Worst song ever

Listen at your own risk.

23 Aug

Sexy confident. So intelligent.

Walden Green and friends of the Dirtyverse trawl the bottom of the musical barrel.

Here's a fun party game: get all your friends together, and try to agree on a single worst song ever. While compiling this roundup, I've played this game quite a few times, and there are favorites that come up regularly: "Sweet Caroline," "Blurred Lines," the "Cha-Cha Slide" (all of which make at least one appearance below). But what I've mostly observed is that there is no objective rubric for the worst song of all time (WSOAT). 

A few weeks ago, Annie Clark, the artist better known as St. Vincent, went on the record for Kerrang! and declared the worst song ever written to be "Daughters" by John Mayer. I thought this was funny for two reasons. Number one: Dave Grohl collaborator and frequent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame visitor St. Vincent is positioned much closer to John Mayer in the rockist industrial complex than she might like to admit. Number two is that All Born Screaming, Clark's latest album, has some really atrocious songs on it. "Daughters" is pretty heinous, yeah, but in a way that delivers exactly what we want, expect, and perhaps deserve when we listen to John Mayer. But St. Vincent was once best-in-class, and now she's half a degree of separation away from soy latte with a double shottay territory.

So, in setting out to answer this question myself, my first instinct was to go for the most garish, gaudy, unlistenable car wreck of a song I could think of. Which brought me to "Acapella" by Karmin. If you're not familiar, Karmin are a pair of married Berklee College of Music grads, and beneficiaries of an early 2010s era when two white millennials could not just get away with, but find real success off a YouTube cover of Chris Brown and Busta Rhymes' "Look At Me Now". 

"Acapella" is what happens when two musical strains that have produced plenty of "worst song ever" contenders on their own—theater kid energy and white hip hop—come together to produce something truly foul. But it is not the worst song ever, because enough people just haven't heard it. If you can't elicit a roomful of groans on mention alone, are you really in WSOAT territory? The badness is so surreal, so preemptively parodic, that there's no curve you can possibly grade it on. It is terrible without a point of comparison to anything good.

This paradox, though, gives us an easy backdoor into finding our true winner: cover songs, whether that be the Glee cast version of "Don't Stop Believin'" or, my personal entrant, Michael Bublé's cover of "Feeling Good," by Nina Simone. 

Simone is, for my money, the greatest popular American musician of all time. She maintained a ridiculously high standard of quality over dozens of live and studio albums, consistently demanding to have the fight for Black liberation heard in her work—even the songs she didn't write herself. Simone's "Feeling Good," a song she did not write herself, is joyful, sensual, and provocative solely by nature of her being the one to perform it.

Bublé's rendition? Totally bloodless. Barely tolerable as background music, it's not even fun-bad. Play the two versions back-to-back, and you'll never be able to listen to this one again.

But it turns out coming up with one WSOAT isn't as fun as debating it with a lot of people. So we turned to the broader dirtyverse for their answers. We also, of course, made a Spotify playlist of all the songs included below. Listen at your own risk. —Walden Green

This roundup was voted on by the Dirt Founder’s Pass holders.

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In the first season of Evil, there's an episode called "7 Swans a Singin" about a demonic earworm that infects teenagers through a social media app. I personally found this melody, which subconsciously compels the teens to commit acts of violence, an improvement over the entire discography of the Beach Boys. Choosing a circle of Hell to writhe in would be easier than picking their worst song, but if forced, I might say "Good Vibrations," and I'll never forgive Walden for bringing it back into my head.

Heart Emoji by Coldplay and Jacob Collier - The way I feel about Jacob Collier can’t be healthy. I’m really his opp, like… I pray on his downfall and I HATE to see him winning. But musicians love him, I think because they so resent and push down their critical impulses. But anyway, a notoriously cheesy band like Coldplay especially would be susceptible, but even they should know better than to make something like this. Coldplay is arguably underrated, their cheesiness is their strength. But Collier takes advantage of their weakness and drags them straight to hell—the musical equivalent of one those sick-looking American jelly deserts from the middle of the 20th century.

The way I feel about Jacob Collier can’t be healthy. I’m really his opp, like… I pray on his downfall and I HATE to see him winning.

"23" by Mike WiLL Made-It, Miley Cyrus, Wiz Khalifa, and Juicy J

This song is not so bad it’s good, it’s just bad. If you can muscle your way through Miley Cyrus’ nasally rapping, there’s still so much song left. It would be funny if it wasn’t so painful to listen to. No more songs about shoes.

This song is not necessarily bad as much as it has been a bad omen for me for at least 20 years. I am talking about Forever Young by Alphaville. Five times after hearing it on the radio (by chance!!) someone close to me died. When it randomly played during a mid-exercise recovery in my first Peloton running class I took thanks to a generous free trial (shoutout to the instructor Tobias Heinze, by the way) I remained hysterical until I managed to conduct seemingly random phone calls that were actually wellness checks. The last time it came on I was in a taxi, and I forced the driver to change the station. I blocked it from every platform that allows me to do so, and I hope it never finds me again.

One time I had a crush on a guy I worked with, and he wasn’t texting me back. I controlled the music at work, so my friend Blair and I made a playlist of songs that I would play at work if he never texted me back. Enjoy!

it’s by billy joel but which one…hmmm

it’s either Honesty by billy joel or any country song after 9/11/2001

need a write up? I hate honesty because it’s so maudlin and melodramatic like all of billy joel’s songs but is less catchy and has his worst vocals. the lyrics are basically holden caufield type Livejournal posts about how everyone is just so PHONY, amirite?! I don’t think it’s meant to be tongue in cheek, billy joel isn’t good at irony and can only do it very overtly like in angry young man. just a dreadful listen the whole way through. it makes sense it’s what Kendall Roy wanted to sing while being mounted to a cross in his birthday episode

I also hate james taylor. oh you saw fire and rain buddy? sure doesn’t sound like it in this smooth-ass AM Gold bullshit

(I know it’s about friends who died it still sucks!!)

mgk & jelly roll's "lonely road" — a soulless John Denver interpolation by two guys cosplaying male vulnerability in order to remain famous

“Don’t Stop Believin’” (Glee Cast Version) by Glee Cast

Kidz Bop for adults. Glee premiering on FOX in 2009 was my 9/11. High school theater kids were acting like it was their own personal Avengers. Those acapella “dah-dah-dahs” are as grating as ten million Jimmy Carrs collectively laughing in your face. Maybe worse. Even when I try to close my eyes at night now to succumb to slumber, 15 years later, it’s still Lea Michele’s voice that echoes in the darkest corners of my brain, her soprano the leeching parasite version of a literal earworm, hacking and hawing. She may not be able to read, but she can do that.

Those acapella “dah-dah-dahs” are as grating as ten million Jimmy Carrs collectively laughing in your face. Maybe worse.

I deliberated until the end of the shot clock between Train’s ‘Hey, Soul Sister’ and ‘Where is the Love?’ by the Black Eyed Peas. Pat Monahan and the band’s chipper Disneyland disposition never ceases to stress me out upon his opening shrieks. A moldy white guy singing about his ‘untrimmed chest’ or how ‘I’m so gangsta, I’m so thug’ remains some of the most harrowing choices you’ll ever hear on a pop song. Still, as maddening as it is, it never strives past pop psychosis into gross territories.

But there’s something deeply insidious about will.i.am and co. and how they clumsily navigate grand social issues. The Bloods and the Crips lounge in the same space as the CIA and the KKK, vague, empty notions of love vs hate exist the same way sheepish white people talk about Martin Luther King during Black History month. Never give too much detail or you’ll scare the unwitting suburbia that listens to Black Eyed Peas in the first place.

Post 9/11 America operated in deranged patriotism or vapid, pathetic displays of ‘equality.’ Funny that they invoke the CIA considering this is just the kind of cowardly, centrist propaganda that keeps people from ever rebelling against their oppressors. It’s one thing to be aggressively bad or dreadfully boring and tedious. It’s another to wield both and pacify notions of tangible change in the process. All while debuting Fergie into the limelight. Deeply evil music.

“happy birthday”

I try to avoid thinking of ugly things, but this came to me unbidden: “What Does the Fox Say”

One Corner by Patapaa In 2017, I saw people (read as men) I considered sane jump in gutters, ditches, large holes, shallow wells—anything that looked at all like a corner—to dance to repetitively abysmal lyrics. It's a 3-minute atrocity that should never have been made. Let's maybe not support all indie artists.

So much of my hate towards a song (if not most things) is situation-based.....just as, for example, the best pizza place in New York is "whatever slice shop happens to be near me at that given moment," the worst song is usually whatever shapeless Top 40 track is playing too loud inside whatever store/restaurant/bank I happen to be in. That all being said, the answer is "Tongue Tied" by Grouplove.

The worst song is usually whatever shapeless Top 40 track is playing too loud inside whatever store/restaurant/bank I happen to be in.

This is my health insurance company’s hold music and I’m pretty sure it’s just meant to make you hang up.

Daisy: Hotel California

Walden: Are you sure? You're telling me even if I erased all memory of and associations with Hotel California and let you listen to it for the first time again, you wouldn't say it bangs?

Daisy: Hotel California.

Taylor Swift - You Need To Calm Down

Ugh it kind of slaps though.

“Rude” by Magic!, “Girls” by The Dare, “Me!” by Taylor Swift

Falling In Reverse - "Watch the World Burn"

This song is the aural equivalent of getting Auntie Anne's pretzel grease in an infected Piercing Pagoda navel ring while lingering awkwardly in the dildo section of Spencer's Gifts.

Imagine, by John Lennon.

A song so dumb that not only did Steely Dan reportedly write "Only a Fool Would Say That" as a rebuttal, Elton John parodied it too: "Imagine six apartments/ it isn't hard to do/ one is full of fur coats/ another's full of shoes." Like, yes, John, we've all imagined a world where everybody is nice to each other. Like you said, it is not hard to do.

I like to imagine the genesis of this song: maybe someone asks John what he would do with three wishes, and smug as hell and stoned out of his gourd, he giggles, "to be famous and rich," before catching himself and adding perfunctorily "oh, and, uh, world peace." Later, in a panic, he writes "Imagine" to get ahead of any gossip about his hypocrisy.

Wasn't hard for me to imagine, to be honest...

As told to Daisy Alioto

I’ve been asked this question before, and my go-to answer is always Escape (The Piña Colada Song). The only argument that I can possibly make to justify this song’s existence is that it exists solely to be made fun of. That’s probably the only somewhat-good thing that’s come out of my many (always involuntary) encounters with it. But even the fun of shitting on this song doesn’t outweigh the torture of Rupert Holmes’ insipid lyrics, goopy vocal delivery, and schmaltzy faux-yacht rock sheen that’s about as artful as a souvenir keychain from a boardwalk gift shop, but without the personality or novelty to make its tackiness charming.

Also, Kate Bush told almost the exact same story with “Babooshka,” and that song fucking rules.

don't call me Angel

Three queens maximizing their joint flop

To this I say: Our song, playing in the wild, in the absence of any us. Or Trippie Redd and Torey Lanez’s “FeRRis WhEEL.”

i hate most ballads but this is my personal nadir.

another contender but unfortunately i love it sooo much 

perfect bridge

Avril Lavigne’s “Hello Kitty” is pretty bad. The song seemingly can’t get much worse from the opening chant of "k-k-k-kawaii!" But then Lavigne sings about having a “slumber party like a fat kid on a pack of Smarties.” Okay??? The dubstep breakdowns were already horrible in 2013 and sound even more grating now, she lets out a single italicized meow before the final drop… it’s just really really awful from start to finish. The whole song makes me nauseous whenever I hear it.

My distaste for the "Cha Cha Slide" predated my understanding that this was a social dance. My first exposure to the "Cha Cha Slide" was in the car listening to Radio Disney. I felt an immediate revulsion, internally groaning and yearning for them to play Hannah Montana again. It was the "Cha Cha Slide," Kidzbop, and other classics of the children's birthday party genre that radicalized me into a becoming a hater and left me so unwilling to dance to music I find unpleasant.

I thought I'd escape the genre as I grew older, but to my shock they played it at prom, and people danced to it in a large group. We will never be free until we stop getting up to dance the "Cha Cha Slide." If you think it's a fun and enjoyable song, good for you. But I suspect many of us suffer in silence under the harsh social contract of the simple line dance, conforming in fear of "yucking" someone's "yum," suppressing our inner buzzkill until we hold our own weddings with a 40+ banned song list.

We will never be free until we stop getting up to dance the "Cha Cha Slide."

'Blurred Lines' is objectively the worst song ever made, both for its lyrical content and how overplayed it was, though I don't think that's controversial to say. A strong contender for me is 'Hurdy Gurdy Man' by Donovan. I just cannot take it seriously at all and it makes me immediately want to turn off whatever device is playing music. I find that particular brand of twee 60s self-serious hippie difficult to swallow.

I don't really know what the worst song in the world is (with apologies to musical genius Louis Armstrong, it might be "Oh When the Saints Go Marching In") but I do know it's NOT "Woman's World" by Katy Perry. Sexy confident. So intelligent.

Gotta be It’s My Life by Bon Jovi

So intensely falsely sentimental

A real void 

The songs I consider the "worst" are genuinely wonderful: they shed light on my taste and values (“Imagine”), they inspire impassioned diatribes (“Love It If We Made It”), they get me excited to be a full-on hater (PinkPantheress’ “Pain”). The actual "worst song of all time" would be one that elicits nothing, that causes me to say little beyond, "Yeah, it just never clicked—not sure why.” And what song have I said that about the most? Interpol's "Obstacle 1."

BadBoyHalo's "MUFFIN"

I'm pretty partial to brainrot, but this YouTuber posse cut is like brain-snot, just all queasy-corny lines and a beat that's somehow lamer than anything Dream has used. It's counterculture for people who write ":3 rawr" and call their crushes "kitten" in the year 2024. We need Ricegum back.

It's counterculture for people who write ":3 rawr" and call their crushes "kitten" in the year 2024.

When I was in college in the 80s, DJs at parties would always play Bob Seger's “Old Time Rock and Roll” because Tom Cruise danced to it in the movie Risky Business (1983). People would get super amped. Way more than for any other song. But, it is a song about today’s music being bad. We were just listening to today’s music. Was everybody silently fuming during the Human League? There are plenty of old records they could have played rather than just a song about old records. Why not just play some Motown if you want to mix it up? It didn’t help that Bob Seger's “Old Time Rock and Roll” is the best possible song on the theme “today’s music sucks”, so you couldn’t even really complain.

The worst song ever is “Happy” by Pharrell.

My initial gut reaction to this is American Authors' - "Best Day Of My Life", as it is a song almost solely made to sell products. An almost too happy exterior that's completely soulless and empty as soon as you try to dig into the song. But I can't imagine I'll be the first person to say this song so I'l throw a more unique option with J Bigga - "Pink Chocolate". J Bigga was a semi-popular name in the scenecore world due to his association with Blood On The Dance Floor, but before he went scene he was a Justin Timberlake ripoff in the early 2000s and made a truly baffling album called Laced Me Up, with "Pink Chocolate" being the worst of the bunch with its horrific Fruity Loops beat and horrific vocal production/performance, as it sounds like he's trying to guess the harmonies as he's singing, leading to a sort of uncanny valley vibe only heard in AI music. And yet, this was music made by a real human being that should have a warrant out for his arrest not just for this song, but the amount of crimes he probably did based on the things he sings about.

Anything by Taylor Swift, but if pressed, Shake It Off

The worst song of all time, to me, is “Quit” by LANY.

“Quit” is a song about a man begging his bitch girlfriend to just get over all her trust issues and stop pulling away from him. He doesn’t wanna hear what harm other men did to her! He’s a different guy! Think how good it could be if she could just shut up! Hey girl, NOT ALL MEN!

It’s a bizarrely callous message packaged like he knows what’s best for this woman who obviously has serious misgivings about him. Lyrics aren’t the song’s only sin— baby’s first electronic drum beat underscores the whole affair and it kicks off with the old bubbles popping mac volume increase sound for some reason. LANY at this time was trying to ride the coattails of The 1975 but this song is so devoid of personality and obsessed with LA appearances that it barely works as a slightly less creepy version of The Neighbourhood. It’s humorless. It’s emotionless. It’s dull.

It was my most listened to song of 2016.

I enjoy a lot of music and try to find the beauty in as many songs as I possibly can. But I am never ever happy to hear Train's "Hey, Soul Sister." It's a perfect melding of horrible lyrics ("My heart is bound to beat right out my untrimmed chest" alone is a song-ruiner) and irritating instrumentation (it took until Billie Eilish's "Happier Than Ever" for me to forgive the use of ukulele in pop music) and I think playing it in public should be categorized as a crime. "Drops Of Jupiter" on the other hand is lovely.

"My heart is bound to beat right out my untrimmed chest" alone is a song-ruiner

Omg honestly hands down Peach Scone by Hobo Johnson. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard another song in my life where it feels like i’m being held against my will when I hear it. It’s so bad.

The Happy Birthday Song. Don’t know much music theory but I was in a beginner class in college and they used this song to help us learn to read music. I think the song is annoying as is—something kind of “haunted orphanage” about it—but it’s really exacerbated by how horribly people sing it. Once you start listening when the cake is brought out it’s impossible not to notice. The little diddy is only a few notes but everyone sings it wrong/off-key/changing keys. So the result is this morose train wreck: instead of a celebratory dance it feels more like a forced march. Don’t want to ever hear it again and yet I’ll be stuck with it until the end of my days.

Bom Bom by Sam and the Womp

Horrendous. Terrible. Cursed. Can’t tell the difference between the original and the Simlish version featured on The Sims 3: Island Paradise expansion pack.

Passion Pit's "Sleepyhead." The backbone of this unlistenable indietronica abomination is Irish harpist Mary O'Hara's "Óró Mó Bháidín," a spectacular and genuinely sublime tune that the band samples then transforms into cacophonous slop. Amidst the endless "indie sleaze" cultural revival, I beg that we leave this earworm (derogatory) back in the aughts, along with shutter shades.

Sweet Caroline. Explanation: Boo Neil Diamond and boo the Red Sox.

Ok it's kind of a controversial take but the worst song of all time (to ME) is "Genius of Love" by Tom Tom Club. It's the type of song that bores its way into your brain and refuses to go anywhere. I'm a big Talking Heads guy, so the fact that this song evokes something so viscerally angry in me is honestly surprising – and I love the beat on its own, when it's sampled on stuff like "Fantasy" by Mariah or "Return of the Mack." But I think it's the white people singing shit like "Wailin' and skankin' to Bob Marley" or moaning "James Brown" over and over in funny voices that gets to me... It feels really grating and asenine, and I say that as someone who loves shit like "Dance Monkey" and weird Ween deep cuts.

[REDACTED]

literally any song by kygo I think he should be executed.

When I think of songs that have inarguably done real harm to this country and this world in my lifetime, the first one that comes to mind is Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American).” To me, the 2002 single marks the beginning of a certain strand of right wing culture war politics in country music that arguably persists to this day in pop culture broadly. The song is bold and brash in all the worst ways, a chauvinistic call to fight first and think later, which is a stance that has proven impossible to justify more than twenty years on, if there ever was any excuse.

What’s perhaps most astounding about the single is the galling sense of injustice that oozes from each line. In lyric after lyric, Keith bashes you over the head with a tortured patriotism depicting American empire as a sleeping giant provoked, serving righteous violence with little regard for its consequences. It isn’t just that this Bar Fight School of American Foreign Policy lacks nuance, though of course that’s also true; every image Keith presents is united by the tautology that justice must be served, that America must preserve its place in a global hegemonic order, that any effort to challenge its dominance justifies whatever consequences ensue without question. It’s a dangerous logic that would ring out from the throats of Fox News pundits, warmongering officials, and the office of the presidency for years as the U.S. presence in the region became more and more indefensible. In its rage and in its humor, the single is absolutely to blame for the cultural moment we’re in today. To say that we’re infinitely worse for it feels like an understatement.

In its rage and in its humor, the single is absolutely to blame for the cultural moment we’re in today.

i talked about this extensively with my friend anna gaca who is an editor at pitchfork and we both agreed it’s an impossible question to ask two music critics because we immediately stated arguing what the nature of “good” even means in music. u can easily argue anything is bad but also good. so much of what is “bad” is actually just camp or schmaltz, which are both things i ultimately respect. even bad pop music with no soul can be good and therefore not bad. like me espresso is a song that is terrible but it’s also good. you’ll cowards don’t even smoke crack by viper is an amazing song because it’s bad. all male a cappella groups covering britney spears songs are bad but also good. THE REASON THE SHAGGS ARE ONE OF THE BEST BANDS EVER IS BECAUSE THEY ARE TERRIBLE!!! some of the worst songs ever are inherently good because they are by definition, bad!!!!!!

then anna texted me and said “maybe it’s justin bieber yummy”

Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass. I am only just reading that it was criticised for purported anti-feminism; I don't know about any of that, all I know is that I find it deeply grating on a gut and spiritual level whenever I hear it.

Popular Song by Ariana Grande and MIKA — horrendous earworm; ruined my opinion of Ariana before she began blackfishing

"Love It If We Made It" by The 1975

Whenever Matty Healy speaks for the collective I see red. Who is the “us” in the assertion that modernity has failed us? Because from where I’m standing, Healy gets to say controversial (racist) shit just for the hell of it and be named the philosopher of our times. (And I feel like he's adopted this post-earnesty irony that shields him from any critique...if you're mad it's because you don't get that it's all a joke.) Modernity is working really well for him I'd say!!!

I’m really not trying to be essentialist or too, like, 2016 identity politics about this - people can obviously make compelling art about experiences beyond their own identities. I just don’t feel much emotion or urgency when I hear him string together a number of incredibly pressing social issues that will never hurt him. There’s an emptiness to the song and yet it's cited as an anthem for our generation. He witnesses the zeitgeist in the way a white Asian studies professor theorizes about revolution because they find it interesting, not because it’s an ideology they have any personal stake or investment in.

The worst song of all time is (irrefutably) "Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran. No comment is necessary.

“Freaky Friday” by Lil Dicky

This song was just an excuse for Lil Dicky to “say” the N-word. For what must have been the biggest check of his life, DJ Mustard basically reworked the beat to Ty Dolla $ign’s, “Saved (feat. E-40),” and let Lil Dicky go on about how big Chris Brown’s dick is. But wait there’s more! Before the song ends, Lil Dicky wakes up in Ed Sheeran’s body, DJ Khaled’s body, and then Kendall Jenner’s body, where he learns about the “inner workings of a woman.“ Spoiler alert: Lil Dicky did not solve racism nor did he solve sexism. In fact, he transformed this flimsy concept into his biggest song to date.

I've always loathed "Don't Stop Believin.'" I loathe its cloying bombast, its ingratiating faux-solidarity. I loathed the way the most obnoxious boys at my school would sing it, relentlessly and hideously, after it was featured in a Family Guy episode in 2005. I hope the remaining members of Journey sue each other into oblivion. They stopped believing a long time ago.