The five most annoying songs in recent history
When you’re sitting at home, listening to your favourite music, very little can be wrong with the world. Whether that’s The Beatles, Kendrick Lamar, or whichever artist you enjoy, once that song is playing, the rest of the world could be on fire, but you’re just swept in those sweet layers of sound. It’s a sweet sense of escapism that is often necessary in these turbulent times, as you’re alone with the music that brings you the most joy. How could you ever want anything more?
Our affinity for our favourite songs is a clear example of why music is so important. We love it so much because of how it continues to make us feel. However, the price we have to pay for good music… is bad music. How can the art form we adore so much also make us feel so bad? Well, it can, as there are some songs out there that are so annoying and painfully frustrating to listen to that they would be better never played again.
It’s worth noting that this list is impossible to write. In the age of social media, while art is written consumer-first and people think about what will get engagement instead of what will sound good, picking annoying songs is too difficult as they are everywhere. These songs are some recent and some older releases that weren’t written for social media but still manage to fall in the realm of being annoying. Some are problematic (but most aren’t). It’s more just that they sound horrible.
Here, we list five of the most annoying songs in history. Listen to them if you want to inflict that kind of pain on yourself. But if you’d rather stay close to good music, then these tracks are ones that you should avoid at all costs.
The five most annoying songs ever written:
Fat Dog – ‘Wither’
When you see Fat Dog live, it’s easy to see why they have such a broad appeal in the live music space. However, when it comes to their studio-recorded songs, Fat Dog’s shortcomings become clear, mainly because the entire band revolves around one drawn-out and done-to-death idea.
‘Wither’ highlights this well. It’s that same rhythm, the same thumping bass, the same annoying vocals. The frustrating repetition of this song is truly impossible to ignore. While some noisy and chaotic music is enticing, borderline charming in its messiness, this just feels like something that needs cleaning up and binning.
Sex Pistols – ‘Johnny B Goode’
If ever there is an album that shouldn’t exist, it’s Sex Pistols and The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle. How ironic that a band who rose to fame because of their rebellious nature and willingness to sing about greed and societal issues would be subject to such a blatant cash grab.
In a haphazard rush to put something out after the band had split up, these half-arsed recordings of vocal warm-ups between recordings for their debut were thrown together. It sounds as bad as you’re thinking, but the absolute worst is their rendition of ‘Johnny B Goode’, which is made up of John Lydon sprouting nonsense over a poorly played cover.
The Dare – ‘Girls’
The Dare remains the electronic equivalent of Mötley Crüe, and yet people continue to listen with glee. If ever there was an artist for the most vanilla people you know, it’s The Dare, as he draws in the boring and bland with songs promising revolt and rebellion. Nothing epitomises these bland shortcomings more than his incredibly dull ‘Girls’.
It’s a pretty simple song to write, just google free electronic beats and then reel off whatever awful nonsense might appeal to the few that will listen. If not for the “Brat Summer” movement, the popularisation of posh people doing drugs and treating the most mundane things as if they’re outrageous, this music would have slipped into obscurity. However, it’s managed to find a market amongst the few who are engaging in this newfound age of teenage rebellion ten years too late.
Tones and I – ‘Dance Monkey’
The success of this song is truly mind-blowing. It was the most streamed track in the world and has only recently been beaten by The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’. The Weeknd’s song managed to surpass Tones and I’s offering, which sat at the top of the tree with three billion streams for a long time.
Three billion streams is positively bonkers, as the song is so bad that anybody who can listen to it and make it all the way through is stronger than most, let alone someone who can listen to it and then feels compelled to go back for seconds. The vocals are frustrating, the chorus is catchy in all the wrong ways, and this track should have been left unreleased.
Robin Thicke – ‘Blurred Lines’
Do you remember when this song first came out? Of course, you do; there was no escaping it. There are two confusing things about this song’s success. The first is that the theme of the song is incredibly questionable, as it seems to suggest forcing oneself on women over a jovial beat, and everyone was just fine with it.
The other strange thing was that even if the lyricism wasn’t questionable and the theme was awful, the song still sounded horrible. It has one of the most frustrating beats ever made in the background; the vocals sound atrocious, and the whole thing reeks of borderline parody rather than being anything worth taking seriously.
