the latent promise of love as widespread agora in The Troggs’ original version is converted into atomised, individualised ideals of love as saccharine shite.

TM: Even in 1994, this sounded like greasy hands in the till: life seeping out of the culture. This milking of a so-so ‘60s ballad paved the way for more inane film tie-ins and the worst boy-band tendencies.

54. Eamon - 'Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)'
(2004, #1, DL)




DL: Struggling to get to the end of these tracks now. What an awful, pitiful and misogynist strop of a record. However, the week when Morrissey propped up not only this but its answer record too was quite a moment. Fuck this.

AN: An empty hook amid nasty noughties misogyny.

JG: Supposedly, this song was released as a kind of “twist” on the usual teen break-up nonsense. That’ll be the kind of “twist” that made Bruce Willis a ghost in The Sixth Sense when we all saw it coming from the opening frame.



TM: This whiny railing against his ‘hoe’ exemplified the bitter, mean-spirited mood of the early 2000s. The emotion seems staged and calculated, as in Frankee’s infamously egregious ‘answer’ record.

53. Phil Collins - 'Groovy Kind of Love'
(1988, #1, RC)




DL: Deep down, I know this is a terrible record yet I can't help but cite a fondness for it. On the other hand, no, I can't even enjoy this nostalgically. Has there ever been a less glamourous pop star? "I'm talking nonce sense".

AN: Proto-Westlife dross. How did he get away with this?

JG: There is just something about Phil Collins’s late 1980s output that makes my blood boil and I don’t even know what. Maybe it’s just fundamentally infuriating in every conceivable way.

TM: A reasonably charming ‘60s hit is premeditatedly, ruthlessly slain by Collins, a man who exemplified ‘80s efficiency and selfishness as much as The Beatles summed up ‘60s egalitarianism and openness.

52. Hughie Green - 'Stand Up and Be Counted'
(1977, did not chart, TM)




DL: Hateful and sinister right-wing patriotic spoken word horror from a fucking game show host. No wonder Paula Yates was so saddened to learn that he fathered her. Yep, this is terrifying. Not rousing, but spooky and extremely unnerving.

AN: Actually scratch what I said about the liberals. The right-wing cunts are obviously slightly more blame-worthy.

JG: A man approaching pension age (and who hid in the Canadian Air Force during WW2 like Zilly from Catch the Pigeon) self-pityingly decries the end of empire as though his flaccid little ego depended on it. A 1970s antecedent of the execrable Noel’s HQ.

TM: Portentous, mean-spirited poppycock from the talent-show host with right-wing delusions of  grandeur. "The will to win"! Like Portillo in SAS mode; mere Mosleyite demagoguery flanked by grim choir and strings.

51. Jonathan King - 'The True Story of Harold Shipman'
(2007, album track; did not chart - surprisingly!, TM)




DL: Even scarier than #52. It was bad enough listening to this when the nominations began so I don't think I can repeat the experience. I would imagine that the full opera is quite amusing in the wrongest sense possible. Had to be in.

AN: By god, sometimes the sheer weight of sinister shit in the world really gets me down.

JG: Jonathan King’s effort to implore us all to treat media caricatures with scepticism might have won more favour had it not attempted to rehabilitate a man who killed dozens of his patients in cold blood in the process.


TM: There is much scope for a song to critique media sensationalism. The vile King is manifestly not the man to record it, as this pitiful effort attests. Simply abysmal, as well as crass.

50. Eric Clapton - 'Wonderful Tonight'
(1977, #30 - live, 1991, DL)




DL: I'm all for sincere musical declarations of love to your chosen figure of obsession, but fuck me if this isn't unbearably gooey. He's as boring as shit anyway at the best of times, the acoustic 'Layla' being a lifeless drag too. Get a room.

AN: Good call Dave. Can’t understand people who like this. It’s odd that Clapton became so terrible though, isn’t it? People of a certain age regard him in the same bracket as Hendrix. Which makes me wonder: is death the only escape from capitalism?

JG: Millionaire anti-immigrant bore tells us all about the great shags he reckons he’s getting. Well thank you and fuck off!

TM: Clapton sleepwalks through this ballad which makes Knopfler sound animated. There is nothing of interest in this: just a dull, complacent riff and soft chords with barely any musical variation at all.


"CLAPTON IS GOD" - or just a millionaire in a suit?



49. Athlete - 'You Got the Style'
(2002, #37, DL)






DL: Sub-Coldplay. How can a song about rioting sound so safe and conceited? And how many will have picked upon the subject matter, rather than thinking it's simply a cosy song about nice weather?

AN: I quite like 'Wires' by Athlete.

JG: Why the hell were Athlete so popular? This is awful, plodding nonsense that pre-empts no-marks like Orson and The Feeling as much as anyone else. For an indie band, that’s scandalous.

TM: Student-friendly ‘indie’ from 2002 defines forgettable. I preferred Lemon Jelly, Junior Senior and Tweet. This Athlete tune is far from hateful, but is evidence of how little we’ll settle for.

48. The Kooks - 'Ooh La'
(2006, #20, DL)




DL: So pleasing to see so much dreadful bland 'indie' in the upper reaches of the chart. Fake Scouse accents, Brit School background, sub-Britpop backwards-looking bullshit. 'Pretty, pretty, petti-coat'. FUCK OFF.

AN: The most inexplicable thing about The Kooks – and there were many – was the guy’s accent. It’s fake Scouse isn’t it? I can think of no real explanation for this.

JG: As with Kula Shaker before them, and The Vaccines later, The Kooks are just an Etonian idea of what indie music ought to be – gelded, depoliticised and “nudging” the masses toward a life of diligent consumption.

TM: “Your pretty, pretty petticoat”. A John Power lookalike advances words that are vague, presumptuous and puzzlingly smug: empty Hollywood references thrown around like so much hollow tinsel.

47. Jess Conrad - 'Mystery Girl' 
(1961, #18, RC)




DL: Conrad's beige and sickening pop ditty may be as edgy as Daniel O'Donnell, but by all accounts he was something of a fearsome psychopath in his day, not only biting chunks out of his rivals' faces, but even threatening to chop Frankie Howerd's ears off. What a nice man.

AN: Similar to the Marty Wilde. The English Establishment attempting to negate and twee-ify the counterculture before it was even born.

JG: Number 47?! This isn’t that bad, surely?

TM: Much to their credit, the British public preferred ‘Johnny Remember Me’. A cantering, innocuously dim bauble of a track; cut-price teddy-boys surely swaggered. The last pre-1970s entry: deeply resistible.




46. Kula Shaker - 'Mystical Machine Gun'
(1999, #14, TM)




DL: The accompanying TFI Friday performance was akin to experiencing the last dying whimper of Britpop. This was at a time when the key players of that movement found their popularity had crumbled seemingly overnight. Pretentious yet hilarious self-indulgent drone.

AN: Funnybad.

JG: This is just a re-working of 'Spaceman' by Babylon Zoo, except it’s worse. Imagine that. Utterly vacuous shite.

TM: Utterly misbegotten and ponderous grand-folly churned out by Mills & Co in their twilight. 346 seconds of pseudo-spiritual mumbo-jumbo that even that crazed shyster L. Ron Hubbard would find fanciful.

“Open up forget your life, breathe in breathe out retain a sense of suicide / Are you glad to see how far you’ve come? / You’re a wizard in a blizzard / A mystical machine gun”?

45. The Feeling - 'Never Be Lonely'
(2007, #9, DL)




DL: "B-b-b-b-b-b-b-baby, I think I'm going c-c-c-crazy". I'd like to hear you defend that. On the other hand, it's practically Modeselektor when compared to the works of similar offenders Scouting for Girls.

AN: The rundown this week is making me depressed. At least in previous weeks I was heartened by the tunes I quite liked. Eiffel 65 is the best we’ve got this time around.

JG: This (and Adele, and Jessie J, and The Kooks) is what the BRIT School churns out. One institution, degrading our aural culture like a great whirling piece of Ideological State Apparatus. “Consume, do not think.”

TM: Mika might have been an even surer bet, but this is an absurdly successful fusion of Supertramp, Macca and The Rembrandts, crowned with a glib sentiment. Why accept this, when we have Hot Chip?




44. Scouting For Girls - 'Elvis Ain't Dead'
(2007, #8, TM)




DL: I've spent five years trying and failing to put the anger awoken in me courtesy of this trio into words. After this, you could never use the word 'indie' to describe a style of music again. "Elvis has left the building!" A pathetic example of popular song.

AN: On the other hand, I’m glad we’re now getting a preponderance of recent excrement. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the members of SfG in the future. Actually, no it won’t.

JG: Actually, I can relate quite well to that line of “I wish it was me you chose.” It’s rawer than anything else this shower have achieved. Naturally, the mood is then killed off with a completely nonsensical reference to Elvis being alive.

TM: More tin-pot ‘70s theft in those keyboards. I slated this over four years ago, and have no reason to change my mind now; sadly, SFG have yet to leave the building. Yes he is dead, you Ruislip fuckwit!

43. The Stereophonics - 'Madame Helga'
(2003, #4, DL)





DL: Extremely unpleasant, tuneless and bluesy coke-rock that a certain pub-rock covers band used to open with at work every single time they played. Completely charmless. What happened to the poignant humdrum small-town tales of the 'Word Gets Around' era?

AN: Fuck me.

JG: That this isn’t technically the worst thing the Stereophonics have produced should not be read as any kind of recommendation. Like a heavier form of The Feeling, unfortunately.

TM: 

Assail my tired ears

With hoarse, strutting gutturals

In tatty facades

42. Cher Lloyd - 'Swagger Jagger'
(2011, #1, DL)





DL: Christ. M.I.A's become disappointing enough without having to endure an 18 year old 'street' reality TV star emulating her style. At least it doesn't have a dubstep breakdown. The referencing of Twitter sounds very desperate too.

AN: Profoundly dystopian.

JG: This kind of nursery rhyme shite makes Simon Cowell lots of money by bowdlerising earlier templates established by the likes of Lady Sovereign. Criminal.

TM: The sole W200S track with a majority of dislikes on YouTube. There’s brash, bubblegum pop but this is just woeful. “Be what I be”: such senseless lyrics make it the natural and equally odious sibling of ‘Darling Buds of May’.

41. Lenny Kravitz - 'Fly Away'
(1999, #1, TM)





DL: 1999 was so shit. I remember listening to 13 a lot as the perfect antidote to everything. Lenny is synonymous with terms such as 'vapid', 'cliche', and 'Mondeo' and quite rightly so. It's piss miserable hearing this again.

AN: In many ways this pre-empts the noughties trend (Scouting for Girls, Stereophonics, The Feeling, Athlete) for lobotomised rock with just enough alternative street cred not to be laughed out of town by Joe Average. Risible.

JG: The entire latter two thirds of this song consists of Lenny Kravitz wishing he could “get away”. Go on then.

TM: To Curtis Mayfield what Ed Milliband is to Clement Attlee. And that’s actually being kind to this journeyman irritant. This is a monumentally galling record, endlessly ubiquitous in its nettling triteness.

 

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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






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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

AN: Wowzaroo. Words fail me.

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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





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

AN: A beautiful piece of music.

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

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

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





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

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

JG: F this S, lol.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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






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

AN: Don't know it.

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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



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

AN: I like this quite a lot actually.

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

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

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





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

AN: This too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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



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

AN: Like it.

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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




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

AN: No clarification needed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

AN: Don't know it.

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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




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

AN: Don't know it.

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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



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

AN: A nightmare vision of contemporary youth culture.

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

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

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



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

AN: There is absolutely nothing good about this.

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

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