I had to look up the song to get a lyric to reply with. I don't think there's been a song in the history of popular music which has made me reach for the dial faster than Sublime's "Santeria". ...it honestly doesn't even sound *THAT* bad, but the lyrics are just painfully stupid and lazy.

I feel that way about so many songs, but the one that jumps out at me is Billy Joel’s My Life. It sounds okay, probably, but it makes me want to fuck my own skull with a toilet brush.

All of these songs are mediocre to bad, but none of them are the level of soulless glurge that is "The Christmas Shoes".

I just went and read the lyrics. Now I’m crying for all the wrong reasons.

WINNER.😫 ...my Christian wife adored this song. She was a genuinely brilliant woman, but too indoctrinated to understand that it was pandering trash. Having to tolerate that song multiple times every holiday season didn't make me want a divorce... but, I mean, it almost did.

If you’re going to subject someone to religious hokum, it needs to at least be good religious hokum. The way I see it, if a religious song isn’t at least as good as Amazing Grace, why did you even bother writing it?

My wife introduced me to the music of Christian artist Michael W. Smith, and he is excellent. She's been dead for years and I am an Atheist, but I still listen to his albums sometimes. He exists in that smart multi-genre multi-decade nexus Garth Brooks and Sting occupy in their respective careers.🍀

Since you brought up Brooks, and since we’re talking about good songs now, I want to take a moment to point out that The Dance sucks and it never, ever makes me cry whenever it comes on the radio.

I can't follow you there, man. Tony Arata is one of the best writers in the history of country music, and Garth Brooks' performance of this song is pure auditory poetry. Arresting and glorious. It's one of the most perfect recordings in the history of all music. I CAN'T FOLLOW YOU THERE, MAN.

While I do enjoy Brooks, I don't think he overall competes with Strait, Travis, Jackson, or Parton as the modern country GOAT.

I don’t know enough about Parton or Jackson to say, but Strait is just a crooner, not an artist. Brooks at least had a hand in writing SOME of his songs.

Parton predates Garth Brooks. Different generations. I think Brooks is the best vocalist among his peers. And the best song selector. Solid writer. But Clint Black was actually the best star writer of that generation, and would have been the champion of the '90s if Brooks had never come along.

I’m standing my ground. I didn’t cry all the time over that song when I was young, and I absolutely do not get sad whenever I hear it now. Not me. Also, I guess I always thought it was about a man whose dance partner died young, possibly from cancer, but apparently I made that up.

The magic of "The Dance" is that it can be about anything which started happy and turned sad. It encompasses all of the crushing entropy of the inexorable march of time. It is pain and beauty in a blender.

"The Dance" takes on a special kind of power after you've lived through things like holding your unconscious wife's hand as she died young. The same hand I used to hold when I danced with her. I would give anything to have saved her. But I almost wish I'd never met her. ...that song is REAL.💔

This looks funny, but I mean it earnestly.

And yes, "Amazing Grace" is genuinely a great song. I don't need to believe along with a Christian artist to be moved by them -- I need *them* to genuinely believe and to try to move me, instead of just trying to pander and attempting to convert me.

Ray coming in hot with "The Christmas Shoes" in a thread about terrible songs, and now I truly understand what it's like to bring a knife to a gun fight (as Taylor Swift references in her brilliant song "Call It What You Want"). God damn Ray, you are playing to WIN.

I would also nominate Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time" as the worst song ever written by a brilliant man.

Few things are as maddening to me as when a brilliant songwriter writes a dogshit song. Billy Joel is often a genius... but when he's not, I want to punch him right in the piano. His album Stormfront takes you from glorious highs like "The Downeaster 'Alexa'" to godawful lows like "When in Rome".🤮