So here we are at the end of another retro chart year and honestly, 2000 was a pretty good year...we got some classic hit songs and likely one hit wonders, the best stuff in 2000 was really good but today we're discussing the bottom of the barrel...the absolute worst that 2000 on the ARIA singles chart had to offer and for the most part most of the songs are from badly produced pop that hadn't aged well, r'n'b and hip hop that was either sleazy or hilariously badly written and even rock and country striking out and believe me, a few choices here will be controversial (there's at least three songs here I can think of that will piss people off)
Let's quickly go over the rules:
1. To make this list, the song has to have made the ARIA year end list for 2000
2. Being boring cannot be a factor, a song must annoy or irritate me in some form to make this list.
3. If a song made the 1999 year end list and peaked higher on the 2000 year end list than it's also eligible.
You got that? Good. Let us begin this list of bad with one question, Jennifer Lopez, what the fuck were you thinking?
10. “Let’s Get Loud” by Jennifer Lopez
As somebody who mostly can tolerate Jennifer Lopez, there’s
a part of me that wants to be benevolent and leave this song off the list but I
can’t, this song drives me up the wall every time I hear it…that repetitive
chorus that borders on the line of being annoying to obnoxious, the gang vocals
that seem louder than J Lo is in the mix with their omnipresent yelps of “Hey!”
and the lyrics that try to turn music into a metaphor for an empowerment
anthem…all I can say J Lo, is if I was wanting to get loud, I’d be turning up
songs that are much better than this attempt at empowerment via annoyance.
Jennifer Lopez would go onto further success in the 2000s
before her career really kind of sputtered out a bit and has reverted to
releasing songs mostly in Spanish…doesn’t stop “Let’s Get Loud” from being
annoying as all hell.
So you might remember that in my 1998 best list, I praised
“The Boy is Mine” by Brandy and Monica, well just two years later there’s a
song that goes in a similar direction and does it so completely wrong, it’s
nearly hilarious.
9. “He Wasn’t Man Enough” by Toni Braxton
This song is just embarrassing from Toni Braxton, it paints
her as this capricious catty diva who has just found out her man is married to
another woman but instead of handling it with class by ending the relationship
and just moving on herself, Braxton tries to interfere in his relationship with
his wife by telling her she can have him because he wasn’t ‘man enugh’ for her
but is just the man for this other woman like she knows what this other woman
wants from a man and Braxton declaring that she has already ‘had’ this man is
enough for me to turn this garbage off, it’s toxic in an unpleasant way and the
production doesn’t even acknowledge the toxicity…it’s too bright and doesn’t
sell the drama so yeah…pass…at least “Unbreak My Heart” is good.
Speaking of relationship songs…this next one goes the other
way to a point of being so gooey, it’s positively rainbows and lollipops to an
almost sickening degree.
8. “Amazed” by Lonestar
This song is the only ‘country’ (if you can call it that)
song to make the year end list for 2000 and in a way I get the feeling this
song was one of the reasons behind why we rarely ever see country music hit the
top 50 of the ARIA charts anymore because wow, this song when not being
cliched, is corny, sugary and gooey to the point of making me want to vomit.
Lyrically the song reminds me of how absurd “I don’t Wanna
miss a thing” by Aerosmith was in singing about love from a year earlier except
toeing a line between corny and ridiculous in the lyrical department while
being completely bland in the instrumentation, for a start, “Every little thing
that you do, Baby I’m amazed by you”…Dude, I am pretty sure not every little
thing she does is amazing, unless she farts rainbows and releases unicorns into
the toilet when she poops which is extremely unlikely however it’s an example
of how cloying and over reaching the lyrics are.
Another example is he wants to spend the whole night in her
eyes…I’m sure burning an imprint of you into this poor girl’s retinas is
fucking impossible. This song is ewww in every which way..
Remember when I said the Spice Girls should have went their
separate ways after “Viva Forever”? Well here is the proof of that…
7. “Holler” by Spice Girls
The Spice Girls decided to drop the pop that made them
global superstars and go for a popular R’n’B aesthetic and “Holler” is an
example of why it did not work, the Spice Girls were known for being boisterous
and very in your face with cheeky colourful pop music that established the very
different personalities of the women involved, “Holler’ not only is bland from
an R’n’B perspective but strips away the personalities of the four remaining
members of the band as they sing about wanting this guy to come into their
world and play by their rules so they can make him scream and it honestly
combined with the production, I don’t think the guy would at all be enticed.
Especially when we get to the middle act of the song where
it’s the girls and this male voice spewing the word “Holler” and other nonsense,
its actually really creepy to a degree and again defeats the purpose of this
song’s attempt to be sexy and lure this guy into their world so he can “holler”
for them.
It’s also worth pointing out that only Mel C and Mel B sound
even vaguely close to good over that beat. Emma and Victoria just don’t
fit…yeah…I’ll stick to “Stop” and “Say You’ll be There” for my Spice Girls fix
Well now we get into where electronic music got completely
annoying….
6. “Freestyler” by Bomfunk MCs
This song was irritating the first time I heard it in 2000,
now it’s irritating with a capital I, that sound of what might be a rooster
having it’s balls wrenched off with no anaesthetic in the back of the mix and
the fact the song instrumentation wise sounds like it just wants to be a knock
off Fat Boy Slim who did this sort of sound better in the 90s with “Praise You”
and “Weapon of Choice”… however “Freestyler” manages to incorporate the
annoying elements through the song including gang vocals that sound like a
person about to start dry retching into a toilet however it’s the vocals
solidly kill this track, the lead vocals have no flow and are so smug they
grate on every single nerve and that’s before you realize the song itself makes
about as much sense as Donald Trump being US President.
By the way, the rooster having his balls wrenched off
returns at the end of the song just to make my headache from this wall of noise
even worse. Next.
Now we’re hitting proof that 2000 couldn’t escape the trends
of the 90s…1996 had a myriad of covers, several of which made my year end worst
list for that year, unfortunately we weren’t completely free of covers in 2000
and the only question that I need to ask Madonna is WHY?
5. “American Pie” by Madonna
I can argue that 2000 was a bad year for Madonna, sure she
got two hits on the year end list…this being one, the other we’ll get to but
this cover of Don McLean’s “American Pie” is here because she turned a song
that is about the loss of innocence in music with the line “the day the music
died” being about the 1959 plane crash that killed big popular music names of
the time Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens into this colourless
albeit shortened slice of pop music that reduces Madonna to singing in a flat
monotone for most of the song, she doesn’t sound good and takes away a lot of
the texture and resonance of the original version by McLean.
Mercifully, we’ve all moved on from and forgotten about this
awful cover, certainly don’t hear it played on the radio, but we’ve got more
Madonna to deal with a bit later on this list, folks…stick around…
Remember when R’n’B songs about sex were sexy and had a
recognisable groove…something this next act forgot…
4. “Thong Song” by Sisqo
This is a little lower on the list than I had thought it
would be originally and that’s mostly because I find what’s in front of it
intolerable but yeah “Thong Song” is a sleazy arse song that was approximately
fourteen years ahead of its time with its unimaginative chorus and Sisqo
sounding about as smooth as a car driving over humps in a shopping mall carpark
which makes sense for a song about a woman’s arse…NOT!.
That said it’s not like he actually gets any sort of melody
or rhythm to work with ditching the intro’s violin for the overuse of heavy
percussion as Sisqo nasally goes on about a scandalous dress this woman is
wearing and then uses the chorus to beg her to let him see her thong, it’s
sleazy, leering and pretty god damn unpleasant to listen to so yeah…let’s
quickly move on from this turd like the world moved on from this guy having a
career…NEXT..
Rock on the ARIA singles chart was in a bit of a mess,
depending on your definition of rock, we had Bon Jovi, Matchbox Twenty, U2 and
these guys…
3. “Take a Look Around” by Limp Bizkit.
Oh dear god…Limp Bizkit were one of the worst bands of 2000
and this song is the perfect example of why. “Take a Look around” pairs a
sample that basically sounds like the Mission Impossible theme and pair it with
the bratty whiny rapping of Fred Durst who sounds buried in the mix on the
verses, at least the guitars somewhat shred of a tolerable chorus when Durst
isn’t trying to scream and really Durst is the one who just makes this song and
Limp Bizkit’s presence on Australia’s music charts in the early part of the new
millennium intolerable and I blame them, Creed and Nickelback for why rock has
next to no presence on the charts in 2020.
2000 saw many female pop starlets hit the charts, Britney
Spears, Christina Aguilera, Billie Piper amongst others and for the most part
their songs were good to objectively fine then Jessica Simpson showed up.
2. “I Think I’m in Love with You” by Jessica Simpson
Of the early 2000s female pop set, Jessica Simpson was one
of the weakest, her first hit “I’m Gonna Love You Forever” is not good and only
just barely missed the top ten proper but “I Think I’m I Love With You” just
pisses me off wholesale. For one thing, why use a classic riff from John
‘Cougar’ Mellencamp’s 1980s classic “Jack & Diane” (a song I actually love)
if all Jessica Simpson was just to coo and shout all over it? She hasn’t got
the grit in her vocals to handle the sample, she hasn’t got the rock edge that
say a Avril Lavigne would later have. For another, the lyrics are asinine, just
because this guy looked her in the eyes does not mean he is reciprocating what
she is feeling, making eye contact is part of how humans communicate
nonverbally, Jessica!
This song is just lame and really given how Jessica Simpson
would go on to have a brief period of prominence by playing the part of a
stupid ditz on a terrible “reality TV” show, she’s mostly been forgotten but
she left this turd with skidmarks as a memory of her time on the charts.
Before we discuss the worst hit song of 2000, lets race
through some dishonourable mentions, shall we?
DHM 1: “B-Boys & Flygirls” by Bomfunk MCs
The follow up to “Freestyler” isn’t as bad but those vocals
are absolute garbage, going for the cheesy sports announcer vocal style does
not work for me at all.
DHM 2: “I Wanna Love You Forever” by Jessica Simpson
This is mediocre as hell and with overwrought lyrics like
“ten thousand lifetimes together”. Jessica, we only have ONE lifetime, you are
overplaying your hand with that lyric. Only got left off the list because “I
Think I’m in Love with You” is considerably worse.
DHM 3: “Who Let the Dogs Out” by the Baha Men
Novelty song that has not aged as well as you’d like to
remember it. Missed the list only because they really have not done too much lasting
cultural damage other than occasionally being good for a joke or two.
DHM 4: “Jumpin’ Jumpin’” by Destiny’s Child
This is all a bit sleazy and questionable isn’t it? Girls
and guys, leave your significant other to go to the club that’s jumpin’ jumpin’
for a night of presumably wild sex with another person and that production is
just…no…
DHM 5: “Who the Hell Are You?” by Madison Avenue
Yeah…Madison Avenue’s 15 minutes of fame had hit their 13th
minute when this song hit number one. The production is a mess and Cheyne
Coates can’t pull off sounding angry, she just sounds sleazy or like she’s had
a long night at the club…
So what’s the number one worst hit song of 2000? For as much
as “I Think I’m in Love with You” and “Take A Look Around” make me angry, it
just wasn’t going to be anything else other than this affront to “Music”
1.
“Music” by Madonna.
This song is unlistenable and one of the worst hit songs of
Madonna’s career, its not quite as bad as the dirge called “Bitch, I’m Madonna”
she released in 2015 with Nicki Minaj but man it’s close. A song weirdly called
“Music” that just sounds nothing close to being music and more like a group of
people who came together to produce the world’s worst hearing test disguised as
a song with it’s beeps and that clunky as hell vocoder noise.
Then we’ve got Madonna begging the DJ to put another record
on because she wants to dance with her lover…let’s hope the DJ didn’t put this
on because it’s not even vaguely close having a groove to dance to and Madonna’s
assertion that music brings people together…well good music brings people
together…not this absolute atrocity that was allowed to squat at number one for
four weeks.
The worst part is that it all feels like Madonna made this
in an attempt to compete with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera who were
making better pop music than this…I’ll stick to “Just Like a Peayer” and “Into
the Groove”, thanks Madge and bestow the honour of the worst hit song of 2000
on “Music” Instead.
