Throughout our childhoods, we were forced to endure certain things: the rise and fall of MySpace, the cancellation of “The Angry Beavers” and a whole lot of bad music. Keep in mind, this is not a list of the worst albums ever. That list would be full of dreadfulness that never caught the attention of the public. These are albums that actually were (or currently are, in No. 5’s case) enjoyed by a large number of people despite how awful they are.
5. Justin Bieber – “My World 2.0”
You know you’ve listened to it. You may have a girlfriend who is obsessed with it, or you may be that girlfriend, but either way, Justin Bieber has gotten stuck in your head and you either love it or hate it.
If the fact that Justin Bieber actually pays a man who he calls his “swagger coach” doesn’t make you hate him, then maybe his millions of dollars or his opinion of Canada being the best country in the world will.
One listen through his album “My World 2.0,” and any self-respecting male is sure to puke. Unfortunately, this YouTube-sensation turned pop-star thing is not over, and it will probably come to define our generation of music, but rest assured Justin Bieber will eventually fade away and we all just might forget the chorus to “Baby.”
4. Maroon 5 – “Songs About Jane”
This is a guilty pleasure album if there ever was one. Somewhere in the depths of your old CaseLogic CD case lies “Songs About Jane,” and you come close to pulling it out about once every year. Girl or guy, this album was the thing to listen to in middle school, and you can still remember bits and pieces of “This Love.”
The thing that puts “Songs About Jane” on this list is not its creepy lyrics or its overuse of silly distortion effects on everything from piano to vocals; what puts it at No. 4 is the unexplainable embarrassment that keeps you from telling people that yes, you do own a copy of “Songs About Jane.”
3. Soulja Boy – “souljaboytellem.com”
OK, you never bought the CD, but you did illegally download every song from it. The song “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” became so popular that my senior prom featured more than 100 tuxedoed men of all races and social cliques participating in its dance. With songs like “Booty Meat,” “Yahh,” “Bapes” and, of course, “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” this album lacks just about everything that makes rap great, including production value.
2. Limp Bizkit – “Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water”
Between inciting riots at Woodstock ’99 and picking fights with Creed’s singer Scott Stapp, Fred Durst and Limp Bizkit had time to make an album – a 75-minute-long album jam-packed with Durst failing to rap, sing and rhyme.
Songs like “Rollin’” and “My Way” make us wonder if Durst even had the cognitive ability to string two rhyming words together, yet for some reason in the year 2000 this travesty was shoved down our pre-teen throats and, for a second, we thought it was cool. It definitely was not cool, and we all know that now; a couple of smart ones even knew it then.
1. ’N SYNC – “No Strings Attached”
Ah, the generational brain fart that was the boy band age. What were we thinking? I realize that bands like ’N SYNC were mostly fueled by screaming teenage girls, but so were The Beatles, and they actually made good music.
You may say that you never got into ’N SYNC, but you know your sister or friend had this album and it played so loudly in the house or car that you unconsciously know every word to classics such as “Digital Get Down,” “Space Cowboy (Yippie-Yi-Yay),” and “Bye Bye Bye.”
Now, this is not the worst album of the boy band era – those honors would have to go to the hacks like O-Town or 98 Degrees, but the reason it is listed as No. 1 is its ubiquity. Everyone heard this and heard it a lot. Thank you, ’N SYNC, for letting us never be able to proudly tell our children what music was like when we were young.
So there you have it. Five albums you really wish you could take out of your memory. I hope reading this didn’t cause any flashbacks to boy band dances or Limp Bizkit music videos. If we ever need an excuse or reason why our generation has the multitude of problems that it does, we can always offer up the soundtrack of our formative years, and maybe someone will take pity.
