Worst Music

As you might imagine, my (perceived) success with Worse Music resulted with the not inconsiderable issue of how to top it. After you’ve used the epic likes of Meatloaf and Abba where else is there to go? Further, at the time Worst Music was going to be the concluding installment of the Bad Music series. After all, I was starting to get concerned by how much fun I was having with the things, and thought I should get back to making mixes with nothing but Joy Division and Pavement.

This issue hangs over Worst Music throughout. It is the third sibling of the family, desperate to outshine its lofty siblings any way it can. It has also gone through the most edits of any installment of the series (compared to Worst Music, which has really only gone through about three, and they were small adjustments). At the time I finally burned it, I was convinced it was a failure. That, try as it might, it could not compete with its siblings. That it was the Return of the Jedi of the Bad Music trilogy. A fine installment, but somehow lacking the power of its predecessors (that and all of the independent contractors died).

However, as time has gone on, and edit after edit has elapsed, I’ve become quite fond of Worst Music. At the time I first made it, it’s failure mostly lay in that it wasn’t as big or fresh as its sibling mixes. However, I think it may have the best sequencing overall. While most of the Bad Musics are mentally divided by me into several sub-mixes lasting 4-6 tracks, Worst Music is perhaps the only one that functions as one unbroken stream. It’s the most concert-esque in this fashion.

Anyway, enough prologue, here’s Worst Music:

Worst Music‘s basic strategy for circumventing the problem of epic is to try to assault it by veering rock. If it can’t scale greater heights then it’s going to kick more ass. It gets down and dirty versus its more prim and proper siblings, reveling in sex (Sexyback, Push It) and drugs (Just Like a Pill) and general snottiness/immaturity (When I Grow Up, I Touch Myself).

It also spends a lot of time in the 90’s, perhaps moreso than its predecessor. This was the last mix to use a requisite early 90’s eurodance track with "Rhythm is a Dancer." To this day I’m pretty certain that  95% or greater of music like this was made by the same three or four guys and a couple of black singers who were then portrayed by models in music videos. Still, who can’t love this shit? Modern pop could frankly do with more monologues about "knowledge workers."

Worst Music also starts a recurring feature in the series, in reusing artists. I, like most mixtape geeks avoid using the same artist on one mix. However, in a series, this is obviously problematic. Hence, the first artist to join the 2-song club is none other than Ms. Pat Benatar, with "We Belong." This was actually a really difficult cut from Worse Music. Originally, it went in the space that was eventually ceded to Lisa Loeb’s "Stay (I Missed You) when it turned out "Shadows of The Night" was more indispensable as the final track. It worked great there, but it works fine here.

Worst was also, for a while, the blackest of the series, with five total songs (six if you count "Sexyback", and you should since it’s produced by Timbaland, who grows to be a favorite as the series goes on).

As I alluded to earlier, when I first made this one, I felt it was inferior to its siblings, a problem that mostly lay with the ending. As you that while it rocks its little heart out (Ready To Go), goes techno anthem (Everybody’s Free), pulls out the prom song (I Love You Always Forever) and then ends on an appropriately catchy/raunchy note (I Touch Myself). Obviously, not quite an ending that rivals the bombast of Worse Music. However, since Worst Music was far from the final entry, this is less of an issue now.

Yeah, although it would provided some rhetorical closure title-wise, I just couldn’t live with that ending, I needed something that epic-ed the pants off the whole thing and end it once and for all. Thus was conceived Bad Music 4: In Search of Suck…

Oh, and if you want to hear this mix the way I prefer, you’re welcome to substitute the original version of "Boom Boom Pow" for my remix.