The last ten years sucked, music-wise. We all know that. The big surprise is just how terrible the music scene got during the ’00s. How bad did it get? So bad, that I was able to come up with a list of the 50 worst songs of the past decade, including 19 other songs that didn’t make the top 50, and the Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?” is nowhere to be found. So bad, that Britney Spears is only on the official list once, Gwen Stefani only three times, and Miley Cyrus didn’t even get a song past the first cut. So bad, in fact, that Soulja Boy didn’t get the #1 spot. Or even #2.
We’re releasing this list in two parts, but only because I fear that such a large amount of fail uploaded at one time would crash the entire internet. But first, let’s go over the criteria. The song had to have been released, either as a single or as part of an album, between 2000 and 2009. Aside from that, you know what to expect.
I posted this on my Facebook page yesterday, and seeing as this was an LJ feature the last two years I figured it was only fair that everyone else gets a chance to see this year’s list.
Ever since I was subjected to eight straight hours of top-20 radio at work for two whole years (and some simple division ought to explain why that’s a recipe for dementia), it’s been my quest to find the absolute worst songs of the year. Thus, I give you the countdown for the Worst Song of 2009.
The criteria are rather simple: the song had to have been released, either as a single or on an album, during 2009. Songs that came out the year before can be given honorable mentions, but cannot get on the official list. Aside from that, candidates for Worst Song typically display one or more of the following traits:
- The same note being sung for an entire verse
- Humping the corpse of a pre-existing song by sampling it (and mangling said sample)
- Incredibly insipid lyrics (and I don’t just mean the typical level of banality found in most pop music; I mean that you would question why you’re listening to the song if you were to actually read the lyrics)
- Use of recording techniques that bely an ignorance of what makes music good (voice synthesis especially)
- Being played so frequently on the radio that there is no way I can get away from it
It should be noted that my access to this constant stream of crappy music ended in July when I left the aforementioned place of work (thank goodness), so most of the songs that made the countdown come from the first half of the year. Still, there was more than enough tripe to fill out the top 10 and even have a handful of honorable mentions. I am not about to argue with anyone about the merits (or demerits) of the songs on the countdown; I can’t stand them, whether or not you can.
And now, I present to you, the Worst Songs of 2009… After the Break.
First off, I figure I might as well post the review for New Super Mario Bros. Wii that I uploaded on YouTube, considering that I should’ve done it when I first put it up:
There.
Aside from that, we’ve got some really cool news to report. Thanks to an anonymous benefactor, I’ve managed to reclaim the original domain name that I once owned and lost in a rather convoluded way. That means that loogslair.com is once again operable and currently directing to this site. Amazing that as sporadic as my updating has been the past couple years, people still enjoy the site enough to do something this awesome. I plan to absorb this domain back into my webhost, so that all the other pages use the domain and not the StartLogic URL. In any event, I really appreciate it.
I’m going to try to make progress on some rewrites this Mon.-Tues., as I’m probably not going to have a chance to do another video review before Super Bowl Sunday (when episode 3 of The Time Bomb will hopefully be taped). The Wii capsule reviews could use some freshening up as well.
I almost feel a bit embarrassed writing this update, considering how long it’s been since I refreshed any of my content. Then again, I think I have a fairly decent reason for dropping off the face of the earth this time around. Y’see, while I do write video game reviews, I’d also like to, y’know, play a video game or two once in a while? And when the game I’m playing takes close to 100 hours to complete, then obviously I’m going to be occupied by that and not rewriting my review for Final Fantasy III yet again.
Which reminds me: I rewrote my review for Final Fantasy III yet again. Among a few others.
Here’s what this latest update has in the way of rewrites, incidentally featuring both the highest- and the lowest-rated reviews in my collection:
Apparently at some point between updates I rewrote the review for DuckTales as well, but I’m leaving that separate since I don’t remember exactly when that was done.
As for the game I just got done playing, it would be a bit of a waste to invest all that time into the game and not review it, so look for something on that front sometime between now and when the Mayans predicted the world would end.
In the wake of the new blog, I realized that not everyone can get a hold of me conveniently. I had someone PM me on YouTube; apparently they decided that was the easiest way to get in contact. Thus, if you have a need to e-mail me, you can do so at loogslair@yahoo.com.
As for new content, I was going to start recording footage for a new video review, but I think I’ll hold off on that until tomorrow night.
I’m also going to work on fleshing out the links on the right in the near future, since my LJ page will be going poof fairly soon, so keep your eyes out for that.
As you could probably deduce if you saw this page on the first couple of days that it’s been up, the major updating project that I’m doing right now is that of rewriting my old video game reviews (for the third or fourth time) to make them fit with the scoring system I use. Since I have a habit of doing things like this in a scattershot manner based on what title looks interesting, and then losing motivation when the list of remaining items gets less appetizing, I’m simply doing them in order of the filenames I use. Thus, here are the reviews I’ve done so far:
What I’m likely to do once I start running into the games that I reviewed on YouTube is embed the video on the page as well as include the text review. Although if there’s a video review for the game already, I wonder how much more I can say in written word.
So here’s what’s been going on in the past 24 hours or so:
The game show programs that I’ve had on the site for years have now been consolidated onto one page. To celebrate, I’ve uploaded the newest version of Buried Treasure, which is now a full-screen program.
I’ve decided to do away with posting the reviews here, partially because it’s been a major hassle to format them to my liking with the CSS used on this side, and partially because I’ll be able to keep them better organized on the old site. In fact, I’m likely going to use this page as a combination journal/update page, kinda like the way I had it a few years ago. The sidebar will be used to navigate onto the main parts of the site.
I’m beginning the long, slow process of reformatting the pages so that everything looks pretty much uniform. That’s not easy to do, considering just how much stuff I’ve put on this site over the past 10 years or so.
Once all the pre-existing stuff is back in order – and again, once I have a steady paycheck coming in, so I don’t feel as if this thing is a distraction – we’ll start adding fresh stuff onto the site. There are a few ideas in mind, so stay tuned.
