Having spent the last five years writing borderline libelous critiques for various Australian publications – especially BMA in my hometown of Canberra where I do the fortnightly singles column – I’ve found myself surrounded by bad music. Sure there’s good stuff in there too, but it’s almost more fun to observe the shit stuff. Thinking more and more about the abysmal lows of my journalistic endeavours, I decided it was time to do something fun, and wrap it all up together. Here it is, my Shitrospective. As it sounds, this is a collection of the very worst Australian singles (just singles) of the last decade and a year. I hope you enjoy wading through the mud as much as I have again.

Bec Cartwright – All Seat’s Taken

While Neighbours has given us Kylie and even Nathalie Imbruglia, Channel 7’s rival weekday soap Home And Away gave us…Bec Cartwright? ‘All Seat’s Taken’ sinks faster than if the Titanic was bottomed with lead, with Bec’s voice sounding thinner than a wafer. It’s fitting that after this bomb Bec found her true calling: harvesting Lleyton’s seed.

Alex Lloyd – Amazing

Words can’t express how much I loved ‘Black The Sun’ back at the turn of the century, Lloydy really went south from there, transforming into a soft, MOR sack of shit and serving as the blueprint for Pete Murray’s whole career. Indeed, ‘Amazing’ is him at his most contrite. As nice as the mesh of production may be, Lloyd sounds more earnest and self-serious than a second year NIDA student.

Eskimo Joe – Foreign Land

I’m happy to back arguments for an artist’s growth and development, but when it comes to Eskimo Joe’s career progression into humourless waist-coat wearing stadium dudes it’s a bit much to stomach. Really, how is something like the shrill posturing of ‘Foreign Land’ more fun than playing fucking ‘Sweater’? And then there’s Basement Birds…

TV Rock ft. Seany B – Flaunt It

It’s as if Grant Smillie DJ’d at one too many bogan weddings until he finally had the eureka moment and figured that the world was crying out for a Right Said Fred revival and decided to form TV Rock. To top it all off he picked up the first meathead from Kings Cross who said he could rap in Seany B. You’re not hearing that wrong, he really did say “This track’s designed to make you cream”.

Scott Cain – Hilary Duff

Reality TV is to blame for much of the trash on the ARIA charts these days but one the worst offending puppy mills from this generation would have to be Popstars, Channel 7’s pre-Idol performer competition which had none of Idol’s staying power and left behind a legacy of Sophie Monk’s veneers, the one who married and divorced Kyle Sandilands and the remarkably unremarkable Scott Cain. Who thought Scott Cain could be a marketable pop entity? His audience pull would’ve been desperate teenage girls and, um, well desperate teenage girls. And they’re too busy shopping at Equip to go to fucking Sanity or whatever retailer was big in 2002.

The dude’s most notable tune was this, ‘Hilary Duff’, an in-theory cheeky ode to the ‘Duffster. But she would’ve been, what, 16 at the time? That’s more than a little creepy, dude.

The Valentinos – Rain

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Too controversial? Eh, maybe. Perhaps the hype wave following their first EP was insurmountable but when The (not quite Lost yet) Valentinos returned to the scene with ‘Rain’, a kinda limp and constrained love-tap compared to uncontrollable energy of ‘Man With A Gun’, it was an epic disappointment. Four something years later and ‘Rain’ still stands out as one of the biggest let-downs of the buzz band era.

Girlband – Partygirl

Of all the artist reality TV shows produced in Australia recently – the Popstars, the Idols, the X-Factors, the Australia’s Got Talents – the worst of the worst had to be Girlband, the dead-on-arrival Channel 10 show following the assemblage of an all-girl pop group of the same name. This show was horrendous but totally watchable to see record industry folks blindly believe they were creating the next Spice Girls out of four mismatched Aussie wannabes who were better off hosting bingo nights than masquerading as pop stars. Indeed one of them did go onto host a bingo night on Channel 7. Eerie.

The duo’s feted debut came with ‘Partygirl’ which still remains essentially unlistenable to this day. But the plain truth of ‘Partygirl’ is that it’s just really bad. Were Sony BMG’s people doing blow through their ears that they just couldn’t hear that some ridiculous speed garage beats don’t mix well with ‘rawk’ guitars and that seriously cheesy chorus? It’s a puzzlingly dreadful choice for a single and an easy way to put a bullet into four young careers.

The Galvatrons – When We Were Kids

There’s been no love lost between this blog and The Galvatrons, with myself previously penning some not-so-kind appraisals of the group and their four dedicated fans spamming the comments in fits of Proactiv-fueled rage. But instead of just calling them slapstick dickheads and douchebags I’ll try to be more reasonable with a measured explanation of my disdain for The Galvatrons.

Put simply, this shit is cheese. And not the tasty kind of cheese that you snack on occasionally; it’s the filthy, festering cheese at the back of the fridge that’s been half open for a few months, slowly growing mould and that weird dairy sweat to the point that you’re afraid to touch so you just leave it in there until your girlfriend tells you to chuck it the fuck out. And even if The Galvatrons are deliberately trying to be tasteless and ironic their whole steez is ripped from a genre that barely existed outside of a few Stan Bush songs.

I could’ve picked any of their tunes to illustrate how shitty The Galvatrons are/were but this one’ll do as it’s the only single that really did anything before Warner wised up and gave the A&R dude that signed The ‘Trons a well deserved punch in the scrote. And yeah, it doesn’t help The Galvatrons’ case that they’re also dickhead douchebags.

Rogue Traders – Watching You

When future generations look back on the wasteland that was the ‘00s local pop scene, Rogue Traders will invariably come up and in between this and that horrible ‘here comes the drums’ one our children’s children will tilt their cyborg heads and wonder “what were they thinking?”. Seriously, the most interesting thing about this is Nat Bass’s choker and emo-sleeve combo in the video.

Nikki Webster – Strawberry Kisses

Proving that all the bad ideas on this list don’t even scratch the surface of Australia’s dark pop past it’s time to move onto the notorious Nikki Webster. International readers will (hopefully not) remember her from the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics, an incident which imbued the star with enough foolish motivation to launch a pop career, climaxing (eugh…) with ‘Strawberry Kisses’, a single destined to be blasted from the cheap speakers of a sex offender’s windowless rape van for all time.

Butterfingers – Yo Mama

It’d take some genuine cultural treasures like Butterfingers to come with something as aurally ugly as ‘Yo Mama’, which, as advertised, is that same lame joke from high school stretched out into a rap/rock jam designed for pub drunks and snickering 14 year old boys.

Joel Turner & The Modern Day Poets ft. Anthony Mundine – Knock U Out

Taking a break from the torrent of cynicism here, this isn’t that terrible. Joel and his MDP are serviceable enough as far as proto chart skip-hop goes and belching ‘Eye of the Tiger’ bass is a fun novelty, but what really stinks about ‘Knock U Out’ is of course the preposterous inclusion of boxer/athlete/idiot Anthony Mundine. As intimidating as he would probably be in person, his chripy flow is absurdly un-tough, providing about as much snarling menace to the track as an injured baby lamb.

Silverchair – The Greatest View

In a particularly misguided display of teenage pop-rebellion I once microwaved a copy of Silverchair’s ‘Diorama’. I was in the throes of ‘rock n roll’ at this point in my life, blindly fapping for anything made in a garage with attitude and I could no longer carry the shame of owning ‘Diorama’ with all its orchestral pop whimsy. So I nuked it. Dumb of course. Since then I’ve come to appreciate its expansive scope but one song that remains sucky to this day is ‘The Greatest View’.

On an album of other-worldly hooks and fully realised Daniel Johns pop-chops, ‘The Greatest View’ is an epic retreat into the overdone and outplayed radio grunge that everybody not on a worksite left behind in the ‘90s.

The Veronicas – Untouched

Unable to decide whether or not they’re goths, punks, pop stars, faux lesbians, or a PR person’s wet dream/rape-fantasy combination of all four, The Veronica’s hit their shit-peak with ‘Untouched’, a horrid mess of orchestral presets, turbo-sludge riffs, electro bass, and thin throated vocals. I’ll happily stand behind ‘4ever’ as good pop, but this really just makes no sense.

Yolanda Be Cool vs. DCUP – We No Speak Americano 

Super Mario Bros. The movie. You feel me? Put three good things together: Ninetndo + Bob Hoskins + Dennis Hopper / DCUP + Yolanda Be Cool + sample house. Despite the sum of both their parts the results of each equation are frighteningly shitty. And funnily enough, ‘Americano’ is like the Mario Bros. movie in song from the gratingly annoying premise to the dudes masquerading as Italians. And what the hell is with Bowser’s hair?

Tags: Australia, DCUP, Lost Valentinos, Reviews, Singles, The Galvatrons, The Man Mundine, Yolanda Be Cool