So. I have a two-year-old. Anyone who relates to that sentence will know that breakfast time can be a bit of a trial; nursery rhymes playing on the Bluetooth speaker, porridge being flung at you while you try to eat the toast that your daughter keeps trying to steal out of your hands, tears every time Incy Wincy Spider stops playing. You know the drill.
Suffice to say, when a work trip recently took me away overnight, I was absolutely relishing the hotel breakfast in peace. It was a nice place. A posh buffet breakfast with your eggs and meat cooked to order. A huge choice of sauces. Love it.
And then, just as I was about to take my first bite of bacon, the song on the radio changed. Fuck off. One of my most hated ever songs coming in to ruin this moment of bliss. And I’d left my headphones in the room.
As I angrily chewed my food, I plotted revenge. I was going to write about that song, putting it in the number one slot of a top ten list of songs you love that are actually annoying as fuck. But not just that song. It’s time to call them all out – the annoying songs that everyone apart from me seems to ADORE.
You can comment telling me how wrong I am if you want, but I’d not gonna read it. I’m too busy picking porridge off my clothes:
10: ‘Tender’ by Blur
I remember this song being absolutely huge – a Number One single that seemed to create new fans for a band that had been going through a dry spell. All I hear is a dirge, the same words repeated again and again for hours, Albarn’s voice at it’s most obnoxious. Awful.
9: ‘Go Your Own Way’ – Fleetwood Mac
Bloody Fleetwood Mac. You love them. Your mum loves them. My mum loves them. Everyone I run this website and podcast with loves them. I honestly could have picked any of their songs for this list, but there is something particularly grating about the chorus of ‘Go Your Own Way’.
8: ‘Sex On Fire’ – Kings Of Leon
This one gets extra points for being by a band that were actually quite good until they released it. ‘Sex On Fire’ was so bad that it sent the band who wrote it on a spiral, turning them from an original and exciting act creating sounds that nobody else was creating to a stadium rock mess. If you disagree with me, just go and read the lyrics. I dare you.
7. ‘Imagine’ – John Lennon
I’ll admit that I was a big fan of this one in my youth, when I thought that you had to be a fan of it to be respected as music enjoyer. But really? Are we really letting a very rich man sing to us about how hard we would find it to imagine no possessions?
6. ‘Single Ladies’ – Beyonce
Okay. This one might be on the list because it’s just too fucking catchy. I can’t tell you the amount of times that I have just been walking around my kitchen in the middle of the day and the words ‘if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it’ have come out of my mouth for no discernible reason. If that isn’t annoying as fuck, then I don’t know what is.
5. Any song by Abba
Look, I can’t just choose one. They all sound the same and they’re all about Dancing Queens and they all make my ears bleed.
4. ‘Shake It Off’ – Taylor Swift
I’m giving the Swifties some easy ammunition here – come at me with your haters gonna hate comments all day long, I’m ready for you. Listen, I have made it clear that I am not a big fan of Taylor but that I also admire her work ethic and think she has released some interesting music, challenging her own fanbase with new sounds on a regular basis. This song is not in that category. The chorus has every annoying element a chorus can have; smugness, repetition, rhymes that don’t really rhyme, and the ability to stick in your head even when you can’t stand it.
3. ‘Hey Jude’ – The Beatles
Dirge is my word of the day. Dirge, dirge, dirge, dirge, dirge.
2. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
In my extensive ‘research’ for this article, I read that this was the third highest selling song of all time in the UK. Jesus. It has the line ‘Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?’ in it. It is almost impressive, though, that this song goes through so many extreme changes in style, key, and tone, and yet manages to be annoying at every turn.
1.‘Wuthering Heights’ – Kate Bush
And now we come to the breakfast ruiner. There is a chance ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ would have beaten this to the top spot if it wasn’t for that very specific moment at a Birmingham breakfast buffet, but in all honesty, I have really never understood the love for this song. Her voice on the chorus makes me wince and the drama of the whole thing is just too much to cope with it. This song hurts me.
Words by Fran Slater
Picky Bastards 