As promised...next up on my year-end-lists for 2010, it's the The Annoying List!
What happens when you round up the worst of the worst, stick em all in one list...along with scathing commentary from yours truly.
50. Plain White T's - Rhythm of LoveI hope their love has better rhythm than this song. Hella off. Besides, they already tried the wannabe-cutesie anthem with "1, 2, 3, 4" with similarly disastrous results.
49. Colbie (McFish) Faillat - I Never Got the Memo that my 15 Minutes of Fame Is UpAnd really, her 15 minutes of fame expired after "Bubbly" was played 5 times and now what we're left with is the music equivalent of Target $4 generics.
48. Katy Perry - Firework"Do you ever feel like a plastic bag drifting through the wind? Well, I guess songwriting's never been Katy Perry's strong point." -Mix 106.5 DJ on air
47. Escape the Fate - IssuesWell, I certainly didn't
escape the fate of hearing this disaster or the
issues (ba-dam ching!) they're getting overly hoarse about.
46. Kevin Rudolf - I Made ItNewsflash: having a pretty standard (complete w/ rapper) Top Ten hit with a #25 followup does NOT mean that you "made it." Now go away.
45. Sade - Soldier of LoveInstead of "Sade," this time we'll call her "SoldOut" because that's what she sounds like here & even confirms it by getting a hip-hopper to (c)rap all over this. For a normally reliable artist that we haven't heard from in way too long, this is an utter disappointment.
44. Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes - HomeI really tried to like this, but I just couldn't come to terms with the fact that it's not that great to begin with compounded by the fact that every single thing about this is as generic hipster as you possibly get. You have the guy and the girl alternating parts, the muted overpolished effect they put on the instrumentals, and the stupid fake kinda Southern accent because OMG-it's-so-cool-for-us-hipsters-to-actually-like-music-from-Jesusland, and almost finally, the asininely asinine band name. But that's not all folks, for Chrissakes Edward Sharpe looks like a hipster Jeezus!
43. Train - Marry MeNo thanks. Why would you ask someone to marry you today and every day anyway, wouldn't get be kind of expensive?
The song isn't good enough to justify the hyperbole esp. since apparently he admits it's just some girl he saw at a cafe. It also makes me worry that his previous two singles were written about said girl too in which case qualifies as obsessive stalkerdom.
42. Shinedown - The Crow & the Butterfly Not really sure why this needed to exist. I just find the idea of the singer of this kind of a screamy song comparing him and a girl to a crow and a butterfly kind of stupid & I'm as pained listening to this as the girl in the video from :45-:47 looks.
41. XXXTina Aguilera - Not Myself TonightShe's back with more of the same reasons why we here @ the Annoying List don't prefer X. Aguilera in general, as well as many of the reasons why we don't prefer new-ish pop music in general. And unsurprisingly, she excels in neither. So in other words this is a perfect watered-down updated piece of Agarbaguilera.
40. Kanye West & the New Dumb@$$ Coalition - MonsterAnother huge disappointment considering I don't have less than a slightly unfavorable opinion on any of these people. This song might as well be a bad parody of itself considering the result sounds like a gaggle of honking geese being strangled. Rhyming "Sri Lanka" with "Willy Wonka" would have been clever if she would have tried to make an attempt at
either of those making sense in context. Speaking of, none of the rest of the song make much sense either, talking about Pharoahs, Achilles, Vampires, Godzilla, Mosters, etc, presumably in the context of one big orgy.
39. Jason DeRulo - Whatcha SayThis wasn't too good or radio-friendly when Imogen Heap did it, and it's certainly not now so I'm not sure how Jason DeRulo gets a #1 pop $hit with this.
Even then, I would have given him credit for realizing she exists had this not set off a trend that never should have existed and in 5 years will sound as ridiculous as leg-warmers and bell-bottoms looked five years after they started.
38. Sheryl crow - Summer DayShe ain't 16 and she ain't Graceland, stop trying to be both!!!!!
37. The Smashing Pumpkins - FreakBilly Corgan continues his descent by filling our ears with what sounds like a record skipping and nothing that made the Smashing Pumpkins the Smashing Pumpkins, save his voice which just sounds overly whiny here. Before this he never needed permission to start trying again; now I'm not so sure.
36. Lady Antebellum - I Run to YouProving that most country crossovers aren't capable of having more than one good song in a row. I run too fast, I run from pessimism, I run from pain, I run, you run, we run, yadi-yada-yada... *yawn*. I run from this song. (How about
that, Lady Antebellum?)
35. Muse - UprisingFirst single from an otherwise solid album sounds like a bad outtake from a Dungeons & Dragons B-movie soundtrack, and also proves why everything is wrong with everything as this manages to be their biggest pop & Hot AC hit to date and lasts over a year on the alt. charts, getting in the way of their other songs that are actually good.
34. Broken Bells - The Ghost InsideMakeup of the band is a perfect example of the "sum of the parts" being greater than the whole. Their first attempt was bland and uninspired; this one, in addition to being both of those, is whiny and annoying, the line about the daughter being a stoner makes no sense and the entire song being sung in falsetto doesn't work either. (Addendum: I looked up the official lyrics and the daughter is a "star tonight". WTF, that's not what he says in the song. Still doesn't make much more sense, but if he really meant he should have enunciated!!!
)
33. Ingrid Michaelson - ParachuteGeneric bland girl with no potential, meet choppy intro and beat that ruins most songs. Bland girl + choppy beat, meet Annoying List.
32. Britney Spears - 3Was this really supposed to shock anyone? Seriously, at the rate she's been going to get to here, and yet a 14-year-old one-hit-wonder one upped her
nine years ago. Besides, Britney Spears, if all the boys and all the girls are begging to if you seek a-you, then why was "3" the best you could do? Why not like "8"? or "19"?
31. Jesse McCartney - McShakeA-T & the word "shawty" (
. ) give Jesse McCartney's career a second chance at life when it didn't even deserve a first. But hey, we now have the McShake and the McFish; all we need are some fries.
30. Kelly Clarkson - Already GoneTen seasons later Kelly Clarkson has beyond worn out her welcome. Makes song after song that are "different" enough to make her say that she's trying something new, but not "different" enough to actually
be new, especially since it's usually just one element per song, which ends up being annoying. In this case she puts a shrill, whiny effect on her voice & places it in a stasis field throughout the song, so her voice ends up being what it would sound like if you tapped an organ pedal and it got stuck.
She needs to just shut up already.
29. Pearl Jam - The Fixer"When something's ____, I wanna put a little/a bit ____(Opposite of previous blank) here." Multiply by about twelve and throw in a dozen "yeah's" for the chorus, and you essentially have the long-awaited return of Pearl Jam. Deep.
Band who's reached "immortal status" by recycling the same song for the past two decades now reaches a new lyrical low.
28. Cage the Elephant - Shake Me DownA band that has not been around this long and has never been good to begin with does not deserve to automatically make it anywhere near the top (or top 3, at least...close enough) and especially not with garbage like this that sounds like an Atari threw up.
27. Rihanna - HardSaying "Yeah" 26 times before the song has even started (with a few "ah"s thrown in between) is not a way to start off a wannabe tough-girl anthem or make one "hard." There is nothing in the rest of the song to back up her assertion either and all we're left with is 4 minutes of this nonsense.
26. Black Eyed Peas - The TimeThis one is pretty horrible, for all the reasons one could possibly think of (I'll elaborate more next year), but is only at #26 because it was released too late in the year to sink in. I'm trying to hold it off but losing so this (un)fortunately means it'll be a shoe-in for next year's.
25. The Ready Set - Love Like WoeUnnecessary and incompetent nod to Mya who had one of the worst songs of the past decade (which, I had actually managed up until I heard this to forget that it existed...thanks a lot, The Ready Set
) full of WTF rhymes ("undeniable/unreliable, boulevard/shooting star, intuition/superstitious, face/face") and vocals, message, and music on the annoying side of "as generic as you could possibly get." The video is pretty dumb, too.
24. Ke$ha - We R Who We RI've even give Ke$ha a pass just for being so ridiculous and not being able to take herself seriously enough, but her using this song to cash in on the trend does more to feed stereotypes than anything else...except for maybe screw with our eardrums. At least KP legitimately tried with the (albeit horrendous) "Firework." But this is inappropriate, inexcusable, and uncalled for.
23. Usher - Hey Daddy (Daddy's home)Just hearing phrases like "get some," "bottom up" within the first 30 seconds of a song called "Hey Daddy (Daddy's Home)" is going to be a recipe for automatic disaster. And of course he continues to go on about doing a "lot of sexing" and "work that chair", etc etc...how crass. That being said, this actually has potential but due to ridiculousness but stops just short of being "so bad that it's funny."
22. Sean Kingston/Justin Bieber - Eenie MeenieWhat the hell is an "eenie-meenie-miney-mo" lover? And who is "shawty" referring to
this time? Oh, and uhh...it really sounds like Bieber is singing the girl's part here.
21. Will.im.not ft. Notckool Minaj - Check It OutA perfect example of why sampling just because you can is a preposterous idea. Nicki Minaj is not as clever as she thinks she is & neither is will.i.am.
20. The Dead Weather - Die by the DropThis choppy, obnoxious piece of megaoveramplified static makes me want to put my stereo on the chopping block. That, and Jack White sounds like a possum who got caught in a cabbage shredder.
19. Justin Bieber - BabyHow ironic that he keeps on saying "baby, baby, baby" because...that's what he sounds like here & in all the rest of his songs.
Sappy and unbelievable.
18. Lady Gaga - Bad RomanceOversinging does her no good in this instance, especially when she repeats syllables that are typically not accentuated for a reason, i.e. "ra ra" & the lame attempt to mask yelling out her name "ga ga" as opposed to "la la," which she throws in near the end of the chorus but too little too late; it's already overkill.
17. Florence & the Machine - Dog Days Are OverThis is what you get when you take a tired old cliche and wrap it around a recording of a daycare center's music class, and then get Florence to bleat like a goat on top of this cacophonous mess. No thanks.
16. Blackeyed Peas - Imma BeWhat the hell is an "Imma Be"? Well, whatever it is, he doesn't have to start the song off with it 30 times. Vocals are dumb. Harmony is nonexistent. Instrumentals are weak. "Song" is garbage.
15. Vampire Weekend - CousinsSelf-important geneaology dig obviously written to make those who can't or don't care to decipher what this is feel smart, with similarly pretentious yet generic instrumentals.
14. Willow - Whip My HairI don't really have the stomach to listen to nine year olds singing about whipping
anything...
13. Lady Gaga w/ Beyonce - TelephoneIf this was going to come from "Monster" one reason why that addendum never should have seen the light of day. L. Gaga, given her propensity for drama (i.e. Bad Romance) purposely ignores the idea of number blocking just so she can duet with the most annoying, talentless singer in the world and the results are predictably disastrous.
12. Pearl Jam - Just BreatheRidiculously droll lyrical content as their previous single with the added demerit of it being 15 years too late for them to try something new. Eddie Vedder's not suited to delicate ballads...or any other song for that matter.
11. Rihanna - Rude BoySchizo can't decide whether or not she wants to be sub or dom using nothing less than explicit, pedestrian language and elementarily graphic details. Quite the stylish one, Rihanna.
10. OneeskimO - KandiUnknown concept bands are not supposed to pull shenannigans with their band names. Besides it seemed like they just sampled Candi Station so they could say they did, and then quickly dummied up a song about getting cheated on around it, but didn't take into account that both Candi
and themselves both sound like guys
and girls. Seriously I can't figure out who's singing which part, which moves this down a few notches from "weak" to "horrendous."
9. Kelly Clarkson - All I Ever WantedStill doesn't get it, except now she's recycling ideas. We already heard her squealing like a pig getting his balls cut off ("Since U Been Gone") & here she goes again, we already heard her singing about painfully generic subject matter (everything else by her, except perhaps "Breakaway"). It's not ignorable anymore.
8. Crash Kings - Mountain ManI've finally accepted that the instrumentals are worthwhile. But I can't get over how the lead singer sounds like Jack White sticking his finger in an electrical socket (and that's on top of what Jack White already sounds like; see #20) and this is one of the stupidest and most offensively idiotic songs ever written to boot, period, about sitting on a girl's boobs and getting a bj perhaps all while drinking a beer too. Classy, Crash Kings.
-- How else are you supposed to interpret "I'm sitting here on top of a mountain, she's rocking my valleys down below"?
7. Katy Perry - California Gurls There's no reason she (or anyone else) needed to sing this, though if she would hurry up and actually
find something that suits her then that might help. Flagrant misspelling the titles isn't cool (except when something's so stupid it's funny, a la "Hot in Herre") & everything, including
that, is as generic as annoyingly formulaic & just plain annoying as can be except for the line that isn't hers, but She Wants Revenge called; they want their popsicle back.
6. Usher ft. Will-i-am-not-cool - OMG"OhMyGodIDidItAgain!!!" Well, it unfortunately looks like he did. Stupid repititive lyrics, ("Baby let me love you down, there's so many ways to love you") Stupid similies ("bootie like pow pow pow"), stupid rhymes ("dynamite...outta sight"), stupid wannabe anthemic cheering all over...and don't even get me started on the autotune. (And who is this "shawty" that everyone keeps on falling in love with?
) Worst thing he's done since "Yeah!".
5. Beyonce - Sweet DreamsUnacceptably singsongy whininess over three and a half minutes of instrumentals that sound like a bug getting stepped on. The schpeel with turning the lights on is a lame attempt to validate what she can't decide whether or not is a legitimate fantasy.
4. Pink - Raise Your GlassAttempts to pass of a song about shameless partying as an anthem for people who don't fit in (see; Ke$ha @ 24.) Nice try...not. But this one makes no attempt at having any structure whatsoever and amounts to nothing more than sloppy drunken gibberish. The hook is three words sing-yelled out in succession in the exact same key and pitch, omfg P!nk aren't U clever.
3. Sara Paralysis - King of AnythingSinging about how her inability to communicate justifies her lashing out at people who have opinions that don't line up 100% with hers...and then using that to justify her slamming her hands down on seemingly random keys and passing that off as music. What a perfect theme song.
Next time, keep your anger management answers to yourself, Sara Baralieses.
2. Train - Hey Soul SisterBeginning this off by obnoxiously accentuating a syllable of the word "Hey" (or is it "a"?
), you'd think that from there it could only get better. But no, it falls even deeper into the next level of dumpsterdom with mind-numbingly atroctious pop culture references and catch phrases placed to rhyme at the most unopportune times (Soul Sister/Mr. Mister, and just about every other line too.) If that weren't bad enough, they sock it full of underlying tones of "Meet Virginia" in a desperate attempt to latch onto any pre-Their Private Nation credibility that died long ago. The musical equivalent of complete toxic sewage.
1. Katy Perry - Teenage DreamI can't even begin to describe the number of things wrong with this mother-of-everything-that's-wrong-with-everything-wreck-of-a-song but we'll try. First --- EWWW I don't need to hear her singing about underage sex multiple times a day.
Second, there's her lame attempt at emulating a teenager's first sexing by putting a fake orgasm undertone in her voice throughout the song & it'd be laughably bad if it weren't so damn annoying. Third, why the hell does Katy Perry think she should sing about her own skintight jeans in the first place. Who knew Katy Perry (or anyone, really) was capable of a this kind of monstrosity!!!
