< So Bad It's Good

So Bad It's Good/Music

"Jimmy Webb is a genius. He's crafted this incredible record, and decided to put a man who can't sing at the front of it...and it's all the better for it!"

The good, the bad, and the So Bad It's Good songs that we all know and love to hate/laugh at.

Troper General's Warning: The songs on this list may contain excessive levels of Narm and/or Lyrical Dissonance. May require heavy surgery to excise from one's mind.

Next up I'll scream
I will
<he screams>

I warned you

  • Before William Hung, a nice middle-aged lady named Elva Miller parlayed her off-key warble and whistling (!) of pop hits like Downtown into four albums during the middle 1960s. The Other Wiki discusses her here.
  • This song was used to try and teach kids how to speak French "La Le". It fails badly as it just made them fall over laughing from the awful lyrics, the bad animation and the sexual overtones.
  • Im Gettin Money, Aye!
  • Also before William Hung, there was Wild Man Fischer, who sang (bad) songs to passers-by on the Sunset Strip in L.A. for a few years. (That was his source of income since due to his mental illness(es) he couldn't maintain a job.) He was finally given a chance to record an album when discovered by Frank Zappa in 1968.
  • "Always" by Erasure is a total Ear Worm, so corny that it shows up in stool, and the music is full of electronic beeps and boops that sound like R2-D2 scatting, but there's an earnest quality to its unabashed cheesiness that makes it impossible to hate. Lead singer Andy Bell's fantastic pipes are a big check in the song's "plus" column, but please remember that Adult Swim picked it for Robot Unicorn Attack for a reason, and not simply "because it's awesome."
  • The entire discography of Average Homeboy rapper, Denny "Blazin'" Hazen. It's hilariously incompetent "rapping" to a generic keyboard rhythm.
  • Bangs. He wants to take you to the mooooovies!
  • Yasha Swag's "Go Go Go". It takes autotuning and ridiculous lyrics to far beyond even Jenna Rose's levels. The video's horrible too, but that's another story.
  • Ja Rule's rapping is pretty good. His singing on the other hand... not so much. Not that his horrid singing is a bad thing though, as it provides great unintentional comedy in gems such as "Mesmerize" and "I'm Real."
  • Florence Foster Jenkins. Listen to her sing the "Queen of the Night" aria from Mozart's The Magic Flute. For best results, bring some musicologists and some classical musicians for extra fun (if they don't know about her already, she's pretty infamous).
    • In case you don't have a musicologist or classical musician available, here's Lucia Popp's rendition for comparison.
  • Some of the karaoke ending songs in Lucky Star, as expected from traditional karaoke, are hilariously awful. The most popular of these include Konata screaming through Dragonball Z's and Konata trying to sing the English Monkey Magic opening despite not knowing English.
    • What makes the DBZ one, at least, is how much Konata is clearly enjoying herself.
    • Likely in response to this, JAM Project, the Hot-Blooded music group founded by the guy who sang the Mazinger Z intro, did their own epic rendition of Lucky Star's opening. Warning: Super Robot Wars fans that listen to this may get nightmares of Humongous Mecha dancing in cheerleader outfits.
    • Also: Everything Shiraishi has ever sung on that show. Particularly that one time in the end credits when he tried to sing "Mottoke! Sailor Fuku" without knowing the words.
    • Remember Fist of the North Star? And its opening, the manliest song ever Ai wo Torimodose (You Wa Shock!)? Then please listen to this cover made by Shiraishi and Akira. Also, notice how near the end of the first song they give up any pretension of singing and just start screaming into the mic.
  • If you were to take every stereotypical problem associated with amateur, self-made musicians, mix them all together, and crank the mix Up to Eleven, the result would be Jan Terri, an aged, overweight, and often downright mean-looking woman, singing in a chain-smoker-esque voice to background music that often sounds like a badly synthesized midi, and then making ridiculously amateur music videos to them. Try this! Watch her most famous video with the sound muted, and see how hard it is to remember such an unremarkable home-movie was supposed to be the music video to a love song! The worst part is that she's good enough at songwriting that her music will never leave your head.
  • The Shaggs were four sisters from Fremont, New Hampshire, who were forced to become a band by their father, who was told by his mother that his children would form a popular music group. He forced them to practice every day, perform at local events, and record an album, despite the girls not even having rudimentary knowledge of music theory or how to play their instruments. The result is odd, hackneyed melodies, uneven time signatures, and instruments/vocals that are blatantly out of tune. Despite all of this, as their obscure LP "Philosophy of the World" achieved recognition among collectors, the band was praised for their raw, intuitive composition style and lyrical honesty. "Philosophy of the World" was lauded as a work of art brut, and was later reissued, followed by a compilation album, Shaggs' Own Thing, in 1982. RCA Victor released Philosophy of the World (with the original cover art and track sequence) on CD in 1999, whereupon it was hailed as something of an avant-garde cult classic. The Wall Street Journal reviewed the CD on the day it was released, and The New Yorker subsequently ran a lengthy profile of the Shaggs, authored by Susan Orlean. The Shaggs are now seen as a groundbreaking outsider music group, receiving praise from mainstream artists such as Kurt Cobain and Frank Zappa. You can read more at That Other Wiki here, and hear their music, such as it is, here.
  • Joe Aufricht's "Mockery and Perversion".
  • "The Most Unwanted Song" by David Soldier, intentionally written to combine the genres and topics that people in a focus group most disliked. It is indeed incoherent and, in places, just plain atonal. It's also hilarious, involving such things as a soprano rapping about cowboys.

"HEY, EVERYONE, IT'S LABOR DAY!"

    • "Do all your shopping... AT WALMART!"
    • "The Most Wanted Song," on the other hand, meant to be exactly what the focus group wanted, is insipid and unlistenable (but has a nice guitar solo).
  • "Chocolate Rain....some stay dry, and others feel the pain." The lyrics are so bad they're good: the music... not so much emphasis on the "bad".
    • For that matter, the entire musical output of Adam "Tay Zonday" Bahner draws a certain fascination.
      • ** I move away from the mic to breathe in
  • The Eurovision Song Contest since about two years after they introduced a phone-in voting system.
    • 2008's Irish entry was a turkey puppet called Dustin, who was a mainstay of Irish children's TV for 20 years at that point(originally a vulture, but it got retconned shortly after his introduction) singing a So Bad It's Good song about how the Eurovision has become So Bad It's Good (or possibly horrible). This is a few post-modernisms too many for a lot of people, who think the song is simply and shallowly crap. Thus, it didn't get past the semi-finals.
    • The 2009 contest actually suffered because of this: most of the acts were too good to be so bad they were good but not good enough to be actually good.
    • The original Belarusian entry for 2011, containing such gems as "Byelorussia, USSR time...you're my passion, do it old-fashioned", was so hilariously terrible that the Belarusian broadcaster felt the need to change the lyrics... which made it go from so-bad-it's-good to plain bad.
    • This was also many people's view of the Eurovision Song Contest for decades before the introduction of the phone-in system.
  • This version of "Oh Holy Night". For some people, it might fall into So Bad It's Horrible; but anyone with a robust sense of humour split their sides laughing while listening to it.
  • No Use For a Name's asinine and earnest anti-war ballad "In Fields of Agony (Everybody Dies!)" You can find this gem on Rock Against Bush Vol 2. It is complete with bongos and oh so clever sound clips of Rumsfeld and George W. Bush.
  • Sondra Prill's music. A notable example of one of her cover songs is of Janet Jackson's "Nasty". Unlike the original, Sondra's version is more off-key, and she seems to yell most of the time.
  • PDQ Bach, people, PDQ Bach! Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments! Grand Serenade For an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion! March of the Cute Little Wood Sprites!
    • Extra credit and >9000 karma points to Peter Schickele for promoting appreciation of legitimate classical music through PDQ Bach. Tens of thousands of classical music lovers had their first exposure to classical music through PDQ Bach. And let's remember Oedipus Tex. All of his music is intentionally that bad, and is always hilarious.
  • "MacArthur Park." As performed both as an emo ballad by Richard Harris and as a disco dance remix by Donna Summer. The chorus is meant to be symbolic of a lost love; that only cements it more firmly in this category:

Macarthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet green icing flowing down.
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again...oh NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

    • Humourist Dave Barry - whose Bad Song Survey had ranked this song No.1 - commented that a lot of fans had since written to inform him that he didn't get it; that "the cake was a Metaphor. To which I reply, OK, but it's a really stupid metaphor."
    • Insipid lyrics notwithstanding, the Richard Harris version has good instrumental backing, and his voice sounds pleasing enough. The Donna Summer version, however, butchers the original song in every single area but the lyrics. It doesn't help that her arrhythmic singing brings William Shatner to mind.
    • The narminess of this song was lampshaded on The Simpsons. At the Little Miss Springfield Pageant, Apu's niece announces that she will be performing it and playing the tabla (an Indian drum). Cue the audience bursting into hysterical laughter,
  • The entire musical output of Russian metal band ANJ. Whether it's singing about a Goth teen getting chased off a building by jealous classmates wielding baseball bats or Mikhail Gorbachev fighting off EVIL STALIN ZOMBIES with his EYE LASERS, it has to be seen to be believed.
  • Massacration. Just, Massacration.
  • Danish pop band Aqua is either this or a Guilty Pleasure for many people.
  • The (in)famous Bowie/Jagger cover of "Dancing in the Streets." Especially with the video.
    • The video is even more hilarious with the sound off.
    • "The Laughing Gnom," from before Space Oddity or even his first full album. It's...odd.
    • Or from his first full album, "Rubber Band."
      • From the same album, We Are Hungry Men.
  • Former Ramones bassist Dee Dee Ramone's out-of-print solo debut (under the name Dee Dee King) Standing In The Spotlight. While there are songs that are more typically Ramones-esque, most tracks prominently feature him rapping in a tone of voice that has been memorably compared to "a cartoon moose" and making memorable boasts like "I'm the cut-creator, the master of rap\ when I walk down the street, homeboys tip their hat". What might be the weirdest moment on a fairly bizarre album is a hip-hop update of 60's dance craze "Mashed Potato Time" featuring back-up vocals from Debbie Harry. While it's actually an outtake, there's also a silly but adorable rap written from the point of view of his pet cat. The Ramones themselves did evidently like "The Crusher" enough to later record a slightly less hip-hop-influenced version without Dee Dee though.
  • There's this video. Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down...
  • While James Bond songs are usually made of awesome, Lulu's "The Man With the Golden Gun" is so over-the-top, campy, and ridiculous, it loops around from stupid right back to enjoyable. The hilarious, barely-Double Entendre lyrics help, too.
  • Most of Chicago's earliest music is truly good on its own; but Terry Kath's "An Hour in the Shower" suite, in which he laments not having the right kind of Spam with him while he's travelling, qualifies.
  • "Hey baby wake up from your asleep. We have arrived onto the future and the whole world has become...ELECTRONIK. SUPERSONIK."
    • As the "I hope you enjoyed this flight as much as you enjoyed our accent" line implies, it's a Stealth Parody. It was made to promote the book Molvania: A Land Untouched By Modern Dentistry, which is a mock travel guide for a Ruritania-style fictional country. So it's still so bad it's good, just intentionally so.
  • A band called Complete wants to take us on a trip to a magical land, called..."HOOGIE BOOOGGIIEE LA-HA-HA-HAND"
    • If you want to get to a magical land without your limbs being ripped off and eaten, for the love of Peach, NEVER FOLLOW THE BASSIST!
  • "No Way," By Raed. Imagine a man singing lame, barely-rhyming lyrics that don't match the music or even the beat, imagine music that just seems to make itself up as it goes, imagine the instrumentals barely sound like music...and you will get something a fraction as bad as this mess of a song.
  • Anything made by Microsoft Songsmith - particularly the original Songsmith ad, now a Youtube classic.
  • The inimitable "Shine on Me". Ordinarily, it would simply be an outrageously 80's love song that just happened to be released in 2008. But the music video, which steals scenes from every fantasy movie, video game, and book cover ever made, is truly a beautiful travesty which must be seen to be believed. Unfortunately, the two sequel videos promised have failed to materialize.
    • That is the most nonsensically awesome video ever.
  • Afterbirth's "Mr. Lewis". While the rest of their lone self-released EP is closer to So Bad It's Horrible, this one song is perversely melodic in a The Shaggs meet hardcore punk sort of way. It also features a guitar solo nicked from "Mary Had A Little Lamb", as well as the hilarious Painful Rhyme "I wish you'd keel over and die/burn in hell, you faggot french fry".
  • The Blue Dragon song "Eternity". Singer from Deep Purple + the guy who does the music for the Final Fantasy series should equal epic win. Instead, we get So Bad It's Good.
  • Mc Miker G and DJ Sven's Holiday Rap, a cheesy but incredibly catchy European 80's pop-rap hit. What really brings it into so-bad-it's-good territory is the lyrics: "I'm the number one rapper, yo my name is Sven/ I can rap more raps than a superman can". And next time you hear Madonna's "Holiday" (which it prominently samples), expect to end up with both songs in your head simultaneously. Also hilarious is the the fact that the artist's names are displayed onscreen at the two minute mark, and then promptly contradicted when "MC Miker G" immediately calls himself both "Sven" and "Miker G" within the next fifteen seconds.
    • This troper remembers (but is sure he must be mistaken and would appreciate some kind of video evidence) an interview with the offending parties on the BBC's Wogan chat show wherein one of them announced that they were "putting the C back into rap music." So it may have been deliberate.
  • A lot of the English in J-rock falls under it for this troper. The music he uses tends to be very good... until you realize that they're singing in English on this or that song. This troper's love for the band alice nine. knows no bounds, but he still finds the English in Stray Cat and, to a lesser extent, Blue Planet to be an endless source of amusement. (Oh, he still loves the song. So Bad It's Good, after all. And it's endearing to a point. But still.)
  • Any song coming from the Mexican band Los Pikadientes de Caborca qualifies for this in their attempt to parody music from the Norte�o genre.
  • MACHO, MACHO MAN...
  • Everyooooone is Jesus, everyone!
  • The music video for Korpiklaani's "Wooden Pints." TO explain, the very first thing in it is the fiddle player kicking open the door of an outhouse and stepping out of it to play with no emotion what-so-ever, there is one member of the band who hits his single drum with a ridiculous amount of intensity, despite being completely inaudible, a scene with the band sitting at a table eating chicken and beer, followed by them jumping over the table and wrestling, among other ridiculousness. Given that it's Korkiplaani, it's likely that it was supposed to be ridiculous; it's not like any of their stuff is particularly serious. But judge for yourself.
  • Mark Gormley. The glasses, the moustache, the bad green screen and the random posture changes are so hilariously jarring that everything he does becomes a surreal masterpiece.
  • The cancelled Rhythm Game Neon FM was going to have a song called "Girlz Buttz". It is about exactly what you think it's about.
  • ooooh you touch my TRA LA LA!
    • My ding ding dong?
    • That's not even getting into the appearance of the guy singing it. 80s sunglasses, porn mustache, mullet skin greasier than you'd find on the average pizza kid, combine with creepy mannerisms to make the guy look like a rapist.
    • I-Mockery named Gunther Levi to this category when they reviewed his album, Pleasureman. The reviewer said the album was "so incredibly bad that it actually comes back around to being good, and may in fact be one of the best ever."
    • Tutti Frutti Summer Love
  • Plethitude's New York Surprise, which managed to get a slight bit of memetic mutation going on, at least in the Boston area. It's on the borderline of being just plain bad, but the angst ridden lyrics that have no particular meter or rhyme scheme, the "harmonies" in the chorus, and the fact that the drummer is lagging behind everyone else throughout the entire song make it at least hilariously awful.
  • Tommy Seebach's disco cover of Apache, especially with the music video.
  • Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law" is a rock classic, due to actually being considered a good song by a great many people. The video, however? You'll be laughing at how cheesy and ridiculous it is, even for the 80s, in less than a minute.
  • The Skatt Bros. song "Life at the Outpost" doesn't fall overwhelmingly into this category, but its music video, a deliberate and outrageous parody of those by the Village People, certainly does.
  • JUS WANNA PLAY VIDEO GAMES
    • The info claims it won a Grammy. The official Grammy site does not list the band or the song as a winner.
  • Rapper Lil B is possibly the king of this trope whenitcomesto Hip Hop, though this may be a case of So Bad It's Horrible if its not intentional.
    • He's released serious songs that sound nothing like his other output. He's got big name fans such as Lupe Fiasco and Wiz Khalifa. Some people even call him hip hop's Andy Kaufman. Lil B makes So Bad It's Good an art form. And it is indeed deliberate.
  • El Chombo's song, "Chacarron Macarron," barely deserves to be called a song because it has very few real notes; it is mostly just bizarre chanting to a drumbeat, especially its ridiculous sounding "ualuealuealeuale" chorus. It has become infamous on the Internet for being such terrible music, largely thanks to YTMND.
  • Keith Moon, the drummer for The Who, released exactly one album, called Two Sides of the Moon, and it consisted largely of crooning covers of Beach Boys and Beatles songs, and one song where Keith Moon and Ringo Starr were just telling corny old vaudeville jokes back and forth over some music. Bless his heart, he wasn't any good at singing, but he was just so enthusiastic and just so obviously enjoying himself that it's infectious.
  • Initial D includes a song called "Speed Car," the cheesiest ode to Initial D around:

Speed Car, Speed Car
It's a team of Project D they're winning
Speed Car, Speed Car
And Takumi is the king of racing
Speed Car, Speed Car
AE86 is coming
Speed Car, Speed Car
And he's gonna be the oooooonnnnnnnneeeee...SPEED CAR!

    • Most Eurobeat falls into this. The combination of cheesy broken English lyrics and hyperactive electronica makes it all the more endearing.
  • Dennis Madalone's patriotic power ballad "America: We Stand As One". UU-SS-aaaAAY!
  • Not actually an example, but, this trope is the entire subject of the Frank Zappa song "Cheepnis".
  • This I-Mockery.com page is devoted to this trope. It even lets you listen to some of them.
  • The Barenaked Ladies' song "Shopping" is meant to be a bland, insipid paean to consumerism; it was inspired by then-President George Bush's advice to Americans worried about the economy, war etc. 'When the going gets rough/Just shop with somebody tough...'. Given the number of fans who missed that point, however, the band has since conceded they probably took the gag too far.
    • Which may explain why their live performances of the song involved a shopping-cart ballet on the 'La-la-la-la-la-la-la' bridge... yes, using actual shopping carts. Probably stolen from Wal-Mart.
  • MTV Brazil's TV show Piores Clipes do Mundo ("The Worst Videos In The World") had many music video and/or song examples showcased (the hilarious analysis could also be listed, but most people here don't speak Portuguese):
  • The entire Disco Polo genre falls into this.
    • In case you've never heard of: it's a Polish mix of Italo Disco and drinking-folk music.
  • Steve Miller's 1984 album Italian X-Rays - it sounds like Miller discovered keyboards and mountains of high quality cocaine, right around the same time. Quality.
    • BONGO BONGO!
  • Battalion 88 is an extremely obscure band featuring Belarusian neo-Nazis making black metal/techno songs about the Space Marines. If that weren't odd enough, there's also completely jarring viking metal vocals with the otherwise normal black metal vocals, sci-fi sound effects, and broken English lyrics about ancient battle spirits and racial hoo-ha. It goes together about as well as you think it would. But the concept is just so strange that one can't help but love it.
  • PUT A DONK ON IT!
  • The song "Money in the Bank" by Lil' Scrappy
    • Consider the "musician's" name...
  • The official music videos of the Italian metal band Rhapsody of Fire (former Rhapsody) definitely count, at least the older ones. They are usually made of 20% shots of the band playing their instruments and 80% liquid Special Effects Failure. See for yourselves.
    • You'd think after getting signed to a major metal label, their videos would look a bit more professional. Nope. Their latest video, "Sea Of Fate", somehow manages to make a simple performance video absolutely ridiculous, with piles of unnecessary zooming. They still can't seem to afford (or just find) a cameraman who didn't just discover zoom.
  • I Want You to Love Me Tender qualifies.
  • John Ascroft's "Let the Eagle Soar," if for no other reason than the fact that it has inspired some of the best jokes on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. To this day, I can not hear it without laughing.
  • Even if it borders on So Bad it's Horrible, this should qualify. Open with caution: there is some serious musical rape, in there.
  • What happens when you combine the worst elements of Crunk and Screamo, add lyrics involving IKEA Erotica and falling in love with girls you met on Myspace, and top it all off with a dress code that puts one in mind of Metrosexual hipsters? BrokeNCYDE!
  • Canadian rapper Chuggo released an album that was actually reviewed positively--but most people know of him from his camp single, "Aw, C'Mon"--Commonly known as "AAAAAAAAAHHHHH! COME ON, FUCK A GUY!" (Actually it's "fucking guy")--along with its suitably outrageous music video. The sheer mix of rather simplistic rhymes (Ladies come to see me, because they can't fuck! You'll never sell a record, because your rap sucks!), gratuitous use of any and all debauched tropes relating to rap music (It seems like it might be a diss track, only Chuggo seemingly forgot to explain whom he's dissing at any point the whole song), the video's low-budget quality and sometimes questionable choices of its visuals (A skull? You sure you weren't trying for a heavy metal band, Chuggo?) and its occasional use of elements that don't seem to belong anywhere in rap music, (I put mayonnaise on all my food!) earns it this trope so hard, it's nearly impossible to believe it wasn't an intentional joke.
  • Knuckles' stage themes in Sonic Adventure 2. Somebody at SEGA decided that they get a rapper to do the music for Knuckles' stages. Hilarity and Getting Crap Past the Radar ensued. This is a game about talking animals protecting the world from an egg man and a space lizard with a cannon rammed up its ass. Here's an example. And another.
  • Prit Stiiiik! DRUM SOLO!
  • The video for David Hasselhoff's Hooked On a Feeling.
  • Wesley Willis. His music consists of ramblings spoken over the basic rhythms of his keyboard, the song name shout-sung about eight times in the "chorus", random fill-ins standing in for solos, and the classic ending "Rock over London, rock on Chicago" and a tag line coming from a commercial ad. This is all awesome.
  • Black metal pioneers Venom. While you can't deny their impact on the genre, their technical prowess is lacking, especially on the early albums (like Welcome to Hell). The title track helps show this off nicely, with cardboard drums and comical lyrics, as do songs like "The Witching Hour".
  • "The smell of flowers... DEATH! Your pretty face... DEATH!!!"
  • Five words: Disco Ballad of Sweeney Todd.
  • The song Girlfriend by Kabbage Boy, the Nu-metal band that Eddie Riggs initially roadies for in Brutal Legend, was synthesized specifically to exemplify all the worst things that have ever happened to Heavy Metal. The result was a success but the tune itself is sorta catchy, for all the wrong reasons.
  • Japanese pop culture in a nutshell.
  • I feeeeeel Fantastic! Hey Hey Hey!
  • Oh shit bitch!
    • I smoke good weed bitch! I'm from Mutha Fuckin Canada Shit!
    • In case you where wondering why he keeps repeating 613 over and over agian, 613 is the Ottawa region's Area code. So he put his friken area code in his song!?
    • When you realise he's not actually wearing a top hat, it's even funnier.
  • Austrian Death Machine is a side project of As I Lay Dying vocalist Tim Lambesis. It consists of a lot of Bay-area thrash metal which essentially all sounds identical, and Lambesis doing a lot of indecipherable metal growling. What makes it good is 2 things: all their songs are based on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, and "Ahhnold" is the second vocalist. This results in some completely ridiculous tracks with hilarious lyrics commentating the movie in question, and the "Ahhnold" vocalist being a massively overblown caricature of the actor himself.
  • Sometimes, people make a war, don't know what it'sa for...
  • Seven words: "Go club get drunk you stupid shit."
  • What no "Love Juice?"
  • The work of Normand L'Amour certainly qualifies, with the "lyrics" being apparently random syllables or a single word being repeated over and over, and the background "music" being melody-less midi noise. One of his album was nominated for the "Best Humoristic album" category at one of the ADISQ Gala.
  • Die Antwoord is a weird South African hip-hop group which might be deliberately bad, but a lot of people seem to enjoy it unironically. See this and this for example of their creative output.
  • STAY. WITH. ME. TONIGHT.
  • A certain video game track qualifies here. It doesn't fit on the Video Game page because the game itself is squarely in So Bad It's Horrible territory, but this track...well...yeah.

"Oh my god. I now have the most glorious mental image of a paintball fight taking place in a barnyard with Frosty the Snowman systematically violating all the animals with akimbo electric banjos, and all of this is in a Benny Hill-style fast-forwarded scene with several dancing hillbillies and a single Mariachi in the background. I am sincerely disappointed that I cannot convey this image through this text box. It's fucking fantastic. Probably make a great mural."

  • "Why Must I Cry?" Many songs are so bad they're good, but Reh Dogg managed to go above and beyond by trying to write a sad song, only for it to come out as side-splittingly hilarious. Barring that the lyrics are repetitive and lame, and the fact that Reh Dogg enunciates them about on par with The Godfather, the music video's constant close-up shots of Reh Dogg's face, displaying perhaps the worst teeth ever in a music video, finishes robbing the song of any remaining ability to be taken seriously.
  • The output of the Portsmouth Sinfonia, an orchestra where the only requirement for joining was that you want to play your instrument.
    • The orchestra was founded in 1970 as an experiment by Gavin Bryars, who was convinced that, as long as you hit all the right notes in a song, you would communicate that song properly; hitting several other notes in the general vicinity would not impact the audience's comprehension. For a thorough test, he allowed anyone to join the Sinfonia on any instrument they desired, regardless of such piddling matters as musical training, prior experience, or talent. His "orchestra"'s performances proved his hypothesis correct: if you search them on YouTube, the songs they play are (mostly) recognizable. And side-splittingly funny.
  • The infamous DK Rap from Donkey Kong 64. Theme Tune Rap songs are always narm, but... seriously He has no style, he has no grace, this kong has a funny face! and This kong is so strong, it isn't funny, he can make a Kremling cry out for mummy! are just ridiculous. The whole things is here.
  • This AC/DC Cover. The band seems to know it, too!
  • "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" by Trace Adkins. "Got it goin' on/Like Donkey Kong/And oo-wee, shut my mouth, slap your grandma!"
  • Microsoft Sam sings "White and Nerdy".
  • Montgomery, it's just like, it's like a mini-mall!
  • Come On Back by FUSBI.
  • B4-4 and their song Get Down.
  • Thrash Queen's second album, actually an In Name Only recording made illicitly by a German record label using their name. The band themselves, and their debut album, are much worse.
  • R. Kelly's epic "Hip Hopera," Trapped in the Closet, can be considered as RENT with a dripping faucet serving as the musical score. Each episode is the same melody and the sheer ridiculousness as more affairs are uncovered and more characters threaten each other with violence with R. Kelly dubbing everyone. "...And I pull out my gun, and say I'm gonna shoot someone. "And I count to THREE, and she looks at ME!" It all escalates to sheer madness with the introduction of the midget, whose name is BIG MAN for obvious reasons. To say the least, the song has became somewhat of a meme, and inspired countless parodies, like most notably, Weird Al's "Trapped in the Drive Thru."
    • Despite its questionable writing, sophistication, and repetitive melody, some people are still eagerly awaiting the predictable finale. Oh NO! Now we all have AIDS!.. AIDS!... AIDS!...
  • Deathcore band Waking the Cadaver is just so over-the-top with how bad its taste in lyrics is, combined with absolutely illegible vocals.
  • My horse is amazing (warning, NSFW)
  • This performance turned an obscure dance-pop song by an unknown Romanian group into a meme, a hit, and a piece of 2000s pop culture.
  • William Shatner should never sing. Ever.
  • If you think Shatner is bad, take a listen any time Shaquille O'Neal tries to rap. His single "I Know I Got Skillz", between Shaq's terrible singing, various product plugs, and completely ridiculous lyrics, it is just so Narmtacular.

I got a hand that'll rock ya cradle,
cream you like cheese, spread you on my bagel,
my Ford Explorer boomin' with the clumped-up funk,
all you jealous punks can't stop my dunks,
they're brand new like Heavy,
built like Chevy, Impala,
but Shaq's a smooth balla,
(yeah, but what about rhymin?)
I can hold my own,
knick-knack Shaq-attack, give a dog a bone

CRAWLING IN MY SKIIIIIIIIIIIIN, THESE WOUNDS THEY WILL NOT HEEEEEEEEEAL.

Stomp! Step! Slash! To hell with it!
Stomp! Step! Slash! Drop dead!

"GO LET'S GO LET'S GO LET'S SUPASO GO LET'S GO LET'S GO LET'S SUPASO GO LET'S GO LET'S GO LET'S SUPASO"
"SUPERSONIC SUPERSONIC SUPERSONIC SUPERSONIC SUPERSONIC SUPERSONIC SUPERSONIC SUPERSONIC"

"I take a couple uppers, I down a couple downers, but nothing compares to these blue and yellow purple pills. I've been to mushroom mountain, once or twice but who's counting, but nothing compares to these blue and yellow purple pills.

    • Clean Lyrics:

"I've been so many places, I've seen so many faces, but nothing compares to these blue and yellow purple hills. I've climbed the highest mountain, once or twice but who's counting, but nothing compares to thes blue and yellow purple hills.

    • It just gets worse from there. Also a lot of the lyrics they keep are just as offensive in the clean version, like

I can't describe the vibe I get when I drive by six people and five I hit.

Hey, you know what Paradise is? It's a lie, a fantasy we create about people and places as we'd like them to be. But you know what Truth is? It's little baby you're holding, and it's that man you fought with this morning -- the same one you're going to make Love with tonight! That's Truth! That's Love!

  • David Geddes' "Run, Joey, Run" -- A Teenage Death Song, made especially memorable by the whiny heroine's chorus, the lead's overwrought delivery, and the Squicky implications of her father's over-reaction to their relationship.
  • Macho Man Randy Savage's rap album. Particularly "Be A Man".
  • The Cornel Hurd Band is an intentional example of this. They purposefully make their music repetitive and boring, and the lyrics they write sound like a deconstruction of Country Music.
  • The music video of Billy Squier's Rock Me Tonite. The song itself isn't bad (in fact, it was his highest charting single), but the hysterical video fits well here. Squier claims it ruined his career.
  • An Image Song for Higurashi no Naku Koro ni gives us, said in Engrish, "Do you know Oyashiro-sama? Yes, Hinamizawa. I kill you you kill me, no Hinamizawa". It Makes Sense in Context and is probably very intentional. Neither of the singers are exactly cool, it's set in The Eighties, and it's making fun of a mystery-murder series.
  • Lucia Pamela's album Into Outer Space With Lucia Pamela. Sounding like someone's boozy great aunt doing an impersonation of Ethel Merman, she brays through thirteen songs (which seem to contain the same three backing tracks repeated over and over), each with a spoken word introduction, about a fanciful trip to the moon.
  • Notorious in prog-rock circles is At King, the 1985 debut album by the Swiss neo-progressive band Deyss. Reportedly, the sword-fight effects were created by clinking butter knives together!
  • Anyone who attended the 2010 National Scout Jamboree got to hear this song at the closing ceremony.
  • This song (at 2:20) originally from the also So Bad, It's Good video game Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, but just hearing how "you're the star" just because you pursued to go after Jane is just... well. How The Angry Video Game Nerd would react to this if he ended up pursuing after Jane instead of just not going after her?
  • I'm on a couch. To quote a youtube comment "this fails so hard it wins".
  • Lords of the Crimson Alliance: All of the absurdities of 80s heavy metal, rolled into one package of pure hilarity!
  • I Get Wet by Andrew WK. The album's subject matter consists of three things: partying, getting drunk, and girls. Drilled into your head repeatedly. It would normally be dismissed, except for two things. First is that the songs themselves are incredibly catchy. Second is the fact that the songs are not supposed to be taken seriously at all. Andrew WK himself doesn't take it seriously, saying "I just wanted to make a bunch of dumb songs that would be good for getting drunk to." Even music critics love the album because they agree with the catchiness quotient and admit it succeeds at its intended purpose.
  • "The Next Door" by Exile. Better known as "Indestructible", Street Fighter IV's opening cutscene song. If you're listening to it in Japanese, it sounds like an average J-Pop song. Listen to it in English and, at first, you may be annoyed, eventually you will love and start singing along to it. It's sung in Engrish and hearing it while seeing either Ryu and Ken, Chun-Li and Crimson Viper, Akuma and Gouken or Guile and Abel having an epic fight just helps with the awesomeness. Unfortunately, the song was booted from Super Street Fighter IV.
  • The Japanese screamo/punk/funk/metal band Maximum the Hormone. Just listen to them.
  • "Pieces of Me" by Ashlee Simpson. It's so full of Narm and Angst that it makes an extremely enjoyable song to sing and make fun of. "It seems like I can finally rest my head on something real/I like the way that feels/Ohhhhh/It's as if you known me better than I ever knew myself/I love how you can tell/All the pieces, pieces, pieces of me"
  • Everything by Family Force 5. They are a Not Christian Rock band who performs wearing oversized "Hulk Smash" gloves, wearing large balloons on harnesses, and screaming nonsense.
  • I had a dream when I was in high school, I attended the Punk Rock Academy I had a dream when I was in high school That at the Punk Rock Academy no one made fun of me
    • Atom And His Package intentionally based his career on this trope.
  • I GOT DAT DRINK IN MAH CUP I GOT DAT DRINK IN MAH CUP
  • Pittsburgh Slim. With hits such as Girls Kiss Girls. If you can't click the link, just know that it's a white guy rapping about lesbians. Nothing else is needed.
  • Black Metal band Silencer is the definition of "so bad it's good" because of the vocalist's bizarre banshee wail that's been likened to a cat being raped. Some people love it, but others find it so over the top and ludicrous that it saves the music from being downright terrible to laughably endearing. Only you can decide for yourself.
  • "AOAO (Royal Mix)" by DJ Sharpnel. Or should I say, AOAOAO AO AOAOAO AO AOAOAO AO AOAOAO
  • The video for Tommy Seebach's version of "Apache."
  • Sam Sacks. It's not clear whether Sam -- who looks like Hans Mulman on the Simpsons and has a 3-note vocal range -- is in on the joke or not. Notable for sing each and every one of his songs at exactly the same pace.
  • According to The Other Wiki, Sweden's Eilert Pilarm is an Elvis impersonator known for "his striking lack of resemblance to Elvis Presley, both vocally and physically; his shaky command of the English language in which he sings; and his apparent absence of enough musical talent to recognize that he is usually out of tune and inaccurate with the timing of his singing." They're not kidding. It is also this that is said to have caused his success.
  • Well known doujin artist REDALiCE produced a remix of "Love Colored Master Spark" from Touhou based on Pon De Floor by Major Lazer. The result sounds absolutely nothing like the original and is probably one of the most hilariously bizarre Touhou remixes ever made.
  • Kenny G's entire ouevre.
  • IT'S JUST SO COLD IN DA D
  • Ever wondered what "Anarchy in the UK" would sound like recorded by a French-Chinese band who speak no English?

AIIIII AM AN AIIIIIINAIKIIIIIII AIIIIIIIII AIII AII AIIIIIII AEEEEE

I wanna *quack* you hard, I want to feel you deep, I wanna rock your body, I want to taste your sweet. I wanna *squeak* you hard..

  • Any parody by Rucka Rucka Ali manages to be this.
  • Italian self-made rapper Trucebaldazzi, who in this epic video is lashing out his rage against... a middle school. Complete with Elmuh Fudd Syndwome.
  • The 'Alphabet Rap' from 80's TV show Quantum Leap, as performed by actor Dean Stockwell . What make this even more hilarious is that the lyrics in this release have been sanitised into a slightly more positive message to teach kids. In the original show, Stockwell's lyrics began "You're a looney-tune in a big white room.." Which he freestyled to, yes, an imprisoned mental patient.
  • Drinkenstein. Sylvester Stallone singing. Seriously.
  • Perhaps the best-known song in John Trubee's catalogue is one he never sang. "Peace And Love," better known as "Blind Man's Penis" was done by a local song poem company on his behalf. Musically speaking, it's a deadpan country ballad which plays all the clichés completely straight. The lyrics are a baffling heap of abject nonsense, containing such lines as "Warts loved my nipples because they're pink/Vomit on me, baby, yeah yeah yeah" deadpanned as though they were age-old aphorisms.
  • "My Parachute Won't Open" by Itzhak Volansky is an interesting case. The man who made the song is a 50-something Jewish bookstore owner in San Francisco who wanted to make a quick little ditty. The song just reeks of amateurity, but is enjoyable. A group known as Dizzy Balloon made a pretty good cover, though.
  • We like pizza, in the mornin', we like pizza everyday..
  • Scottish rapper MC Swell, whose "music" largely consists of him swearing over copyrighted beats. Typical lyrical themes include beating people to death with cheese sandwiches and other trials faced by your average rural street hooligan.
  • This guy can't sing in the slightest, but he has such heart that the entire performance becomes Narm Charm. It's apparent that even he knows he flubbed it when he stops the last verse with "That's all I'm doing."
  • This song by Nicki Manaj: YOU A STUPID HOE, YOU A YOU A STUPID HOE
  • Steve Bent's "Going To Spain": Before The Fall did a Cover Version, it was best known for being one of the more memorable songs on a compilation called The World's Worst Record. However it's oddly catchy, and the cheesy arrangement and inane lyrics make it sort of charming.
  • Here's this... rather interesting video involving some breakdancing dedicated to 9/11 with this overall weird song.
  • These covers [dead link] border between hilariously bad and awfully bad (particularly the Russian guy singing "Let It Be").
  • Jesus Is a Friend of Mine by Sonseed is so stupid that everyone loves it.
  • The music video for the Satan of Hell [dead link] by the Black Satans. The music itself is Grindcore-like metal, only longer, but the video... set in the snowy woods it features tiki torch headbanging, snowballs, tree humping and evil peek-a-boo. And the choreographed dance at around the 1:55 mark. It will make you laugh, if anything.
  • This instrumental cover of "My Heart Will Go On". The guy's recorder-playing is horribly off-key, and the video includes him hugging a vase of flowers while crying and ripping his shirt open at the song's climax. Intentional? Most likely, but it's still awesomely hilarious.
  • Gay Boyfriend by the Hazzards was noticed by MTV for being really, really stupid. People love it, though. The dance remix of this song, however, is too good to belong here.
  • Once upon a time, some guy in Japan thought it'd be awesome (or hilarious) if he got Japan's most famous voice actresses and had them record a punk album. In English. Because of this brilliant idea, we are treated to things like this. Yeah...
  • La Tigresa del Oriente, a Peruvian folk singer of dubious vocal qualities, who became memetically famous with her song "Nuevo Amanecer" in 2006. Saint patron of Age-Inappropriate Dressing, being a septuagenarian lady wearing full-body feline-printed leotards that even Lady Gaga would find tacky and more makeup than Mae West in Sextette (and for similar reasons). You cannot stop snickering when listening to her songs. And yet she has a fandom that follows her, half in Bile Fascination, half in genuine endearment on her antics.
  • Delfín Quishpe, otherwise an standard Ecuadorian folkloric singer, jumped to fame in 2007 with the Narmtacular "Torres Gemelas", a terrible song about how the singer lost his beloved on the 9/11 terrorist attack at the World Trade center, compounded with a video clip full of terrible greenscreen showing him in front of old World Trade Center footage.


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