As if hell couldn’t get any worse, welcome to 2021. September 11th, 2021 to be exact. We stand here on a historically graphic and significant date in order to bring the few viewers of our terror a retrospective. The worst music of the year 2020, a year where every single day was September 11, 2001 all over again. I did not publish this at new year’s time and have left it to wait like a lot of things in the modern endemic era, so you’ve best been used to these delays by now. Due to the slowing of things in the pandemic, this list will feature two more than your usual three recipients of an award for worst songs of the year to bring it to a bottom five. However, because of the decrease in released new music overall in 2020, the majority of these songs are live performances, remixes or covers. In a year of pandemics and presidential elections, these were the worst of all crimes against humanity, even thoughts and prayers will never save them.
5. Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra – All Within My Hands
Metallica continues to remain a staple of the punching bag list of bands here, and this time around it’s not even because of new material. Back in 2019, Metallica made a needless sequel to their 1999 live release S&M, which was one of the few metal meets symphonic backing albums that wasn’t a completely overblown waste of time. However, this time around they only released the original show as a cinematic experience and waited until deep into the 2020 pandemic hellscape to release the actual Blu Ray and album recording. This was also Metallica’s final live performance before they cancelled all their 2020 tour dates, not due to the pandemic but because of James Hetfield’s relapse and rehab again. So therefore this will be included; also to address the elephant in the room, this is a song originally from St. Anger. In 2020, Metallica re-released a song from fucking St. Anger and it immediately went to #1 on the butt rock controlled Mainstream Rock Chart in the US and suddenly became reevaluated. I will not settle for this, regardless of a reconstruction in a symphonic and acoustic live performance, that doesn’t make this anything else than a mediocre and unmemorable installment in the Metallica pantheon. They’ve gone on for 40 years now and this settles very comfortably at the bottom along with the original on St. Anger, no dressing up is going to save this boring and overly long relic of Metallica’s shame. Unfortunately, as of yesterday, they have now completed their trilogy of error that began with LULU, continued with Lady Gaga, and has now concluded with Miley Cyrus. Metallica are yet again on the fast track to a 2021 spot on the awards list.
4. Steven Wilson featuring Elton John – Personal Shopper
Much like Opeth’s inclusion in the 2019 installment of the worst songs of the year awards, it would have been unthinkable 10 years ago that Steven Wilson would end up being included in the consideration. Steven Wilson is by far the most prolific artist featured in these ceremonies, having nearly 2,000 albums on which he is credited on in some form of production, remastering, remixing or performing. Not including things like remastering the discographies of Black Sabbath and King Crimson, the things Steven is most revered for are Porcupine Tree’s 25 year career of great music, his contributions to Opeth’s legendary Blackwater Park through Ghost Reveries era, and his actually solid solo career for several years. Until he began focusing on dad rock concept albums about cleaning kitchen appliances, hating Facebook, and downloading sex, god and shit you didn’t want, eventually leading to making the godawful “ABBA meets Daft Punk” song “Permanating”. However, in 2020, it seemed things couldn’t have lined up worse for Steven Wilson. He was planning to play stadiums for the first time ever as a headliner in Europe and still commanded a hardcore cult following elsewhere while planning to release his prophetic new solo album, The Future Bites, which was to release on June 6, 2020. The first single, released in March 2020, was the nearly 10 minute long “Personal Shopper”. This song features Elton John… in a spoken word role, reciting a list of things to sarcastically search for in a supermarket. Wow. The most hilarious thing about this song is the context in which it released, March of 2020. At a time where people would have really appreciated online ordering and drive up services, Steven Wilson released this tonally deaf song against contact free delivery. It’s almost 10 minutes long, and completely devoid of anything that made fans of his work of the years before, now eschewing nearly all the rock elements entirely for industrial and electronic driven misguided pop in the vein of bands like Genesis, Queen and Rush before him in the 80’s, or in more recent times, Muse. The transition from prog to pop was always a failure and it’s not any different for Steven either. It’s very emblematic of everything longtime fans have issues with. But then there was this…
3. Steven Wilson – The Last Great American Dynasty
I really have nothing bad to say about Steven’s transition to the entirely digital age of corona, he has absolutely known how to maintain a career online, releasing a ton of of performances from his own high tech studio that covers tons of eras of his long and storied career. However, this might be the single worst thing Steven Wilson has ever done. One of the strangest cover choices ever, one can wonder why an aloof Brit in his mid 50’s would cover this. Someone Steven Wilson’s age listening to Taylor Swift alone should probably set off alarms. But it easily ends up falling in line with those creepy dudes in their 40’s and 50’s that still try to act like they’re into shitty new pop music that the kids listen to, it’s eerily reminiscent of the guys I knew in their late 30’s and early 40’s that would praise Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga 10 years ago. That’s how it comes off to me at least. Meanwhile in 2021, Steven Wilson is now into some “all lives matter” bullshit regarding the Israel and Palestine conflict, so he can fuck right off.
2. Deftones and Maynard James Keenan featuring Mike Shinoda – Passenger (Linkin Park Remix)
On paper, you would think you were headed for a full on nu-metal classic with this one. You’ve got all the ingredients necessary; Deftones, Maynard, Mike Shinoda, and a reissue of the genre defining classic White Pony album. However, the giant asterisk necessary here is that this was coming from Black Stallion, the 2020 remix album also included in the White Pony reissue. This album would feature electronic and techno remixes of the original album from artists such as The Cure’s Robert Smith, DJ Shadow, Purity Ring and Phantogram. For the legendary collaboration “Passenger”, this task fell onto Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda, and what he has done here is nothing short of an atrocity. Imagine stripping all the musicality out of a classic and replacing it with the most tired and generic electronic droning possible. What we’re left with here is a sleep inducing lull lacking any of the urgency of the original, and when it gets to the “drop” accompanied by Maynard’s powerful chorus, instead we get this stale EDM club music that time already left behind in the early 2010’s. What a flat out fucking embarrassment, people expecting a powerhouse of nu-metal based on the involved roster here were instead given a pile of steaming and fresh bullshit. Deftones, Linkin Park or the many projects of Maynard James Keenan were never going to be falling into the “club banger” category of music and this pathetic attempt was not going to change that. Hell, after the second chorus they didn’t even do anything but add an obnoxious drum machine over the original song. It sounds like even Mike gave up halfway through this. Don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken, because you might just end up with a useless electrified junk heap.
1. Puddle of Mudd – About a Girl
Wow. Well there is something that was handed the number one spot on this list immediately upon release and stayed there with an iron grip. Puddle of Mudd resurfaced after 10 years in hilarious obscurity as an object of humiliation and rejection in 2019 with their comeback Welcome to Galvania, and in 2020 they have only cemented their reputation with what might be the single worst cover of any song ever. For those of you keeping track, holding back to back #1’s in my series of worst of recaps was previously only a feat managed by Weezer, but in comes Puddle of Mudd with an easy back to back reign. Keep in mind that if they were to release something in 2021, they would not only probably rocket to #1 and stay there in our series, but would also find themselves along with Weezer and Machine Head in our esteemed “so bad they were eliminated from competition” status. This cover was received so impossibly poorly that the video on Youtube itself is unlisted and you have to use a URL in order to even find it. Even Sirius XM was smart enough to bury this shame in a closet full of skeletons. It set a record for most disliked rock music video on Youtube, currently sitting at a staggering 25,000 thumbs down versus only 4,000 likes. Which is by far too many, who the fuck are the 4,000 people who actually liked this? I wish we could go back in time and replace the people who died in the 9/11 terrorist attack with the 4,000 people who liked this cover. It’s a fate they frankly fucking deserve. With the amount of perpetual motion generated from Kurt Cobain spinning in his grave, you could power all of Seattle and the northwest United States. If things like Kid Cudi’s Speeding Bullet 2 Heaven and Pearl Jam’s Gigaton didn’t already seal the coffin on the grunge revival, this would’ve been the final nail. It’s just that terrible, and I encourage you to leave the above video alone so it can toil away in unlisted Youtube irrelevance. Fuck Puddle of Mudd, we should just go ahead and blame them for 9/11 and the Covid-19 pandemic at this point, because they are about on par as far as tragedies go. Jet fuel may melt steel beams, but one can only hope Wes Scantlin ends up doused in jet fuel and placed inside a raging fire.
So there it is, the worst music we were forced to contend with in the year 2020 finally revealed, a year where every day was September 11, 2001. Investigate 311, keep your bibles in pools of blood so that none of it’s lies can infect you, and never forget that god hates us all.
VS. MusicK 