“London Bridge” by Fergie (2006)

One person’s view:  “I think this song has gotten us all desperate, searching for weird roundabout ways in which this might have been ‘good’ in some strange sense of the word.  Anything but having to accept we let something so aggressively and unabashedly miserable rise to the top – and then ordered seconds.” – standbytheseawall @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.58 / 5.00, in the bottom half of #1 hits of 2006

Scholars at the Institute of Applied Fergalicious Studies have been debating the meaning of “London Bridge” since 2006.  One theory is that the “London bridge” in the song is a metaphor for Fergie’s underpants, which slide down in anticipation from under her skirt whenever her boyfriend is nearby.  The panties stop at her knees and form a “bridge” between her legs.  This forces her to waddle around like a person who has belatedly discovered that all of the toilet paper is in a closet on the other side of the house.  The “London” descriptor may be an allusion to the nursery rhyme in which the beloved London Bridge falls down in the same manner as the singer’s intimate apparel.  Or perhaps the panties form a “London” bridge because Fergie embroidered a caricature of the Queen on them in an effort to stimulate the boyfriend.  That guy is into some weird things.

The opposing view is that “London Bridge” is just made-up stupidity that was intended to ride on the coattails of Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl”.  Like “Hollaback Girl”, “London Bridge” relies on a cryptic lyrical theme, an angry cheerleader-style chant, and the incessant use of the word “shit”.  Fergie does not, however, equate excrement with bananas as Stefani did in her song.  She didn’t want to permanently wreck her chances of signing a lucrative endorsement deal with Chiquita.

“London Bridge” has also been compared to Fergie’s previous single with the Black Eyed Peas, “My Humps”.  Both hits present themselves as sexy, yet any use of either song’s lyrics in an actual bedroom scenario is likely to result in involuntary abstinence.  (Praising your girlfriend’s skin tags and warts as “lovely lady lumps” is rarely taken as a compliment.)  Sociologists have measured a decline in sexual activity that began around the mid-2000s, and we can probably blame Fergie for this.  I think 50 Cent may have contributed a bit too, though, with “Candy Shop”.

The most surprising thing about “London Bridge” is that it isn’t hated more than it is.  The beat is catchy enough to earn it a number of devoted fans, some of whom praised the track on a Reddit thread.  However, no one leaped to the song’s defense when it was attacked on a message board for sports journalists shortly after it was released.  The best that any of the journalists said about “London Bridge” was that it was not as bad as Paris Hilton’s new song, but even that was not a unanimous opinion.  Eventually, the Fergie debate simmered down and the sports guys returned to arguing about whether baseball would be more exciting if it added a three-point line.

“London Bridge” was the first oozing tentacle of the Black Eyed Peas biomass to reach the #1 position on the Hot 100.  It served as a warning of what was in store for chart-watchers for the next four years.  I suspect that another Pea-affiliated song will eventually make an appearance on this blog.

“Do I Make You Proud” by Taylor Hicks (2006)

One critic’s view:  “The two craptastic songs that American Idol 5 finalists Taylor Hicks and Katharine McPhee performed Tuesday night were, unbelievably, the best two songs in a pool of 150 possibilities.  …  All five [of the writers of these two songs] deserve eternal scorn and shame, or at least membership in the Diane Warren Hall of Mediocre Pop Songs.” – Andy Dehnart @ reality blurred

The public’s view:  1.79 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 2006

Winning American Idol in the 2000s was like boarding a spaceship and blasting into the outer reaches of fame.  The champion soars through the atmosphere at Mach 10, watching through the window as the Earth’s mighty cities, mountains, and rivers bow down before his greatness.  He is living his dream for a moment, but then the booster rocket malfunctions as it is supposed to lift his celebrity status into a stable orbit.  He opens the door to the engine compartment to see what is wrong, and discovers that someone has emptied a trash can into the space where the ignition module is supposed to be.  Amid the gum wrappers and orange peels he finds the script for From Justin to Kelly and the sheet music for “This Is the Night”.  Gravity soon does its thing, and he ends his brief flight by splashing down into the Pacific.  He never quite becomes a pop star, but he goes back to his hometown and his job at Winn-Dixie with a great story to tell for the rest of his life.

Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood were able to avoid this scenario, as both of them escaped the shadows of the mediocre adult contemporary ballads they were forced to perform for their first singles.  However, neither had to contend with “Do I Make You Proud”, which was assigned to Taylor Hicks in season five.  This was debatably the worst coronation song for any Idol winner (or second-place finisher) up to that point, and it was some fairly heavy ballast to bring along on a career-launching rocket ride.

“Do I Make You Proud” starts out as a standard soft rock gewgaw, but then builds to a powerful chorus with a memorable hook.  Unfortunately, the reason the chorus is memorable is that it sounds like a previous #1 hit:  Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”.  Now, I am sure that music experts can point out dozens of ways in which the two songs are different.  “Taylor Hicks’s bass player employs an innovative left-handed tuning scheme that elevates the rhythmic feel of the piece.  Also, Hicks’s melody has a tilde over the A-flat in the second measure – a jarring contrast from Aerosmith’s arpeggio.”  But to my uninformed ears, these are essentially the same choruses with different lyrics.

Let’s talk about those lyrics, which focus on the singer’s one nagging concern:  he needs to know if the listeners are proud of him.  It’s unreasonable for him to expect that of us.  Unless I’m Taylor Hicks’s singing coach or his mother, why should I be proud that he got a trophy in a televised contest?  His fans may have felt contentment, relief, or even sexual pleasure when he won Idol, but I doubt that any of them truly took pride in an achievement that wasn’t theirs.  Perhaps he’s talking about pride of representation, as with Black Pride or Gay Pride.  Hicks isn’t black or gay, but he is an ambassador for the Men With Prematurely Graying Hair movement.  However, as a card-carrying member of the MWPGH community, I can report that we used up all of our representational pride on Steve Martin and Phil Donahue back around 1980.  We don’t have any left for Taylor Hicks.

The first verse contains the line “My heart is full of endless gratitude.”  Logically, I expect the next line to be “That I got to see you in the nude.”  (“And I’m a handsome gray-haired dude” would also work.)  Instead, the line is “You were the one, the one to guide me through.”  Maybe I should be pleased that the songwriters didn’t go for the obvious rhyme.  Instead I’m annoyed that they didn’t bother to rhyme the line correctly at all, yet still came up with something boring and trite.

Hicks’s performance on “Do I Make You Proud” gives me the sense that he is not just a technically proficient singer like all of the other Idol winners.  He also has some soulfulness and passion, and I might enjoy listening to him in another context.  Too bad that the song demotivates me from wanting to seek out his other music.

“Bad Day” by Daniel Powter (2006)

One person’s view:  “There is no word or phrase – no matter how derogatory or boldly offensive – that can describe how much I despise this song with every fiber of my being.  …  It feels like the fucker is mocking you.” – Ambishi @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  1.85 / 5.00, tied for the third-worst #1 hit of 2006

Daniel Powter was once an aspiring violin virtuoso.  That dream ended when an angry mob attacked him outside of a talent show and his violin was pulverized in the ensuing affray.  This brutal incident established Powter as British Columbia’s definitive expert on bad days.  It also motivated him to start playing the piano, because pianos are one of the hardest musical instruments for an angry mob to hurl across a parking lot.  (Pipe organs are even more mob-resistant, but Powter couldn’t afford to buy a cathedral.)  From this moment, he was destined to write a piano ballad called “Bad Day”.

“Bad Day”’s greatest strength is also its Achilles’ heel:  a catchy, sing-song chorus that needles the listener for being at a low point in his or her life.  It’s the sort of taunt that is designed to be played at a sporting event when the visiting team is getting its ass handed to it in a metal bucket.  Indeed, the song became famous by being used as a parting jibe against losing contestants on American Idol.  When you are having a bad day, the last thing you want to hear on the radio is “Bad Day”.  Unfortunately, this is exactly what many millions of people heard on the 365 bad days that comprised 2006.

“Bad Day” was not the first chart-topper to take a poke at the unfortunate.  Remember Bobby McFerrin, the guy who made all the body noises back in the 1980s?  (No, not the kid who sat next to you in algebra – the other guy who made all the body noises.)  His hit “Don’t Worry Be Happy” described a bleak scenario, but it also conveyed a hopeful message:  your financial, legal, and medical problems will all disappear if you simply pretend that they don’t exist.  McFerrin’s unsound advice ruined countless lives, but there is something to be said for optimism even when it is misplaced.  “Bad Day” doesn’t offer any such optimism, beyond the vague implication that a “blue sky holiday” might occur at some point in the distant future.  It’s a depressing song from start to finish.

That doesn’t mean it’s a bad song, per se.  Daniel Powter’s singing and musicianship remind me of Supertramp, a band that was popular in the 1970s and early 1980s and continues to be well regarded.  Like Powter, Supertramp had a hit song about someone going through a rough time:  “It’s Raining Again”.  However, that tune was not nearly as overplayed as “Bad Day”.  If “It’s Raining Again” had become Billboard’s biggest single of its year, as “Bad Day” later did, the public would have been calling for Supertramp to be forcibly exiled to the South Pole.  (“You guys want to bitch about the rain?  Well, rain won’t be a problem for you at Amundsen-Scott Station.”)

Sudden deportation to Antarctica was certainly a possibility for Powter, so he wore his warm knit hat 24/7 for the next three years just in case.  Ultimately, though, he was permitted to fade away without punishment and become the most obscure person ever to top the year-end singles chart.  (The previous holder of the obscurity title was fellow hat-wearer Acker Bilk, whose “Stranger on the Shore” was Billboard’s #1 song of 1962.)  It was quite the decline in fame for someone who was praised in 2006 as “arguably one of the hottest singers in the world at the moment.”  Then again, that accolade came from MTV News, and MTV was about as culturally relevant in 2006 as Daniel Powter is in 2024.

“You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt (2006)

One journalist’s observation:  “[A]sk anyone about it now and they will tell you it’s annoying.  It’s a terrible song.  No one wants to hear it.  A former colleague who had it as the first dance at her wedding says that is now her ‘greatest shame’.” – Issy Sampson @ The Guardian

The public’s view:  1.64 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2006

Many people once enjoyed “You’re Beautiful” but then grew to passionately hate it after it was overplayed.  My view of James Blunt’s chart-topping record has followed the opposite trajectory.  Upon first listen, I interpreted it as a pathetically fawning ode of praise for a woman.  It was like something Lionel Richie might have written in a bout of intense depression after going four months without getting a gold record.  Later, however, I realized that I hadn’t given the song enough credit.  It is not a miserable love ballad, but a contradictory internal dialogue taking place inside the drug-addled brain of a disturbed young man.  On that basis, I kind of like it.

The turning point in my opinion of the song came when I was on a vacation in another country several years after it hit #1.  I was riding in a vehicle in which I had no control over the radio, and the opening strains of “You’re Beautiful” came creeping into my ears.  The first few mournful notes have always reminded me of the sad music that was played at the end of each episode of The Incredible Hulk.  This is appropriate, because “You’re Beautiful” has been known to provoke listeners into Hulk-like rages in which they turn green and destroy everything in sight.  I tried to ignore James Blunt and think of more pleasant things, like the colossal spider I had seen scurrying around my hotel room which was probably now intermingled with my belongings.  But then one of the lyrics grabbed my attention:  “She could see from my face that I was fucking high.”  Until then, I had always heard a different version in which Blunt was “flying high.”  Without U.S. censorship, I was finally getting to appreciate “You’re Beautiful” as it was meant to be.

This one change affects the entire meaning of the song.  Now I know that the singer is not just “flying high” from seeing a pretty girl on the London Tube; he was already stoned halfway to Glasgow before he boarded the train.  Perhaps this is why he keeps shifting back and forth between addressing the woman directly and speaking of her in the third person.  His thoughts about the situation also veer from one extreme to another.  Initially, his life is brilliant and he has a plan to somehow woo this woman away from the dude she is with.  A few seconds later, he is dejected and has no idea what to do.  (The video suggests that he ultimately kills himself by jumping into the sea.)  And what was the moment they shared that will last ‘til the end?  She probably asked where he buys his weed, and he erroneously thought she was flirting with him.  Never mind that her boyfriend was right there.  This moment might not last ‘til the end, but it will last until James Blunt gets punched in the face.

This delusional narrative wouldn’t work without Blunt’s unique voice, which is a mix of Dave Matthews and Grover.  It’s exactly the type of voice you would associate with the weird guy on the Piccadilly line who reeks of cannabis and who giggles uncontrollably every time the conductor announces that the train is headed to Cockfosters.  I think I would break out in a rash if I heard a conventional romantic balladeer like Julio Iglesias or Barry Manilow singing “You’re Beautiful”.

I keep a copy of “You’re Beautiful” in the low-priority folder of my computer’s MP3 library, and it pops up randomly in my listening sessions maybe once every six months.  This is just often enough to remind me of how this dark story was so widely misunderstood as a mushy love song.  I am amused that it managed to sneak its way into environments such as proms and weddings where it was completely inappropriate.

“Laffy Taffy” by D4L (2006)

One person’s view:  “Enigmatic how something so dumb and talentless became so huge.” – halo19 @ Pulse Music Board

The public’s view:  1.85 / 5.00, tied for the third-worst #1 hit of 2006

Like many rap tracks, D4L’s “Laffy Taffy” sounds like it was made by someone who had borrowed Timmy T’s keyboard and was learning how to use it for the first time.  While this is not enough by itself to earn “Laffy Taffy” an exhibit in our hall of “bad” #1 hits, we can’t overlook the song’s insane premise.  The lyrics urge a woman to shake her posterior, in the peculiar belief that this body part’s motion will remind males of a piece of Laffy Taffy candy and will please them thusly.  This absurd directive makes it impossible to deny “Laffy Taffy” a spot at our museum, so we better start clearing out some of the memorabilia from the older #1s to make room for it.  I guess I’ll throw away Pat Boone’s purity ring and the grungy seat cushion I salvaged from the Starland Vocal Band van.

Laffy Taffy is a confection that manages to be both hard and viscous at the same time.  Its purpose is to test whether a person is suffering from gum disease.  If you can chew a piece of Laffy Taffy without any of your teeth coming out of their sockets, then congratulations:  you do not have gingivitis.

Laffy Taffy does not resemble a human derriere in shape, texture, color, or odor, unless perhaps the candy is well past its expiration date.  Likewise, normal buttocks should never resemble a piece of Laffy Taffy.  The CDC advises women between the ages of 16 and 45 to have their rear ends inspected regularly to ensure that their flesh has not acquired taffy-like characteristics.  If your butt becomes flat, sticky, and rectangular, and smells like watermelon or sour apple, this may be a sign of a serious medical condition known as Gluteal Wonka Syndrome.  Contrary to the advice from the song, shaking an afflicted rump is not a therapeutically effective remedy for GWS.  Shaking is more appropriate for butts that have turned into Polaroid pictures.

Much like a Vanilla Ice Electronic Rap Game, the lyrics of “Laffy Taffy” are so dumb that they are essentially parody-proof.  One of the D4L rappers, Fabo, developed the concept for “Laffy Taffy” when he was searching for an unorthodox butt metaphor and happened to find a piece of that taffy in his pocket.  I’d like to make a joke along the lines of “Good thing he wasn’t carrying a Jolly Rancher instead!”  But I can’t do that, because Jolly Ranchers are in fact mentioned in the song as an analogue to a different (male) anatomical part.  Fabo was one step ahead of me on that one.

Although “Laffy Taffy” has mostly vanished from popular culture, it did leave an imprint on a few people.  One of them is a guy who I often see at one of my local parks.  He stands on the stairs for several minutes while alternately bending each knee and pulling each foot up behind him with his hands.  I used to think this was an exercise to stretch his legs and make himself taller, but after researching this post I now recognize it as a dance move from the “Laffy Taffy” video.  This man is not just obstructing a stairway; he is also performing a public homage to the D4L crew.  Shout out to Fabo, Mook B, and Stoney, and rest in peace Shawty Lo.

“Candy Shop” by 50 Cent featuring Olivia (2005)

One person’s view:  “I just can’t take this song seriously and I don’t think it’s sexy.  It’s just uncomfortable most of the time.” – HungryLuma27 @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.08 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2004 & 2005

Night-clubbing has been one of the most common motifs for rap singles over the past two decades.  These hits have little in common with the disco nightclub records of the 1970s or the countless country songs about patronizing honky-tonk bars.  Most of the modern hip-hop songs about clubbing focus on conspicuous consumption rather than on performing impressive dance moves or having fun with friends.  These tracks describe performers arriving at the nightclub in luxury vehicles while wearing the finest clothes and jewelry.  If the club happens to have strippers, or women who look like they should be strippers, they are showered with $100 bills and confetti made from Honus Wagner baseball cards.  At some point during the evening, a bottle of Hennessy is poured into someone’s mouth.  The majority of it spills onto the floor, and the janitor is pelted with precious gems and pieces of King Tut’s mummy while he cleans it up.

We can credit 50 Cent’s “In da Club” as the first truly massive hit about this style of clubbing.  The timing was perfect for that song in 2003 after trillions of dollars of wealth had just vanished in the stock market and thousands of companies had gone bankrupt.  Nightclub visits in 2003 usually entailed smuggling in cans of Old Milwaukee under a coat because nobody could afford to tip the bartender.  No one could have more than two beers anyway, because there was always a job interview early the next morning for a position that probably didn’t even exist.  In the midst of the economic ruin we were treated to 50 Cent’s rap about driving his Benz to a bar and sipping champagne and Bacardi while offering Ecstasy to the ladies he meets.  Listening to “In da Club” was aspirational, like reading a story about another person accomplishing a great feat.  The prospect of dropping $800 on a night out was as realistic as climbing Mt. Everest or finding a job that paid as much as your last one, but 50 Cent allowed everyone to dream.

50 Cent imparts a business-like tone to his rap on “In da Club”.  For him, clubbing is not an amusing pastime like it is to lesser individuals.  It is what he does, and he is good at it.  He goes clubbing so that he will be seen going clubbing, which puffs up his marketability so that he can earn more money to invest in more clubbing.  Given that “In da Club” was Billboard’s biggest hit of 2003, it was only logical that 50 Cent should make a sex song with this same type of dispassionate attitude.  The result is “Candy Shop”.

In “Candy Shop”, 50 Cent recites a list of sexual boasts with an enthusiasm level more suited to narrating an audiobook about estate planning.  He is accompanied by the similarly emotion-free Olivia, who was obviously instructed not to do anything that might outshine the track’s lead performer.  I can’t say that the song is completely without excitement, however.  As each of the duo finishes their respective lines on the chorus, they say “whoa” as if something mildly stimulating has just occurred.  There’s also one fairly clever candy pun:  “I’ll melt in your mouth, girl, not in your hand.”  It’s too bad that the same line was already used 15 years earlier by another rapper, Candyman, in a hit record that pretty much everyone had already heard.

And that helps point us to the biggest problem with “Candy Shop”.  By 2005, we were well accustomed to erotic raps that were delivered either more explicitly or more effectively.  Even 50 Cent had given us something better along these lines:  his Lil’ Kim collaboration “Magic Stick”.  Listening to “Candy Shop” after “Magic Stick” is as thrilling as watching the bowdlerized basic cable version of an R-rated movie after you’ve already seen it uncut in the theater.  One of the official edits of “Candy Shop” is even milder, censoring harmless words like “nympho” and “thongs”.  Who is this intended for?  Did 50 Cent’s label think that Radio Disney would play this version, under the assumption that the song is really about M&Ms?

“Candy Shop” incorporates the Middle Eastern-style synthesizer riff that was briefly a big music industry fad.  There’s nothing really wrong with that, but it does make the song sound dated.  Whenever you hear a pop or hip-hop track with that type of arrangement, you can be fairly certain that it was released in the mid-2000s.  It’s like if you find someone buried in your lawn when you’re putting in a new swimming pool, and the corpse is wearing a white leisure suit.  You don’t need to do a carbon-14 test to determine that the person probably died between November 1977 and July 1978.

The best thing about “Candy Shop” is that it eliminated the need for there to be any more rap hits comparing parts of the human anatomy to types of candy.  Yep, everybody in 2005 could breathe a big sigh of relief that 50 Cent had worn out this concept and no such song would ever reach #1 again.  Never, ever, ever.

“This Is the Night” by Clay Aiken (2003)

One critic’s view:  “‘This Is The Night’ has left absolutely zero cultural impact.  There are no prominent covers, no samples, no soundtrack placements.  The song has utterly evaporated.” – Tom Breihan @ Stereogum

The public’s view:  1.51 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of the 2000s decade

The first season of American Idol successfully discovered the best unsigned singer in the United States.  The second season’s goal was to reveal the nation’s second-best unsigned singer – not counting anyone who had lost to Kelly Clarkson in the first season, and also not counting anyone who had ever been arrested or who had posed for nude photos or who was on the no-fly list or who had rotting green teeth or who was older than 24.  Clay Aiken was the second-best of this batch of the second-best, finishing behind a guy named Ruben Studdard.  Yet it is Aiken’s name – not Studdard’s – that is written in the record books as the proud owner of a #1 single.  The aforementioned record books are the only place you will find any reference to “This Is the Night”.  It is perhaps the most forgettable #1 in all of Hot 100 history, Tommy Page notwithstanding.

“This Is the Night” and its spiky-haired performer traveled a pothole-filled road to #1.  First, Aiken was voted off of Idol in one of the early rounds of competition.  Through a quirk in the show’s rules, he was permitted to return as a “wild card” contestant despite this initial rejection by the public.  The public then decided that they liked him after all.  Aiken was like Grandma’s Brussels sprout casserole:  something that grosses everyone out the first time they try it, but later becomes a favorite.

Even though he had endeared himself to many Idol viewers by the time of the final vote, Aiken still lost by a slim margin.  He was disappointed, but he didn’t pout or whine or accuse his opponent of cheating.  He didn’t urge his supporters to boycott Fox or to mail poop to Ryan Seacrest.  Instead, Aiken reacted to his loss by congratulating the winner and expressing gratitude for the opportunity to compete.  I’m glad that our society no longer accepts this pathetic defeatist attitude.  Everyone today now understands that contests don’t end simply because someone wins them.

Losing the final round on American Idol usually comes with a humiliating penalty.  The first season’s runner-up, a young man named Justin Guarini, was forced to co-star in a terrible movie before being sentenced to a lifetime of appearing in Dr. Pepper ads.  Clay Aiken’s contractually mandated chore was to perform “I’m a Little Teapot” with the aid of a sock puppet.  Just kidding – it was worse than that.  He was required to record “This Is the Night”, a generic composition that had already been disparaged by the Idol judges.  Releasing it as his first single was certain to put his career on a monorail to Nowhereville.  He’d be lucky if even Fresca or Mr. Pibb wanted him as a spokesman after that.

“This Is the Night” was designed to be a nondescript song that could be used in a talent competition without giving an unfair advantage to the person singing it.  It is musical wallpaper, with nothing interesting to offer aside from the absurdity of it becoming a #1 hit.  And Aiken was a decent enough singer, but his domination of the Hot 100 – and, therefore, of the national arts and culture scene – was far out of proportion to his TV fame.  Simon Cowell was the most popular figure on American Idol; the contestants were merely his foils.  The fate of a secondary character such as Aiken could never be as big of a phenomenon as the shooting of J.R. Ewing on Dallas, which sent the whole country into a maelstrom of angst until the beloved oilman recovered from his injury and the perpetrator was identified.  Claymania – which my spell-checker keeps changing to “Chlamydia” – was as relevant to most people’s lives as if someone had shot Squiggy on Laverne & Shirley, or had thrown a pie in the face of Higgins on Magnum, P.I.  Nonetheless, the lackluster entertainment environment of the mid-2000s allowed Aiken to spend a couple weeks on top of the chart.

Predictably, “This Is the Night” was not a golden ticket to sustained success in popular music.  Aiken did, however, branch out into politics, where he was able to once again demonstrate his proven skill at getting the second-most number of votes.