“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.

“I’m Real (Murder Remix)” by Jennifer Lopez featuring Ja Rule (2001)

One person’s view:  “The contrast between the rough verses and gentle hook doesn’t work as there’s nothing that brings them together seamlessly and the relationship they’re talking about doesn’t sound like one I want.” – Nerd with an Afro

The public’s view:  2.66 / 5.00, in the bottom third of #1 hits of 2001

The entire concept of success got flipped on its head in the early 2000s.  The most lucrative investments were stocks in dot-com companies with no viable plan for profitability.  The guy who received the most votes lost the presidential election.  And a red hot singer and actress couldn’t get her latest single to #1 until it was replaced by an inferior version that offended many of the listeners she was trying to attract.

Jennifer Lopez’s “I’m Real” was like an updated edition of the music that Janet Jackson had made in the 1980s, effortlessly wafting across the boundaries of pop, dance, and R&B.  This pleasantly harmless trifle of a song was perfectly suited for radio, but J. Lo’s management couldn’t care less whether the bumpkins out in Fly Over Land enjoyed hearing the track on their AM top 40 outlets.  Her label expected to sell only three or four CDs in all of Iowa; the real money was in the big cities along the coasts.  For the J. Lo album to go octuple platinum, “I’m Real” needed a hip-hop remix by someone with a deep sense of musical craftsmanship.  No such person was available, so the job was given to Ja Rule.

Ja Rule decided to change the parameters of the assignment.  Instead of remixing J. Lo’s hit, he composed an entirely new song with the same title.  And instead of doing a guest rap on one verse, as was the custom, he wrote himself into the new version on equal footing with the woman who was supposed to be the star.  The resulting duet was dubbed the “Murder Remix” of “I’m Real”.  The “Remix” part was a misnomer, as this was a total rewrite, but “Murder” was accurate because Ja Rule had managed to kill anything that was interesting about the original song.  He eliminated the catchy melody and added a Rick James sample that wears thin after being repeated in the background for four minutes.  It is the lyrics, though, that earn “I’m Real (Murder Remix)” a spot in the museum of “Bad” #1 Hits.

Ja Rule comes across as a thug on this track, but not a motivated type of thug who hustles to sell drugs or who gets into violent feuds with other rappers.  He can’t even be bothered to brag about his wealth or his sexual abilities, because that would require energy.  Instead, he just sits around and smokes so much weed that he forgets his own name and has to ask what it is.  J. Lo says she can’t go on without him, but never explains what attracts her to such a useless boyfriend.  She uses most of her lines to complain about other men, which suggests that she is settling for this guy because everyone else she knows is worse.  We are supposed to accept that the beautiful Jennifer Lopez can do no better than a dull stoner who calls her a “bitch”, but it isn’t plausible.

As Lopez’s label promoted Ja Rule’s rewritten track to urban radio stations, some of them pushed back against the transparent attempt to curry their favor.  J. Lo had previously marketed her music to suburban soccer moms, and now she was trying to have it both ways – literally, in fact, by releasing two different songs under the same title.  Disc jockeys at New York’s Hot 97 saw this as an insult, and they led a protest against Lopez’s needless use of the n-word in the “Murder Remix”.  At every appearance that J. Lo made in support of her single, she was forced to wearily utter some variation of the line “I am not a racist.”  When you’re having to say things like that on a promotional tour, maybe it’s best to just stay home.

The “Murder Remix” could be considered a catastrophe by many measures.  On the Billboard Hot 100, however, it was a huge success.  Ja Rule had stumbled into a loophole in the chart’s methodology.  Because his song was titled as a remix of “I’m Real”, it was credited with the airplay points from J. Lo’s original version as well as its own airplay.  Neither track was probably strong enough to hit #1 by itself, but this glitch in the formula allowed the “Murder Remix” to spend five weeks on top.  It worked out so well that J. Lo and Ja Rule repeated the stunt with “Ain’t It Funny” and “Ain’t It Funny (Murder Remix)”, prompting Billboard to introduce a new rule – the Ja Rule Rule, you could call it – to prevent another recurrence.

By the topsy-turvy standards of the new millennium, “I’m Real” is the perfectly ironic title for J. Lo’s endeavor.  What else could you call a song about an unrealistic and unrelatable romance, written as a cynical marketing ploy and then used in an artificial scheme to manipulate the singles charts?  It’s the audacity of it all, rather than any artistic merit, that makes it intriguing.

“With Arms Wide Open” by Creed (2000)

One person’s view:  “Overwrought, overproduced, and ugly.” – TumbleweedExtreme629 @ Reddit

The public’s view:  1.99 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2000 to 2002

Many music critics look back fondly upon the grunge craze of the early ‘90s.  They curse the day that grunge was replaced by the execrable post-grunge, which committed the unpardonable sin of sounding like grunge despite being slightly later chronologically.  It should have been clear from the beginning, however, that grunge would have only a brief time as the dominant force in rock ‘n’ roll.  The movement’s hero was an iconoclast who disdained wealth and fashion, and whose success led to hundreds of others imitating him in an attempt to become wealthy and fashionable.  The contradiction could not be sustained.  Within a couple of years, the price of flannel shirts was bid up so high that no one aside from Eddie Vedder could afford the extravagant lifestyle associated with the genre.  Plus, life insurance companies wised up and stopped selling policies to anyone who was in a grunge band.  Post-grunge may not evoke the same warm reminiscences as grunge, but at least it has better actuarial statistics.

Creed is despised even more than the average post-grunge act.  I don’t feel like writing a long essay about all the specific reasons why.  Instead, I fed a bunch of reviews and online discussions about the band and their #1 hit into a word cloud generator, and this is what I got:

To the professional and armchair critics who write these reviews, it doesn’t matter that Creed has sold over 50 million CDs.  It also doesn’t matter that Creed’s reunion tour – a quarter century after the band’s peak – is one of the hottest concert tickets this summer.  The band will never appease its haters, and its haters happen to control certain honors such as induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  In that respect, Creed can be compared to Styx.  Like Styx, it even has a religious, overdramatic lead singer who often antagonizes people.  I guess Scott Stapp is the baritone version of Dennis DeYoung.

I’m going to be a contrarian again, as I was with Michael Bolton, and say that “With Arms Wide Open” doesn’t merit this torrent of contempt.  It’s an inspirational song about becoming a parent for the first time, and it can be appreciated for what it is.  Yes, the production is a bit overdone, and any newborn who enters the world to the sound of Scott Stapp’s angry deep-voiced barking is probably going to turn around and go back into the womb.  Plus, Stapp pronounces the word “open” as if it has a “u” in the second syllable.  But this was the start of a truly forgettable decade for popular music, and Creed’s #1 hit wins some points from me just by not being everything else on the charts at that time.

No other hard rock band has had a #1 song on the Hot 100 since the chart-topping feats of Creed and the similarly maligned Nickelback in 2000 and 2001.  I’m sure it will happen again someday, perhaps as part of a White Lion comeback, but for now we must contend with all of the hip hop, country, and Ed Sheeran that the gods of popular culture choose to bestow upon us.  We still have plenty of material for this blog.