Worst Songs Of All Time: Part III

By Matt Neal
Updated November 7 2012 - 12:18pm, first published January 9 2009 - 6:09am
Cher: her songs suck as bad as her costumes.
Cher: her songs suck as bad as her costumes.

JUST when you thought it was safe to dive back into Musicology, here's another installment on the worst songs of all time. The last time we dared broach this touchy subject, we slagged off Bon Jovi's Always, which resulted in quite a backlash. Strangely, despite Musicology's explanation as to why we believe it's a bad song, the Bon Jovi lovers failed to back up their arguments with reasons as to why they thought it was a good song. "You suk, Bon Jovi rox!'' is not an argument. Anyway here are some more crap songs, which are sure to be refuted by the fans and stir up some angst among the many thousands of people who own these tracks and helped make them chart-toppers.Schnappi Das Kleine Krokodil - Schnappi (2005)WE could have picked any of those annoyingly cheesy songs sung by stupid animated animals - Crazy Frog, Gummi Bear, that bloody hamster - but Schnappi The Little Crocodile will do. If you were under the age of 12 when this song came out, you can be forgiven for liking it. If you weren't, shame on you for perpetuating this crime against music. It's annoying first time around, let alone on high rotation, but somehow this gratingly saccharine nursery rhyme sold 75,000 copies in Australia and went number one across Europe. There's nothing wrong with music for kids, but since when do we need to hear it on the radio daily? Horny - Mousse T Vs Hot 'n' Juicy (1998)SUBTLETY is not a key factor in this collaboration by German DJ Mousse T and Brit singers Hot 'n' Juicy. It's about a woman who's really horny. Sure, there have been songs in the past about wanting to get it on (and there's nothing wrong with that) but where's the art here? Just repeating "I'm horny'' 100 times is not sexy or alluring at all. In fact, it sounds desperate and grasping. This song is the musical equivalent of the graffiti you see on toilet walls that has a phone number and the words ``Call this number for a good time''. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone put this on their Chef Aid soundtrack, but added a phone call over the top where they discuss with their manager how crap the song is and why they don't want it on the CD. My Humps - Fergie (2005)HERE is a rough translation of the lyrics of My Humps into layman's terms: "I'm going to get you intoxicated on my tits, my tits, my tits, my attractive female tits''. Huh? Like Horny, there's no time for metaphor or intelligent lyricism, let alone innuendo or even double entendres. It is just Fergie banging on about her boobs. This song conjures up disturbing images of nightclubs filled with women dancing and singing along to this un-sexy piece of smut, while a bunch of drooling men ogling them like a pack of hungry wolves. I Will Always Love You - Whitney Houston (1992)WHITNEY Houston's version of this Dolly Parton tune served it's purpose effectively in The Bodyguard, but outside the film it became so overplayed that turned into some kind of nausea-inducing weapon of mass destruction. The main reason for it's awfulness is the chorus, where Whitney crams as many extra syllables and notes as she can into five words. It's a shining example of the hideous art of melisma, where singers over-sing the hell out of one word by trying to fit every note in the scale in there (see also Christina Aguilera). What was even worse was hearing people try to sing along.Believe - Cher (1998)THERE'S lots of things wrong with Cher - that gaffer-tape-and-seatbelts outfit she wore in the film clip for If I Could Turn Back Time, her plastic-looking face, her enduring popularity. But this song is the worst thing she's done. Her auto-tuned vocals are so over-the-top that they make her sound like a demented robot, which is doubly weird when the Cher-bot is singing about the un-android idea of love. Auto-tuning in itself isn't totally evil if it doesn't sound like auto-tuning, but this is technology run amok. The producer apparently put the effect on Cher's vocals (now known as the Cher Effect) as a joke to test out some software. The record label told him to take it off. Cher said "over my dead body''. If only they'd tested her on that threat.

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