The Fifty Least Wanted

Blender magazine has issued its list of what it calls "the 50 Worst Musicians of All Time". Here is the list, stripped of the compilers' comments. Some of Dr. J's comments, however, are interspliced in italics.

1. Insane Clown Posse
2. Emerson, Lake and Palmer
3. Michael Bolton :IN-deed.
4. Kenny G :The Anti-Christ, indeed....
5. Starship
6. Kansas
7. Asia
8. Vanilla Ice :Kind of a no-brainer, really...
9. Lee Greenwood :Good, they didn't leave country alone...
10. Air Supply
11. Latoya Jackson
12. Tin Machine : I don't mind David Bowie, but TM was a broken before it was invented
13. Mick Jagger :Yeah, most of the time, but Wandering Spirit (1991) was a good album
14. Yngwie Malmsteen
15. Yanni
16. Oingo Boingo
17. Benzino
18. Pat Boone : Good call. Thought they might forget him.
19. Dan Fogelberg
20. Howard Jones
21. The Alan Parsons Project
22. Primus
23. Creed
24. Bad English
25. Jamiroquai
26. Celine Dion : Why so deep in the list? I'd have thought her pollution a more serious offence
27. Colour Me Bad : Oh, yes, I remember them. Unfortunately.
28. Crash Test Dummies :One letter, repeated sixteen times: Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm
29. Skinny Puppy
30. Richard Marx : The sort of music only a mother could love: Marx's
31. Arrested Development
32. The Hooters
33. Japan
34. Live
35. Paul Oakenfold
36. 98 Degrees
37. The Doors : Oooo, controversy! Actually, I agree. I still think the Doors vastly overrated.
38. Nelson : Do they qualify as musicians? They're really rock's Sigfried and Roy
39. Bob Geldof
40. Blind Melon : AGREED!
41. Whitesnake : Ah, yes, I had forgotten these bozos
42. Rick Wakeman
43. Mike and the Mechanics : Okay, I admit to a soft spot for 'The Living Years.' There, I said it. But yes, they sucked
44. Manowar
45. Gipsy Kings
46. The Spin Doctors : Yah
47. Goo Goo Dolls : Yah
48. Master P
49. Toad the Wet Sprocket : Oh, I had *so* forgotten those schmucks.... Damn Blender!
50. Iron Butterfly : Agreed

Overall comments from Doctor J: Can't say there's too much disagreement from me here; all of the candidates here are viable, and deserving of a place in the bowels of musical history. I'd posit some other names, though for Dishonourable Mention, if you will:

Bryan Adams: Joe Cocker via No-Frills (or, outside of Canada, insert a no-name brand sales outlet).

The Backstreet Boys: Yes, an easy target, but a necessary one nonetheless. Include here all the other variations on the 'boy'-band, all of whom are pretty much interchangeable with one another.

Snoop Dog and whatever name he's using this month: Ugh.

INXS: It's not nice to mock a band with a dead lead singer, but they were pathetic. Saving grace, their collaboration with Ray Charles on "Please," only because Ray does his inimitable 'thang.'

Mariah Carey after her first album: So much potential, so little soul. I still say she should have been sent to work with Aretha Franklin or Van Morrison or someone who'd have pushed her to use that voice for good instead of for evil.

Britney Aguilera and the rest of the interchangeable blonde bimbos: God help us if they do it again, dirty or clean.

Donovan: Sorry, Catherine, if you're reading this; 'Mellow Yellow' remains a crime against humanity, and I can't for the life of me think of a single virtue to his other music that I was exposed to and tried to like for your sake. If he's the 'Scottish Dylan,' this only advances the myth of the Scots as cheap.

The Cranberries: Why did they have to let it linger?

Culture Club: Do you really want to make me cry?

Whitney Houston: And I-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i will always loathe you.....

Hanson: Mmmmm-barf.

Yoko Ono: How could Blender have forgotten this import?

REO Speedwagon: Nuff said.

Billy Ray Virus, er Cyrus: Don't Play That Song, That Achy, Breaky Song....

The Spice Girls: Hurl power.

Devo: I hope someone whips them, and whips them good.

Tiffany: Do I really need to say anything here?

Divinyls: Appropriately, they pioneered musical masturbation.

and Rick Astley: Oh, how soon we forget.... We have Remembrance Day, after all, to remind us 'Never Again.'

There are so many names I could list here... And I didn't even go into the spurious realms of 'house' and 'hip-hop' and so-called 'dance,' and the myriad contortions of musical crap that have cluttered up our culture bodies. But take comfort everyone, even the sternest cheese eventually makes it through the most constipated colon.

Oh, and how could I forget, the bane of every music lover's existence, whose utterly unnecessary shrine can be found here.