2005: A Year in Regrettably Terrible Music

You may be wondering to yourself why it is that I am doing a musical retrospective of a year that's been gone for nigh 3 months now. The answer is partially because I am a lazy man who is loth to update his journal more than 2 times a month with something other than some random nonsense that I found on an erotic Charles in Charge fan fiction forum. In 2005 we saw witnessed a torrent of audible horror not seen since William Shatner released his opus "The Transformed Man" onto an unsuspecting and mostly undeserving audience. At this point I'd also like to mention that I am terrible with introductions, so let's just leave it at that and call this an introduction and get down to business, shall we? So here we go!

Worst song written about high school by someone who graduated during The Reagan Administration:

Winner- None.
Runner up- Gwen Stefani "Hollaback Girl"
The reason I didn't call this song a winner is because I'd hate to think that it "won" at anything, and generally "winning" has a positive connotation that quite frankly doesn't deserve to be associated with anything Gwen Stefani does. Some of you may remember Ms. Stefani from the band "No Doubt". While they weren't the greatest band by any means, they at least held a distinction that Gwen Stefani's solo career is without, that being they didn't tempt you to search for the dullest object you could find and painfully, slowly insert it into your aorta. Chances are if you own a radio or even dreamed of owning a radio or even know what the word "radio" means then you've more than likely heard this song to the point where life no longer has any meaning to you and sugar and sweets taste as bitter as licking a leaking car battery to you. I credit this to the soul-crushing depths of the insipid lyrics contained therein. For example, "This shit is bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!", this being the chorus of the song. OK I suppose there are lots of people who have over-indulged themselves on bananas, gotten the runs and then being so excited had to inform everyone within earshot of the fruit of their bowels, but most of them had the good sense not to write a song about it. They also had the good sense not to write songs about how totally bogus high school is at the tender age of 36.

Guns n' Roses- Still no Chinese Democracy
Does this even qualify as news anymore? I don't want to write about it too much, it's already been the job of music columnists to write page after page about this column for the past fifteen years or so, and somehow they've done the impossible of stretching "We know this album will be called Chinese Democracy" into what must be some several hundred pages of fluff and filler by now. Recently it's been said that the new album will sound somewhat like Nine Inch Nails, which makes a little bit of sense considering Axl is a big fan of Trent's and NIN actually opened for Guns back in '89 or so. To me this is a baffling move because now when this album drops into stores in 2038, it's guaranteed to be an album no one will actually like. Fans of Guns n' Roses big metal riffs will listen to this album and say to themselves "What the hell is this shit?" and fans of Nine Inch Nails will, ok they probably won't buy the album but if they did they would listen to it and wonder to themselves "What the hell is this shit?" So kudos to you Mr. Rose, for working on an album for so many years and spending untold tens of millions of dollars on an album that's more or less guaranteed not to find an audience with anyone. Not even polar bears, and they'll listen to anything.

Korn apparently releases a new album or something
World apparently fails to notice since their schtick has been dead for the better part of a decade. In fact these guys are so washed up they've lost their guitar player to Jesus, and if your rock band has become so lame that Jesus actually seems really cool in comparison, well then you've lost all the essence of what rock and roll is. I haven't listened to their new album and neither has another person that I like to refer to as the nation of America. The best part about the whole thing is the only way I even knew they released an album is because there was an article about Axl Rose showing up to their release party (apparently only people more washed up than them were given invites). How bad off does your band have to be when the only reason people know you released an album is that a man who hasn't been seen nor heard from in a decade and a half showed up to your release party? The funniest thing I've heard about Axl is that Trent Reznor called him a recluse. When a guy who regularly goes half a decade without being heard from calls you a recluse, you know it's bad news.

Mall punk still inexcplicably popular
You know, there used to be a time when punk music was considered rebellious, anti-authoritarian music. Then somewhere along the line someone decided that punk rock should actually be saccharine sweet pop songs about school and how bogus middle school is performed by nice young men who your mom would probably love. And so bubblegum punk-lite bands like Fallout Boy and All-American Rejects continue to be inexplicably popular to inexplicably "not gay" kids with lip rings and shitty tatoos. I've been riding out the wave of mall punk for years now and either it goes or I go, and I am certainly not going!

Papa Roach goes from shitty nu-metal to shitty mall punk
Somehow remains incredibly shitty. I really don't feel like writing more than two sentences about bands who change genres to sell more records to make more money so this is going to be it. There only two sentences. Shit now it's three sentences. Oh christ now it's four, this is going to turn into a paragraph before you even know it. I'll just wrap it up by saying I really wish Papa Roach would stay away and that's all I have to say about that.

Kevin "K-Fed" Federline releases stupid video of stupid song
Chances are you've seen this video by now. In case you haven't, stay ignorant and feel free to continue to lead a happy, well adjusted life, but if you really must throw it all away, just Google for it. Yes, 2005 was the year in which K-Fed decided to let MTV catch a free preview of his latest ghetto anthem "Popozao". Mercifully he only raps in the song for approximately 20 seconds (too long if you ask me) and the other 3 minutes consist of the words "Po po popozao!" chanted repeatedly to a beat that could have been made by pretty much anyone with any kind of music editing software. He sits there at his mixer, steadily increasing the volume ("Hey I've got one dial on this thing figured out, only another twenty-six to go!") occasionally shouting things such as "Whoooo!" and "That's the fire!", as is the wont of many serious artists when first displaying their latest masterpiece to an unwitting audience. He seems convinced that his song is the audio equivalent of Jesus Christ taking a golden piss directly into your ear canal, meanwhile it sounds like someone compressed the entire Holocaust into a three and a half minute song and forcefully inserted it into your eardrums. Everyday I check the tabloids to see if Britney aka "K-Fed's meal ticket" has dumped this loser yet, simply because if she does then it probably means the Kevin Federline full length album will never come to fruition, and the world will be saved. I think perhaps K-Fed is ahead of his time, and in the future when "Things that make people want to run their heads through a wall" become popular he will be hailed as a pioneer.

And finally, because I am tired of writing:

Worst song of the year:
Black Eyed Peas- My Humps
Could it really have been any other way? Not only is this the worst song of the year, I nominate it "Worst Audible Sound of the Year". For a while it ran neck-in-neck with "A live jackhammer full of cicadas and angry hornets being dropped from a thirty story apartment window", but in the end "My Humps" managed to pull ahead. I'm not sure if this song is supposed to be sexy or not. I mean when I hear things like "My lovely lady lumps" I don't think about breasts, I think about breast and cervical tumors. Quite frankly, tumors belong in a little category that I like to refer to as "not sexy". Also Fergie, the vocalist behind this song also belongs in that same said category. Anyhow I don't want to hear a song from you about your humps unless you're a hunchback or a camel, and possibly not even then.

Well folks, see you next year when 2007 is nearly a quarter of the way over and most people have already made their opinions on music from the previous year public months before! 2005 was a stellar year for crap music and 2006 looks to be shaping up to be just the same. It's ok, at least we have eachother right?