Year's Worst: Music

Since I love this topic of the worst things from this year, and I love talking about what's so goddam bad in music these days, I had to beat Mike to it and start up the music discussion.

Worst Overall:
Any discussion of bad music from last year has to start with my boy -- wannabe rapper, former background dancer who thinks that makes him a badass, nominal proprieter of the worst website of the year, keepin' it real pimp wansksta K-Fed, Fed-Ex, Kevin Federline. I feel like just saying his name is enough to cement the argument that he was indeed the worst artist of the year. Is it just me, or is Federline so incredibly, amazingly, profoundly untalented and self-deluded -- and consistent with both -- that he's becoming kind of awesome? Maybe its just me. I do, after all, have Road House on DVD, and I just downloaded Triumph's greatest hits (the semi-hair metal power balladeers, that is, and not the insult comic dog).

Music by People Who Don't Make Music
This is, in my opinion, the worst kind of music, and the worst thing about music today. These people are not "artists," and are probably more removed from artistry than my boy Douche-Fed. They're either confections -- made-up groups that basically lip sync dance routines to tracks laid down by badass producers like Timbaland and the Neptunes and the like. Or they're celebrities who inexplicably are enabled to lay the ghosts of their digitally altered voices over pre-produced tracks by those same producers-for-hire.

• Paris Hilton
  
• The Pussycat Dolls
  
• Fergie
  
• Anybody with the last name "Simpson"
  

Worst Song:
Dane Cook fans, callin' y'alls dumb motherfucker, tasteless, mediocre asses to the dancefloor! Get yo "My Humps" on, yo. Superfinger! Whoooo!

My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump.
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
In the back and in the front (lumps)
My lovin' got you,
She's got me spendin'.
(Oh) Spendin' all your money on me and spending time on me.
She's got me spendin'.
(Oh) Spendin' all your money on me, up on me, on me.

Aerosmith Award for Most Disappointing Success
Nelly Furtado, for that terrible Timbaland song "Promiscuous." There was a time, and this is actually hard to believe, so I had to go back to allmusic.com to make sure my memory (and frequently questionable taste) was right, but there was a time when Nelly Furtado seemed like she might be a combination of Beth Orton and Madonna and maybe Morcheeba. Kind of like Lily Allen right now. What I'm saying is, there was a time, after her first album, Whoa, Nelly, when she seemed like she might be legit. Or at least, like Madonna, legit lite. She was a pop singer, but not a dumb one. And she pulled elements of folk, trip hop, hip hop, and rock together in a way that was, well, it wasn't stupid or pandering or lazy, which are all of the things that Promiscuous song is. There's a difference between the Nelly Furtado album and the Paris Hilton album, but not as much as there should be, by a long shot. Nelly Furtado got lazy, got stupid, and got paid.

Meet the New Boss, Definitely Not the Same as the Old Boss:
This also doubles as the Most Disappointing and Misguided Sophomore Effort, and I'm talking about The Killers Sam's Town. I guess we should respect Brandon Flowers and the rest of the boys for not resting on their laurels and sleepwalking along the Smiths/Cure/Oasis highway for another album. But, um, well, I've heard Bruce Springsteen, boys, Bruce Springsteen was a childhood obsession of mine, and you fellas, well, you know how this ends. Thing is, if you're going to be Springsteen, or U2 -- or maybe The Alarm would be a closer target for you guys, by the way -- you have to put away the chippy synths and the Duran Duran vocals. When you keep that shit in, and you add this big sweepy Bruce/Bono like chorusus, and you're singing about "dreams round here" and "burning down the highway on the back of a hurricane," it just sounds kind of like, well, to be honest, it sounds kind of like the Hooters covering Springsteen songs. Yeah, that bad.