Sorry it took an extra day to get to this one. Going over this list was not a lot of fun. I won’t sugarcoat it - IMO, 2002-2005 is the nadir of American pop music, and there aren’t a lot of great songs in this list, but the good news is it only gets better from here.
The year is 2004. There are 30 songs in this set. What’s your favorite?
I voted for Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” – I mean Beyonce’s “Naughty Girl,” which was based on the Summer sample. This is a pretty shallow list when I have to vote for a 30-year-old song. I considered voting for “This Love”, “The Reason”, and even “Numb” before settling on Beyonce.
In dead-ass last place, “White Flag” finishes below even “She Will Be Loved” and “Pieces of Me.” Nickelback is so terrible, they were in effect ineligible for dead-ass last: I did not dare to YouTube their song and confirm how much it sucks. (I don’t remember that song, but I unfortunately do remember the three songs that I did list.)
Smapti is right, it does get a lot better in a few more years.
Very lackluster year, but I’ve got to give it to No Doubt - it’s a smart choice of cover, and a fair stab at it. Also, Mark Hollis got some money and that’s fine by me because Talk Talk were a great band.
It may interest you to know it’s a song with a long legacy - it was written in 1965 by Cat Stevens, and it first charted in America ten years later in a cover by Rod Stewart.
I’m not sure how I missed the Rod Stewart version, but my Cat Stevens collection only goes back as far as Mona Bone Jakon, so I had no idea he’d written it.
the local radio station has a daily “question of the day”. One day it was “There are still 10,000 of these in the United States” and after lots of viewers called in with wrong answers, they said they’d give a hint, and they played Maroon 5’s “Pay Phone” (which was the answer they were looking for). I desperately wanted to call in and give my answer: