Five Songs That Should Find A Permanent Home In The Red Hot Center Of A Collapsing Star

I wasn’t going to participate in this.

Music is like pizza toppings… most people like normal, good quality things, and some people are wrong and like pineapple. It’s not worth my time to argue with the neanderthals who like the latter. There’s plenty around to make my blood boil and delving into those songs I spend time consciously avoiding isn’t exactly what I want to do with my free time.

But Paul and Lamar bullied me into it. And there’s a fiver on the line. I’m not below a little ear bleeding for a fiver.

Without further ado, the five worst songs ever (plus a little bit of ear bleach for after).

5. Happy - Pharrell Williams

If your song is called happy, actually make it, you know, happy… I’ve seen more chutzpah from the 4th grade backing chorus... after the funding cuts have hit.

4. The Freshman - Verve Pipe

Fuck this song. Fuck everything about it. Besides sounding like absolute whiny garbage… you know what, fuck it. Whatever. I'm not wasting my time analyzing shit unless they pay me like a Gastroenterologist. This shit sucks. It’s so unearned and doesn’t feel authentic in the slightest, thus robbing any serious themes of meaning.

3. The Four Seasons - Antonio Vivaldi

Bet you didn’t expect some Vivaldi discourse, but here we are. The only positive about this song is that it is, somehow, happier than the song Happy. Actually, this one has nothing to do with Antonio and everything to do with the Verizon Exec (or AT&T, whoever, I don’t give a shit) that decided this would be the standard hold music of every stupid cell phone for like a decade. If you are like me and came into the professional world early to mid 2010’s and had to do things like make cold calls you know the piercing pain of those g’damn violins over a scratchy speaker after the robot told you to “Please hold while I try and connect you.”

I still cringe when I hear it. This is my misophonia song.

2. Fast Car - Luke Combs

Finally some controversy. There’s nothing wrong with this song. Country sucks. I’ll stand by this. However, this is nothing more than the most recent example of songs for and by the marginalized end up white-washed in what’s at best a cash grab.

Commercialized art? Not in this country.

1. Math Sucks - Jimmy Buffett

Ahh Jimmy… Amazingly, despite every bit of my persona saying otherwise, Jimmy is the artist I’ve seen live the most. I fucking love Jimmy Buffett. A1A is a masterpiece (more on this later). And look, I get it. As an artist sometimes you just bite the bullet, create the thing, and cash the check.

This song has nothing to it.

At least the much maligned Cheeseburger in Paradise has some underlying commentary to it: that sometimes you need a taste of home, and in pursuit of point one were destroying everything that makes somewhere “paradise” (am I overanalyzing to make a point? Maybe, but this is my soapbox, damnit!).

And look, I get it. You make one for the studio, you make one for yourself. You get that bag buddy. Still, this song is irredeemably pointless. In fact, it's so pointless, I spelt the title wrong and despite realizing that detail before I hit publish, it's not worth my time to fix.

There’s just nothing here. Nothing at all. If you remove it from existence there’s nothing that changes, which is made all the worse knowing the artist is capable of so much more (see next for example).

Palate cleanser - Tin Cup Chalice by Jimmy Buffett.

Now this, this right here ladies, gentlemen, friends, countrymen, is a masterpiece. I love, no I adore, a proper lament. It’s a style that’s so easy to screw up and sound like a whiny Verve Pipe song (callback!), but when done properly like this it strikes at the soul in a way that is equal parts sad, and equal parts uplifting creating an equal strain on all parts (nailed that fuckin' Easter Egg). This is a proper lamenting plea (My strange proposal) about the main character’s unabashed desires. Like the oysters and beer, it’s raw, simple, and beautiful. This is a proper artists creation right here, the thing that we should circle around and cherish, the thing that transcends. Most artists, even very successful ones, DREAM of creating something this properly impactful. Knowing it exists makes me hate that stupid math song even more.

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This was written for Sam's lovely challenge, details below:

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