The Bottom Five

November 25, 2008
7:27 AM CST

Okay, Rachl Lukis started it, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t continue with my suggestion for the five “band/artistes who make you want to plunge your head into a vat of boiling oil” or something like that.

I don’t listen to country music much if at all, and they sound dreadful to me anyway (with a couple of exceptions), so other than Dwight Yoakum (whose high adenoidal voice sounds as horrible as his silly name), I’m going to ignore all of them Nashville types.

1. Air Supply. Whenever I hear “come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with meeeeeee”, I want to board their saiiiilinnnnng ship with a cutlass and slit their throats. Styx falls into the same castrato category, but at least their music sounds okay—until that dweeb starts singing.

2. AC/DC. Nothing makes me reach for the on/off switch as quickly as that singer: “tuneless screech” is about the kindest way I can describe it.

3. Frank Sinatra. Oy, when Ol’ Blue Eyes/No Voice starts that off-key braying, I reach, in the manner of Josef Goebbels, for my pistol. Absolutely, positively without question the most overrated singer ever.

4. Carole King. Oh holy mother of Beethoven, spare me from the monotonous chanting of this horrible woman, with her songs which really do never end.

5. Bob Dylan. Yeah, maybe he could write the occasional good tune (not as many as his legions of fans seem to think), but ol’ Zim gets the Nasal Incoherence Award each year (in the Rock Division: Yoakum gets Country), and all other competition is for second place.

Your opinions may differ, and I don’t care. These five/six are the Muzak in my Room 101.