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Worst Songs You've Ever Heard


Johan Liebert

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrUvu1mlWco

 

Nothing against Miley, and the video is irrelevant. This song was just plain boring and a drag to listen to even if I try. Normally if I make myself listen to songs like this, it gets stuck in my head and eventually becomes catchy and I end up liking it, but not this song.

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I don't really listen to a lot of artists, but I've heard a few that I thought were horrible.

 

1. Royals by Lorde. The singer is younger than I am by around 2 years, but it just sounds awful. I've heard a 14-year old Japanese girl sing thousands of times better than her [that was back in '02-'03 though].

 

2. Wrecking Ball (and its parodies on Youtube)

 

 

Yeah, the list is kinda small, given I generally listen to either anime soundtracks or hip hop/R&B stuff off the radio. Certain things, I'm not fond of.

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What's with all the Lorde hate? 

I thought people pretty much idolized her. 

 

Personally not a major fan, but she's got a certain uniqueness. Royals is probably the most mediocre song on Pure Heroine. 

I recommend listening to the entire album before passing judgement. 

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I never get the point of these threads. Unless it comes from a critical background, rather than a personal opinion, this is a 'Songs You Don't Like' thread rather than a 'Bad Songs' thread. They spiral into 'trash everything I hate' threads, with nothing more than that. More of the Internet Syndrome that we'd rather publicise things we hate rather than introduce new things to people.

Royals and Miley hate are unnecessary, in my opinion. Bangerz is a good album. Off-kilter pop sensibilities with some of the best producers in the game (mostly). And Royals is a plain-out well-composed song. Her singing style is divisive understandably, but she's probably one of the best songwriters in the game, and Joel Little one of the most solid producers as well.

Also, the cardinal sin has been performed several times in this thread: judging music you have not heard on the celebrity rather than the music. I'm unwilling to criticise a person's music if I'm totally unaware of that music is, or I'm basing it off maybe one single.

How about I recommend severely underrated songs instead? Janelle Monáe's Tightrope didn't have the publicity it deserved. Jessie Ware's Running or SBTRKT's Pharoahs for cool stuff from the UK scene.

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I'm not about to rant about pop music being awful, but I really do hate it passionately. I have my reasons though...

 

For starters, the songs are generally written incredibly cheaply and are very repetitive which gets extremely boring. There are 25 minute long songs with less repetition than a 3-minute pop song (see Symphony X - The Odyessy).  They are designed specifically to get stuck in your head rather than for you to actually enjoy them. That is how they sell music these days...
Also, the music has become probably the least important part of music behind advertising and what the "artist" looks like. Talent has therefore been thrown out of the window and replaced with auto-tuners/computers.

Then there's the amount of money these people get for mouthing/singing into an auto-tuner that is just ludicrous...

They contribute nothing positive to society and have created a pop-star culture where everybody expects to become famous by making people idolize them for what they do. A lot of them (not all) are not people to idolize at all. They didn't work hard at school, have never contributed to society or have had fame and riches thrust upon them. Some of them are also smokers/alcoholics/drug users which shouldn't be idolized whatsoever.

 

As a singer/electric guitarist I get insulted at all the untalented and musically ignorant people who become famous "musicians/singers/artists". I work extremely hard and will never achieve the wealth they have achieved just for being pretty and having no brains/talent.

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I'm not about to rant about pop music being awful, but I really do hate it passionately. I have my reasons though...
 
For starters, the songs are generally written incredibly cheaply and are very repetitive which gets extremely boring. There are 25 minute long songs with less repetition than a 3-minute pop song (see Symphony X - The Odyessy). They are designed specifically to get stuck in your head rather than for you to actually enjoy them. That is how they sell music these days...
Also, the music has become probably the least important part of music behind advertising and what the "artist" looks like. Talent has therefore been thrown out of the window and replaced with auto-tuners/computers.
Then there's the amount of money these people get for mouthing/singing into an auto-tuner that is just ludicrous...
They contribute nothing positive to society and have created a pop-star culture where everybody expects to become famous by making people idolize them for what they do. A lot of them (not all) are not people to idolize at all. They didn't work hard at school, have never contributed to society or have had fame and riches thrust upon them. Some of them are also smokers/alcoholics/drug users which shouldn't be idolized whatsoever.
 
As a singer/electric guitarist I get insulted at all the untalented and musically ignorant people who become famous "musicians/singers/artists". I work extremely hard and will never achieve the wealth they have achieved just for being pretty and having no brains/talent.

Where to start? You've put in place so many generalisations and assumptions that your point doesn't have any major significance at all.

On Exclusivism

I've crossed out pretty much everything that I think is a bit off-topic for simplification's sake. This is not a 'The Nature of Celebrity'-esque topic. For the purposes of musical critique, I couldn't care less about the wealth of an artist or their fame. Essentially, there's no point lamenting on how the universe works. The universe does not always favour the intelligent and talented.

For a direct counterexample, the artist, Grimes, makes what is essentially pop. She was expelled from school, and is not a trained musician. She makes her music in GarageBand. Her 2012 album, Visions was on the end-of-year top album lists of NME (2nd), Allmusic (1st), The Guardian (2nd), Pitchfork (6th), while also being nominated for the Polaris Music Prize, and winning a Juno Award. One of the tracks, Oblivion, is classically structured pop (verse-chorus-bridge), while still managing to earn itself the opinion as best track of 2012 from a lot of publications.

In the same way that you believe that certain people don't belong in the music industry at all, there are many classical observatory-trained musicians who believe that music is incredibly exclusive.

Computers/Auto-Tune has not replaced talent

If good music is good music, does it really matter whether the person was talented or not? Love the music, not the artist. Obviously, we're all human and we all like to idolise, but you can't be so aggressively hypocritical about the way celebrity and idolising works. Computers themselves have the potential to be instruments - I don't think any of the music that you own would sound as good without computers (in fact, Symphony X's The Odyssey - their orchestral sound are definitely synthesized; that song, by your logic, should not be allowed to exist if they cannot play every instrument in the orchestra or have enough money to hire one out). Some of the greatest sounds of all time are custom, experimental, electronic sounds.

Writing Pop Music

"That is how they sell music these days..." This makes no sense. Since the beginning of time, humans have loved all that is catchy about the world. Pop songs are written to be catchy, because that's what appeals to us.

The concert-filling Classical music was 'conventional'. The pieces that broke the least conventions, were the most 'catchy' to the ear, were the ones that were commissioned to orchestras. Experimental pieces weren't performed as often - they had smaller audiences, simple as. This has been seen throughout history: Indonesian gamelan music is fundamentally simple, bards' ballads were simple and catchy, folk songs are simple and catchy, the entire history of modern music is dominated by simple and catchy music. The norm is no worse than the experimental. What matters is musical integrity. It helps if a song plays with new, untrodden audio design, but this does reduce the worth of a good solid pop album. Good music is not necessarily complex.

Repetition is also not a bad thing. See Ravel's Boléro for the most obvious example of repetition in orchestral work. By claiming repetition as a bad thing, you've essentially slagged off the entirely of Indonesian gamelan, Classical music, Pre-Classical music, and many more traditions.

Basically, catchiness is always good. Repetition is not bad. Complexity is not necessarily good.

My opinion of big commercial painting-by-numbers songs is mixed. On one hand, I do think that their strength lies in their catchiness - and that's no bad thing. It's enjoyable. One the other hand, having positives in as many other criteria as possible is a bonus - hence favouring musical integrity. So much of pop achieves this though, that I fail to see where your complaints are coming from. Pop is not merely the Billboard Top 100. It exists beyond that, and I'm sure there's plenty of pop that you have ignored beyond that. And I'm sure there's plenty of crap pop that's not in the Billboard Top 100 too.

Pop is Not the Only Genre with Bad Music

Yes, everything from metal to bossa nova has mediocrity.
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You guys asked for bad music?
Here is some horrible music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLYoJgbybes

Like seriously, it actually makes me cringe.
"metal"core or whatever you want to call it mixed with swag..
Bleh, its the worst of pop music combined with the worst music genre on the world...
Like its just horrible.

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