Worst Songs

Worst songs of all time

Music is a large part of our lives. Whether it’s listening to the ipod on our way to Grand Forks or tuning in to the XM radio stations on our TV or Kristie listening to the Big Dogs on KJ 108 as she gets ready for work, we have a constant stream of music flowing throughout our home.

A few weeks ago, a certain song came over the TV and both Kristie and I were clamoring for the remote to change the station. The same happened a few days later.

This got me to thinking about the songs I despise the most.

Now, I excluded all country and rap from the list. It is just a given that both of those genres are horrible and I couldn’t compile a list long enough to cover the atrocious music country and rap have contributed to the airwaves.

I also excluded some songs that I hate, not because they are bad but simply because they were/are so overplayed that they a fine song soon became an instrument of torture. Some examples: “Good Riddance/Time of Your Life” by Green Day (have you ever attended a graduation where this was NOT played?), “It’s the End of the World as We Know it” by R.E.M. (when Y2K rolled around, this song became sickening), and “Run-Around” by Blues Traveler (this would have been a fine song, but our pitiful excuse for a radio station XL93 picked it up and played it once an hour all summer long).

Others have been excluded because ALL of their catalog is terrible (any boy band you can think of, Celine Dion and Meat Loaf would be two excellent examples).

So, keep those in mind as you read my list. If you have any additions, let me know.

10. Take on Me – a-ha.

Now, I’m a bit biased here. I think you’ll find a wealth of songs on her from the craptacular year for rock music that was 1985. Only three ‘rock’ albums sold over a million albums that year – Motley Crue’s “Theatre of Pain,” Ratt’s “Invasion of your Privacy” and Deep Purple’s reunion album. Slim pickings for a rock junky like me. Now, there was plenty of synth rock on the radio (Springsteen, Tears for Fears, Level 42, and the Outfied) that year. But the majority of it sucked.

If I’m not mistaken this terrible excuse for music also came out in 1985. I am convinced that it had not been for the popular cartoonish video, this song would have quickly faded. As it is, because of the video, this song hounded the airwaves and drove me to my beloved cassettes. Is it any wonder I wore out my “Pyromania,” “Stay Hungry,” “Shout at the Devil,” and “Powerslave” cassettes?

9 Jump – Van Halen.

Wait a second. What am I doing putting a decent rock song on here? That’s the problem. It’s not a decent rock song. Granted this dominated the airwaves in 1984, but it doesn’t even come close to comparing to “Panama” or “I’ll Wait” from that same album. Plus, this song – while Van Halen’s most popular – marked the end of the David Lee Roth version of the band. Plus, it signaled the death of guitar rock for the 1984 and 1985.

When I heard this, I thought it was great. You can’t get Eddie Van Halen’s synthesizer out of your head. But then I listened to their classic first album with “You Really Got Me,” “Atomic Punk,” “Jamie’s Cryin’,” “Eruption,” and “Running with the Devil.” That’s real rock. This sounds like disco compared to the sonic vibrations from their first album.

Plus, the lyrics make no damn sense.

8. Wake Me up Before you Go Go/Careless Whisper – Wham

A double whammy. Have there ever been two crappier songs in the history of man kind? God forbid aliens ever siphon some of our airwaves and hear this. The martian death rays will be here within seconds. How could any intelligent life form create such drivel?

The first song is so annoyingly upbeat it makes me want to gag. The worst part was we had to listen to this song seemingly every day on the way home on the bus. It’s as if the radio station knew I was a captive inside the yellow cage and played it precisely at 3:10 just to torture me.

Plus, if you have ever seen the short, shorts and hair legs in the video, that’s grounds for the death penalty right there.

The second song is a miserable ballad that haunted the airwaves of – you guessed it – the God awful year of 1985. I don’t think there is one song that sums up how terrible and shallow the music of 1985 was quite like this one.

7. Invisible Touch – Genesis

In the 70’s Genesis put out some good music. However, when they got back together in the 80’s, though I think this song is from ’86, not the dreaded ’85, they released some horrible music. What the hell is an invisible touch anyway?

Is there even a decent guitar riff in this song? It’s all synth and foolish lyrics. This marked the end of anything cool from Genesis. No wonder Phil Collins’ damn hair fell out. He was never the same. He had some okay solo stuff in the ‘80s – “In the Air Tonight” and so on, but then he went bald and nuts. Didn’t he do a Disney song? Enough said.

6. Walk This Way – Aerosmith

You know you’re a craptacular band with an even more craptacular song when it takes a RAP group (Run-DMC) to make your music relevant again.

Everything I hate about Aerosmith – besides Tyler’s mutated lips and over the top voice – can be summed up in the brilliant lines “The cheerleader was a real young bleeder.”

Not exactly Bob Dillon or Chris Cornell lyrics there.

5. Fly Away – Lenny Kravitz

Talk about horrible lyrics. How many times can you sing the line “I want to fly away”?

How long do you think it took Lenny to come up with the first stanza:

“I wish I could fly/Into the sky/So very high/Just like a dragon fly”?

He must have taught Nickelback a thing or two about rhyming every single line in a song.

Lenny was not going to include this song on the album (which is too bad because this was the only hit off of it – outside of his cover of “American Woman,” which was added to later editions of the album after its release), but he decided to include it at the last second.

4. Photograph – Nickelback

This one was overplayed. But if it had just been played once, it still would be horrendous. And it’s too bad because Nickelback had some decent songs early on in their careers (“Leader of Men”), but then they released “All the Right Reasons” and totally sucked.

How about this phenomenal first stanza –

“Look at this photograph
Every time I do it makes me laugh
how did our eyes get so red?
And what the hell is on Joey’s head?”

What the hell is on my radio? Is a more appropriate question.

Oh it gets better –

“This is where I grew up
I think the present owner fixed it up
I never knew we ever went without
The second floor is hard for sneakin’ out”

They don’t even rhyme new words! Are they that stupid they can’t come up with something else to rhyme with ‘up’ and ‘out’? I know Ozzy did this on “Warpigs” (generals gathered in their masses just like witches at black masses) but that’s Ozzy, the man has enough drugs in his body at any given time to kill several large farm animals.

Now for the brilliant third stanza –

“This is where I went to school
Most of the time had better things to do
Criminal record says I broke in twice
I must’ve done it half a dozen times”

Here they give up trying to rhyme. By the time the chorus kicks in, any sane person is looking for a gun.

3. All I Want to Do (Is Make Love To You) – Heart

This is one of those horrible ‘story’ songs. A lady picks up a young guy in the rain, has a one night stand, comes around a year later, sees him, picks him up again, only this time he sees that she has a child with him, and the child has his eyes, he gave her what her husband couldn’t. Retching, retching, retching.

My favorite line from the song

“I am the flower you are the seed
We walked in the garden
We planted a tree “

I couldn’t make crap like that up if I tried.

2. Money for Nothing – Dire Straits.

Dire Straits indeed. Maybe no song sums up how terrible music was in ‘85 like this song. Like aha’s blathering, had this song not had a cartoonish video, we might never have heard it. But given that it references MTV, it was a lock to make it into heavy rotation on the channel.

Songs like this make me happy that MTV doesn’t play videos anymore.

Is there a more annoying synth line or chorus (Get Your Money for Nothing and Your Chicks for Free)? Even having sting add some vocals doesn’t help this piece of trash. It’s hard to believe this is the band once gave us “Sultans of Swing.”

1. We Built this City – Starship

By FAR the worst song ever. Again, from 1985.

It’s so terrible, and such a sell out, that Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship didn’t even want their band’s name associated with it, so they just called themselves Starship on this one.

Of course they claim “We Built this City on Rock and Roll,” but what comes out of the speakers is anything but rock and roll.

When I think of rock and roll, I think of a little “When the Levee Breaks,” or “You Shook me all Night Long” or “In the White Room” or “