The Sloppy Dog's Worst of 2008: Singles

We thought we had a hard time narrowing down the year’s greatest singles to just ten selections, but trying to whittle down the gargantuan quantities of shit music for our Worst Singles list was even more difficult.
That means a reprieve for The Verve and Sugababes, both of whom should be utterly ashamed of themselves for their respective Pingu and Boots cackfests. It also means a lucky escape for Nickelback, H Two O, Leon Jackson and multiple entries from Alphabeat, plus Christina Aguilera who narrowly avoids making the list three times in a row. But for now, let’s don our gas masks and root through the sewage bad enough to warrant a festive dose of The Slaegin™...

10. Basshunter - Now You're Gone
We left the country for a brief holiday back in January, and returned to find this abomination sat smugly at Number One. Seriously, can we not turn our backs for five minutes without the music scene going into Euro-manure meltdown? Is there no chance that the soundtrack to a million regurgitated Reefs on the pavements outside a contemptible out-of-town nightclub could actually stay there?

9. Pussycat Dolls - When I Grow Up
We’ve always held a substantial amount of contempt for the dancing courtesan collective, but never before has one of their songs been so completely vexing. Ham-fisted, tacky, self-indulgent lyrics which denote precisely nothing – so, you ladies wanna have cars, groupies and/or boobies? Well, we want you to have low sales, typhoid and/or multiple accidents. Starting with Nicole.

8. Dizzee Rascal & Calvin Harris - Dance Wiv Me
It was a shame to see the gifted, inventive Dizzee Rascal hooking up with bandwagon-on-legs Calvin Harris, but an even bigger shame to hear the extent to which Harris decimated the track. It’s not just his hackneyed beats that make Dance Wiv Me so unbearable, it’s the pitiful attempts at singing, sounding more like Father Paul Stone reading out the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy league scores.

7. Kylie Minogue – Wow
Dear ol’ Kyles has peddled some shit throughout her career, but nothing comes close to the lifeless, uninspired waste of oxygen that is Wow. Seriously, not even Chocolate or that one with that Keith bloke come close to the musical dishonour on display here. Kylie, love, when Dannii is effortlessly outshining you without even realising a single thing, you know the drawing board’s a-calling.

6. David Jordan - Sun Goes Down
Looking back on 2008, we breathe a dramatic sigh of relief that this jumped-up Mini-Mika never lived up to the hype this shoddy mess of a single insinuated. Camp to the point it was actually strangely eerie, it was hard not to watch David Jordan perform this monstrosity without wanting to shower vigorously afterwards. Ah well – you rip off the almighty Wizbit, you end up a one-hit wonder. Now that’s magic.

5. Mika – Lollipop
Oh, and look! Here’s the man herself! Pay attention David Jordan, this is how you pass high-pitched effeminate baloney off as a singing career. Lollipop actually failed to make the Top 40 as a stand-alone single, but its mere existence alone was enough to instil terror in anyone with taste. Mercifully, 2008 was otherwise quiet on the Mika front – is it too much to hope he and David Jordan killed one another in a particularly gory hair-pulling bitchfight?

4. Scouting For Girls - I Wish I Was James Bond
In fairness, we’ve probably liked a Scouting For Girls song. However, that was prior to them re-recording said song under eleven different titles and carpet-bombing the nation with them. By far the worst offender was this, a shameless cash-in on the James Bond mediafest, and although it didn’t perform particularly well, its eye-gougingly awful tune and wholly embarrassing lyrical run-through of past Bond actors would induce a big enough cringe to turn you inside out. Someone give these morons the Sing-a-long-a-Scouting-For-Girls series on Nick Jr they deserve, and leave the rest of us well alone.

3. Boyzone - Love You Anyway
The most irksome, exasperating, lodged-inside-your-brain-until-death-presents-itself-as-the-only-viable-option shitcunt of a tune this year came courtesy of Boyzone, who evidently invoked some majorly dark magicks to create a song this vulgarly infectious. The persecution of the ears that comes with the sound of Ronan Keating’s voice only played the tiniest part in what made Love You Anyway so unbearable – yes, it really was that bad of a song.

2. Adele - Chasing Pavements
Now, much has been made on these hallowed pages about the visual side of Adele, but we have to clarify, her weight is by no means the issue – moreover, it’s her sullen, slappable face and permanently-downturned codmouth. She’s like a walking bad mood in a shapeless black smock. And as if to provide the perfect aural accompaniment for such a sorry sight, along comes the morbidly depressing fuckwittery of Chasing Pavements, commandeering the airwaves and throwing the nation into inconsolable despair. In fact, we’d bet this pus-filled hag and her ballad of bollocks are indirectly responsible for the economic crisis...

1. Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl
And just – and that’s literally only just – beating Adele’s vile anthem of funereal flab to the top spot is the vacuous, white-trash slurry-party known as Katy Perry. Aside from the cheap, mock-coquettish, home-made moneyshot of a song, Perry’s sluttish desperation to look titillating in every single item of visual media fails on all counts, and only serves to make her look almost as big a dead-eyed cocksucker as the Pussycat Trolls themselves. Tell you what, love, if you’re that keen on some girl-on-girl action to grab another headline or shift another few units, why not check yourself into HMP Holloway...?