Wednesday, December 7, 2011

The 6 Worst Songs of 2011

On my previous, now-defunct blog, I used to write a monthly series that saw me brutally eviscerating or mildly praising the current chart toppers. Due to the untimely demise of that blog, I missed out on profiling the various and sundry terrible songs of 2011. This post is a roundup of the most atrocious songs of the year, organized in no particular order.

Note 1: The two criteria for this list were 1) the song must be irredeemably bad, and 2) the song had to enjoy the bulk of its popularity during 2011. So, for example, even though #6 was released as a single in 2010, it received most of its airplay in 2011, making it eligible for inclusion (it’s also fucking awful, fulfilling the other requirement for this list).

Note 2: I had originally planned this as a top 11, but since Clear Channel only plays approximately 40 unique songs per year, it was somewhat difficult to come up with a comprehensive list. I ensured that each artist only appeared once, for maximum variety (otherwise, this list could have exclusively been Rihanna songs). If an artist (like Rihanna) released multiple bad songs over the year, I tried to select the song that best captured that artist’s overall awfulness. There are some horrible songs missing from this list because I couldn’t think of anything funny or interesting to say about them. “Party Rock” by LMFAO is a war crime put to music, but I really can’t articulate why I hate it beyond that. 

Without further ado, I present to you, dear reader, the absolute worst songs of 2011:


#6. Christina Perri – Jar of Hearts
Listening to Christina Perri’s “Jar of Hearts” is like being transported backwards through time into a dystopian past where the airwaves were ruled by the likes of Paula Cole and Shawn Colvin. Just as Jimmy Buffet once described himself as “a pirate born two hundred years too late”, Perri is an artist who hit the scene 15 years past the sell-by date for the “unshaved pits chick rock” genre. Of course, if she had existed back then, I doubt Perri would have been welcome even as an opening act on the second stage at Lilith Faire. It goes without saying that this song is terrible; having said that, this song is terrible. If I had to describe “Jar of Hearts” in one word (other than terrible), it would be “overwrought”. The vocals are delivered with such withering intensity and over-the-top enunciation that it sounds like she’s delivering them to the defendants at Nuremberg. The piano composition seems like it was written for the funeral of the President. Finally, the lyrics read as if the Myspace accounts of every 13 year old girl on Earth were combined then distilled to their pure, angsty essence. The only enjoyment I can wring from this abomination is thinking about the disconnect between how Perri imagined how this song would make her former beau feel and his likely reaction. The song is intended as a brutal kiss off to the guy and their relationship, but after hearing it, what guy wouldn’t be tickled pink that he dumped this hysterical twat? Imagine having to deal with this emotional train wreck on a daily basis. It’s similar to how I feel about Adele’s inexplicably beloved “Someone Like You”; who would want to go back to some tub who won’t stop screeching? If I wanted to hear that shit, I’d step on a cat, an experience that would be preferable to hearing this song ever again. 

#5. Rihanna – Cheers (Drink to That)
Probably the worst thing that can be said about Rihanna’s “Cheers (Drink to That)” is that it makes me want to listen to the Arvil Lavigne song from which it samples (“I’m With You”, for the record). Let me repeat that, for shameless emphasis: this song is so bad it makes me want to listen to Arvil Lavigne. I’d like to count the number of “Yeah yeah”s said during the course of the song, but mathematicians have yet to invent a number sufficiently large. The lyrics play out like they were written at the cutting edge of the year 2000, with references to Ray-Bans and the word “hella”. The song is embarrassingly pandering, exhorting listeners to “put [their] glasses up” as well as featuring an extended break during which a drunken chorus sings along. I guess this is supposed to endear the audience to the song, but every time I hear it, I sink into my seat in humiliation. An honorable mention goes to any of the other 58 singles Rihanna released this calendar year, especially the despicable robot sex anthem “S&M”.       

#4. Dev – In the Dark
2011 may go down (no pun intended) as the most sexually explicit year in pop music history. In addition to Rihanna’s obligatory five songs about taking the beef, this year also saw the release of Kelly Rowland’s “Motivation”, which features the line, “And when we’re done/I don’t wanna feel my legs”, implying that she wants to get boned so hard that her spinal column is pulverized. But even more flagrant than that is Dev’s “In the Dark”, which is so explicit that it goes beyond pornography into some warped, Cronenberg-ian conception of sex. Just take a look at this filth:

You know you better spice it
Flavor it
Get it right
Savor it

           When you work on me
Open my body up and do some surgery
Now that you got me up
I wanna taste it - taste it

That shit sounds like something out of Se7en. Revolting lyrics like this are featured over a jazzy, electronic number that sounds like the muzak played in the elevator to Hell. Dev’s vocals are delivered as if under the threat of harm or sedation, so limp and emotionless are they. As for Dev herself, I’m not certain if she’s an actual human being or a sophisticated computer simulation, like the title character from the Al Pacino stinker S1mone. If it’s the latter, I truly hope that America’s cyber security is as bad as the news keeps saying. Losing the country’s entire infrastructure and descending into a The Road-type society would be worth it if Dev is completely deleted from existence.  

#3. Train – Marry Me
If Train’s “Marry Me” isn’t the worst song of the year, it’s certainly the most mercenary. Designed exclusively to be used in commercials, movie trailers, and TV shows like “Grey’s Anatomy”, the song features nothing resembling human insight or emotion. It could have just as easily written by a computer or an alien raised on a diet of Nora Ephron movies. The target demographic for this song is people who cry while reading greeting cards. Even within the profit-driven music industry, it’s rare to hear a song this crass and calculated. Astonishingly, there was another 2011 song that dealt with the same subject matter in an equally craven way; it’s comparatively minimal airplay is the only thing keeping Runner Runner’s “I Can’t Wait” off this list. Over the course of the past few years, Train has been steadily cementing their position as the kings of terrible adult contemporary music. Surely, “Marry Me” is their crowning achievement.    

#2. Jessie J featuring B.O.B. – Price Tag
In “Price Tag”, Jessie J spit’s into the face of thousands of years of civilization by proposing that we abandon traditional capitalism in favor of some sort of sex-based economy wherein we “pay with love tonight”. The anti-materialism message is so trite that I’m sure five year olds across the country roll their eyes when it comes across the dial. Note that J herself prefers to be paid in real dollars rather than love, evidenced by the fact that her shitty album is not available for free download on her website. She also takes aim at “video hoes”, even though she looks like this:

Pictured: Not a Video Ho
B.O.B., aka “The Most Boring Rapper in the Game”, contributes a guest verse that barely merits mention. In fact, I’ve already dedicated too much space to it. In summary, “Price Tag” can be considered a failure because it actually increases my desire to become wealthy, in the hopes that one day I may have the money and power sufficient to permanently exile Jessie J from our shores.      

#1. Hot Chelle Rae – Tonight, Tonight
The members of Hot Chelle Rae, the group behind “Tonight, Tonight”, aren’t just douche bags; they’re the Platonic ideal of douche baggery somehow coalesced into human form. The CDC took blood samples from each member so that they would have a pure strain of douche bag to study and, hopefully, vaccinate against. The name “Hot Chelle Rae” is actually three letters from the Sumerian alphabet that, when placed together, spell the 1000 B.C. equivalent of “douche bag”.  Their douchiness is so powerful that it actually ripped a hole in space-time, travelled through the past, and inspired Harold Douche M.D. to invent the first douche in 1888 just so future generations would have a word to describe the band 120 years later. In regards to this song specifically, I hate every single thing about it. The “Na na na” refrain is the type of thing the CIA would love to blast into the cells at Gitmo on a constant loop, but I can’t imagine even Cheney at his most mustache-twirlingly evil would allow such a savage violation of human rights. Lines like “It kind of looks just like you…mixed with Zach Galifianakis” and “Even the white kids” are allegedly jokes, but have the exact same humor value as my parents getting murdered during a home invasion. What mirth. Hopefully these hipster dicks will ironically reenact Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane crash in the very near future.


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