Shitlist 2/27/26
the terminal shit
I can’t believe I made it. It sure was dicey there for a while. The final tally adds up to — and this is approximate due to some last second adjustments throughout the month — roughly 617 songs. That’s 617 almost entirely shitty songs over the course of one month. There was a minute fraction of songs that I didn’t entirely hate, even kind of liked. The ones I truly enjoyed, I replaced. The rest were either insufferably shit, or just plain shit. I am acutely aware of the fact that this project has only scratched the deceptively spare surface of the great musical shitberg that lurks beneath the the fathomless sea of human culture.
There is no doubt in my mind that I will remember many pieces of questionable shit well after this project concludes, but I think that on the whole, given my ADD and near total disinterest in being scientific or exhaustive, that I have managed to create a reasonably representative overview of shit from the vast world of music available to me.
Could I have dug deeper? Really honed in on a number of sub-genres, global musics, and so on? Sure, I could be a total pedant and shoot for a PHD in the science of what constitutes shit music, to whom, why, how, and so on. But let’s be frank. I’m not smart enough, organized enough, or dumb enough to undertake such a monumentally pointless exercise. A research-backed thesis on musical shit is something that would very much belong in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, and I hope that one day someone with their shit together way more than mine would be demented enough to do this. I, sadly, will not be that asshole.
Don’t fret, however, because I am most assuredly an asshole. I am an asshole of the fireside, storyteller, man on the street variety, and as such, my reach is more prosaic than someone who trades strictly in facts and data.
Also, I have no idea what I’m talking about, so let’s just get waist deep into this shit.
The first 26 tracks on this list are all commercial jingles. My friend Roberto recommended the jingles, and it was a good call because they are almost entirely shit. Many of them are notorious, some of them are more localized, and as designed, almost all of them are perilously catchy. Tuning them out is my natural go-to, so it was a bit of a challenge to actually listen to them all. Of all of these, I think the current Burger King “You Rule” campaign is the one that most makes we want to stick my face through a windshield. Not to take away from some of the others, because fuck, it’s grim.
Most of the rest of the list is also from recommendations. I had to leave out the Huey Lewis song because I liked it. Sorry.
You’ll hear songs like “Stars,” which was the ‘80s hair metal version of “We Are the World,” and honestly is funnier than it is shit. Of course it is undeniably also shit. There’s “I go Meow” by Kiffness which made me nauseous, “U Smile” by the Biebster, and “My Dick” by Mickey Avalon, all of which are pure shit.
David Soul wasn’t exactly a great actor, but he sure as fuck acted better than he sang, because “Don’t Give Up On Us” is a straight-up crime against humanity.
I added “As Long as You Love Me” from the Backstreet Boys, which I chose because while I don’t actively listen to them, I do find “Everybody” and “I Want It That Way” to be at very least, great for karaoke (more on this on Monday), whereas I just think “As Long as You Love Me” is just forgettably bad.
On goes the litany of recommended shit, with songs like “Candy” by Mandy Moore, the despicable “La La” by the equally despicable Ashlee Simpson, “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” by the Chipmunks, “I’m So Miserable” by Billy Ray Cyrus, “Big Green Tractor” by Jason Aldean, “A Place in the Sun” by Pablo Cruise, and “Gitchee Gitchee Goo” by Phineas and the Ferbtones, all by request and all total shit.
My personal selections include two songs from a cast member of the TV show Alone, a guy called Timber Cleghorn. They are fucking horrendous, inexcusably so. I also selected the Starship song “Knee Deep in the Hoopla,” which is another utter stinker from their infamous album of the same name. I did “We built This City” back in week one, because how could I not? The planet hates that song. “Knee Deep in the Hoopla” should not be overlooked for its own shittiness, though, because wow.
Easily the worst decision of this entire project was to listen to the entire two hours of Kmart’s in store Christmas music for the year 2013. You don’t even want to know how torturous that was. Fuck, I will hear it in my nightmares until the day I die.
My wife was kind enough to recommend two Brazilian tunes that deserve a spot in the global roster of “Worst Shit Ever” with “Cha Lá Lá” by a literal clown named Tiririca, and “Milk Shake (IKO IKO)” by kiddy popster Angélica, which is a tragically awful take on the famous New Orleans song “IKO IKO” with it’s goofy chorus of: "Jock-a-mo fee na nay." If you hate yourself, listen to this song. Twice.
And to wrap this fucking nightmare up with a neat little bow, I chose the ultimate: Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
I chose this song to close it out for several reasons.
First of all, I actually have grown to love it for what it is. Is it shit? Well, duh. But it’s also iconic and brilliant in its own way. Life would be less fun without it. I like the idea of taking the piss and closing with a song that sort of exemplifies the project while subverting its self-imposed guidelines by not being one I hate. It wasn’t the only one over the course of this project that I didn’t loathe, but as a closer it felt poignant.
I also chose it because way back in the early ‘90s when I saw Bill Hicks perform stand-up for the first time, he came out to this song, and when the song was abruptly cut, he slagged Astley but then said that maybe he should go easy on the guy since he was “born with no dick.” Obviously not Bill’s best joke, but it stuck with me because it was the first thing I saw him say in person.
Finally, I chose it because I once made a petition on change.org to get my band Project Grimm to open for Astley here in Houston. It went nowhere, but I was proud of that one.
Shitty music, my friends, lies in the eye of the beholder. One man’s shit is another man’s treasure. Bad music is akin to six shits in one hand and a half a dozen shits in the other. It’s comparing apple shaped shits to orange shaped shits.
Shit is ubiquitous, omnipresent, a byproduct of humanity. And as such, perhaps we are not best served when we ignore shit, or lambast the shit, or look down our nose at the stink of shit. Perhaps, just perhaps, every one in a while, it might behoove us to stop for a moment, look around us, and take a deep breath right above the biggest pile of hot, moist, steaming shit one can find. Because in the end, you never know, what if it turns out you actually like that shit?
Nah, that’s nothing more than a shit idea.
Thanks for joining me on this moronic adventure. I can’t wait to get back into the good shit on March 1st.
See you Monday, shitlovers!
Kars 4 Kids (The ultimate annoying jingle)
Burger King (”Whopper, Whopper, Whopper, Whopper”)
Quiznos (”We love the subs”)
“The Barnes Firm Jingle” The Barnes Family Attorneys
“Stanley Steemer Theme”
Meow Mix (”Meow, meow, meow, meow”)
Empire Today (”588-2300”) the Jackson Beatz remix (the “my dick fell off today” song)
“Farmers Insurance Jingle”
“Doxidan - Skeeter Starke”
“Celebrate Every Kiss” Kay Jewelers
“Carmel Car Service (666-666-6666)” New York City radio staple
“Oscar Mayer Weiner Song”
“Sing Along With Chili’s” Chili’s Bar & Grill (kill me)
“Mentos” entire fucking song
“Extra Gum - Can’t Help Falling in Love” Haley Reinhart (way too serious)
“Crumbelieveable” Kraft Crumbles
“Hormel Pepperoni” to the tune of My Sharona
“Goldfish Crackers - I Love the Fishes” (”The snack that smiles back”)
“KitKat (”Give me a break”)”
“McDonald’s” (I’m Loving It)
“The Best part of waking up” Folgers Coffee Song
“Napa Know How” Martin Truex Jr.(multiple versions)
“5$ footlong” Subway (full song)
“Regis Bernard Furniture Jingle”
“Kmart in Store” (2013 holiday campaign, 2motherfucking hrs. long, I did it all)
“877-CASH-NOW” JG Wentworth (operatic crap)
“Shiny Happy People” REM
“Agnus Dei” Michael W. Smith
“If You Find My Body” Timber Cleghorn
“Cara’s Song” Timber Cleghorn
“Stars” Hear N Aid
“I Go Meow” The Kiffness
“U Smile” Justin Bieber
“My Dick” Mickey Avalon
“Don’t Give Up On Us” David Soul
“As Long As You Love Me” backstreet Boys
“Candy” Mandy Moore
“La La” Ashlee Simpson
“Knee Deep in the Hoopla” Starship
“You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” The Chipmunks
“Cha Lá Lá” Tiririca
“Milk Shake (IKO IKO)” Angélica
“I’m So Miserable” Billy Ray Cyrus
“Big Green Tractor” Jason Aldean
“A Place in the Sun” Pablo Cruise
“Gitchee Gitchee Goo” Phineas and the Ferbtones
“Never Gonna Give You Up” Rick Astley
Just checking in since there was no episode posted today, hope everything is okay!