The 2005 Readers' Poll
Posted Tuesday 12/20/2005 1:00 AM in
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| a. Billie Joe Armstrong | 26.7% |
| b. Kanye West | 19.2% |
| c. Mariah Carey | 17% |
| d. Bob Geldof | 14.3% |
| e. Fiona Apple | 12% |
| f. Chris Martin | 10.8% |
OK, maybe he didn’t rescue any kittens from trees, but the Green Day kingpin did lead his band from faded ’90s stars to sold-out stadiums on the strength of a lefty concept album. However, Erin from Kansas City thinks we might be taking a few liberties with the term: “Chris Martin? Mariah Carey? Heroes? What are they saving us from, better music?”
2. Loser of the Year| Michael Jackson | 48.8% |
| Lil’ Kim | 17.2% |
| Nick Lachey | 15% |
| DMX | 5.7% |
| Phil Spector | 6.7% |
| Paula Abdul | 6.6% |
With nary a conviction, cuckolding or sordid sex-for-
American-Idol-vote scandal under his overly ornate belt, the recently exonerated Michael Jackson may be the only candidate who actually had something
good happen to him this year. Yet that didn’t stop you from crowning him King of Pop Losers.
3. Album of the Year| a. Coldplay, X&Y | 21.9% |
| b. Mariah Carey, The Emancipation of Mimi | 18.9% |
| c. The White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan | 15.1% |
| d. Kanye West, Late Registration | 14.2% |
| e. Franz Ferdinand, You Could Have It So Much Better … | 11.1% |
| f. Beck, Guero | 8.2% |
| g. Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine | 7.2% |
| h. 50 Cent, The Massacre | 3.4% |
Colin M. probably wasn’t one of the many readers who gave the nod to Coldplay. “Can Chris Martin stop sucking your dicks so you can stop talking about his alleged greatness?” Silly Colin — it’s not the blowjobs, it’s the cash.
4. New Artist of the Year| a. My Chemical Romance | 42.2% |
| b. Fall Out Boy | 27.6% |
| c. M.I.A. | 18.9% |
| d. Young Jeezy | 9.3% |
The Jersey Goth kids run away with newbie honors, but reader Chuck Smith of Tuscon, Arizona, ruins everything by insisting their first album came out in July 2002. Thanks, Chuck. Thanks for nothin’.
5. Song of the Year| a. Kelly Clarkson, “Since U Been Gone” | 32.1% |
| b. The Killers, “Mr. Brightside” | 21.9% |
| c. Green Day, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” | 17.5% |
| d. Kanye West feat. Jamie Foxx, “Gold Digger” | 12.5% |
| e. Fall Out Boy, “Sugar, We’re Going Down” | 6.9% |
| f. Weezer, “We Are All on Drugs” | 6.3% |
| g. R. Kelly “Trapped in the Closet” | 1.5% |
| h. Mike Jones, “Still Tippin’” | 1.3% |
All of which proves our theory: People really seem to like that Kelly Clarkson song!
6. Lyric of the Year| a. “This shit is bananas/B-A-N-A-N-A-S.” (Gwen Stefani, “Hollaback Girl”) | 33% |
| b. “I’m so movin’ on.” (Kelly Clarkson, “Since U Been Gone”) | 25.4% |
| c. “Your famous friend, well, I blew him before you.” (Franz Ferdinand, “Do You Want To?”) | 19.1% |
| d. “We want pre-nup!” (Kanye West feat. Jamie Foxx, “Gold Digger”) | 11.6% |
| e. “Wait till you see my dick.” (Ying Yang Twins, “Wait (The Whisper Song)”) | 8.1% |
| f. “Tramps like us, and we like tramps.” (The Hold Steady, “Charlemagne in Sweatpants”) | 2.8% |
Thanks to Gwen and her cheerleaders, “bananas” became this year’s Word Least Likely to Cause Confusion During a Spelling Bee.
7. Video of the Year| a. Green Day, “Wake Me Up When September Ends” | 33.4% |
| b. Missy Elliott, “Lose Control” | 22.5% |
| c. Beck, “Girl” | 17.2% |
| d. Fall Out Boy, “Sugar, We’re Going Down” | 12.8% |
| e. R. Kelly, “Trapped in the Closet” | 7.5% |
| f. OK Go, “A Million Ways” | 6.7% |
Green Day’s doomed Iraq War romance trumps all, including OK Go’s low-budget choreography.
8. Overexposed Blonde of the Year| a. Paris Hilton | 47.4% |
| b. Jessica Simpson | 20.9% |
| c. Lindsay Lohan | 13.6% |
| d. Gwen Stefani | 7.8% |
| e. Hilary Duff | 7.4% |
| f. Courtney Love | 2.9% |
Lindsay knocks herself out of the running with a late-2005 switch to brunette. Well played.
9. Cutest Couple of the Year, OMG!| a. Chris and Gwyneth | 37.3% |
| b. Joel and Hilary | 14.4% |
| c. Jack and Karen | 13.6% |
| d. Britney and Kevin | 12% |
| e. Pete and Kate | 11.7% |
| f. Bobby and Whitney | 11% |
To reader Joely Bond of Washington, D.C., who claims her “booty looks better than those couples,” we say only this: Huh?
10. Best "Trapped in the Closet" Chapter| Chapter 1 | 33.3% |
| Chapter 5 | 20.8% |
| Chapter 2 | 16.2% |
| Chapter 4 | 12.9% |
| Chapter 6 | 9.8% |
| Chapter 3 | 7% |
Before stooping to incontinent midgets, R&B’s preeminent mini-opera promised something resembling intrigue. Apologies to Rachael of Centreville, Virginia, who says, “I never read it, so how should I know the best chapter?”
11. Most Afro-tastic Afro| a. Phil Spector | 31.6% |
| b. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (The Mars Volta) | 26.4% |
| c. Claudio Sanchez (Coheed and Cambria) | 22.6% |
| d. Steve Bays (Hot Hot Heat) | 20.4% |
“Wall of sound?” More like “wall of crazy-ass curls!” The legendary, and possibly murderous, record producer wins by a hair.
12. Craftiest Celebrity Defense Attorney of the Year| a. Thomas Mesereau Jr. (Michael Jackson) | 72.2% |
| b. Ed Genson (R. Kelly) | 12.6% |
| c. Leslie Abramson (Phil Spector) | 7.9% |
| d. Eamonn Sherry (Pete Doherty) | 7.3% |
The most lopsided victory in this year’s poll goes to the silver-haired, silver-tongued genius who convinced a jury that the proprietor of Neverland Ranch is not, in fact, a kiddie-fiddler. Johnnie Cochran smiles down from heaven.
13. Event of the Year| a. Live 8 | 55.2% |
| b. ReAct Now (VH1/MTV/CMT Katrina relief show) | 24.4% |
| c. Coachella music festival | 11.3% |
| d. The birth of Sean Preston Federline | 9.1% |
So, an unprecedented global gathering of musical talent designed to relieve third-world nations of crippling debt was somehow more culturally significant than K-Fed’s supersperm finding another target? Whatever, hippies.
14. Most Likely to Piss Themselves Onstage in 2006| a. Fergie (again) | 42.8% |
| b. Ozzy Osbourne | 33.3% |
| c. Keith Richards | 15.9% |
| d. Mick Mars | 6.8% |
Votes streamed in for the Black Eyed Pee, while Zack Elias of Edmonton in the great state of Canada is partial to serial urinator R. Kelly.
15. Most Inappropriate Public Display| a. Corey Clark ratting out Paula Abdul on 20/20 | 32% |
| b. Courtney Love at the Pamela Anderson roast | 30% |
| c. Black Eyed Peas “singing” about TV shows at the Emmys | 19.3% |
| d. Diddy krumping at the MTV Awards | 18.7% |
“You should have included Hilary Duff and Joel Madden’s entire relationship,” writes Quinn Santo of New Boston, Michigan. “He was something like 25 and she was 16 when they started dating — if that doesn’t scream ‘pedophile,’ I don’t know what does.”
16. Best Rediscovered High School Yearbook Photo| a. Rivers Cuomo | 55.3% |
| b. Billie Joe Armstrong | 19.1% |
| c. Kenny Chesney | 16.1% |
| d. Brandon Flowers | 9.4% |
The annual shot of the enormous-haired Weezer frontman wins in a landslide—a landslide of rock. Yet we fear for the health of reader Meisha Virtue, who writes, “Every time I see Billie Joe’s yearbook pic, I shit my pants.”
17. Least Annoying Reality TV Star| a. Carrie Underwood (winner, American Idol) | 43.3% |
| b. J.D. Fortune (winner, Rock Star: INXS) | 20.6% |
| c. Kristin Cavalleri (Laguna Beach) | 16% |
| d. Melinda Stolp (The Real World: Austin) | 16% |
| e. O’so Krispie (winner, R U the Girl?) | 4.1% |
For name-awesomeness alone, J.D. Fortune and O’so Krispie, dead-person surrogates for INXS and TLC, respectively, deserve accolades.
18. Movie of the Year| Sin City | 23% |
| The 40-Year-Old Virgin | 21.3% |
| Wedding Crashers | 19.8% |
| Crash | 17.6% |
| Batman Begins | 15.8% |
| Hustle & Flow | 2.5% |
In a tight race, graphic castration barely edges out nuptial misadventure, once again proving that there’s very little difference between the two.
19. Geezer(s) of the Year| a. The Rolling Stones | 36.7% |
| b. Madonna | 27.7% |
| c. Paul McCartney | 13.4% |
| d. Neil Diamond | 8.7% |
| e. Bruce Springsteen | 8.2% |
| f. Gang of Four | 5.3% |
They weathered countless Geritol jokes and still trotted out back-catalogue gems for hours a night. But David Slone of Warsaw, Indiana, thinks this whole category is “stupid.” Gripes Old Man Slone: “Appreciate your elders because sooner rather than later, you’ll all be ‘geezers’ too and won’t find ageism cool. Grow up.” No, you grow up.
20. Videogame of the Year| a. Resident Evil 4 | 36.2% |
| b. Call of Duty 2 | 17.6% |
| c. The Warriors | 15.4% |
| d. God of War | 14.2% |
| e. Stubbs the Zombie | 8.4% |
| f. Quake 4 | 8.3% |
Resident Evil 4: four times the evil residents!
21. Commercial Sellout That Was Actually Kinda Cool| a. Gorillaz, “Feel Good Inc.” (iPod) | 35.4% |
| b. Franz Ferdinand, “Take Me Out” (Sony PSP) | 30.7% |
| c. The Cars, “Just What I Needed” (Circuit City) | 15% |
| d. M.I.A., “Galang” (Honda Civic) | 10.4% |
| e. Transplants, “Diamonds and Guns” (Garnier Fructis) | 8.5% |
We didn’t get a lot of comments for this category specifically, so we’d like to use this space to quote reader Christopher Fields of Billings, Montana, who says, “
Blender is so cool, it makes my nipples itch.”
22. Quote of the Year| a. “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” (Kanye West) | 38.9% |
| b. “You wanna know how I know you’re gay? You like Coldplay.” (Paul Rudd in The 40- Year-Old Virgin) | 26.4% |
| c. “I want to go to Egypt and Japan and open orphanages. A chain of them.” (Lindsay Lohan) | 14.4% |
| d. “I’d like to be governor one day.” (Courtney Love) | 7.8% |
| e. “In the future, my private life will be expressed solely through art.” (Britney Spears) | 6.1% |
| f. “Other men have Ferraris. My bliss is giving and sharing simple and innocent fun.” (Michael Jackson) | 5% |
| g. “The spirit inside of me is a predator of energy and balance.” (Fred Durst) | 1.6% |
Dishonorable mention to munchies-stricken Ashlee Simpson’s “Stop talking to me, bitch. I’m nice,” drunkenly mumbled just as this survey went to press.
