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 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 VI: #100-81

'The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography'
Oscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 (Norton Critical Edition, 2007, p.3)


100. Mick Jagger - 'Let's Work'
(1987, #31, TM)



DL: Reminiscent of and from the same period as George Harrison's seminal 1987 cover version 'Got My Mind Set On You', only totally dreadful. Somehow not as hilarious as his current guest spot though.

AN: Thatcherism dressed up as a rootsy work-song. I often ponder over the mystery of how The Stones’ best singles (‘Sympathy for the Devil’, ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’, ‘Gimme Shelter’) were so gloriously transcendent, when they were clearly such massive twats.

JG: Somewhere in the depths of a dark cellar, Iain Duncan Smith is assessing the potential of this shite as the soundtrack to a workfare advert near you. Scrub that toilet you lazy fuck!

TM: A personal bête noire: a ghastly paean to Thatcherism from the new establishment’s Stakhanovite ‘rebel’. This is a millionaire haranguing the “lazy”: like a triumphalist Tebbit speech set to ‘music’.

99. Templecloud - 'One Big Family'
(2011, #24, TM)



DL: One of many stripped back, 'haunting' and rubbish 2011 cover versions of middling rock records alongside Birdy and Charlene Soraia's efforts, this time flogging KFC. Really, who covers Embrace?!

AN: The remarkable credibility of cabaret in the 21st century: how did it happen? Quite liked the original though. In fact, I’ve just revisited 'All You Good Good People' and can confirm that it’s actually definitely better than completely mediocre. It uses the pentatonic scale, which is the magic one. I hope to speak more about this in future.

JG: This was complete toss when Embrace did it. What’s the point of a new version from a karaoke Winehouse? 

TM: Slushy middlebrow song in symbiotic relationship with KFC advertisement shock! This is more fraudulent family championing in Cameron’s Britain, appropriately harking back to late-90s insipidness.

98. The Thrills - 'Big Sur'
(2003, #17, DL)



DL: Typical of much charting indie-pop of the noughties. Backwards-looking, empty, ironic pretentions of musical authenticity. Oozing with desperate West Coast clichés at every turn. You're not American!

AN: The Thrills are Irish, so I forgive them. Almost everything about Ireland is good. Except Bono obviously. And sectarian violence. And the conservatism of the Catholic church. But I stand by my point.

JG: Right, I see. Shoehorning completely unwarranted Kerouac references into song is the way forward, is it? What’s next? Wipe those Dharma bums? 

TM: Merely another sort of middlebrow; this is in the Top100 ahead of Viva Brother due to its higher chart placing. This embodies dull competency and the line about “monkeyin’ around” is undeniably irritating.

97. Heather Small - 'Proud'
(2000, #16, DL)



DL: Takes me back to 2003 again, and a bleak pub jukebox on very narrow rotation when no one fed it with money. What have you heard today to make you want to rip said jukebox off wall? Insipid bullshit.

AN: Don’t mind this. Black female Londoners scarcely need criticising, even if this isn’t particularly brilliant.

JG: The main issue here (other than its contribution to the commodification and cheapening of the amateur sport of athletics) is with the appalling grammar – “What have you done today to make you feel proud?” Yourself, surely? 

TM: The message of the ‘motivational speaker’ in song form. Emblematic of the wilful self-delusion and ‘feel-good’ cajoling of the management culture that has served us so well in recent years...

96. Tonedef Allstars - 'Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Jurgen Klinsmann?'
(2006, #13, TM)



DL: Have there ever been any good unofficial football records other than 'England's Irie'? As a footballing nation, we really don't do sophistication very well. The musical equivalent of a tabloid spit-roast.

AN: Another football novelty song. Nowt more to say on this meme, I’m afraid.

JG: No. Just fucking no. 

TM: Not just deluded, but odious in its xenophobic idiocy. English ‘pluck’ is embodied by Warden Hodges and Frank Bruno. You think it can’t reach lower depths... and then the “It’s a Wayne’s World Cup!” sequence rears its repugnant head.

95. LeAnn Rimes - 'How Do I Live'
(1998, #7, TM)





DL: Celine Dion-lite late-nineties hit penned by restraining order pop architect Diane Warren. I'm sure it has tugged at the heartstrings of people with no personality the world over. Haven't missed it.

AN: LeAnn Rimes was a poor woman’s Shania Twain, whose ‘I’m Gonna Getcha Good!’ is one of the all-time great pop tunes.

JG: Conservative US music culture is all arse over tit, no? Here’s a good honest clean-living 15 year old girl from the flyover states wondering how she “gets through a night without you”. Oreos and soda pop, presumably.

TM: Rimes’s singing is incontinent in its deployment of melisma: “bab-e-eh-e-eh-y-aiiirrrrrrrr!” “no-o-ow-ow-ow!” Tedious, routine, compliant: monumentally unappealing in every conceivable way.

94. Barenaked Ladies - 'One Week'
(1999, #5, JG)





DL: I will get into trouble, but unfunny, annoyingly smug surprise UK hit that really must have worked better on the other side of the Atlantic. Pre-cursory caution for future rap-rock chart hazards.

AN: Don’t mind this either, largely because of some neat little harmonies in the bridge. As with ‘Teenage Dirtbag’, I feel like this is open about its frivolity, unlike, say, Ed Sheeran, who dresses up frivolous shite as bankable emo-lite pseudo-art.

JG: Not even the late Scatman John (clearly the template for this vapid nonsense) would have allowed a line such as “chicken de China, the Chinese chicken” to slip through quality control.

TM: There is an exasperating conceit in the singer’s delivery; you can practically hear the goatee beard. This is ‘zany’, but sadly not the Marx Brothers. It at least keeps its twaddle within 3 minutes.

93. East 17 - 'Thunder'
(1995, #4, JG)





DL: Particularly low ebb from a band approximately a billionth as treasured as their one-time equals Take That. It's this kind of lineage that leads up seamlessly up to N-Dubz. May sound good on 12 Es.

AN: Yeah this is pretty crap. I live right next to Walthamstow now. Weird.

JG: This song starts: “When the thunder calls you / From the mountain high / Better spread your wings and fly.” It’s all downhill from there.

TM: Pompous piano chords. Egregious Brian Harvey posturing and gesticulating in the video, alongside scantily clad ladies. “When it calls you!” “Whoah-oh-oh!” Plus, a silly backwards-vocal bit. Cretinous.

92. Mike Batt with the New Edition - 'Summertime City'
(1975, #4, RC)





DL: Oh such luck! There's a reason that some of these seventies hits haven't endured. Maybe sentimental and nostalgic for some, but surely vacuous, cheap and vacant to everyone else. I hate the 1970s.

AN: A pretty shockingly cynical co-option of the vitalism of funk and disco that quickly descends into MOR froth after an attention-grabbing intro.

JG: Bloody hell, did this flaccid, uninspired, sub-Mike Love crap really get into the Top 10 when The Beach Boys’ own Surf’s Up album sold about five copies?

TM: Carrot-topped Tory songster produces wimpy, inane ode to the weather, the city and a baby. He was later responsible for a preposterous science-fiction concept album and TV-musical (as brilliantly featured here).
 

91. 50 Cent - 'Candy Shop'
(2005, #4, TM)





DL: Misogynist 50 Cent really is a caricature of an absolute penis isn't he? After Eminem, such a shame to see Dre back something so cliched. Worst euphemisms for blow jobs in the history of music too.

AN: 50 Cent is so, so fucking terrible. For me he will always epitomise the awful mood of 2003, the year casual venality broke: Bush, Blair, Iraq, reaction in the air; The Darkness on the radio, Jonathan Ross on the box, Mohican haircuts, and just around the corner was the next entry …

JG: This is the sound of 50 Cent ordering a young woman to perform sexual favours for him. Hideous.

TM: Can he sound anything other than arrogant and unpleasant? Ah, what great days in 2005: Bush and Blair; the public lapping up sub-prime mortgages, thinking they can live the 50 Cent life. Fuck 'bling'.

90. The Libertines - 'Can't Stand Me Now'
(2004, #2, AN)





DL: Self-mythologising, glorified demo from band who were for the most part pure image over substance. Typifies the gaping universe between their popularity and rather non-existent cultural contribution.

AN: Thankfully I feel like I don’t have to go to any great lengths to convince people why The Libertines were so vastly obnoxious any more. But I would just like to remind people that Pete Doherty once tried to justify his heroin habit by saying that his mum would rather he was a drug addict than a vicar.

JG: I appreciate the autobiographical nature of this song, but I never really got the Libertines. It all sounded like a bit of an East London in-joke to me. Plus, that Carl Barat is an offensively earnest little runt, no?

TM: I wouldn’t put this higher than #108 or #102, but it is bog-standard stocking filler from Hexham’s most improvident son. Just a bit dull, really; sign of the undue sway of folk like The Strokes.

Well facking futile, indeed.

89. Adele - 'Chasing Pavements'
(2008, #2, BB)





DL: Can't say it does much for me, but it doesn't drive a grinding churn into the very pit of my stomach like the opening notes of 'Someone Like You'. Big hit, but now dwarved by omnipresent successors.

AN: Adele is just so boring isn’t she? Even FATM has some vaguely interesting arrangements. Watch barely human Guardian journalists attempting to justify their complete lack of conscience/consciousness here.

JG: The more I think about it, the more this song is basically a reiteration of Shed Seven’s ‘Chasing Rainbows’. At least choose ‘Getting Better’, if you must.

TM: Is she a one-woman boon for UK exports or a selfish objector to the 50p tax rate? Either way, the grain of the voice has always agitated me; this is so fucking tasteful and wearisome: leading nowhere.

As captivating as a crime scene in an ITV cop show

88. True Steppers & Dane Bowers, Ft. Victoria Beckham - 'Out of Your Mind'
(2000, #2, DL)





DL: Seems this was to the underground garage movement what Skrillex and Nero are to dubstep now. Hook-less arsewank that was deservedly beaten to the punch by Groovejet. This tune's still punishing me.

AN: I loved UK garage, hence I have a soft spot even for its more risible commercial incarnations.

JG: Somewhere in the bowels of deepest hell, Satan is assessing the potential of this shite as the permanent soundtrack to an eternity of being hosed down with Bernard Manning’s diarrhea.

TM: Particularly early-noughties pop stylings here. Misapplied drum ‘n’ bass and techno tropes; dismal vocals from ‘Posh’ and Dane: “Ice cream, you’re out of your mind”. Maddening, airbrushed opulence.

87. Oasis - 'All Around the World'
(1998, #1, DL)





DL: Ah, we meet at last. Thankfully I'm only having to endure the 5 minute edit (!) and am saved the 2,000 key changes and extended sense of coked-up, bloated aural violation of its 9-minute plus form.

AN: I am a committed and long-standing Oasis apologist, but my argument hinges on the fact that, post-Morning Glory, they did absolutely nothing of any worth whatsoever. Except for ‘Stay Young’, which is quite good. And ‘Where Did It All Go Wrong?’ which is a nice Neil Young pastiche (listen to the harmonies on line “alone under stormy skies” about half way through).

JG: The remarkable sound of Oasis ripping off their previous ripping off of Badfinger’s ripping off of The Beatles. 

TM: Epically bloated farrago from their disastrous folly Be Here Now. With every 8/10 review and sycophantic comment, you could sense people’s musical horizons narrowing. “Yeah I know what I know!”

"Yeah I KNOW WHAT I KNOW!" / Aye, all too little...

86. Little Jimmy Osmond - 'Long Haired Lover from Liverpool'
(1972, #1, TM)





DL: Why would you adopt a Scouse persona to snare some paedophiles somewhere? It's again an utter enigma as to why anyone would have not only wanted to listen to, but pay actual good money for this.

AN: Everyone knows this is shit, and why.

JG: It is patently ridiculous for a nine year old child to be singing a song such as this.

TM: What is ‘cute’ about this infernal little tyke singing a post-coital ode to a Scouse hippy? It is about as appealing as the prospect of a nuclear winter spent in Slough within earshot of Lee Newell.

85. Boyzone - 'You Needed Me'
(1999, #1, TM)





DL: It's constantly hard to comprehend that the people who identify with these teeth-grindingly blank records on any level are capable of fully-functioning emotions. Thank God boy bands have evolved!

AN: ‘Love Me for a Reason’: magic. Everything else they ever did: black magick.

JG: Isn’t the point of these slow schmaltzy songs for the singer to admit to a feeling of vulnerable dependence on another? Rather than the other way round?

TM: Hubristic and hyperbolic: you just know that it won’t end happily. Pedestals and human peculiarities don’t mix. He apparently ‘lies’ but is somehow redeemed by her God-like influence.

84. The Killers - 'Mr Brightside'
(2004, #10, DL)





DL: Yet another cheesy noughties indie-disco number totally inferior to the records it alludes to. Very popular this one, possibly more so than anything else so far, so reactions will be interesting.

AN: Hmm. Controversial. The Killers were obviously an utterly pernicious cultural force but it’s difficult to argue with this tune taken in isolation. The bass line in the chorus is particularly nifty.

JG: This song would be improved with the following lyrical amendment: “But it’s just the price I pay / Destiny is calling me/ Open up my eager eyes / Cos I’m Norman Whiteside!” Youngest goal scorer in World Cup history, I’ll have you know.

TM: Another entry damned by ubiquity. Not that it stands up that well to aesthetic criteria in its contrived ‘uplift’ and early-80s pilfering: having ‘influences’ doesn’t make your music interesting.

83. The Woolpackers - 'Hillbilly Rock Hillbilly Roll'
(1996, #7, TM)





DL: The most successful line-dancing hit our shores have ever produced? Or simply: the only one? The thing is, Emmerdale is shit, and God knows I've persisted with it. Stood no chance with awful genre.

AN: I never did try line dancing.

JG: Do you know, I think I preferred 'Old Pop in an Oak' by the Rednex to this. At least that had a (very, very) faint whiff of anarchy about it.

TM: Foreign influence can sometimes embed backwardness, as with this silly Emmerdale spin-off. As Meades argued: ‘Insularity and rural indigence prompt the same emotional landscape wherever they’re found’.

82. Paul Oakenfold, Ft. Shifty Shellshock - 'Starry Eyed Surprise'
(2002, #6, JG)





DL: As you may have gathered, rap-rock makes my skin crawl in a way not much else can, and even when one of its vocalists takes his dubious talents into other waters, the delivery continues to grate.

AN: Not great, but not all that bad.

JG: By the early 2000s, superstar DJs were the Rick Wakemans of their day, living comfortably in the sticks, inviting Crazy Town to appear on their half-arsed songs and pilfering the opening lick from Harry Nilsson’s sublime ‘Everybody’s Talkin’’ like right bastards.

TM: The inane flipside of dance music’s utopian dreams. Nilsson’s sampled ‘Everybody’s Talkin’’ is stripped of its splendour amid the downright gormlessness. “Seeing stars! Seeing stars! I’m seeing stars!”

81. Curtis Stigers - 'You're All That Matters to Me'
(1992, #6, RC)

DL: Some of these 'love' songs really are soulless. Said it before and I'll say it again: the only romantic love worth penning a song about is that of the dark, sadistic unrequited variety. Total shit.

AN: Crazy midi percussion track. Bizarre.

JG: Jesus, this is boring shit. Have we got any Michael Bolton songs coming up?

TM: Neutered horns, smugly clicking percussion, sanitised ‘gospel’ backing vocals, a waist-coated man earnestly emoting: is anything less liable to connect with me than an early-90s AOR ballad? So humdrum!