It seems like ages ago, but it was in fact only Thursday that I began this series of posts covering the 100 Worst Songs as determined by the folks at AOL Radio. We’re into the Top 30. Cringe along with me!
30. “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)”, The Offspring. (Parenthetical title Number Thirteen.) Musically, it’s kind of a rehash of “Come Out and Play”, so there’s my complaint. However, AOL’s noting that the song is simultaneously telling the joke and being its target is the thing that actually appeals to me. I’d give this one a pass.
29. “Axel F”, Crazy Frog. Even Harold Faltermeyer didn’t like “Axel F”; it only appears on his album because the label insisted on it. And I think that says something when a song isn’t even as good as the version that the composer recorded and subsequently hated.
28. “Livin’ La Vida Loca”, Ricky Martin. I’m glad I got out of the DJ business before this song charted. Having said that, it’s not bad in the smaller doses.
27. “Wild Wild West”, Will Smith. This is the one with the musical bed lifted from Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish”, not the Escape Club dance track, which could easily replace this one on the list. Or, perhaps more accurately, sit alongside it on the list.
26. “Afternoon Delight”, Starland Vocal Band. How is this one not in the Top Ten? Another song I hated on the day it was released. Unfortunately, my brothers (BOTH OF THEM. Richard, I’m looking at you) and my grandparents loved it and I was forced to endure it that entire summer.
25. “I’ll Be There For You (Theme from Friends)”, The Rembrandts. (Fourteen.) The ubiquity of this song, because of the popularity of this show, has turned this band into a one-hit wonder. Sucks to be them. It’s a shame, because most people know only the first verse and the ending; the other verses and the bridge are kind of cool. Of course, that could just be the novelty talking.
24. “Hangin’ Tough”, New Kids On The Block. Whoa-oh-oh-OH-oh! Meh, whatever. I can’t really work up the energy to hate on this one. It’s like poseur rock.
23. “Nookie”, Limp Bizkit. Here’s the thing about Limp Bizkit, at least for me. Whatever they do, Linkin Park does better. And Linkin Park pretty much sucks, too. No, wait, that was a cheap shot. The problem that I have with Linkin Park is that their songs all seem to follow the same pattern, so I get bored pretty quickly when I’m listening to them. And Limp Bizkit isn’t even that good.
22. “We Built This City”, Starship. This song is another one that really depends on my mood. Today I’m feeling generous, other days not so much. If it hadn’t come out of Grace Slick and Co., I’d probably give it a pass. But this was a musical bridge too far.
21. “One Week”, Barenaked Ladies. I rather like Barenaked Ladies, if only because I like songwriters who have fun with the English language. Bob Dylan used to do this sort of thing. So did Bruce Springsteen.
20. “What’s Up?”, 4 Non Blondes. It may be a rule that this song has to appear on “worst” lists; I think it’s on everyone’s. But everyone liked it back then, only to be struck with Buyer’s Remorse.
19. “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It”, Will Smith. Mr. Smith makes his second appearance on this list but I’m OK with this one, unlike the other one. Go figure.
18. “Achy Breaky Heart”, Billy Ray Cyrus. This song is arguably the reason that line dancing broke into the mainstream. And for that, BRC must die.
17. “MMMBop”, Hanson. Believe it or not, this one gets a pass from me. It’s bubblegum, but it’s not really bad as such.
16. “Hollaback Girl”, Gwen Stefani. No argument from me.
15. “Rico Suave”, Gerardo. The very name “Rico Suave” has become a bit of a fallback punchline for amateur comics. The chorus (such as it is) reminds me a little bit of the Emerald City scene in the film The Wiz. It’s a passing resemblance—specifically to the “green” segment—to be sure, but it’s enough to call it to mind:
Watch Emerald City Sequence - Green, Red, Gold in Music | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
And because I have not much else to say about “Rico Suave”, I’ll pass along some “Wiz” trivia about this scene. They used over two hundred dancers, each of whom had more than one costume (because of the color changes). According to director Sidney Lumet, this scene wasn’t shot on a soundstage designed to look like the World Trade Center’s plaza, it was shot AT the World Trade Center’s plaza. He writes in his book “Making Movies” that the “Dead Red” scene had to be cut short because of wind and scheduling issues. The scheduling problem probably arose due to several takes being spoiled, because the set was so huge. Why? Speed of sound, Baby: when they played the music, the sound took too long to get from the speakers to the far end of the set. As a result, the dancers were out of step with one another because they were hearing the beats at different times. They solved the problem by putting in lots of extra monitors so that everyone heard the music at about the same time. (This probably also explains why much of the “Red” segment doesn’t have much synchronized sound; it’s mostly long shots of the dancers.)
14. “Convoy”, C. W. McCall. Listing this song is kind of like listing “The Twist”: it’s just a product of its times, a period when there were more CB radios in cars than in trucks. The part I don’t get is why the backup singers’ voices are so much higher than McCall’s.
13. “With Arms Wide Open”, Creed. Yeah, just boring. This is “Having My Baby” for the 2000s.
12. “Wannabe”, Spice Girls. It’s written that this Girl Power anthem was composed in a half-hour and recorded in about an hour. So…zigazig-ha.
11. “My Heart Will Go On”, Celine Dion. I didn’t much like “Titanic,” either. This was just so much overwrought noise, I can’t argue with its inclusion on this list.
10. “Macarena”, Los Del Rio. Stupid song, stupid dance, and if you hear this song and decide that you’re so annoyed by it that you’re going to kill the DJ, I recommend following through on that impulse because you’re probably doing him a favor. This is another song that has many versions—at least thirteen, TWO of which are Christmas versions.
9. “Ebony and Ivory”, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. Sir Paul's second appearance on the list, and this one deserves to be in the Top Ten. Given that the key to the song is the second line, “Live together in perfect harmony", and this (harmony, that is) is the one thing they DON’T achieve, one would think that these two pros would have listened to the mix, scrapped the recording and gone back into the studio. More trivia: McCartney and Wonder performed this song at the White House on this past July 27, the first time EVER that they’d performed it together, live.
8. “I’m Too Sexy”, Right Said Fred. Yet another song with numerous mixes available. On the bright side, Right Said Fred cracked the Billboard Top 10 only the one time. In England, however, they scored FOUR times between 1991 and 1993. Suck on that, England.
7. “I Am Woman”, Helen Reddy. OK, here’s the thing: I like most of Helen Reddy’s oeuvre. But this song, which essentially launched her career (“I Don’t Know How to Love Him” notwithstanding), passed quickly into cliché territory and just got old. I was eight years old when this song was a hit and I knew it was getting over-played on the radio.
6. “U Can’t Touch This”, MC Hammer. I don’t think this necessarily belongs in the top ten of this list. My biggest complaint is that, at the time, it made people completely forget about Rick James, whose riff was lifted for this song. “Super Freak” is a great song, especially if you lived in Chapman Hall at Adelphi University at the time and you knew what kind of effect it had on the co-eds there. Just sayin’.
5. “Barbie Girl”, Aqua. I can get behind this one being in the Top Five. This record makes my ears bleed. Just knowing that the MP3 file is on my hard drive is making my teeth hurt.
4. “She Bangs”, Ricky Martin. Blah blah blah, double entendre, that chick is hot yada yada yada making me all horny blah blah blah de blah. Let me just say this, Mister Martin: STINKIN’ LIAR!
3. “Ice Ice Baby”, Vanilla Ice. I have no argument one way or the other about this song’s presence on the list. Frankly, I have no strong feelings one way or another about it. Which, I suppose, is a good argument for its being here.
2. “Who Let the Dogs Out?”, Baha Men. Again, no argument here. Given its ubiquity in sports arenas and being used as a source of “humor” for so many, I’m all in on this one.
1. (It’s Time To) Beat Dat Beat”, DJ Pauly D. (Fifteen!) Yes, it comes from “Jersey Shore", which is nonsense all by itself. And yes, it’s just so much boring-ass noise. But I’m not even sure that this was a single. I know the soundtrack album cracked the Billboard Top 100 Albums chart, but I see nothing that suggests that anything other than the Enrique Iglesias song was ever released as a single. So I’m disqualifying this one.
So in my opinion, AOL Music pretty much punked out on this list by setting us up with a non-single (or, at the most, a single that wasn’t a hit) as being the Number One Worst Song. And they also (again in my opinion) listed a bunch of songs that could have gotten the wave-off in favor of some truly awful songs that DID make the charts. Some of those songs will be listed in my next post.
Naturally, if you have suggestions, I’m more than happy to hear what’s on your mind. So let me frame the question: what Top 40 (US) song that didn’t appear here would you classify as truly bad? You may open your blue books and begin.
Will comment on these individually another time, Claude. I am wondering why "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro did not make the AOL list. It should be #1 worst IMO. Also, "Undercover Angel" by Alan O'Day was one reason why 1977 was such an awful year for me personally! It should be on the list too.
Posted by: Nick Koliarakis | September 21, 2010 at 12:25 AM
What you don't like line dancing?
Posted by: Janice | September 21, 2010 at 07:33 AM
Last round of comments. Hope I'm not overwhelming you with them!
“Axel F”, Crazy Frog - I didn't know this had been remade. I don't know what Faltenmeyer found wrong with his original version.
“Livin’ La Vida Loca” - I like this song mainly because it was used as background music in the HBO documentary about the US Women's World Cup soccer team; specifically, when it documented their run in the 1999 World Cup. Not a "Worst List" song, IMO.
“Afternoon Delight”, Starland Vocal Band - This is indeed a "wool over the eyes" song where the music disguises the somewhat controversial lyrics. I used to imagine anthropomorphic storybook bunnies singing the high-pitched harmonies and also imagined Bugs Bunny in his Cosmos soccer uniform (they had him as a mascot during their existence) strutting around at the start of the song. Ah, the images that one conjures up in his head - only to have that aspect of listening to music taken way by the advent of music videos!
“I’ll Be There For You (Theme from Friends)”, The Rembrandts - This is on my MP3. Again, not a "Worst List" song.
“We Built This City”, Starship – I’m wondering if Grace Slick and the rest of the band’s fortunes had dried up where “White Rabbit” and “Someone To Love” were concerned. I could never understand the lyrics to the chorus, though. What do they say? “Marconi plays the mamba”?
“Achy Breaky Heart”, Billy Ray Cyrus – Another song of which I am more familiar with the “Weird Al” parody. How he was given permission by BRC to record it is beyond me because it was all about a guy who couldn’t stand the original song!
“Convoy”, C. W. McCall – They even made a movie out of this w/Kris Kristofferson and Ali McGraw! Give the song credit for that. It was quite a good novelty song for its time. When it first came out, I thought the name for it was “Con Boy” about a young con artist or something. Conceptually, the whole concept of a “convoy” was a new phenomenon to most people – as were CB radios. Check out Benny Hill’s use of the song during one of his skits.
“My Heart Will Go On”, Celine Dion – I like the song. The movie, for all of its good performances and action, had a silly plotline.
“Macarena”, Los Del Rio – I take it that you don’t like the Bayside Boys mix in particular. The stand-alone song from Spain I think might be more palatable for some people.
“I Am Woman”, Helen Reddy – This is one of the relatively few songs of its time that had some social significance – and at a time when women’s liberation was gaining strength. This was not just a song – it was an anthem.
“U Can’t Touch This”, MC Hammer – I myself would be interested to know how “Super Freak” affected the co-eds in Chapman Hall. Since I didn’t dorm at Adelphi, I would not know.
“Barbie Girl”, Aqua – I only know this song from record offers on TV. But I can see from the VERY high-pitched vocal why people would object.
Posted by: Nick Koliarakis | September 23, 2010 at 02:18 PM