I think I understand what you’re going for here, but I don’t agree that a bad song from a genre I like is any worse than a bad song from a genre I don’t like. If anything the hypothetical worst song from my least favorite genre would seem like it would have to be a more unpleasant listening experience for me than the worst song from my favorite genre. I can think of bad songs by artists I generally like, and these can sometimes seem worse to me than a bad song by an artist I don’t care for since my expectations were higher. But this is even more subjective than judging a song as good or bad usually is. It’s my own disappointment making things seem worse than they really are.
If a song from a genre or artist I normally don’t care for anyway stands out as being particularly loathsome then there must be something more going on than just my not liking that kind of music in general. I mean, most '90s European electronic club music sounds basically the same to me. I wouldn’t seek it out to listen to, but when I hear it my typical reaction isn’t rage – it’s boredom. But within seconds that “Shut Up (And Sleep With Me)” song had me hoping that the people responsible had all died horrific deaths since the '90s.
I agree with what you’re saying here too, I guess I was just thinking of a different way to judge a “worst song” - for me personally, as you said, songs in genres I don’t like generally sound the same to me, but within a genre I pay attention to, a song that is horrifically bad can really grab my attention and seem like a worthier candidate for “worst song ever” due to my disappointment.
Grunge. All of it. And I’ll throw in “alternative rock”, whatever that was supposed to be.
I remember the day that our college radio station changed from your normal eclectic mix of, well, everything that college students listen to, to “Your Alternative Rock Station”. When I want to listen to rock I want to listen to rock, not an alternative to rock. Based on their playlists they considered the alternative to rock to be “whiny suckitude”.
There’s really only so many times you can expect people to listen to something like “Man In The Box”; I think about zero per lifetime is adequate.
Ah, OK. The Drugs Don’t Work, Lucky Man and Sonnet were all relatively big hits in the UK at the time. Last year they had another hit with Love is Noise.
Except for Daft Punk, naturally. They’re thoroughly excellent, and I have very fond memories of cruising around town in my car when I was a teenager listening to Da Funk, Revolution 909, and Around The World.
There was a lot of bad music during the '90s, as with any decade. I actually quite like a lot of the songs listed here, though…
Oh dear God this song is terrible. Like, really, really awful. The most half-assed, lazy, boring, middle-of-the-road song I’ve ever heard.
If you’re gonna be shit, at least have the decency to be entertainingly shit. I can look at ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’ or ‘The Hampsterdance Song’ and laugh at how bad they are - but ‘Breakfast At Tiffanys’ just makes me want to die.
Len should count if for no other reason than that the lead singer spends half the video groping his sister and the other half looking like a supreme douchebag.
I’m a little amazed that other than the “grunge” post, not a single song I like has been mentioned in here. I was sure some stuff I liked would be dumped on, but no. Anyway my contribution to the bonfire is Good, by Better than Ezra. Just a generic, irritating song with an annoying vocal hook in the chorus. I’m not sure it’s going to work in text, but it went “It was gooo-oood, livin’ with you-wha-awww…”
I actually dig that song, but can’t deny its generic nature. While the songs are normally in different keys, I used to start playing Good, then shift to Green Day’s When I Come Around, then to Glycerine by Bush and Closing Time by Semisonic - some of the chords are different, but they have the same basic structure and it was easy to blur them together…