The 10 Worst Songs of 2004
Moronic! Derivative! And even worse…inspirational!
10 Limpbizkit
“Behind Blue Eyes” Interscope
It’s never nice to kick a man whose career is on life-support, but did the world really need to hear about Fred Durst’s persecution complex?
9 Jet
“Cold Hard Bitch” Elektra
We’ll pound beers with them any time, but this is less a song than an SNL sketch, where a studied bar band paint on leather bellbottoms and howl about mean girls who won’t come back to their hotel.
8 Joss Stone
“Fell in Love With a Boy” S-Curve
Slack interpretation of a White Stripes classic sets comically breathy vocals to basslines plucked from softcore porn. And not in a good way.
7 Black Eyed Peas
“Let’s Get It Started” Interscope
It’s hard to “disconnect from all intellect and let the rhythm affect” when an MC with capri pants and Princess Leia hair is hurling some of the clumsiest rhymes since Vanilla Ice at you.
6 Josh Groban
“You Raise Me Up” Warner Bros.
Inspirational hit that sounds stitched from scraps of Céline Dion and the Lion King soundtrack. Makes “Wind Beneath My Wings” sound like the Ramones
5 Five for Fighting
“100 Years” Columbia
In an extremely unpleasant falsetto, John Ondrasik spins off trite carpe-diem life lessons that would fit perfectly over the closing credits of any Lifetime original broadcast.
4 Toby Keith
“Whiskey Girl” Dreamworks
Since you were wondering, this red-state icon’s perfect woman wears blue jeans, scorns champagne and makes no fuss about her hair. Which is all clichéd and fine, but when he leers about her ’69 Mustang and says, “I like ’em rough,” it’s like listening to some ’roid-fueled braggart in a football locker room. Call it shock and ewww.
3 Eamon
“Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back)” Jive
Granted, there’s an amount of moron genius required to turn “Fuck you, you ho” into a pop hook, but this Staten Island goomba makes you feel cripplingly sorry for his ex
2 Nickelback
“Figured You Out” Roadrunner
Fellas, if you ever meet a girl who is kind enough to ignore your goatee and hemp necklace and perform fellatio on you, the least you can do is avoid gloating about the dirt on her knees and calling her your “favorite damn disease.”
1 Lenny Kravitz
“Lady” Virgin
The only things more wooden than the guitar playing are the lyrics (yep, Kravitz actually rhymes “she’s so fine” with “she blows my mind”). But the worst song of the year couldn’t have made it to the top without the help of that ubiquitous tie-in Gap commercial, in which rock’s silliest peacock meets Sarah Jessica Parker in a car-wreck of flared jeans and warmed-over riffs.
