Putting together a list of the year's worst albums was a daunting task. It involved re-listening to a bunch of aural abominations on the off-chance I was too harsh the first time around. Like last year when I included Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" and then had egg on my face when I re-visited it a couple of months ago and decided that Tay Tay's mega-seller was actually a triumph. However, I'm confident that I haven't made the same mistake this year! All ten of these albums give music a bad name and should be avoided at all costs. If you think I've forgotten anything let me know in the comments. And for the record - there is no "Born This Way". It's not brilliant but I'll take 4 or 5 good songs over none any day.
10. Soy La Mejor - Malena Gracia
Malena is the Spanish equivalent of Samantha Fox - only with no hits. That doesn't stop the former Playboy model applying (unsuccessfully) to represent Spain at Eurovision every year or her ability to churn out inane dance music at an alarming rate. I usually worship the ground this icon walks on but "Soy La Mejor" is so horrendously bad that even I have to draw the line somewhere. This entire album sounds like it was recorded in one take on Malena's busted iPhone. Avoid at all costs.
9. Siberia - Lights
Sometimes I hate bloggers. Along comes a pretty girl with a canny stylist and a couple of decent electro-pop songs and suddenly she's the next Robyn. Wrong. I simply refuse to join the frenzied circle jerk over this dire Canadian flop. With the exception of "Toes" and "Banner", Lights' debut album is as pretentious and mind-numbingly boring as her name. Come back, Annie. All is forgiven!
8. Wonder World - Wonder Girls
This makes me sad. The Wonder Girls were always my favourite K-Pop act and I was pulling for them to make it big in America. But if you want to be a success outside of Asia, then you need to leave the gimmicks behind and make music that matches (or preferably exceeds) the current international standard. Instead, the Korean stunners release a bunch of songs that Girls Aloud would have rejected in 2007. There isn't a fresh or interesting idea to be heard on this stilted mess. Give me "Spice World" any day.
7. Secret Codes And Battleships - Darren Hayes
While "Bloodstained Heart" is undoubtedly one of 2011's better singles, the rest of this meandering mess is Rufus Wainwright-lite for tiresome homosexuals of a certain age that don't know better. It's not too late for that Savage Garden reunion... 6. Vows - Kimbra
Kimbra is the real deal. I know it and so does anybody else with ears. She has a great voice and knows how to write a killer pop song (see "Settle Down"). So can someone please explain why I can only make it through the Kiwi's much-hyped debut with the aid of Valium and half a bottle of wine? "Vows" reminds me of Bic Runga's "Birds" - only without the melodies and raw emotional connection. What you're left with is pretty enough but ultimately unengaging and completely forgettable.
5. Cinderella's Eyes - Nicola Roberts
A stinking pile of fake hipster shit that makes Nadine Coyle's Tesco-only smash sound like "The Fame". Give up while you're behind.
4. Snapshots - Kim Wilde
I love Kim. She is a legend and I'll keep importing her stunning German releases until she throws in the towel but there's no excuse for "Snapshots". This abomination finds the English diva destroying classic pop songs by the likes of East 17's ("It's Alright") and Tasmin Archer ("Sleeping Satellite"). The thing that annoys me the most is that this could have been enormous fun. Instead, the weird arrangements and sombre mood make this a truly depressing experience.
3. + - Ed Sheeran
Who anointed this ginger cunt the new James Blunt?
2. Lulu - Metallica & Lou Reed
I was forced to review this insane mess for my day job and the task still haunts me. If Lou Reed mumbling bad poetry over Metallica songs is your cup of tea, then knock yourself out. The rest of us will just pretend that "Lulu" never happened.
Now this was hard. 2011 was a great year for really, really bad videos. I feel like people have just given up and either recycle something that took their fancy on YouTube or go for shock tactics by stripping off. Or both if you're Kelly Rowland. To make matters worse, Australia appears to be the world leader in shitty clips. If it was hot ten years ago in America, chances are you got the local equivalent this year. Yay? Admittedly, it's not all doom and gloom. Some of these efforts are hilarious and I think the winning/losing clip is a work of comedic genius. Let me know what you make of my choices in the comments!
New Zealand's King of Pop/self-proclaimed male Lady Gaga has polluted YouTube with some truly shocking videos. However, he is trying harder to be less rubbish and "Unicorn" is a step in the right direction - albeit not a big enough one. The toilet-paper outfit, bad choreography and ridiculous marriage to himself earn Pattyboy a spot on this list.
18. What Do You Take Me For? - Pixie Lott Feat. Pusha T (Video)
I know that it's fashionable to hate Pixie but I think her album is stunning. Haters are clearly intimidated by her powerful pipes and flawless beauty. Or perhaps they just saw this stinker. Who decided it was a good idea to turn Miss Lott into the prissy, white Beyoncé - complete with pussy-poppin' hood video? Possibly the least convincing urban transformation of all time.
And the award for the year's most disappointing video goes to "The Edge Of Glory". This is perhaps the only song on "Born This Way" that really lends itself to a meandering, over-the-top production. Everything about Fernando Garibay's anthem is epic - from the massive chorus to the now iconic sax solo. I wanted to see Lady Gaga drive off a cliff on a pink motorcycle and then use the pearly gates as a stripper pole when she landed in heaven. Instead, we get the Germ dancing on a fire escape. That's it. Literally.
A boat full of rough bitches shake their tits for attention in this desperate bid to attract the lowest common denominator. Imagine the "Home Girls" section of Picture magazine come to life.
15. When I Think About Sex - Osvaldo Suppino (Video)
Osvaldo is to Italy, what Pattyboy is to New Zealand ie. an epically untalented homosexual, who has spent far too many hours watching Lady Gaga videos on YouTube. The result is a showcase of bad fashion - a bedazzled Lakers singlet? - and worse choreography. The lowlight is when the budding pop star has sex with himself. Gross.
I stan for Marta. The Spanish Madonna has been a desperate publicity whore since before your fave was born, so she deserves our respect. But she's not going to get it when she's dancing around the club like a mutton-dressed-as-lamb stripper in some of the least flattering outfits ever captured on film. The Catwoman mask kills me. Marta, it's not hiding those wrinkles. It just makes you look like a victim of early onset dementia.
Eva must have the hottest mouth in LA. That's the only explanation I can think of for her amazing ability to get a record deal in the first place - let alone a song written by Ke$ha and a remix featuring Gucci Mane. Unfortunately, the plus-sized diva didn't get quite enough cash for the video. Bad special effects combine with cheap outfits and Eva's nasty feet to make this offering memorably awful.
The time has come for Lady Gaga to take a year off. She is starting to suffer from diminishing returns both commercially and artistically. If you need proof look no further than "Marry The Night". It flopped miserably around the world and boasts perhaps her worst video yet. This self-indulgent vanity project is almost unwatchable. I enjoy the choreography towards the end but until someone edits it down to 5 minutes, I can't be bothered sitting through it again.
You know, if Ms Kelly needs to act like a prostitute to sell records - then so be it. I love "Motivation" and think she looked incredibly sexy in the video. But let's just say lightning didn't strike twice. This scene-by-scene remake of Livvi Franc's "Now I'm That Bitch" is embarrassing. Kelendria looks like a man from certain angles and the onslaught of phallic imagery turns the clip into a parody. On the bright side, it's still a hot song.
What an horrendous way to launch a new album! This tragic mess highlighted everything that's wrong with Britney circa 2011 - the dead look in her eyes, her seeming inability to move and a palpable desperation to remind fans of former glories. No wonder "Femme Fatale" is yet to go Copper in most territories.
If you thought Pattyboy and Osvaldo were sent straight from the bowels of hell, wait 'til you get a look at Brandon Hilton. The aspiring web celebrity turns delusion into an artform on "Radioactive". From the Gaga-lite fashion to Brandon's unfortunate facial expressions, everything about this video is cheap and overwhelmingly nasty.
Why are Australian videos so atrocious? "Raining Diamonds" is such an anthem and deserved an epic video to showcase Ricki-Lee's sexy new figure. Instead, she looks like an admittedly thin fool in this tacky trainwreck. The Barbarella-on-a-budget costumes are as ridiculous as they are unsuited to the lyrics - which I interpret as a mantra not to settle for second best in relationships. Don't even get me started on that cheap set and the plastic guns. This clip is so bad it momentarily made me long for Ricki-Lee's underrated fat phase.
Speaking of great songs with shit videos, here's Mary J. Blige's hot mess "25/8". I honestly don't know what the director was thinking. Did he or she even listen to the song before deciding to stick the iconic diva in a room full of broke-down dancers in a twisted bid to re-create Kelly Rowland's awful "Commander" visual?
I wonder how the pitch for this national embarrassment went: "Imagine Miss Connie on a pedestal dressed as Marilyn Monroe - only we'll make her up to look like a sweaty mess, complete with a shiny face and smudged make-up. Then we'll have a couple perform random sex acts, you know, classy shit involving anal-beads. Only when the lights come on they're doing really innocuous things like cleaning the house! Amazing, right?"
Poor Jessica. I really don't understand how someone so pretty in real-life always looks like the before photo on What Not To Wear in her videos. And this lazy effort is heinous even by her low standards. What's with that fucking turban? "Inescapable" is probably the best Australian pop song of 2011 but the only nice thing I can say about this clip is that's an improvement on "Get Em Girls".
Onika and Rih-cycle wander around a plane crash in couture outfits looking like Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee on the set of Lost. The only this missing is Tyra Banks demanding more broken doll poses in this horrendous four minute episode of America's Next Top Model for low-rent whores.
"All We Have" will go down in history as the Australian filmmaker's guide for what not to do in a music video. Everything about it is embarrassing. I could go on about the lame concept and bad lighting but the clip's biggest sin is making the star of the show look ridiculous. Natalie Bassingthwaigthe resembles an extra from Cocoon squeezed into a dress Lady Gaga rejected during The Fame era. It's not flattering and made worse by the fact she's surrounded by dancers young enough to be her grandchildren. American directors still make Madonna look good and she's a couple of minutes older than Nat - so why can't local talent do the same?
1. Liar Boy - Cindy and Sheila Rhyme (Below)
This was tough. I couldn't decide whether to crown "Liar Boy" the best or worst video of 2011. On the one hand, I'm here for these iconic divas and immediately downloaded their future pop classic from iTunes after seeing the clip. On the other hand, words cannot adequately describe how awful this is. Bad teeth, worse outfits, shocking dance moves and the dodgiest editing in recent memory make "Liar Boy" the most heinous (and hilarious) clip of the year.
Is it just me or was 2011 shadier than usual? It seems like every ho with a record deal was caught doing something underhand this year. Perhaps we're just more observant and unnecessarily criticise artists for playing the game. Or maybe the music business is so cut-throat at the moment that you need sticky fingers and a Teflon conscience just to get ahead. In any case, there were no shortage of examples to choose from when I put together my list of 2011's shadiest moments. I'm sure I forgot some essential acts of thievery and bad behaviour - so feel free to remind me in the comments. 20. Kylie's pop-up book debacle
Kylie announced the $199 "Goddess Edition" of her album way back in June. It's now December and still nowhere to be seen. It can't have been easy for Dannii to cut and paste each copy herself between takes on Australia's Got Talent but this whole debacle is starting to feel shadier than a rain forest.
19. Britney's tweets
And the award for the most obviously ghost-written Twitter belongs to Britney. Who do they think they're kidding? We all know Brit is too high on Xanax and Vicodin to stand without assistance, let alone regularly update her social media platforms with tightly-scripted content. Many artists have admin staff running their Twitter - I met the guy being paid to write Taylor Swift's tweets when I was in New York - but Britney's lack of involvement is so obvious that it crosses into shady territory.
18. Lady Gaga inventing Madonna's support
Now this was awkward. At the height of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" controversy (ie. that it's a blatant "Express Yourself" rip-off), the deluded one went on the Jay Leno Show and proudly announced that Madonna sent her an email declaring her love for the song. Unfortunately, the 97-year-old pop icon's publicist denied the exchanged ever happened. How embarrassing!
17. Madonna's mad YouTube skillz
Madonna is the Queen of shade - probably because she sleeps in a crypt and only comes out at night to feed on male models. In the year's shadiest click of a button, the once popular singer rubbed more salt into Lady Gaga's wounds by uploading "Express Yourself" to her YouTube account - a move that was interpreted as a clear jab at Mother Monster.
16. Lady Gaga thanks Whitney Houston
The not-so-subtle feud between Madonna and Lady Gaga continued at the Grammys when the latter thanked Whitney Houston for inspiring "Born This Way" - despite the fact that it sounds like everything Madge recorded in the '80s thrown into a blender. Acknowledging the pop legend's biggest rival was a particularly shady touch.
15. Kelly Rowland releases a greatest hits album - with no hits
King B stole ten seconds of a dance routine from a random Belgian ballet in her iconic "Countdown" video and faced the wrath of the original choreographer. While I'm usually down with Bey's stunning homages, this particular example was more specific and detailed than usual. It's a clever reference and works brilliantly in the clip but someone could have cleared it with Teresa before the ungrateful bitch went ballistic.
12. Rico Love's beat recycling
It's a common dilemma - a song blows up and everyone wants a piece of the action - but how many times can Rico Love recycle Kelly Rowland's "Motivation"? First came Melanie Fiona's awesome "4am" and now Mary J's equally good "Mr Wrong". Ryan Tedder and RedOne have been doing it for years but this shit is still super shady regardless of the original's quality.
11. Britney's body double
Anyone with eyes can tell that Britney didn't dance in "Hold It Against Me" - I'm convinced her stand-in was actually a man! - but she vehemently denied it. The same accusations were made about Brit's "Til The World Ends" video but this time she was proven to be a shady liar when photos of her body double performing choreography surfaced online. Worst yet is using a body double to make out with her real-life boyfriend in her aptly-titled "Criminal" video. That goes beyond shady into the realm of totally fucked-up.
10. Onika's age
Nicki Minaj is possibly the oldest person nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy in the Award's history. Earlier this year, her cover was blown when a police report outed her as being 28 years old. Until then the poor man's Lil Kim had listed her age as 26. Whoops.
9. Lana Del Ray's entire career
I love Lana Del Slay. She is my new obsession and I still play "Video Games" on repeat. But all this crap about making her own videos and being discovered on YouTube is hard to swallow. This has been a carefully orchestrated exercise in record label shadiness from the beginning. And you know what? It worked. So now she can stop pretending that she does everything from catering to injecting her lips with filler between takes on her self-funded, self-directed and self-styled videos. Something in the tea ain't clean!
Everyone should be able to express their own opinion on Twitter but there was something distinctly shady about the producer behind some of the hottest cuts on Beyoncé's "4" trashing Kelly Rowland's "Motivation" - particularly when Rico Love's production was riding high at #1 on the R&B chart at the time and Bhasker's efforts were getting a lot less love.
6. Kelly Rowland's recycled videos
Sarah Chatfield proved to be the music industry's greenest director when she recycled two videos for Ms Kelly. "Lay It On Me" was a scene-by-scene remake of Livvi Franc's "Now I'm That Bitch", while "Down For Whatever" re-visited Wynter Gordon's "Believer". I'm not sure where the blame lies but this is seriously shady. It's one thing to take an idea and make it better but this was just lazy.
5. Beyoncé's BBMA performance
I have never seen anything like King B's 2011 Billboard Music Award performance. That was next level shit that made your tired fave look like a dusty typewriter in comparison to Bey's shiny, new laptop. But it doesn't change the fact that elements were taken from a previous performance by Lorella Cuccarini. As it turns out the Queen of soul, pop and probably country (if she put her mind to it), hired the Italian singer's producers to re-create the technology - so she can hardly be accused of stealingit. The shadiness results from tarnishing such an iconic moment by using an old idea - regardless of whether she improved on it (she did) or not.
4. Lady Gaga's "Judas" debacle
Mother Monster's sticky fingers worked over time this year. Not only did she blatantly steal "WannaBE" from Loli Lux - using the sexy DJ's exact beats on "Judas" - but she then stole the video concept from Brandy! The similarities to that diva's "Afrodisiac" clip - also choreographed by Laurieann Gibson, funnily enough - are uncanny.
3. Rihanna rapes David LaChappelle's artistic legacy
In a bid to spread her creative wings Rihanna decided to co-direct her "S&M" video. So the Barbadian bonehead flipped through a book of David LaChappelle's photos and basically stole his entire aesthetic. He had the last laugh when she had to cough up the big dollars to keep it out of court. You would have thought Rih-cycle would have learned from stealing M.I.A.'s "Boyz" video concept for "Rude Boy". Shady lady.
2. Katy Perry's price-rigging
I kind of love Katy Perry's creative antics (iTunes discounts, celebrity videos and completely unnecessary remixes) to rack up number one hits in America but it is shady. Can't she just be proud of landing six top 10 hits from the one album? That's an insane achievement! I'm not sure if losing all credibility to squeeze out another couple of chart-toppers is really worth it. Having said all that, I really hope "The One That Got Away" makes it to number one just to annoy everyone!
1. Lady Gaga's 99 cent album deal
The majority of these entries have been tongue-in-cheek. I don't care that Nicki Minaj is a couple of weeks away from menopause and Bey can copy as many Belgian flops as she likes. However, Mother Monster's 99 cent album deal crossed all kinds of lines. At a time when illegal downloading has all but killed the music industry, Lady Gaga gave the year's most highly-anticipated album away for free. Or near enough. If people didn't think mp3s were worthless before, they sure do now. And for what? To get a bogus first week sales record? So lame, so shady, so Gaga.
Putting together a list of the year's worst albums was a daunting task. It involved re-listening to a bunch of aural abominations on the off-chance I was too harsh the first time around. Like last year when I included Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" and then had egg on my face when I re-visited it a couple of months ago and decided that Tay Tay's mega-seller was actually a triumph. However, I'm confident that I haven't made the same mistake this year! All ten of these albums give music a bad name and should be avoided at all costs. If you think I've forgotten anything let me know in the comments. And for the record - there is no "Born This Way". It's not brilliant but I'll take 4 or 5 good songs over none any day.
10. Soy La Mejor - Malena Gracia
9. Siberia - Lights
8. Wonder World - Wonder Girls
7. Secret Codes And Battleships - Darren Hayes
6. Vows - Kimbra
5. Cinderella's Eyes - Nicola Roberts
4. Snapshots - Kim Wilde
3. + - Ed Sheeran
2. Lulu - Metallica & Lou Reed
1. Talk That Talk - Rihanna
