The biggest music celebration of the year, the Grammys, is fast approaching. So I thought I’d squeeze in a little more stone-cold cynicism before the tawdry glitz and glamour of the music industry’s biggest awards ceremony.
To get things started, I surveyed the Soundcore team to learn what the office’s least favorite songs of the decade were. This immediately proved to be a mistake. My questions gave rise to several hours of YouTube and Spotify performances as people reminisced about ‘Friday’, ‘Barbra Streisand’, and worse. It was much more peaceful to lock myself in a meeting room, trawl the internet, and steal ideas from other blogs about terrible songs. So that’s what I did.
And without further ado, let’s start the countdown! DRUMROLL PLEASE 
Straight in, at number 5:
Alison Gold - Chinese Food
If we ignore the casual racism, the strident autotune, the awful lyrics, the mind-numbing melody, the tedious video… and… hmm, doesn’t look like there is anything left to ignore. It appears there are no redeeming features and it’s all absolutely awful.
Slightly worse, at number 4:
Justin Bieber - Baby
Justin Bieber would be a lot harder to hate if he wasn’t such an insufferable little turd. I could have chosen any of his songs from the last ten years (Baby was one of the decade’s first releases in January 2010) but this feels like his most iconic, and therefore most annoying. If you don’t believe he’s bad, just ask China, where he has been banned for being a turd (official wording may differ).
It keeps getting worse, at number 3:
The Chainsmokers - #SELFIE
A narcissistic statement that lacks too much self-awareness to be taken as the satire that it was intended as. Indeed, the thousands of millennials who adopted this song as an anthem for their vacuousness seemed to miss the memo that it was trying to make fun of them. Oh, and the tune is so mind-numbingly forgettable that I can nearly forgive my mom for all the years of complaining that ‘EDM is just noise’.
Almost at maximum badness, at number 2:
Brad Paisley Feat. LL Cool J - Accidental Racist
I’ll be totally straight with you here, I’d never heard of Brad Paisley (let alone this song) before I started putting this list together. So its very presence is a testament to just how off-the-wall insane it actually is.
Ostensibly, it’s about a man in a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt apologizing on behalf of his racist ancestors to a black person working in Starbucks. What could go wrong? Well, his problems begin when he uses 8 verses of ignorant drivel to say he’s sorry. And not even LL Cool J’s lyrical deftness can redeem it. If you don’t judge my gold chains, I’ll forget the iron chains. Yikes.
And the absolute worst song of the decade, at number 1:
Pinkfong - Baby Shark
Sure, the previous song contained undeniable racism. Yes, Justin Bieber could possibly be Satan himself. It’s true, The Chainsmokers perpetuate narcissistic culture. So how on earth can a cute kid’s song about a lovely little fish be worse?
Baby Shark is a psychological warfare experiment developed by the CIA. Someone has written a song so sickeningly sweet, so unbearably cheesy, and so unforgettably catchy that it’s a danger to anyone without hearing protection.
The only other possibility is that it was written by The Shark Propaganda Department to lull us into a shark-loving sense of security before they start a major offensive to rid all surfers of their feet. Either way, it scares me.
So that’s my list! What do you guys agree and disagree with? Let’s see your own lists in the comments below and I’ll pop in to show you where you’re wrong if your list differs from mine.
