This insidious earworm surely ranks in my top five.
As performed by the inimitable Super Dave Osborne:*
*Please note: This clip is extremely non-PC, which is par for the course with Super Dave. You have been warned! 
Nah. Michael McDonald completely ruined the Doobie Brothers!
Hey Ya! by Outkast is the only song that sends me diving for the radio buttons the moment it comes on. If I can catch it by the end of the first line I have a small chance of not having this ridiculous song play over and over in my head for the next three days.
Given that its nearly 20 years old I thought this piece of shit song would have died out by now, but no, it still makes the rounds on radio stations and playing on the background in stores.
No, It’s really not. The message of the song is, “Hey, Alabama’s a great state, and not all of us here are racists. Many of us fought for civil rights too.”
Look at this verse:
Notice that the song BOOS the governor (Wallace)
Paraphrasing:
“Yeah, they voted for the (racist) governor in Bormingham, but we tried to stop it and you still blame us. But hey, how about your own scandals? How about Watergate? That wasn’t us. If we are supposed to feel guilty about the racists in our state, why don’t you feel guilty over Watergate?”
As Ronnie Van Zandt said at the time, “We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two.”
There is no racist sentiment in the song whatsoever. It’s mainly just a song about missing his home state and finding comfort in music. Lynyrd Skynyrd in the ‘Sweet Home’ era were liberals. They wrote anti-gun songs, anti-drug songs, songs about civil rights, etc.
Sweet Home Alabama may be the most misunderstood song ever. The only way you can make it a ‘racist’ song is to assume all residents of Alabama are racist and the state is irredeemable therefore any positive mention of it is by definition racist. And that would be a pretty extreme view.
That said, I’m tired of hearing it, and will change the radio station if it comes on.
Even he admits it.
How can you tell from that mush-mouth?
The thread asked for my hated song and I gave it along with my reasons and, just as predicted, the Defenders appear to tell me the song doesn’t say what it says. I’d hate the song less if it wasn’t for that.
Agree 100%. Odd that many didn’t need to defend the song when it was posted earlier:
I don’t believe Ronnie Van Zant/Lynyrd Skynrd was racist nor is the song, Sweet Home Alabama. Van Zant was a fan of Young, but he took offense to his condemnation of the South in general (not racism), and took a potshot at him with the song.
Young later accepted it as such and reconciled his feud with Lynyrd Skynrd, which I don’t believe he would have done if he believed they, or the song was racist. This article goes into more detail.
Young: “Oh, they didn’t really put me down! But then again, maybe they did! But not in a way that matters. Shit, I think ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ is a great song. I’ve actually performed it live a couple of times myself.”
Weeks after their death [Van Zant and others] in 1977, Young played a charity show in Miami and treated fans to an emotional medley of ‘Alabama’ and ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ in tribute to the band.
I am fighting the OPs hypothetical here because I don’t just want not to hear this song, I want it to never have existed. The song is the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
I hate this song for its religiosity in a good cause, because it taints the cause with its perverseness. I hate it because it is a (vile) hymn that won’t stay in churches. I hate it because it is so self-righteous.
Stanley Kramer very aptly chose this song as the theme song of the religious mania crowd in his film Inherit the Wind. At the end, when reason seems to have at least partly carried the day, this song plays the movie out, as if to emphasize what orgies of unreason await the nation going forward.
Not odd at all. There’s nothing to disagree with when someone says they hate a song, period. Anyone can hate whatever they like. But if someone says, “I hate the song ‘Puppy Love’ because it’s about bestiality”, they are making a claim that can be refuted.
Biggirl says she hates the song because it’s obviously racist. There isn’t a racist line in the song. It boos George Wallace and Ronnie sang that they did all they could do to stop him. Both Neil Young and Ronnie Van Zandt have said the song wasn’t racist.
Of course you can hate the song for any reason If it just reminds you off the South and that gives you bad racist vibes, that’s fine too. But when you make a claim that the song is racist, well…
But sometimes you can grow to intensely dislike a song, say, Born in the USA, solely because some fuckwads decided to turn it into a patriotic anthem without actually listening to the lyrics. If Sweet Home Alabama is used by assholes to celebrate assholery, then it should be fair to dislike the song even though your reason is mangled by antipathiods.
It was mentioned upthread, but it bears repeating : Red, Red Whine.
Close second, Pass the Dutchie. I was about 8 when that song came out and remember thinking “This isn’t a song. It’s babyspeak.”
And how do you know it’s used by assholes to celebrate assholery? I grew up around rednecks and bikers, and heard that song WAY too much, but I never heard anyone say anything racist with respect to it, or claim anything about it other than, “The South Rules! Skynyrd!”
I mean, the same people tend to love Stevie Ray Vaughan, and he did ‘Texas Flood’ and other songs about the south. Does that make him and his followers racists or bad in some other way?
Even more strange, those same people, who tend to be staunch gun owners and supporters, will cheer for “Saturday Night Special”, which is a Skynyrd song about the need for banning handguns. Some people just don’t care that much about the lyrics, or have the capacity to like bands and songs even if they have political messages they don’t like.
Back to songs we hate… I’ll put in a vote for “What is Love?” by Haddaway. Lady, don’t hurt me. If you went to clubs in the 80’s this song was bloody everywhere.
It was a re-make, but you’re not wrong.
Haaa Mahhhaaa NaaaaWhass Cooooon Wooooo Uuuuuu Claaaaaaa Mu Nuuuuu Soooossssss?
Out of my fuckin’ cab! Out!
“A Boy Named Sue”. (Written by Shel Silverstein, performed by Johnny Cash).
In brief: the narrator’s father abandoned him and his mother when he was three. Not only that, but he named him Sue. You can imagine his life sucked. When he grows up, he seeks out his father, intending to kill him. He finds him, and they have a violent fight, which ends with the father praising his fighting prowess and then this:
And he said, “Son, this world is rough
And if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn’t be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you’d have to get tough or die
And it’s the name that helped to make you strong.”He said, “Now you just fought one hell of a fight
And I know you hate me, and you got the right
To kill me now, and I wouldn’t blame you if you do.
But ya ought to thank me, before I die,
For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye
Cause I’m the son of a bitch that named you ‘Sue’.”Well, what could I do, what could I do?
I got all choked up and I threw down my gun
And I called him my pa, and he called me his son,
And I came away with a different point of view.
And I think about him, now and then,
Every time I try and every time I win,
And if I ever have a son, I think I’m gonna name him
Bill or George! Anything but Sue! I still hate that name!
So in brief, while the song does sympathize with the son (and in the end he does say he won’t emulate his father), it still attempts to justify / excuse the father. NO. I’m sorry, just NO. Fuck your “suffering and misery build character” shit. You should not have knocked a woman up and then left her and your child. You should not have given your son a girl’s name. You should have done what was in your power to give your son a good life. I’m sorry that you survived the fight and that you managed to bring your son around to having understanding for your bad parenting. I hate this song and the support it gives for the “misery builds character” philosophy and for letting parents off the hook for treating their progeny like shit.
Christmas glurg is the perfect storm of awful, but 12 Days of Christmas takes the cake for repetition and obnoxious lyrics.
99 Bottles of Beer would only be worse but it is not a real song on the radio (outside of the Mackenzie bros recording which is solid gold, but you get my point).