Well, we've done a lot of celebrating here at Screenaged Kicks Towers in the past week or so. Now it's time to flip the coin and begin lamenting some of the very worst things to happen to music in 2009. So, without further ado, I present you with part one of the traditional Screenaged Kicks 'worst 20 singles of the year'.
20. ANIMAL COLLECTIVE: My Girls
Thousands of the world's finest chin-stroking wankpots are devoting a frankly ludicrous amount of their time to telling every disinterested fucker within a twenty mile radius that Animal Collective are "changing the face of modern music." Their current album, 'Merriweather Post Pavillion', tops a new blogosphere 'record of the year' entry every 1.4 miliseconds, despite the fact that 80% of those who HAVE heard it didn't make it past track three. Yes, the LP is another exercise in, to coin a band name, woefully mindless self-indulgence, an attempt to be as musically 'radical' and 'avant garde' as possible, to the detriment of any semblance of enjoyment whatsoever. 'My Girls' is the perfect encapsulation of 'Merriweather's depressing lack of life, a five minute meandering mess that goes absolutely nowhere and feels like it's deliberately pissing all over your earlobes JUST BECAUSE IT CAN. Avoid.
19. MARILYN MANSON: Armagoddamnmotherfuckinggeddon
Brian Warner seems to have forgotten that he ceased to be at all interesting about six years ago (you know, around the time he started massacaring already-rather-shit 80s pop songs) and still insists on putting out new records, despite the fact that the listening public really couldn't give a shit. Where once he could whip American neo-conservative nutjobs into a frenzy of excitable panic simply by breathing on FOX News, now even the most steadfast of uber-right wing hard-asses finds it difficult to take any of his antiquated shock tactics seriously. Honestly Manson, do you really think adding 'goddamn' and 'motherfucking' to the word 'Armageddon' is going to rile anybody? Are you deluded enough to believe that couplets like 'First you try to fuck it/Then you try to eat it' are going to come across as anything other than embarrassing, half-arsed attempts to recapture former controversial glories? You're not even trying, Brian! Hell, the song's just 'Disposable Teens' with dirgier guitars. Come back when you've got some original ideas. Next!
18. FRIENDLY FIRES: Jump In The Pool
Oh please do, guys. And make it the shallow end, would ya? I'm not sure how much more of your soulless drivel the world can take.
17. HEALTH: Die Slow
Ah, NME. How thoroughly sodding evil you are. Thanks to the magazine's recent bandwagon jump onto the fetid, diseased cock of half-arsed, pompous 'indie electronica', we now have to put up with complete and utter doggerel like this on every self-respecting music channel and in virtually every indie/alt club in the UK. It barely matters who the artist is, the output's always the same. Lazy synthesisers, muffled vocals, the absence of any sort of melody. HEALTH are just the latest peddlers of this achingly cool trend, and 'Die Slow' is just another example of why the music industry is in dire need of a good fucking cleansing. They don't even look like they're interested in their own music, for God's sake! Truly mind-numbing.
16. LITTLE BOOTS: New In Town
Oh, just look at Little Boots, eh? Look at what she can do! Within the space of a single minute, and armed solely with her depressingly average vocal chords, she gets half of down-town LA's ever-burgeoning gangster population to swap their weapons for dancing shoes and start gyrating in rather stunningly choreographed fashion to her latest La-Lady-Lily-Pixie-Winehouse knock-off! With that sort of power, what the hell is she doing making mundane crap like 'New In Town'? Someone mail her to Iran quick, before Ahmadinejad decides to press the red button instead of the yellow one. At least then she'd probably be unable to get anywhere near a recording studio.
15. LADY GAGA: Paparazzi
For all 'Poker Face' might not be the most Earth shattering single of all time, at least it isn't as thoroughly excrable as this bucket of horse manure. 'Paparazzi' is about as irritating as a bout of genital herpes, and frankly, the genital herpes have a lot more going for them. At least they're probably the result of something enjoyable. 'Paparazzi' comes from a place devoid of any redeeming features whatsoever, a black hole of pop detritus that just will not stop spewing its diarrhoea at you until it's satisfied that your soul has drowned in its murky depths. You won't be able to avoid it, regrettably, but you can do your best to counter its effects by carrying a sledgehammer at all times and using it to obliterate any device that is being used to give it airtime. Simples.
14. FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE: You've Got The Love
As if the countless - and we really do mean countless - remixes, re-releases and re-recordings of The Source (featuring Candi Staton, importantly)'s deathly hollow early 90s dance car crash weren't enough to keep the human race ticking over for about, oooh, twenty millennia, in 2009, Florence felt the need to unleash her sorry excuse for a Kate Bush imitation on the bloody thing. Result? A cover version so completely devoid of life that it threatens to send you into a catatonic state every time it's spunked all over by Zane Lowe, Jo Whiley and just about every other mindless automaton on British radio.
13. 3OH!3 (feat KATY PERRY): Starstrukk
Where to begin? The lacklustre beats? The Vanilla Ice rapping? The tuneless warbling? Katy Perry's insipid guest appearance? 'Starstrukk' is just one of many virtually unlistenable 'party songs' (or some such bollocks) on 3Oh!3's debut album; you know, the one that NME described, in a roundabout sort of way, as "the worst thing to happen to music in years". And that's saying something, coming from the magazine that actually enjoys The Horrors. At first, you may be inclined to think that there's something 'ironic' in 3Oh!3's unashamed shittiness; that the half-baked minimalism and abundant cliches are actually a knowing nod to the increasingly image-obsessed and consumerist Zeitgeist. Then you realise that no, they're just fucking awful.
12. HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD: Everywhere I Go
And here's another lot that could do with a good fucking culling. Not only does 'Everywhere I Go' contain possibly the single most eye-gougingly irritating melody of the century, but it's also a great big dollop of unashamed sexism, a brash assertion of the masculine prowess of one particular member of the band and his 'weenie' that he just 'loves to show'. "Oh but it's a joke!", cry Undead's - quite probably lifeless - followers, "You're not supposed to take it seriously!" Yeah, well, it ain't big, it ain't clever and it most definitely is the furthest thing from funny. Hollywood Undead are effectively a poor man's Bloodhound Gang and that, my friends, is probably the biggest insult there is.
11. PAPA ROACH: Hollywood Whore
'Hollywood WHOOOORE!/Passed out on the FLOOOOOR!/Can't take it no MOOOORE!' Well, Coby Dick, sorry, Jacobi Somethingorother, your lyrical prowess has certainly improved with age, hasn't it? Ah dear. When will these idiots learn? Yes, guys and gals, just when you thought it was safe to come crawling out of the hole you'd dug for yourself after 'The Paramour Sessions', Papa Roach are back to empty their sphincters all over your earlobes one more sodding time. Laughably, 'Hollywood Whore' is about 'the glorification of the entertainment industry' and is effectively a load of holier-than-thou finger-pointing at 'out of control' celebrities like 'Britney Spears and Paris Hilton' (Shaddix's words, not ours). Yes, Jacobi, because you've never gotten pissed out of your skull or snorted cocaine off someone's backside, have you? Oh no, this guy's the freaking poster child for abstinence. And in any case, don't you think it might be a little more beneficial to, oh, I don't know, do something to help these poor, broken individuals rather than giving them more reasons to feel bad about themselves? I'm sure Paris is just jumping for joy at the fact that you've called her a 'whore' several times during the course of this song. Yeah, that's really going to help her out. Dickwad.
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