Ten Of The Worst Songs Ever

1. JIM REEVES-"Bimbo"
Last rumored to be used to interrogate terrorist suspects at secret C.I.A. prisons in Eastern Europe......
True story: as a child I would offer to mow the lawn all summer if my dad would promise to skip this track on his "Best Of Jim Reeves" album.  I had to do that anyway so it wasn't much inducement for pops to ease up on the Jim Reeves turntable action.
Trivia Note:
Jim Reeve's "Distant Drums" kept The Who's "Substitute" from #1 in the U.K. in 1966, more the reason to dislike him.

2. BELINDA CARLISLE-"Heaven Is A Place On Earth"
Do you know I actually had to Google this to find out who sang this?  Imagine my surprise when I found it it was someone who once provided backing vocals on the "More Specials" album, used to be in the Go-Go's, was reputedly a member of the early L.A. punk band The Germs, married some baseball jock (how un-punk rock!) and posed nude in "Playboy" (keeping airbrush technicians gainfully employed). Ack! W.W.D.C.S. (What Would Darby Crash Say)?

3. HURRICANE SMITH-"Oh Babe What Would You Say?"
I'd like to go easy on Norman, I mean he did produce "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" AND The Prettie's "SF Sorrow" right?  True but nobody gets a pass on this.  Here's what happens when you have so much juice in the music industry that they let you make a record no matter how pissed out of your mind or tuneless you sound.  Astoundingly it was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.  I guess there were down sides to the "British Invasion".

4. NIRVANA-"The Man Who Sold The World"
I despised everything about grunge and I place the blame squarely on the now fragmented head of Kurt Cobain and his merry band of filthy unwashed alternative hippies.  I was always amused that they were quick to talk about their punk rock street cred and probably grew up on a staple diet of Led Zep, Black Sabbath and Rush.  That's funny, in high school my best friends were punks and we got beat up by people who looked and dressed like Nirvana.  You don't cover the Dame and escape my wrath, esp. when 75% of your fans never heard anything by Bowie that wasn't on MTV in the 80's.
Here's a true story , I wrote it down in a journal when it happened and transcribed it:

Setting: Two scabby grunge punks next to me in a bar in 1993 (let's call it "The Court Tavern"):
Scab #1 :"Dude have you heard that new Nirvana song from MTV unplugged?"
Scab #2: "Yeah it's *uckin' cool.  Really mellow."
Me: "Can you put your cigarette away from my face and it's a David Bowie song"
Scab #1 "Guh?"
Scab #2 "Buh"
Me: "Bowie, perhaps you've heard of him..."
Scab #1: "Nawww can't be isn't he all like dance music or some sh*t dude you got it wrong"
Scab#2: "Dude. I think I heard something like that"
Scab #1: "Buh?"

5. EDUARD KHIL-"Trololo"
"This one's going viral on the web". Bring me the head of the *ucker who coined that phrase. There's no accounting for bad *ucking taste is there? The former Soviet Union's secret weapon developed to counter The Carpenter's in the event of an all out global music war.  Luckily we had Captain and Tenille waiting in the wings.....Is it me or did he bear an uncanny resemblance to serial killer Andrei Chikatilo with a Wayne Newton wig? His 15 minutes of "going viral" lasted 6 minutes, which was precisely how long it took to watch the clip twice on YouTube.

6. STEVE PERRY-"Oh Sherrie"
When I was in high school I worked at a McDonald's and I'll never forget some guy I worked with, who was actually a really nice guy, leaving work early because Harmony Hut was getting the new Steve Perry solo record single "Oh Sherry".  He brought a close and play to work with him so he could listen to the 45 at work.  A few days later at the end of the shift someone seared "Oh Sherry" on the grill.  It wasn't me, we drew lots to decide who'd do it and I lost.  As if Journey weren't bad enough one of their members was allowed to make a "solo" record?  It "worked" for David Lee Roth (that could be #11).

7. VIVA ELVIS-The Album
Not a song but an entire CD of Elvis tracks with other artist's from a Cirque du Soleil show of the King's music, unlike their Beatle's effort this isn't a bunch of Elvis tunes mixed together.  Oh no.  It's a bunch of nobody's singing and playing along with Elvis like one big karaoke/Guitar Hero with your typical bits of "contemporary music" all lumped in and it's all very, very, very disturbing.  I've heard it in Barnes & Noble too many times and each time it has necessitated a hasty exit from the store. Elvis fans everywhere should hold "Viva Elvis" burnings........

8. LOU CHRISTIE-"Two Faces Have I"
There are more than ten high pitched early 60's U.S. vocal numbers so let's just go with one.  This tune (if you could call it a "tune") takes the cake of them with glass shattering/paint stripping histrionics that exceed Frankie Vali at his worst....this is what a man sounds like when you attach electrodes to his naughty bits while he's singing pre-British Invasion American rock n' roll.

9. STARSHIP-"We Built This City"
Can you fathom that the woman who sang on this was the same gal who dazzled us with "Somebody To Love" or "White Rabbit"?! Beneath a deluge of MTV friendly synths and a dreadful 80's guitar solo lifted right off a Van Halen record comes THE worst line ever written in a "rock n' roll" song:

"who counts the money underneath the bar, who rides the wrecking ball into our rock guitars....."

Insert shuddering Sideshow Bob sound effect HERE! Could this be why Grace Slick retired from music?

10. Any and every American song in the Top 40 from 1982 onwards.....
That's you Madonna, Cher, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Peter Cetera, Mike & the Mechanics, USA For Africa, Stevie Wonder, Billy Ocean, Lionel Richie, Mr. Mister, Billy Joel, Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston, Huey Lewis & The News,  John Parr, Bryan Adams, Denice Williams, Ray Parker Jr., Rockwell, Michael Jackson, Van Halen, Sting, Phil Collins, The Culture Club, Wham, Janet Jackson, The Bangles, Poison and everything else I missed when I stopped dating that dipsh*t who listened to Top 40 Radio in 1986.

Bubbling under...dis-honorable mention this "viral" web sensation: