# What's the worst music in the world?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [September 7, 2008, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455 "2008-09-07T05:01:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/1 "2008-09-07T05:01:08Z")
My coworker forced me to endure the Schumacher/Webber \*Phantom of the Opera \*the other day. I’m still recovering. In describing the experience to a friend, I found myself repeatedly describing it as “the worst music in the world.”
Then of course we get to talking about what’s really the worst music in the world. Of course this will be about the most subjective thing ever, so apologies to any of you who named your children after the characters in this dreadful movie. But anyway.
So. Kenny Rogers? Lionel Ritchie? Anne Murray? Celine Dion? Don Ho? Seriously. What’s the closest we can come to a consensus on this?
And I don’t think, like, the Shaggs count. Cuz yeah, no skillz. But hella entertaining, right? and not so soulless and empty as, like, the empty soulless music of Michael Bolton. Right?
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### Author:  [@BigBertha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigBertha)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/2 "2008-09-07T06:18:11Z")
Rap!
No more need be said.:mad:
But I like to say more, anyway, so, I dislike jazz also.
I will qualify it by saying any band or singer the girls in the audience emit high pitched screams for-sure sign its bad.
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### Author:  [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/3 "2008-09-07T06:29:49Z")
I am not so keen on noise rock, R&B, or ambient music in general.
I also hate Sugar Ray, which is none of those. Mark McGrath’s sucktitude transcends all genres.
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### Author:  [@Neon\_Madman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neon_Madman)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/4 "2008-09-07T06:37:07Z")
Polka
/thread
or there is always [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH07XuH6TI0)
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/5 "2008-09-07T06:43:51Z")
Hard to top _Cats_…
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### Author:  [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/6 "2008-09-07T06:45:15Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> Hard to top _Cats_…
See, I’m on your side. Can we have like a War Crimes Tribunal in, what, the Hague? for Andrew Lloyd Webber? And what’s with the extra b?
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### Author:  [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/7 "2008-09-07T06:53:51Z")
> [@Tamara+](#):
>
> I will qualify it by saying any band or singer the girls in the audience emit high pitched screams for-sure sign its bad.
Yeah, [these guys](http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=h6TIEkB4_F8) were pretty sucky.
Very soon, I have a feeling, every single genre is going to get mentioned…
I’ll still nominate something: a song I just heard an hour ago, when I went out to eat lunch. It was so profoundly bad I had to look it up when I came back home. I’d like to hear from anyone who actually appreciates it, and not in a so-bad-it’s-good sort of way.
[Norimasa Fujisawa: _VINCERO_](http://www.dreamusic.co.jp/site_data/disco/music/385-3021.asx)
Unfortunately, the sample cuts off just as the song enters one of its particularly bad parts, but it’s pretty awful from start to finish.
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### Author:  [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/8 "2008-09-07T07:05:34Z")
This version of [Rocketman](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN3MGN899yE).
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### Author:  [@Hometownboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hometownboy)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/9 "2008-09-07T07:39:05Z")
Spider Robinson reminds us, in one of my favorite similies,
“It cleared the room like a Yoko Ono record.”:eek:
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### Author:  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/10 "2008-09-07T08:09:54Z")
Anything involving instruments and/or singing.
🙂
But seriously folks. I think any indie garage band where people can’t actually hit the notes - tuneless grunting meandering overbearing caterwauling is just unbearable.
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### Author:  [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/11 "2008-09-07T08:30:48Z")
> [@Hometownboy](#):
>
> Spider Robinson reminds us, in one of my favorite similies,
> “It cleared the room like a Yoko Ono record.”:eek:
Only nine posts and we have a winner!
I have my clock-radio set on a Christian rock station. It has to be that or country & western, otherwise I will lie in bed and listen to it and not get up.
But if there was an all-Yoko all the time station, that would be my best bet. I’d turn that sucker off before it even had a chance to pollute my brain.
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### Author:  [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/12 "2008-09-07T08:44:04Z")
North Cameroonian griot music is pretty terrible. It involves a really oddly dressed guy (think court jester, but in Africa) blowing a bagpipe or playing a tiny guitar right in your ear while singing a song that usually translates to “Hello white lady…” You have to pay them to go away. People will take a different route when they see a griot. When someone wants to raise money, sometimes they get a griot to go from house to house in the village to collect money to go away. Griot is an inherited position and children of griots can only marry into other griot families.
I wish I had a sound clip. It really does sound like a parody of the worst music you can think of.
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### Author:  [@buns3000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buns3000)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/13 "2008-09-07T09:48:41Z")
Yoko Ono. Honourable Mention: Coco Rosie.
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### Author:  [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/14 "2008-09-07T13:20:19Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#):
>
> But seriously folks. I think any indie garage band where people can’t actually hit the notes - tuneless grunting meandering overbearing caterwauling is just unbearable.
The band that lived in the apartment below me used to warm up with a 20 - 30 minute version of a number that I called “Tuning While Stoned”. It was their signature piece, and they used it between every other number. Strangely, it was the only thing they played that was consistently recognizable…
I also remember a guy who played on the street who had bought a glockenspiel at a pawn shop and was bashing away at it with a pair of hammers.
There was also a busker on the trains in NYC who had an alto sax that had been run over by a car. His schtick involved shaking a coffee cup with some change in it under one’s nose and saying “If you don’t give me something, I might have to actually play this thing”. Never did hear him play…
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### Author:  [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/15 "2008-09-07T13:27:44Z")
For me there are only 3 kinds of music;
1. Music I want to turn up the volume for.
2. Music I want to switch off, and
3. Music that barely registers in my head.
Different genres fall into each of those categories, and as far as I’m concerned, musical prejudice is up there with mankind’s most stupid traits.
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/16 "2008-09-07T13:48:08Z")
Country died with Hank Williams, Sr.
John Tesh and anyone else who plays elevator music should take the long ride all the way down.
Christian rock is just sad. Mocking it seems deeply unfair, much like mocking the people who make it.
Most political and protest music has a very narrow window. After that it should be buried and never spoken of.
The only good ‘boy band’ was the Monkees, and then only sporadically. None of the examples to come after deserve mention here.
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### Author:  [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/17 "2008-09-07T13:50:51Z")
My brother went through a stage where he would listen to Japanese pop music. Why, I haven’t the slightest idea… but it was _horrible_.
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### Author:  [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/18 "2008-09-07T14:02:00Z")
On second thoughts, I’m with Derleth\*; Christian Rock should be sucking Satan’s Cock.
- albeit a little more extreme.
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### Author:  [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/19 "2008-09-07T14:05:13Z")
Norteño, if that’s the right term for all that shit with the grating accordions and piercing trumpets and caterwauling vocals. Inevitably played at high enough volume to share with all the neighbors. God, I’d rather listen to anything else in this thread than that horrible garbage.
And you kneejerk Yoko-bashers don’t know what you’re talking about. Yoko has made some great records. “Mind Train” _rocks_.
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### Author:  [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2008, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-music-in-the-world/462455/20 "2008-09-07T14:12:43Z")
I’ll nominate the songs from the musical Oklahoma. Jesus but that was terrible.
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