Worst. Songs. Ever.

Well, apparently Blender has put out a 50 Worst Songs Ever list. Although their website only gives the bottom 10, the top 10 worst are out in the media now. And while rock ‘n’ roll lists are just incredibly subjective, I’ve gotta say that this list may have nailed it. Number 1 (with a bullet!): Starship’s execrable “We Built This City (On Rock ‘n’ Roll)”, which brings a once-great band that produced some of the all-time best rock songs to a low that most bands die before reaching. Still, it’s not all that catchy, which I consider a key criterion for badness — it really should be a song that, once in your head, you cannot get out, and “City” isn’t like that. In fact, despite thinking of it all day, I can’t even really get it into my head. But make no mistake, it sucks, deeply and importantly.

The others in the top 10? “Achy Breaky Heart,” “Everybody Have Fun Tonight,” “Ice Ice Baby,” “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” “Party All the Time,” “Ebony and Ivory” — yes, deep suckage there. Limpbizkit’s “Rollin'” I’ve never even heard, nor did I hear Madonna’s “American Life.” In at Number 6 is one I might easily have put up in the top 5, the unbelievably successful “The Heart of Rock & Roll,” by Huey Lewis, an artist whose popularity was as mystifying as that of Hootie and the Blowfish. I just didn’t f’ing get it.

Can’t wait to see the whole list. How could there be 41 songs that are worse than Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”? Or 50 worse than Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” — a song that was almost totally redeemed, with tongue in cheek, by Los Straitjackets in a murderously funny, spot-on Ventures surf-rock version that is, to my thinking, one of the best songs in all of rock ‘n’ roll.

While we’re on the musical theme, this week I did something I haven’t done in about 24 years — I bought a copy of Rolling Stone. When I was hip, RS was never nearly hip enough for me, and they weren’t covering bands I cared about at all (had to turn to Trouser Press and other lesser-known rags for that). But I was stuck with a lot of air time this week, Uma Thurman (that well-known musical act) (well, she’s a siren, anyway) was on the cover, there was a story on Chris Rock, and my normal info-porn, Entertainment Weekly, seemed particularly thin. Know what? It didn’t suck. That’s how un-hip I am now.