Bad Music

Alright let’s get this horror underway. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Bad Music:

As I said in the intro, Bad Music came about when I decided to, just once, make a sweet mixtape using nothing but cheesy great music. Being that Bad Music was the first of its kind, and thus entitled to first choice of songs, it, predictably perhaps, skews 80’s. The 80’s were, after all, the decade of Bad Music. Even a lot of the songs that aren’t from the 80’s are later songs by 80’s artists like Duran Duran’s "Ordinary World" (1992), Kylie Minogue’s "Wow"  (2007)  or "Anyplace, Anywhere, Anytime" (2002, though a remake of a song from 1984) which features not one but two has beens in Kim Wilde and Nena. If you’re wondering how I even came across that one, I saw it on MTV Europe when I was in a hotel in Spain.

Which is not to say that the 80’s are all Bad Music is about. There’s the Mortal Kombat Theme, of course. And there’s the 90’s dance single "Be My Lover" by La Bouche. There’s even the Polysics, my favorite Japanese rock band (since Japan, and many other countries are reliable sources of Bad Music).

While many of you are surely balking at some of my choices (Kelly Clarkson, Wilson-Phillips) there are probably others among you who are wondering what the hell Bruce Springsteen is doing here. Well part of a Bad Music mix, as you will see, is my propensity to chuck a few actually great songs into the mix. Another trait is that I may use lesser-liked songs by major artists (because if you put Bruce on a regular mix, people might look at you funny if it’s not something he recorded back in the 70s). Every Bad Music has a couple of secret keepers under its belt. In fact the closing trio of songs are all tunes I have no shame at all about liking. Of course, for the most part I won’t tell you which ones they are, just to keep it mysterious.

This is not to say that the others suck of course, otherwise they wouldn’t be here.

One of the things that frequently figures into these mixes in fact is determining what is Bad Music, and what is just horrible music. Journey, for example, has never, and probably will never grace a Bad Music (I did try out "Any Way You Want It" for a bit before realizing even that song sucks and removed it, never to consider Steve Perry and Company again). You might notice as these gone on, a general scarcity of songs from the 70’s, and it’s not because I thought they ruled (Singer-songwriters, soft rock and prog rock oh my!). Although as you’ll notice Boney M’s "Ma Baker" made the cut here, perhaps because it’s to my mind the funkiest song ever released by Germans (Jamaican singers though).

As a mix, Bad Music is fairly typical of my personal style. It starts big with the King Arthur trumpets of "The Final Countdown", the epic "Heaven is a Place on Earth" and "If I Could Turn Back Time", a song so huge it can only be performed on a battleship (and you can’t use the battleship afterwards). Actually, Bad Music is a little more of a party mix than I’m accustomed to making. It barely stops to take a breath until "Ordinary World", and really doesn’t mellow out until "Secret Garden."

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about this one, but of course the madness is only beginning. After Bad Music got most of the obvious songs out of the way, it necessitated exploring what it means to be a great bad song. As you’ll see, each Bad Music has its own specific personality and sensibility. Which is not to say we’re at all done with the 80’s. Not by a long shot.