The 50 Worst Songs Ever! Watch, Listen and Cringe!

40. COLOR ME BADD “I Wanna Sex You Up” 1991
Small-penis alert!



These Oklahoma R&B smoothies looked like rejects from a Benetton ad and sounded like flunkies from the Keith Sweat School of Horny Jamz. This is one long string of fake falsetto moans — there’s more heat in an Herbal Essences commercial — and the imagery ranges from perplexing (“We can do it till we both wake up”) to downright unpleasant (“Makin’ love until we drown”). Not recommended for the bedroom, unless your bedroom also features leopard-print picture frames, mirrored ceilings and a five-gallon tub of Astroglide from Costco.
Worst Moment Toward the end, la-la-la’s creep in under whispered phrases like “Lay back and enjoy the ride.”


39. RICKY MARTIN “She Bangs” 2000
La vida proves not to be so loca after all



The arrangers of Ricky Martin’s follow-up to “La Vida Loca” worked with the fevered desperation of men who had been driven to the desert and made to dig their own graves at gunpoint: first with the hooting 180-piece horn section, then the percussion played by a crateful of ADD-afflicted chimpanzees, and — finally, in a last-ditch effort at the fade — a male chorus as numerous and frenzied as the Red Army Choir let loose in a Cuban whorehouse. The ingredients of its epic predecessor are all here — but it’s all wrong, and worse still, unintentionally hilarious.
Worst Moment “She looks like a flower but she stings like a bee/Like every girl in his-to-ry!”

38. REDNEX “Cotton Eye Joe” 1995
Just what the world needed: a Swedish techno-bluegrass crossover



Novelty European techno is not a genre noted for its multitude of artistic high points, but “Cotton Eye Joe” may well be its nadir. A Country & Western record made by people who evidently hate C&W music with every fiber of their being, it layers a thumping beat with every hillbilly cliché known to man — twanging Jew’s harp, people shouting “yee-haw!”, bluegrass banjo, horses neighing — and then tops it off with a vocalist singing in what may be the most risible American accent ever committed to tape.
Worst Moment Rednex have spent more weeks at number 1 in Germany than any other artist of the last 25 years.


37. GERARDO “Rico Suave” 1991
He was Vanilla Ice for the Telemundo set



Long before Ricky Martin lived la vida loca, another fleet-footed, sexually ambiguous Latino star crossed over to pop-chart glory by turning an otherwise forgettable dance-pop tune into a ubiquitous and dreaded catchphrase. In the verses, this Don Juan in a bandanna boasted about his insatiable libido over a cheesy Casiotone beat, but it’s the chorus that really sticks in our cabeza: Reeeeeeeco. Suuaaaaaave. No es bueno.
Worst Moment Nothing brings a dance floor to a screeching halt like the line “I’m used to good ol’-fashioned homestyle Spanish cooking/If I try that, I’ll be puking.”


36. MASTER P FEAT. SILKK, FIEND, MIA-X AND MYSTIKAL “Make Em Say Uhh!”
1998Cristal meets constipation!



A lot of ideas occur to people in the shower, but the hook for this Dirty South smash sounds as though someone thought it up on the toilet during a strenuous bowel movement: Master P and a small army of cronies groan “Unnngghhh” no fewer than 25 (!) times here. Rapping, P mumbles, falls behind an already wooden beat and is generally trounced by the phenomenally speedy Mystikal, who tries to pump some crunk back into the sinking ship with an eleventh-hour guest verse.
Worst Moment Each hook, which sounds like the “before” section of an Ex-Lax ad.