Musical taste is subjective, and there are no right or wrong answers when discussing it. Those who enjoy listening to ‘The Ethel Merman Disco Album’ have as much right to their opinion as those who listen to nothing but Mozart all day. We don’t judge.
Having said that, some music is physically painful to sit through, even for 30 seconds. Some might find it interesting from an academic perspective, while others may be writing dissertations on using music to torture enemy combatants during war. It’s all valid. However, we hate these songs a lot, and we dare say that if you threw one of them on at a party, the room would clear.
1.‘Disco Duck’ by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots
In the 1970s, when disco reigned supreme, great artists like Donna Summer and Thelma Houston were forced to share the airwaves with significantly less talented people who had latched on to the craze to make a buck. If there’s a worse example of this than ‘Disco Duck,’ we’re unaware of it.
2.‘Heartbeat’ by Don Johnson
The television show ‘Miami Vice’ was insanely popular for a while there, and Don “Crockett” Johnson was a primary beneficiary of this popularity, as evidenced by the fact that Epic Records gave him money to record the album ‘Heartbeat.’ The single of the same name charted high, and the video played in regular rotation on MTV, but the song occupied a bland, mediocre limbo that made it feel much longer than its 4:20 running time.
3.‘My Pal Foot Foot’ by The Shaggs
We want to give the Shaggs a fair shake here because they were teenage sisters compelled to form a “girl group” by their father and had never expressed interest in such an endeavor. The record that came out, ‘Philosophy of the World,’ will make you believe right away that this was someone else’s idea, and they were forced into it. We’re choosing the song ‘My Pal Foot Foot’ because it’s the first one on the album, and most people listening to it for the first time will not get past that first song.
4.‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ by Billy Joel
Billy Joel is considered a great and beloved songwriter by many. Others believe him to be a talentless hack whose music plagues humanity. Wherever you stand on this thorny matter, there’s no denying that ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ is a repetitive and annoying song whose “lyrics,” so to speak, amount to a list of grievances and historical events for which Joel does not take responsibility, not that anyone was blaming him for communism in the first place.
5.‘Miracles’ by Insane Clown Posse
Many of us ponder the mysteries of the universe, and rappers Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope are no exception. In their song ‘Miracles,’ they detail the world’s many phenomena, such as long neck giraffes, the pyramids, and the tendency of children to look like their biological parents. They also ask how magnets work. The song is amusing when you read the lyrics in silence, but listening to the thing is pure torture.
6.‘It’s All Coming Back to Me Now’ by Celine Dion
Celine Dion never met an overwrought and overly long ballad that she didn’t like, and ‘It’s All Coming Back to Me Now’ is a fine example. Written by Jim Steinman, the man who wrote other such overwrought and overly long ballads as ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ and ‘I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),’ the thing goes on and on for over eight minutes and is so excruciating in its length that if you shave before listening to it, you may be bearded by the time it’s over.
7.‘Illegal Alien’ by Genesis
Some songs were unpopular upon first being released but gained an audience as the decades passed. Then you have songs like ‘Illegal Alien’ by Genesis, which was unpopular upon release and has aged horribly with each passing day. Phil Collins sings the song in a fake, exaggerated Mexican accent, and upon its release in 1984, it was criticized across the board as shockingly tone-deaf and racist. Oh, and before we forget, the music is awful too.
8.‘Barbie Girl’ by Aqua
This may have been the summer in which a movie about a doll by Mattel crushed and smashed every other film at the box office, but that triumph has done nothing to mitigate the horrible trauma visited upon the human race in the form of the 1997 song ‘Barbie Girl.’ In fact, a new version called ‘Barbie World’ was recorded for the movie by Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice, compounding the trauma. Still, nothing can beat the original, with its squeaky delivery and an arrangement so sugary listeners risk falling into a diabetic coma.
9.‘Shiny Happy People’ by R.E.M.
R.E.M. were greatly respected critics’ darlings who, for a while, seemed like they could do no wrong. Unfortunately, they finally started turning in some duds, none of which were as instantly hostility-provoking as ‘Shiny Happy People,’ a song so corny in its lyrics and melody that fans could be excused for thinking they had bought the wrong CD. Kate Pierson of the B-52s appears on the song, to no avail.
10.‘Love Shack’ by the B-52s
Speaking of the B-52s, they needed no outside help from anybody when crafting ‘Love Shack,’ the worst thing ever recorded in their long careers. It might have been salvageable without Fred Schneider’s “jukebox money” spoken bit in the lyrics, but it’s there, and it’s a stain on their catalog that no one can remove. All of our memories of getting down on the floor during ‘Rock Lobster’ have been forever sullied by this travesty.
This article was produced and syndicated by MediaFeed.
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