The worst song ever (runner up) - More Than Words

There are a variety of ways you can make a song horrible---flat singing, sappy arrangements, or even having it performed by David Sanborn (whose comically emotive saxophone performances look like a scatological SNL skit writ large.) But these are performance issues, stylistic decisions that limit a song's appeal without damning the song itself---after all, David Sanborn could ham an Elliott Smith song well past ridiculousness, and the song would be as much of a victim as the listener. In other words, a good song can be turned to shit.

Other songs are written as shit. For instance, "More Than Words" by the one-hit-no-wonder band Extreme. (Whose name performs a semantic feat by managing to pack an oxymoron into a single word.) The band's notoriety spawned from the barely-post-hair-metal guitar stylings of Nuno Bettencort, whose graceful fretwork was deservedly noteworthy; the band's descent into obscurity (a plummet so brisk that they even managed to avoid the radar of "Where are they now" specials) could be attributed to frontman Gary Cherone, who is to hard-rock vocals what Potsie Webber was to doo-wop. (To put Cherone's star power in perspective, his first post-Extreme gig found him as the new lead singer for post-Sammy Van Halen, a personnel decision that offended massive numbers of Van Halen fans before the band even began recording Van Halen III, a record "...commonly said to be Van Halen's most unpopular album", says the Wikipedia post, "the album not even listed on the band's discography.")

I pick on Cherone because he is credited with being the lyrical mastermind of Extreme (another oxymoron), which means the brunt of the blame for this paean to hormonal teenage manipulation falls on his skinny shoulders. Apparently an homage to date-rape wasn't considered commercially viable, so he instead crafted a lyric about pressuring one's partner to express their emotions in other ways, without relying on words. With a voice that's less blue-eyed soul than David Soul, he croons is his wanker semi-falsetto:

Saying "I love you" is not the words I want to hear from you
Its not that I want you not to say, but if you only knew
How easy it would be to show me how you feel
More than words is all you have to do to make it real
Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me, because I'd already know

Frankly, navigating the compound double negatives of the first couplet is a minor feat, and I stumble on the grammar every time (might it be "are not the words", not "is not the words"?) But I digress.

What I loathe about this song is both the transparent effort to brand copulation as a "real" expression of love, and the sophomoric eagerness of the narrator's overt selfishness---does he speak of any reciprocation or affection returned? None. "Show me how you feel", "not the word I want to hear", and "then I'd already know." Well bully for you, Gary, you found a way to coo a supposed love song about emotional blackmail for the cause of self-satisfaction, giving inarticulate high schoolers nationwide fodder for clumsy mix-tape-enabled sexual advances.

In an astonishing bit of irony, the lyrical counterpoint to this song is quite likely "Jamie's Crying", from Van Halen's debut album. The lyrics, presumably penned by David Lee Roth, are about a woman who refuses her blue-balled suitor's amorous advances: "She saw the look in his eyes and she knew better...now Jamie wouldn't say all right, she knew he'd forget her, so they said ah-good night and now he's gone forever." Roth's lyrics promote self-respect and intelligence in a sexual situation, while Cherone's lyrics offer belated advice to the guy who Jamie rebuffed. As far as I'm concerned, if you can be lyrically and morally out-nuanced by David "I can't wait to feel your love tonight" Roth, you're the scum that forms at the top of the rock and roll gene pool. No wonder Alex and Eddie wanted Dave back.

That iTunes charges 99 cents for both this wimpy ballad and---heck, I was going to say "Sway", the fabulous song by the Rolling Stones, but you can insert almost any song into this comparison---is more criminal than anything Napster ever did.