The Worst Songs in the World: the Quiz Answers

So here are the answers from yesterday. These delightfully 'incisive' little barbs (not to brag, but I think some of them really hit their mark) describe which songs? Well, now it can be told.

1. He feels at times like a song-composing computer: the result seems convincing on first glance, but if you look a little deeper it fails the Turing test conclusively. "Hip to be Square" by Huey Lewis and the News (1986)
2. He's a puppet in the video, driving home the point that it's all a big cartoon, but that's no mitigation: I don't listen to the Teletubbies either. "Ass Like That" by Eminem (2005)
3. Wikipedia reveals that the song was written with only one chord: which makes sense, as everything about is screams monotonous and dull. "Coconut" by Harry Nilsson (1971)
4. This was a band that had abandoned incisive social criticism for purposeless button-pushing, a band that had, like lexicographers before and after, confused anarchy with mere chaos. "No One is Innocent" by Ronnie Biggs and the Sex Pistols (1978)
5. Which brings to mind the word 'flaccid' – a perfect word to describe this song, which despite all of its huff-and-puff is as empty as a deflated balloon. "How am I Supposed to Live Without You" by Michael Bolton (1989)
6. This is macho belligerence of the ugliest sort, and it mocks the sympathy the world had for the United States by glorifying its insular world-view and proudly displaying its ignorant disregard for the rest of the world. "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (the Angry American)" by Toby Keith (2002)
7. The most frustrating thing about his apparent assertion that, after crudely describing Kennedy's assassination, there is nothing else to say is that nonetheless he keeps on gibbering anyway. "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel (1989)
8. It’s the organ, you see. That’s what makes it ‘baseball music’. The rinky-dinky rink organ that just calls out ‘me and the boys having a good time with beer and barbecue’. "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits (1985)
9. What I see is a bunch of wealthy white English men taking the real and tragic plight of immigrants and turning it into a clown-show worse than Pat Boone’s “Speedy Gonzales”. "Illegal Alien" by Genesis (1984)
10. This ridiculous piece of nonsense ultimately got the nod for inclusion here because it takes itself seriously: it's a 'sad' song about a girl who has fallen out of love with the protagonist, who like a mealworm writhes up to her mother to complain about it. "Mrs Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" by Herman's Hermits (1965)
11. It’s not an excessive outbreak of political correctness but mere common sense to say that songs like this cheapen and exploit the trauma battered women undergo and not only make domestic abuse socially acceptable but even imply that it’s what women want. "Johnny Get Angry" by Joanie Sommers (1962)
12. A man afflicted with the same disease as Mick Jagger and forced to sing all of his lyrics through pouted lips, Hart gamely grunts out the line “it's time to send our message everywhere” (since until this time Canadian musicians were operating in silence on the topic of African famine) before adding a faux-Michael Jackson “cha-know” that ups the ridiculousness one point, before heading into... "Tears are Not Enough" by Northern Lights (1985)
13. It's merely the navel-gazing of a celebrity who appears to have problems being satisfied despite all of her material wealth. "American Life" by Madonna (2003)
14. Spooky, I guess, if you go for that sort of thing, but perhaps if she'd survived, she'd have pointed out that this a capella nightmare is little more than a silly joke sung in an annoying voice. "Mercedes Benz" by Janis Joplin (1971)
15. Songs don't have to rhyme, but in the absense of anything else that would indicate it took her longer than two minutes and nine seconds to compose the song, a rhyme or two would be nice. "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega (1987)

If you scored 15 out of 15, yay. If you scored 0-14, boo. I have high standards.