I don't normally write about music on this website. But I really want to bring in the attention of the worst in the landscape; the music the radio normally plays. Also known as Top 40. The website I usually write has a nitpicky, but optimistic tone within. I have hope that anything out of movies, TV or music can be good, even better and these mediums are a form of art. It intrigues, it entertains and have you invested because you are bored and have some spare time. But I have to admit one thing: it doesn't apply to music and I have officially gave up on popular music or any kind of music that is radio. In fact, I have already lost hope with radio music last year when the stations started playing club-oriented music over and over. And that's being played to death right now. Calvin Harris is more overexposed than ever, every female singer-songwriter like Florence Welch and Taylor Swift seems to have sold out by singing over EDM and dubstep. All it takes is one exact formula. However the more I hear that, the more I got tired and not being angry about it.
The point is any songs that are EDM oriented are not going to be on a list and that list will be the worst songs of 2012. These are the eleven worst songs that I have to listen. In the car, in public places, online and on the radio. This is because I had enough with the music landscape run by the morally corrupt and money hungry executives of the entertainment industry and after this, next year I won't be doing the same list ever again.
Keep in mind that I am in no way a music expert or a critic. I am just a guy who is forced to listen to the radio and have to be shoved to my throat.
But first some dishonorable mentions:
Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe
There's no doubt that the song is pretty catchy. The beat, the chorus just goes under your skin and it's the usual-cutey song about some girl having a crush on a boy and wants his number. Gee. Why does this sound so freakin' familiar? Well because it's about something related to a phone. What a surprise. What makes this song worst is its impact. The fact that everybody trying to post themselves lip syncing to the song is just amateurish. And the meme that comes with an Arrested Development pun. That is not hilarious in the slightest. There's even an article about how Call Me Maybe can explain the Euro debt crisis in simple terms. It's a joke right?
Muse - Survival
Oh how the mighty have fallen. Muse have been an enjoyable band since their existence and as cheesy and self-indulgent people feel about their music, it is at least fun. Then The 2nd Law have happened and it is the least essential album the band has ever recorded. I'm not quite sure what was the lowlight. Madness or Unsustainable which is pretty empty. No it's Survival. This song was out as the main anthem for the London Olympics and even it fits in well with its context, it is completely passionless. The lyrics don't add up and it feels so overbloated with its grandeur.
Birdy - Skinny Love
Here's a cover of a good song about love being missing and personified as someone distant. It ewas at least sincere and original. But Birdy, a 14 year old girl from Europe changes this completely. Only popular because one contestant from X Factor sang it without knowing who was the original artist is, Birdy's version is incredibly mawkish and weepy losing much of the goal Bon Iver sets in focusing more on the listener being teary. But importantly she turned one of the most authentic songs ever recorded in indie rock into a cookie-cutter white-girl-with-a-piano song which loses any creative spark of the song.
There you have it... oh wait. You haven't checked out the actual list. Let's delve in.
#11. Will.I.Am and Britney Spears - Scream and Shout
The music video isn't good either and it goes in the same pace as the song itself. The product placement is everywhere while the aesthetic and visuals look plain cheap for a music video sung by Will.I.Am. Will. Leave please. And please people. Don't buy so much of the same crap featuring beats with droning. You don't pay money to hear something you get from licking LSD.
#10. Justice Crew - Boom Boom
This song is the run-in-the-mill song about being at a party. It's a song that George Clooney, Chris Brown and Tony Stark could take an intervention over. It's not that it's bad because it's about getting a girl. It's bad because Justice Crew have a zero sense of charisma that make the song so incredibly pathetic. Justice. Stick to dancing please.
#9. Mumford & Sons - I Will Wait
Worst of all are their fans. Like almost every band people find it hip to hate or just hugely popular, they have huge defenders. They simply find them so remarkable and so ingenious it's the only folk music they'll ever listen to because it's on the radio. If you want to find a better folk artist, check out Bob Dylan or Allison Krauss. Their music is much better than this troupe
Anyway, if their breakout hit 'Little Lion Man' was their 'How you Remind Me', then 'I Will Wait' is their 'Someday'. It's the same formula again and again. That is, they have put in little effort to incorporate or experiment with their music. The banjo playing is annoying than ever. If you intend to standardise your music, that would be one thing. But when you're trying to perfect the sound already familiar to your audience, that is just lazy song writing. Right now, Mumford and Sons's Babel is the listener's choice for Album of the Year for 2012. The people's choice blows.
#8. Train - Drive By/50 Ways To Say Goodbye
50 Ways To Say Goodbye has a good melody, but once Monohan's voice comes along, there's trouble. In the third or fourth line he tries to hit a high note about IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME ultimately sounding whiny. Unfortunately it gets worst. The chorus is a list of things Monohan would try to excuse if they broke up. SHE MET A SHARK UNDERWATER.../HELP ME HELP ME/I'M NO GOOD AT GOODBYE. These sound absurd, but Monohan wants us to take his situation seriously. If you want a song that list all the stupid things a human being could ever have the decency to do, go watch Dumb Ways To Die which is a really good song.
These songs are in no way inept as Hey Soul Sister, but it is still infuriating. I don't think I'll ever see good rock music climb back into the rock landscape as far as Train goes... except...
7. fun. (ft. Jannelle Monae) - We Are Young
fun. is the band that sells out, and I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who have actually heard one of their songs before We Are Young. They don't really attract my attention because their early work sounds like a poor man's Vampire Weekend. But when comparing that with We Are Young, fun. are much better than this.
I learnt that they are popular from Glee and the Superbowl covering and playing their songs, and ultimately it grabbed everybody by storm. I can't stand this song not only because of how did it became popular, but because it has no focus. From the first verse you think it's about some guy who hurt his girlfriend, but when THE BAR CLOSES, it changes out of nowhere. Primarily it's about being young again SO SET THE WORLD ON FIRE.
This is filled with pseudo-inspiration waiting to inspire young people freedom. But at what cost? And at to what point? The sound is incredibly overblown with drums and autotune and it's sad when you have a featured singer Jannelle Monae, the only talent involved, only singing harmony behind the Na Na Nas. fun. is the kind of band that will only get popular once it is played during 30 second commercials. For the commercial it's fine, but as a full length song? No it isn't.
I notice in 2012 that artists today have been sounding familiar to classic musicians. With Of Monsters And Men's Little Talks sounding like Arcade Fire, Bruno Mars's Locked Up in Heaven resembling The Police, Usher's Climax emulating The Weeknd. We Are Young along with fun.'s next single Some Nights resembles Queen. And Nate Ruess is no Freddie Mercury. Just because your sound resembles Queen it doesn't mean having the loudest drum beat anywhere or conquering the world.
I don't really know if We Are Young is going to change the public perception of indie rock, but this isn't it. This is the wrong song. It's also weaker than Pumped Up Kicks by Foster The People and that wasn't going to be the gamechanger, but at least it was tolerable. The only people who are bringing indie rock alive to the mainstream are musicians who are unknown to the public and are mostly name dropped from Pitchfork and the people who are willing to listen to their music. So if you want the genre to be relevant and be represented from a good image, you have to listen to those bands on online radios like Spotify and not what the DJs are telling you what is indie rock.
6. Cher Lloyd - Want U Back
After hearing her most obnoxious debut Swagger Jagger, Want U Back is about her breaking up with a guy and wants him back. To do so, she has to spread mean gossip about the girls he's currently dating wehich is not the worst part of the song. No. The worst part is her grunting which happens after every two or three lines sung. With grunting, you're encouraging women to actually threaten people and their partners if they mess with you. What a good message!
Most of these songs about how someone of an opposite gender that treats them badly and are depicted as vulnerable and could get very heavy handed and offensive. It's like that scene from Fight Club in which Edward Norton tries to tell Helena Bonham Carter off because she's not minding his business. And she's like I saw you practicing this. That is what Want U Back is doing. It's telling everybody off including the persona's ex-boyfriend. This becomes irritating not to mention on the verge of becoming a sociopath. It wouldn't be a huge matter if it wasn't for the repeated grunting, the overproduced and loud rhythm, but there's nothing right about being a huge bitch about everything.
5. Glee cast - Gangnam Style (originally by PSY)
This has never been discussed before on the internet, but I am exhausted from Gangnam Style. I haven't heard a song so overplayed and when you combine how much Katy Perry, P!nk and LMFAO is exposed, it doesn't match. I have also haven't seen a song so infectious by having the listener doing a dance that resemble a guy lassoing since Haddaway's What is Love told people to bob their heads. With that said, I somewhat understand the appeal of the song and what its message is. It, along with the music video is mocking the rich and wealthy in South Korea, particularly the city district of Gangnam to which the song is targeting.
But the impact of this song is almost annihilating. Maybe if PSY didn't dance the horsey dance, it wouldn't be a big hit. There are a dozen of parody videos doing that dance, so many articles explaining how Gangnam Style represents the harmony South Korea had brought in diplomatic relations, that song is everywhere. You can't escape it. But one part of it is horrible and that is the Glee cover. Unfortunately though, the song due to being in another language is very hard to judge.
I reecntly watched a Youtube video of the problem with Gangnam Style and that problem is singing it. You can't sing in its language because to the English speaking world you sound like you're speaking giberrish and for Koreans you're being racist. It doesn't even matter if you're pronouncing it right. You're still going to perceived negatively by your peers. So the only thing you can do with Gangnam Style is the dance. And there's a chance that you're reinforcing Korean stereotypes
That is why I think the Glee version sucks! Even though the singer/character Jenna Hororitz who is Asian and have no experience with Korean pronounce it so precisely, it's still a bad song. The opening beat seems so surreal sounding like a twisted version of the Haka. Worst of all is Jenna's accent which primarily distracts from the entire song. As an Asian, I find this totally appalling and is either self mocking or mocking the song. This is probably the worst cover Glee had ever put out and I don't really watch that show very much so why should I bother. Well... because Gangnam Style will still be with us like the movement of a pilgrimage.
4. Justin Bieber - Boyfriend
Boyfriend is Justin Bieber's worst song. If it was him being mature as his colleagues believes so, then that's just bullshit. What's more bullshit is him trying to emulate Justin Timberlake as a solo artist. Timberlake didn't become a rising superstar because girls want him and he knows it, so what else does he do? He singing about shattered relationships and even add some seductive elements into all of them. That is variety.
As a songwriter, Bieber is lyrically inept and it doesn't help that the song is delivered in a very creepy and kinda threatening manner coming from his rapping and a minimalist and boring beat. And like every song, it's the same problem in which there's nothing backing up the lyrics. He's simply saying he'll be the best boyfriend possible that is just sung off-key and off-note.
If you didn't like Bieber, you wouldn't be surprised that Boyfriend is horrible. It's the same schick that he applied in every song which is as overly cliched as ever and has more use of swag in a song sung by a white guy. He still has a legion of fans who will still buy his products regardless of how bad it is, and despite this, it shows that the guy is so 2010 and is now unfashionable. There's this new boy band called One Direction and with comparison with the 18 year old and they have much more lyrical flow and still has a lot to back up why they're hot shit by being not one, but four other people.
Someone should have told him that if he was going to make it big as an adult, write as an adult. And it doesn't matter about making an impression with your oh-so glorious fanbase. You have to encourage this guy creativity. After all he was a gimmick. Biebs, move over.
3. Flo Rida - Whistle
It's obvious why I despised Whistle since this song is about Flo Rida getting head. I originally heard the whistle used as a sexual euphemism before when Lauren Bacall once told a guy in some 1950s movie and Flo Rida is no Lauren Bacall because unlike her there's no sense of subtlety in this song. And it's ain't because of him. There is no subtlety about getting a blowjob and we blame him because we sing about it. The verses are idiotic in the way that Flo is attempting to hit on a chick right after you hear him babble and the only word that is enunciated correctly is the last one of each line or the chorus. BET eraretign PEOPLE/ BET fdsnbgbren FREAK MODE (what we have here is failure to rhyme).
I don't mind sex sung in song. I heard some risque songs that were pretty decent (Nine Inch Nails - Closer is one of them), but this is just misguided. Now I am afraid of other artists trying too hard in being sexy by making awkward sexual euphemisms out of actual objects (lick that glass bitch/I could put you in my backpack/this book turns me on, Fifty Shades of Grey)
2. Taylor Swift - We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
For those of you who don't me, I have a huge disdain towards country music and I would like to call it the whitest of all white people's music. They have some of the most simple chords with little rhythm going into it that it's easy to play and write a song about. Country has no edge because every time you listen to the lyrics, they sound as corny and bland as those sitcoms you watch on Disney Channel. I would be willing to listen to pop more than country since at least it has something that is interesting.
Taylor Swift is, as you guessed from reading the above paragraph, is not my thing. I would not want to live in a world where Swift is praised for representing a generation of teenage girls. All she ever talks about are boys either not noticing her, relationships inspired by Shakespeare, imagining your life as a fairytale, all of which are so goddamn bland. What critics and her girly fans see in Taylor is like what critics and hipsters see in Wes Anderson. In what I'm saying is that for every song Taylor has recorded and for every film Wes directed, every one of them look and sound exactly the same. Same subject matter, same chords, same style, everything. But where I can at least see what people think in Wes's films, I think otherwise with Taylor.
What people at Rolling Stone, Spin or NME see in her baffles me. Swift represents the everyday teenage girl and if that's the case, I would assume that every girl has the hots for a guy who doesn't pay attention to her. If Bjork was first writing songs while she was 19 and her lyrics are surreal and are totally grandeur, neither anyone would care nor would she be labelled that "once-in-a-lifetime" singer songwriter because she wasn't reinforcing stereotypes young girls would look up to. And that's what America has been doing. They have never paid attention to other female singer-songwriters if they don't aim at pre-teen girls, which is perhaps the most easily targeted at today by the music industry for better or worst. They don't sell songs without getting an audience.
Anyway with Taylor Swift's lead single off from her new album Red, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together is about a post mortem of her ex-boyfriend. And so we are treated to how this guy is a piece of a... ship that made it sank. That guy is Jake Gyllenhal.
Am I not surprised? This is why I don't enjoy her music in the first place as all her creative juices rely on having to involve every man in her entire life. Ran out? Go out and date a famous man for less than 40 days and there's your song. I reckon that if she were to record a new album, it will be two people that fucked with her. Harry Styles describing how his taste in music is tasteless, and 4Chan who almost duped her into performing live at a deaf school! If that happens, she'll becomes the real life female replica of Vaughn from Community.
If this song shows anything is that Taylor Swift is nothing but a misandrist. A woman who just can't stand men. People often toss the word 'sexist' to describe how men objectify women, but they would give anything in that reverse order a pass because already it's acceptable to trump a guy who takes a dump on you even when he does nothing at all to you other pissing you off. Already Beyonce gets a pass and so will Avril Lavigne. So with We Are Never Getting Back Together, this is a sexist joke of a song because it puts a man in his most vulnerable, getting every chance to turn him into an object thrown onto the ground and "she's an adult".
Unfortunately, the strangest and worst part about this song is that this sounds like some 14 year old girl wrote it and heard too many of Swift's songs, had a broken relationship leading up to this. Taylor Swift is 22 for Christ sakes and if that's her turning mature, then that's a downhill. In comparing with Want U Back and Chris Brown's Deuces, they are slightly superior than this. Say whatever you will about Cher Lloyd, as witless as that song, at least it's written by a girl appropriate at 19. Say whatever you will about Deuces, as misogynistic and grotesque that song was, at least it had much emotional punch than this song.
This list contains some songs that gets worst from listening, but with We Are Getting Back Together it reaches the bottom of the barrel for me. The beat is so obnoxious, the lyrics are dumb and infuriating and the subject matters remains as stale with every song she has recorded. And even the defense of the song being 'realistic' or 'experimental' sounds totally off. I refuse to accept songs this bad it's avant-guarde. This song comes off as hypocritical for a girl who sells herself as an innocent pure from the bleaches into that girl who scoffs you off while walking down the lockers
Taylor, please write something else for a change. The only man in your life you have never sang about was your dad. Please sing something about anything other than boys screwing you over!
1. Nicki Minaj - Stupid Hoe
My point is female singers don't have little to do with music other than be in the background while everybody is partying or they have to sell themselves being told what to sing under a contract or else they won't make it. For me, it's a huge waste of talent and doesn't utilize their abilities in music and what creativity they can come up with. This is no excuse with Nicki Minaj.
Nicki Minaj has come under my worst to come radar as her prominence as the first female rapper to hit the mainstream becomes enormously big. Nicki, with her animated rapping and her alter ego Roman Zolanski, is only accepted due to her big ass and how she speaks in words that Aaron Sorkin would never jot down in his screenplays. Her tounge consist about boys, herself and her feud with Lil' Kim which is the most unnecessary feud in hip hop history. And every one feud in history is also pointless. Minaj is almost the equivalent of either Angelica from Rugrats on helium or a laughing jack-in-a-box that won't go back into its box and it will still laugh at you no matter what.
Most female artists have to focus on image rather than their ability to write decent lyrics. Katy Perry is one of them and so is Lady Gaga, but then she tries hard to evolve her music departing from being a frolic-shocker. Minaj only focus on her image 100% at the time and sooner or later there's a small chance it would change. Unfortunately with her latest album Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, it features four hit singles. All of which I could not stand. But one of the song remains unmatched in terms of how I listen to music. And that is Stupid Hoe.
Stupid Hoe seems like a milestone. It's a song in which there is absolutely no redeeming factor into listening to it at all. This may seems so soon, but it's already the worst song of 2012. However it may be proud to be THE WORST SONG I HAVE EVER LISTENED TO.
The song had been given an abysmal reception from everybody especially on Youtube which the video has 66 million views while attaining 600 000 dislikes over 259 000 likes. And that's rare for a music video to have the red status truoimph over green. It happened with Justin Bieber's Baby and Rebecca Black's Friday and like those videos, Stupid Hoe will be watched again and have more views because this video is cool to hate. And I can understand why.
It's pathetic for someone like Minaj to be angry over haters and the whole "haters make me famous" phrase has been used to death and Stupid Hoe is the song about not just Lil Kim, but people who never really cared for her and me included. When you listen to first verse you seem to think that the song was about Lil Kim. Minaj compares her and herself to Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie respectively while she uses Brad Pitt as a metaphor for her fans. But the lyrics goes nowhere and just doen't know who to aim. You can excuse the lyrics to do be dadaist, but I call bullshit. What kind of lyrics are they? System of A Down. At least SOAD wrote these lyrics with restraint, Minaj just does it freely. They fail to rhyme, they are repeated more than ten times and they're never coherent. It's like hearing the ramblings of a deranged patient. So once Nicki Minaj then change the person in subject, it loses all of its poignancy. And so the song has already become a mess when she starts opening her mouth.
The beat is perhaps the most repulsive thing I have ever heard. Maybe for all the minimalist beats I hate in Scream and Shout or any other Black Eyed Peas song, this ultimately blurs the line. The "warps" combined with her vocals is beyond annoying and is incredibly hard to hear. Somehow if you mashed that song with Starships, Beez in the Trap and Pound the Alarm it sounds more like something you hear while being prisoned raped rather than being waterboarded.
This song is worst to hear at any time of the day. I mean LMFAO's Sexy And I Know It had a much engaging beat than this and Rebecca Black's Friday has some focus about a stupid weekday.
Also, I should comment about Stupid Hoe's music video. It is incredibly ugly to watch and is pretty suprising from Hype Williams, who has directed some videos that I enjoyed like with Kanye West, and Kid Cudi. It's over-saturated with close-ups of Nicki waiting to not only annoy us even more, but give us seizures.
I just can't believe of how depraved this song would sound. I honestly can't think of anything that I have missed out of what I hate about this song. If Doug Walker had labeled Garbage Patch Kids the Holocaust of cinema, then this is the Holocaust of music. And I advise to people to stay away from this song as far you could. If you hear this on the radio station, change the radio station if you can. Nicki Minaj is as a deplorable rapper and if anyone dared her to become more intolerable than her, no one WOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULD.
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