Music can be sublime, beautiful, inspiring and memorable
It can also be dreadful, horrific and drive you up the wall.
This, unfortunately, is the latter.
We all know the songs, the ones which make you think “What in God’s name was that?” before it stays in your head driving you bonkers for the rest of the day.
These are my selections, if you don’t agree please comment below with your own suggestions.
10. Barbie Girl – Aqua
This was Number One in the charts for far too long at some points in the late 1990s.
This was a godawful piece of Europop from a group called Aqua, who were surprisingly successful and even down the line made a “serious” record.
Serious this aint, documenting what it’s like to be a doll in a serious relationship.
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9.mmmbop - Hanson
Yeah, we all remember this.
Three brothers who looked like girls with high voices put out this ridiculously annoying song called “mmmbop”.
“What’s an mmmbop?” I hear you ask.
I don’t know, but it’s something clearly very annoying.
This reminds me of a friend of mine who walked in the room while this vid was playing, saw the lead singer and went “Cor, she’s fit” before realising he had made a fatal, never-to-be-forgotten error.
8. Agadoo-Black Lace
This piece of 1984 garbage by Black Lace never made it to Number One, which is merciful, but is still always played at hotels full of Scottish holidaymakers armed with hilarious fake plastic bottoms in Torremelinos.
“Push pineapple shake the tree” – inspired.
Q Magazine, where people know way more than me about these things, declared it the worst song ever made.
EDIT: It appears WordPress hates it too, as it won’t let me up load the video. It’s here.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=agadoo&aq=f
7. Beautiful South
If there was an award for most annoying band, this lot would cruise to it.
I’ve always loathed their bland, pointless music.
Then, as I got older I heard their meaningless, stupid lyrics, and they became an instant “station changer” in the car.
There’s a wide range of their rubbish available on youtube this is one chosen at random, they’re all equally terrible.
6. Saturday Night-Whigfield
A Danish singer called Whigfield made this hateful bit of Eurodancepop nonsense when I was a kid at school.
Like most terrible songs it came with an accompanying dance which all the girls did at school discos while the boys sat and tried to be cool.
5. King of Rock and Roll- Prefab Sprout
This is regarded as an 80s classic, but I loathe it.
It’s the stupid chorus “hot dog, jumping frog, Al-ber-querque that particularly gets me.
What does it mean?
Bog all that’s what
It’s irritating from start to finish and a real sticker in your head.
4. Blue – Eiffel 65
Those Europeans have a lot to answer for.
First Aqua, then Whigfield, then this.
Blue, the tale of a little blue man living in a little blue world is a mind-meltingly repetitive piece of non-music.
Rubbish.
3. Rockstar-Nickelback
To a man, people who know about music all hate Nickelback.
They sold huge amounts of records in America, which suggests their brand of super-commercial rock music is rubbish.
Then, they annoyed music snobs even more by producing this cheesy attempt at irony saying people want live a rock star life rather than do it for the music like man.
The irony being that this is a super-annoying attempt at producing a catchy bestseller.
Yah, this is like way too commercial man.
2. birdie Song
Don’t really need to say much about this, still heard a lot in wedding discos.
There’s no proper vid, but lots of annoying things available instead.
1.Achy Breaky Heart
Miley Cyrus senior had a tremendous mullet, and did something no-one should ever do and brought country and western to the mainstream British public.
It did well in the charts and again sold loads in America, where they like that sort of thing, like they like guns, big portions and preachers.
Top Ten Cheats
In Comment, Multifarious, News, Top Tens on January 22, 2011 at 4:16 pmI thought I’d bring this back to the top of the site.
Here we go again, moments that drive us all absolutely barmy, we see it, everyone in the stadium sees it, the world sees it but the idiot in the black uniform who matters the most misses it.
This is the top ten cheats
10. Rivaldo dive
This pathetic incident happened in the World Cup in 2002 in the game between Turkey and Brazil.
The Turkish player boots the ball to Rivaldo, who is waiting to take a corner.
It strikes Rivaldo gently in the leg, yet he goes down clutching his face as if he’s been on the end of a particularly good right hook.
Stupid ref then sends off Turkish player, much to the annoyance of the rest of the team, the management and the watching world.
Rivaldo was subsequently banned, on the grounds of being a twat you’d guess.
9. Neil Back
England rugby legend Back is playing for Leicester Tigers in the European Cup final.
His team were leading, but opponents Munster got a scrum not very far out, dead centre in the last minute.
Irish scrum half goes to put the ball in, as he does, the originally nicknamed “Backy” taps it with his hand back into his own side of the scrum.
For those of you not au fait with rugby, this is akin to punching the ball into the goal in football, a no no.
The ref, however, is standing on the other side, keeping an eye on one of the props, and so misses it.
8. Trevor Chappell
The least well-known of the famous Australian cricketing dynasty is probably the most notorious.
This is a clip from a one-day game against New Zealand in the 1970s.
After you’ve finished laughing at their kits, you’ll need to know New Zealand needed six of the last ball to win.
As a result, Chappell rolls it gently underarm along the ground, thus making it impossible.
The rules were changed after this.
I particularly like the way the batsman reacts.
Despite being a pro sportsman, he reacts in the way anyone else would, by giving him a look which says “you utter c**t’.
7. Tonya Harding
Nancy Kerrigan (Above)
Tonya Harding
Ice skating is not well-known for scandal, but this is pretty unbelievable.
American Harding was embroiled in scandal after her husband hired a man to attack and injure herbiggest rival, Nancy Kerrigan.
The injury put Kerrigan out of the US figure skating championships in 1994, which Harding went on to win.
She was found guilty of helping to cover up the incident, but has always denied masterminding it.
It’s still a blatant act of cheating though, whoever is responsible, and there’s no doubt she benefited.
6.
Thierry Henry
Old Thierry is a fabulous player, but may well be remembered for a piece of handling Jonny Wilkinson would be proud of.
Running down the wing, the ball bounces up and he scoops it along with his hand before crossing it to William Gallas who whacks it in, thus winning France the game and sending poor old Republic of Ireland out of the World Cup.
Cue rage in Ireland, where there were demands for a replay.
They also conveniently forgot they won one of their earlier games thanks to an extreme dodgy penalty, but there was outcry nonetheless.
This is one of those things where you wonder how no-one saw it as it is so obvious, and anyway, who wants to see a load of Championship cloggers playing in the World Cup at the expense of messrs Henry, Anelka and Ribery.
5. Spain’s Paralympic basketball team
The sheer brass and morally wrong-ness of this is brilliant.
In the Paralympics of 2000, the Spanish team was stripped of the gold medal it had won in the intellectual disability competition after it was revealed 10 of the 12 players had nothing wrong with them.
The rules stated that to be allowed to play, players had to have an IQ of less than 70 (they could’ve asked the majority of Premiership footballers).
Spain didn’t bother to do the tests and were rightly stripped of the medals.
4. F1 Crash
I hate Formula 1 with a passion, so when I read about this I smiled.
The second most interesting thing that’s ever happened in the sport, after the tragic death of Ayrton Senna, was when Flavio Briatore, the mega-rich owner of the Renault team, instructed their driver Nelson Piquet junior to deliberately crash to help their lead driver, Fernando Alonso, win the Grand Prix in Singapore last year.
I know what I’d say if someone told me to crash while driving at 200mph but here’s the clip
3.Ronald Koeman
This is still the single moment that has enraged me most in any sporting ocassion.
This is the famous incident from the must win World Cup Qualifier in 1994.
First, Koeman hauls down David Platt when clean through on goal inside the penalty area.
Red card and a penno you must think?
No no, Koeman then convinces the ref not only was the foul outside the box, it was a mere yellow card.
As the script then suggests, the blond-haired get went and scored at the other end, meaning England didn’t qualify.
Happily, it did lead to the sacking of Graham Taylor.
A few points to make, if you look, he grabs Platt’s shirt just outside the area, however, he’s still got hold of it when he goes down very much inside the area.
He is also clearly the last man who has prevented a clear goalscoring opportunity, therefore a red card.
But the good old ref sums up why everyone hates refs by getting two massive decisions completely wrong, allowing good old Ron to stay on and score admittedly a very good free kick.
That said, have a look at who’s playing for England, Carlton Palmer, Tony Dorigo, no wonder we didn’t qualify.
Also check out the Dutch manager’s combover.
For some reason I can only find highlights in Dutch, which somehow makes it even more annoying.
And yes, David Seaman should’ve saved both, especially Bergkamp’s, which was rolling gently across the ground.
2. Ben Johnson
Somehow athletics officials failed to notice Ben Johnson’s yellow eyes and bodybuilder’s physique at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
His time of 9.79 seconds smashed the then world record and is only slightly slower than Usain Bolt’s 9.58 seconds record 21 years on.
Of course, he was found to have pumped himself full of steroids.
You’ll notice a young Linford Christie finishing in third, which was pushed to second when Johnson was found to have more drugs inside him than an NHS Foundation Trust.
1. Diego Maradonna
Yes, who else could it be? Another dirty cheating foreigner who cheated our heroic footballers out of World Cup glory.
We all know about the “Hand of God”, but I have a few questions, why did no-one twig that it was very unlikely that Maradonna, about 5ft 3in, would be able to outjump a 6ft plus goalkeeper stretching as high as he could for the ball?
We also have to applaud the little twat for his first goal, probably the best ever, but why didn’t any of England’s lumbering midfield do what you or I would have done and booted him up in the air?
Mind you, they probably couldn’t even get close enough to do that.
As you marvel at the nimble feet of the Argentinian genius, take stock of how incredibly slow England midfielder Peter Reid is.
Here’s his amazing goal (with some really terrible commentary), which actually made it 2-0 after the handball debacle.
and here’s his ridiculous cheating.