Number 1 with a bullet, baby!  10,000 years from now when explorers from Antares are sifting through our ancient ruins, they will find a disk with this song on it.  Upon playing it, they too will declare that this was not only the worst song in the history of the human race...but the worst song in the history of the multiverse.  The legend lives on.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

  Feeeee - liiings ....Woh Woh Wohhh....FEEE - LINNNGS....WOH WOH WOHHH
   Nuthin' More than FEEE-LINNGS.....

What songs do you detest the most with a vengeance, and why?

That fucking "Chili's baby-back ribs" advertising jingle. Do I need a reason?

Which do you secretly enjoy but will never admit in public?

In the them of Afternoon Delight, there's just something about duets...

KID ROCK

Livin' my life in slow hell.
Different girl every night at the hotel.
I ain't seen the sun shine in three damn days.
Been fuelin' up on cocaine and whiskey.
Wish I had a good girl to miss me.
Lord, I wonder if I'll ever change my ways.

I put your picture away.
Sat down and cried today.
I can't lok at you while I'm lying, next to her.

I put your picture away.
Sat down and cried today.
I can't look at you while I'm lying, next to her.

oooooooooo

SHERYL CROW

I called you last night in the hotel.
Everyone knows, but they won't tell.
But their half-hearted smiles tell me somethin', just ain't right.
I've been waiting on you for long time.
Fuelin' up on heartaches and cheap wine.
I ain't heard from from you in three damn nights.

I put your picture away.
I wonder where you've been.
I can't look at you while I'm lying, next to him.

I put your picture away.
I wonder where you've been
. I can't look at you while I'm lying, next to him.

oooooooooo

I saw you yesterday with an old friend.

KID ROCK

It was the same old same "how have you been?".

BOTH

Since you've been gone my world's been, dark and gray.

KID ROCK

You remined me of brighter days

SHERYL CROW

I hoped you were coming home to stay.

I was headed to church.

KID ROCK

I was off the drink you away!

BOTH

I thought about you for a long time.
Can't seem to get you off my mind.
I can't understand why we're livin', life this way.

I found your picture today.
I swear I'll change my ways.
I just called to say "I want you, to come back home.".

oooooooooo

I found your picture today.
I swear I'll change my ways.
I just called to say "I want you, to come back home.".

I just called to say "I love you, come back home.".

I do not think this is the most annoying song of all time, or anything like that, but as evidenced by my signature (until yesterday) this song had been stuck in my head for what seemed like several weeks.

Still, it has been added to my playlist. I'm not quite sure why. I think I love... it.

Those of a certain age remember K-Tel Collections. Which were awful, but easily avoidable, unlike The TV ads for the K-Tel albums, which were inescapable and featured snippet after snippet of all the agrivating, awful songs on the album, seguing into each other and adding up to a combined and condensed version of all the songs you detest.*

Then, if you were me, your brother would memorize the ad and sing it. Not songs from it - just the snippets of songs, exactly like they were on the ad.

*Strangely enough I sometimes think these ads inspired sampling.

   If either of them showed up deep on one of those links, don't blame me; that's a lot of crap to wade through, if every title brings up a bit of the song, as it does for me. Herman's Hermits "Henry the Eighth" would surely have rated this list even 15 years ago-- sad to think that there's been so much crap released since then that it's been driven from the collective pop memory. Same with "Yellow Polka Dot Bikini", or whatever the fucking title really is-- all I know is that there's a seriously good chance it will end up in my head later tonight or tomorrow. You can all thank me for taking one for the team later . . .
   Seriously, though, I can't get too upset over much of the list. Is it the artist's fault that they came up with a good hook that the industry drove into the ground by repetitive play?  "Stacy's Mom" is a good example: if I'd only heard that three times, ever, my memory would have been of a light tribute to MILFs, one that captured the egotism and terror of being 14 or 15 in the lyrics. Play it ten, fifteen or twenty times, though, and you have a monster, a late night sleep deprivation device of great power. Even decent songs by groups like Abba are best heard sparingly-- "Dancing Queen" is fine once or twice a year, but any more and that great studio production sounds a bit . . hollow, lifeless even.
    No, I hold out my worst spite for artists who know better, who did better, and still went ahead and let the tape out of the studio. Paul McCartney tops the list by sheer volume, even if some of the stuff with Wings has an over-hyped reputation, as the rot had clearly already set in during the Beatles era. Bob Seger rates a personal top spot on the list, for drek like "Turn the Page" and "Night Moves", where the self-pitying takes drives the workmanlike (if uninspired) formula rock into a different, Star Trek plot device, dimension of awfulness. Touring sucks, dude? Try changing adult diapers for a buck above minimum wage for 40-hours a week-- you'll kill a hobo to get back on that bus after a month, Bob. Then I remember that even at his best, Seger wasn't that great, and realize it's just an overreaction.
    REM's "Shiny Happy People" should sting more, but the band had had a habit of releasing crap even at their peak. Reckoning ain't exactly the best album, and I don't care if "The One I Love" is ironic or not, because the music is unbearably bad. Then again, the band has typically had shitty singles; in fact, I've dubbed it "the REM effect" (in contrast to "greatest hits band"), for a group that's so much better than the commercial release hints.
   Other choices might include Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music for "Love Is The Drug"; not a horrible song on it's own, but the dead disco beat, trite lyrics and flat delivery are a mockery of what the band had done less than a decade earlier: "Remake/Remodel"? "Ladytron"? Even "Out of the Blue"? How the mighty fell that track. To make things better, I just imagine Elmer Fudd is singing it, and the chorus at least draws a chuckle.
   Another band on the shit list would be the Moody Blues. Now, they always had released some sappy crap, but at least it made more sense if you were stoned-- "Are You Sitting Comfortably?" is one example. Nothing could make "Your Wildest Dreams" better, though, except maybe (maybe!) a lobotomy of some kind. Even at the purely instinctual level of thought, though, the song would probably suck.
   Other mentions, in brief, go out to Chicago, the Rolling Stones, Kiss, and depending on my mood, ZZ Top. I love Iron Maiden's persistence- no comeback tours for Eddy!- but wish they put out songs that made me want to hear a second one. Judas Priest faded early, as did Black Sabbath-- is it wrong to wish they'd quit when their first singers did? Doubtless you all have similar lists, so I'll end this abruptly, and see if this ruffled any feathers. Oh, and guilty pleasures? Maybe later, this has taken enough time away from y'all :)

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras

Deep Purple's "Perfect Strangers" may be the worst album ever recorded. It provides examples of everything that was bad about rock in the eighties. Rolling Stone gave it four stars, glowing about the musicianship of the reunited lineup, but makes no bones about the half-assed songwriting. The lyrics are cheesy, the riffs formulaic, and from cover to cover it gives off the unmistakable aroma of a band emerging from their mansions to cash in on the success of the bands they inspired a decade ago. From the self-indulgent solos to the lame power ballads, it's all filler and very little killer. And for a year I couldn't stop listening.

Every night I got in my car to deliver pizzas and I rolled that tape: Deep Purple "Perfect Strangers" and Blue Oyster Cult "Some Enchanted Evening". If you knew me at the time, you'd be amazed to find it in my collection. It was 1987 and I was all about punk rock with Big Black and Skinny Puppy leading me in to the industrial wasteland. Finding that tape in my possession would be like tuning on the Family Channel and seeing "Reservoir Dogs".

I still don't know why, but there's something about "Perfect Strangers". It embodies everything I hate in rock and roll. My only explanation, my only rationale, the only way I can figure it out is this: it's a Spinal Tap record. It's one of the unreleased Spinal Tap Albums that we've been waiting for all these years. If you listen with that mindset, it's genius.

-=Logan
Research, facts, a Republican needs not these things.

This thread is probably one of the few times on TnT where we'll have actual justification for multiple uses of the "obnoxious" tag. Perhaps a rating of 1,obnoxious to 5,obnoxious for whoever can find the most horrible, crazy, insane song and post the lyrics?

His canon. it drives me fucking nuts.

Many years ago I worked at a classical record shop.  Every Christmas we'd dig out Pachebel's Canon and play it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.  And it hasn't quite worked its way out of my head.

   OK, I have to confess that the first Enya album makes me happy. Celtic purists probably can't stand it, and some of the keyboards are a bit cheesy . . but the vocal effects are nice when you can't understand what's being sung. (Watermark only makes it in the CD player a couple times a year for that reason.)
   I have to say that a lot of the entries on the lists don't bother me that much, in par because I'm a sucker for good production in a song. "The Macarena" was a dopey dance, but I liked the mixing. The Aqua "Barbie" song doesn't bother me either, mainly because I don't think the whole Barbie doll thing was creepy to begin with.
   Funny that the title is based on "Afternoon Delight"-- I've always had a soft spot in my head for that song, mainly because the sound and lyrics strongly suggest that this is hot and sweaty married sex coming up. (Or is that just me?) You don't have to be a social conservative to note that the music biz hasn't produced a lot of paeans to this particular pleasure-- as Oscar Wilde noted, it's "exposing your clean laundry in public", something rather annoying to the rest of us. Any band that can pull off such a reversal of the industry norm gets a big thumbs up from this listener.

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras

The only song that I can't get out of my head (and not in a good way) is that godawful song they use for the commercial for the Ford Edge.  When the singer ends the song with the word "Edge" it's like he's trying to pass a kidney stone the size of a watermelon.

Illegitimi non carborundum.