I really, really dislike "Real to Me" by Brian McFadden. Yes, it has been a few years now but every time I hear it wafted from shop's doorway (like today), I get very cross indeed and I need to vent. It's such an awful, awful song in so many ways.

It talks of the tiresome trappings of fame, and how none of it is "real" and that it's only his family that matter. These sentiments are to be admired. However, he puts on an american twang so it sounds like he's strummin' away on his Grandma's porch. He appears on TV worlwide, aggressively promoting it. He wants Americans to like his songs. He wants to "cross over".

"Bullshit dinners and the free champagne,
men in suits who think they know it all,
no-one knows me but they know my name
that's not real to me,"

The men in suits are not there to assess whether it is "real" to you, Brian. Maybe some of them are there to make sure that you achieve the lifestyle you crave. Here is a snapshot of the family life he yearns for:

"Picnics in the garden
and the children they can play
the first day of the summer
and i laze here all the day
then we'll invite the family round
and drink some english tea
then i raise up my finger
and watch football on tv"

Doesn't he play with his children? What is the significance of him raising up his finger? Does his family have to respond to this signal by leaving so he can watch football? If so - what an Arse! Note that the "football " line works in the USA as well.

"Hotel lobby to the aeroplane,
another country but they start to look the same
watch the world behind a window pane
that's not real to me,"

D'you know...I don't think I have heard an observation like this before. To follow the same theme, the next lines should muse about waiting for a bus - because sometimes you wait for ages and then two come at once! And where do those socks go, eh?

I could go on. But I will finish with Brian's final, tenderly-delivered words:

"Wake up you might be dreaming
Wake up you might be dreaming now"

OK - she might be having a nightmare and he wants to wake her up. Fair enough. No complaints from me there. But "wake up you MIGHT be dreaming" ? What else would she be doing - eating sausages? Ah, but maybe it isn't a nightmare. Maybe she is having a straightfoward dream. So why is Brian waking her up? Leave her alone, you big oaf.

the same year he left his wife and two young children. Classy.

Utter crap. Even the tune is irritating. I genuinely hate it.

Where to begin?

The readiness of the singer to cheat on his wife?
The readiness of the wife to cheat on her husband?
The complete lack of morality displayed by either?
The description of said wife as 'my lovely lady'?
The sheer nastiness of the cocktail under discussion?
The inappropriate and mindnumbingly catchy 'bounciness' of the underlying rhythm?

Also worth mentioning in dispatches - Lucky Stars by Dean Friedman.

by Frank Sinatra, especially when played at parties any everyone puts their arms round each other in a big circle and attempts some high kicks - aaaaargghh...makes me want to start running away and keep right on going......

Where do I begin?

1) The brackets in the title. It's either Pride or it's Pride In The Name Of Love. Pride (In The Name Of Love) is totally meaningless which leads me to
2) The lyrics. Meaningless pseudo-poetic rubbish purporting to being about something specific. We all know the tune is "about" Martin Luther King, but apart from the verse which mentions the shot ringing out in the Memphis sky nothing is specific.
"One man caught on a barbed wire fence, one man washed on an empty beach" etc etc etc RUBBISH!
3) The music- a repetitive jingle jangle drone which doesn't seem to change a chord anywhere at all.
4) The fact that in spite of all of this the tune lives permanently in my head, like a lot of U2. My every critical faculty is offended by this band but I KNOW HOW THEIR DAMN SONGS GO! They live in my head and I don't want them there! And every time a new album of theirs comes out it's more bloody U2 playing on my internal soundtrack and I truly hate them!
5) Bono's voice. He whines, he implores, he begs, he's rubbish.

I could do more but the tune is circling in my brain again and I am getting short tempered.

Gangle

Can we take it that you're not enjoying the new U2 album either ?

That do it for me. Their version of "Always on my mind" took a good if, admittedly, not stunning song and sucked any hint of emotion, meaning or musicality out of it. He could have been singing the instructions for installing Windows 3 or whatever was current at the time. Hateful.

Can't put my finger on why, but I find their output grating in the extreme. Is this a common affliction?

It's just so wet, and such a dirge. I can't bear it. Why anyone gets misty-eyed over it remains a mystery.

I also hold the following in disdain:

Reet Petite/Jackie Wilson - played to death. And that video!

Easy Lover/Phil Collins & Philip Bailey - see above. And it reminds me of having no money.

Pride/U2 - like the poster above. Just the opening bars make me feel bilious.

I'm with you on Imagine, F-C. When I was a teenager I used to get invited to a New Year’s Eve party by a girl I knew. Once we’d all finished celebrating Big Ben’s chimes, she would turn the radio off and reverently put Lennon’s dirge on the stereo. Presumably we were all supposed to absorb the inspirational message and then go forth and make the world a better place during the coming year. It just made me hate John Lennon as much as I loved The Beatles.

so dreadful that, when I put Bridge Over Troubled Water into my iTunes, I left that track out.

Quite how such a pathetic and annoying pseudo-world-music piece of claptrap found its way onto one of the best albums ever made, is totally beyond me.

by Dire Straits literally makes me want to have a shower everytime I hear it. Not content with being a vile, homophobic piece of shite, it also reminds me of everything that was bad about that money grabbing, style over content period of the 80's. Apparently, it was Princess Di's favourite song, which just about sums it up. How they had the nerve to play it at Live Aid, I'll never know. Unusually, and unlike much of the music from that period, it actually sounds worse as the years progress.

Complete garbage. Three times a lady, dancing on the ceiling, Hello - wouldnt you just like to punch him??

I reckon What Have You Done Today To Make You Feel Proud? by M People gives even Imagine a run for its money. Think it might be counter-productive too; I can’t be the only one in whom it triggers the urge to do something, anything that is appallingly anti-social.

Rockstar by Nickleback. Utter Arse gravy.

There are a few that have me feeling as if my brain is about to explode - but the ultimate is ABBA's Dancing Queen.

I've left buildings when it's come on, I actually squirm at the thought of it. Why? I've no real idea - I actually quite like ABBA - just this one song is a very-big blot on the music landscape.

Others of note (not quite the right word, I know) are The Bluebells Young At Heart, Come On, Eileen by Dexy's Midnight Runners and the aforementioned New York, New York.

"Scaramouche Scaramouche can you do the fandango?
Who the feck cares?
Utter tosh, from start to the the bit before the end.
Nonsense.

...the bass line makes me physically unwell. I'm not kinding. It's just such a pile of shite. I was entirely the wrong age for Queen and I hated them for years as a result - IAKM was the first of their songs I heard on the radio and, added to the terrible decisions (as I and the NME saw it) the band made about playing Sun City in South Africa, Anita May's boyfriend's hair and the all round fan base, I grew to absolutely despise the thing. Still makes me genuinely upset to hear it.

And I've just googled the lyric. It's actually worse than I thought...

"It's just another manic Monday. I wish it was Sunday. Cos that's my fun day. My 'I don't have to run' day." Gordon Bennett. Don't get me started. This song almost made me love Mondays.

apparently

Bermuda triangle makes things disappear( unfortunately not Dire straits )

Its gotta be Lucky Stars by Dean Freidman,it should be ritually burned at a special ceremony,I hate it..

did you see Lisa...Oh its shite..

= instant hatred

I heard 'Wild Boys' by Duran Duran a few days ago, and I feel it's one of those songs that really is well worthy of being pilloried.

There's no denying that they were responsible for some classic 80s songs on their first two albums BUT by the time they were releasing songs of the quality of Wild Boys it seemed that any semblance of quality control was severely lacking. To think that people went out of their way to buy the 12-inch of this tosh

In effect they were a band, like so many others, who had built up a solid fanbase that were just going to be queueing up to buy whatever they released next - regardless of whether it was any good or not.

To be honest, Adam & the Ants were another in this category. The 'Kings of the Wild Frontier' album was where they broke through. But the Number Ones that then followed were real Number Twos (Stand and Deliver, Prince Charming). To think this stuff is often seen as representing a generation. Go on, draw that line on your face with tippex, you know it makes sense. Sheesh!

If it comes on the radio, do you turn it off? For me that's the real test. 10cc 'I'm not in love' has me leaping for the 'off' button.

These posts have made me think about "party!" songs that do not quite cut it. Like them or not, the following songs are floor-fillers at any wedding reception or office bash:

Walking on Sunshine - Katrina & the Waves
Young at Heart - Bluebells
Come On Eileen - Dexys

However, the following songs try to get that vibe going as well but achieve the opposite effect. Murder on the dancefloor:

"Right By Your Side" - Eurythmics
As someone has already observed, Annie Lennox struggles to sound joyful and the steel drums, whistles, "wooh!"s and parpy brass section just piles misery upon misery. The more devices used to create a party atmosphere, the more it aches with loneliness and isolation.

"Sight for Sore Eyes" - M People
Pretty much a routine workout from them. What elevates this beyond straightforward low quality is the video and TOTP appearance. This involved the band making a real effort to exchange smiles, mug to the camera, play bongos, wear funny hats. They had been instructed to look like they are enjoying themselves. Or else!

"Dance into the Light" - Phil Collins
A hopeless and long-forgotten attempt at rebranding, where Phil wears light, summery cream-coloured linen clothes and employs a band full of people that exchange smiles, wear funny hats, play bongos and mug to the camera. Again, it was so forced that it was almost too disturbing to watch. Such desperation by a plainly troubled man to appear carefree and happy breaks my heart.

"She Wants to Dance With Me" - Rick Astley
Rick wrote this one himself. It was the big comeback single after his world domination the year before. Silly jacket? Yes. Band exchanging smiles, wearing funny hats etc etc?
Yes, yes. Everything was in the right place but the party never really got started with this. I put it down to Rick's insistence on using his own song and the bad karma that created. Stock/Aitken/Waterman were outside their comfort zone because the lyric was even worse than the worst they could come up with on their worst day.

"Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment" - which Collins, Astely, Lennox and M People illustrate pretty well I think.

is a song with no tune.

Annie's Song by John Denver - just a tedious list,

Fix You by Coldplay - teeth grating, sanctimonious drivel

I can't believe its still getting airplay. It was racist tuneless c**p when it came out and its even worse today.

Let Me Entertain You.

Its just one of those songs which is just flat, flat, flat. Extremely pointless.

Millenium. Random phrases strung together by a drunk moron. Hated, hated, hated it. Hate it so much I can't even be bothered working out how to spell it correctly

Windmills Of Your Mind makes me want to load up and visit the local Comprehensive..Don't know why to be honest, just the forced crap bandwagon jumping psychedelia of it...even Dusty couldn't save it!!! oh and that weak thing Gone Till November by one of the 'Fugees, which is just awful awful drivel..

Drove me mad during my first post-college employment, being played 'In heavy rotation' on the factory radio, along with Rock Your Baby' by George Mcrae.

Mercy by Welsh warbler Duffy - the title says it all really. Three Words Emperors+New+Clothes. Tweetie-Pie sings Stax with a peg on its nose.

I had a wisdom tooth extraction go wrong & wound up in bed for a week in pretty much constant agonising pain. It was the week that a gaggle of chain-smoking Radio One producers, their gold lame bomber jackets straining against their paunches, decided that Mickey by Toni Basil was just the thing the nation's youth wanted on heavy rotation. I'll know my reactions are going & old age has arrived the day I don't make it across the room to switch the radio off before the first overexcited 'Hey Mickey!

'You had me' used to make me leap for the off-switch every time it sneaked near the radio. The worst aspect was the dreadful fact that it had no intro - it just burst at you, with young Stone's faux-American accent raucously duelling with awful 70s funk guitar.

I worked in a warehouse around the time the song was released, and we had a policy of turning off the radio whenever a Joss Stone song came on. I certainly got fit, legging it to the radio every few minutes.

I would happily spend all eternity with just Stevie's early 70s albums for company, but I fear that the event horizon reaching out with its massive negative capability, it's all-life crushing force would have a sound and that sound would begin ..."No New Year's Day, to celebrate.."

I've hated this song since I was a child. Hate the continental oompahing thing (accordion?). Hate the crass lyric - what is he - a brain surgeon? The name dropping. The whingy tone. His very slappable face. Most of all I hate the creepy stalker/blackmail subtext.
What the off button was invented for.

Once in a lifetime. I don't know why, I just can't stand it. Its the 'And you may find yourself bit...', his voice, the music, its not too bad on the choruses but it just grates so much that in the past I would turn the radio off until it had finished.

dear friends that we have basically compiled Smooth Radio's playlist for today, tomorrow and on and on until humankind's last breath

"our News desk reports that following last week's Argameddon nuclear winter has arrived. Brrr - sounds chilly. But here's Madonna and Like a Virgin to warm you up..."

To put in a bid for "Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree"?

Links with the other thread about country music. Honestly any, repeat, any other country song is better than this.

Nooooooo... Make it stop!

A: Because it's by Keane