Shiny Toy Guns performing “Alice Through the Glory Hole”

The Worst of This Week’s Singles: Stereophonics, Josh Groban, Tich and more!

Published on May 15th, 2013 | Jonny Abrams and Jamie Steiner

This week’s singles were so rubbish that Rocksucker was well vexed, sufficiently vexed in fact to take a not inconsiderable amount of relish in picking apart their horrible bones and gooey entrails.

If you manage to make it through each of the following in their respective, ghastly entireties…well, Rocksucker accepts no responsibility for what may or may not happen next.

Enjoy!

Demi Lovato – “Heart Attack”

Getting a song onto Geordie Shore: it’s the incentive that’s sweeping the nation! Within fifty-odd years of The Beatles, this is what we’ve been reduced to: “When I don’t care / I can play ’em like a Ken doll / Won’t wash my hair / Then make ’em bounce like a basketball”, which mightn’t be quite as bad as it is were it not the most horrible ‘Taylor Swift trying dubstep’ guff imaginable.

“When you come around, I get paralysed” sings Lovato, so we can only implore whoever that is to ‘come around’ more often. Especially when she’s in the studio. Just pop in and render her immobile for a while, will you?

She also inadvertently sums up her vocal technique with “I gasp for air”, while the assertion “I’m flying too close to the sun / And I burst into flames” elicits cheers for the notion of that combustion being literal.

“Flying too close to the sun, eh? Like Icarus?”

“Ica-who?”

Lovato was apparently a child actress in Barney & Friends, and we can only surmise that that’s where she learned everything she knows. Well, “Heart Attack” – always such a sensitive title for a pop song – may not be quite as good as a gormless purple dinosaur singing about simple maths, but it’s closer than most.

Rocksucker says: Half a Quail out of Five!

Joe Cocker – “I Come in Peace”

“Joe!”

“Mmph…why are you calling me at this hour?”

“It’s 8pm, Joe.”

“Nnngghh. What is it?”

“Your accountant’s done a runner. Fled to South America. You need to churn out some more music or you’ll have to sell some of your houses.”

“Oh dear. But I haven’t got any new songs.”

“It’s okay, I found some experienced session musicians who moonlight as a Santana tribute act. Can you be in the studio in an hour?”

“Ugh…fine. Can we make it extra bland, though? I don’t think I can handle loud noises at the moment.”

“That’s fine, Joe. It’ll be perfect for headlining Kenwood House. We can charge one grand a ticket and sell pacemakers at the merchandise stand.”

“Have we got enough money left over for a black gospel singer or two?”

“Just the one, I’m afraid, although I know a white girl who’s good at lip synching.”

“She’ll have to do. As long as she doesn’t do anything that will make the song unsuitable for middle-aged American men tapping along to it on the wheel of their Chevy.”

“I’ve spoken to those middle-aged American men. They say they’ve worn out their Hooty & the Blowfish CDs and they can’t wait to have something else to ‘rock out’ to on the way into the office.”

“Hey, I love Hooty & the Blowfish.”

“Me too, Joe. They help me unwind.”

Rocksucker says: One Quail out of Five!

Josh Groban – “I Believe (When I Fall in Love it Will Be Forever)”

No one showed up to Josh’s concert so he decided to make a music video instead. Eventually, Josh stumbles upon an orchestra and video shifts from black and white into colour, like the poignant Schindler’s List sort of thing it very much isn’t.

“I’m encased inside a hollow shell” we’re informed; we’ll just let you think of your own sarky replies for that one, and strongly recommend this to fans of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Wet Wet Wet and whichever lank-haired commercial opera singer last released an immensely popular Christmas CD.

Meat Loaf for Ronan Keating fans? A wedding song for people who shouldn’t be allowed to breed? To be fair, at least some kind of thought and effort has gone into the songwriting here, which places it a rung or two above the likes of Demi Lovato straight off the bat. If this was a kids’ sports day, Josh Groban would get a certificate for trying/turning up/spelling his name right on the entry form.

Well done, Josh!

Cartman

“Duuurrrp, thanks Rocksucker!”

Rocksucker says: One and a Half Quails out of Five!

a quail half a quail

Lawson – “Gone”

Good grief, another sodding “woah oh oh!” refrain. EVERYONE. PLEASE. STOP. SOUNDTRACKING. SHIT. LADS’. TRIPS.

WE. HAVE. ENOUGH. ALREADY.

Seriously, there’s absolutely no merit to this at all other than its viability for syncing opportunities with Hollyoaks or, if they’re really lucky, Scrubs. Which of course means it has just shy of 200,000 YouTube hits at the time of writing.

Lawson represent a chillingly Orwellian view of Al Bowlly-style entertainment. That’s not to equate Al Bowlly with Lawson; we’re just pointing out that this is what the kids scream for these days, and that we are all doomed to extinction by apathy.

Rocksucker says: Too Bland for a Rating – listen to Al Bowlly instead.

Shiny Toy Guns – “Somewhere to Hide”

The Knife for N-Dubz fans? How do you talk about songs like this? Whigfield was better than this. Whigfield at least had a tune worthy of the name.

Ponder that for a moment: not as good as Whigfield. Just think what that entails. Still, we’re sure everyone involved in the making of this is very proud of what a slick, marketable, box-ticking product they’ve helped spawn.

She also looks more like a Borrower crawling through a glory hole than Alice in Wonderland, but you’d have to watch the video to know what we mean by that.

Rocksucker says: One Quail out of Five!

Stereophonics – “Graffiti on the Train”

Immediate impression: poor man’s “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt. Unfortunately, it’s not even that good.

“Graffiti on the train – oh no!”: sing about what you see, eh? Here Kelly Jones sings the story of a man who falls off a train and dies while trying to ‘graff’ a marriage proposal, such flagrant disregard for healthy and safety that we daresay he had it coming. Couldn’t he have just had it announced over the PA at a sporting event, or slipped a ring into a vol-au-vent? No, it had to be the train thing; and that’s why, somewhere in Kelly Jones’s imagination, there is a wall by the side of a railway track with “Marry meeeeeeee…” splattered on it.

Obviously he wouldn’t keep ‘graffing’ E’s as he was falling, but we can’t think how else to represent the ‘slip line’ in text. So, you know, just pretend he’s Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff. (Blimey, we hope this wasn’t based on a true story.)

Stereophonics are now well entrenched in a mindset where they either don’t realise how dull they’ve become or they just don’t care so long as the money keeps rolling in. Honestly, this is like watching graffiti dry (arf!).

The moral of the story is never to attempt an elaborate marriage proposal: you’ll die.

Wait, we’ve got another one: this is not so much a car crash of a song as it is a fatal train accident of a song.

Can you tell we don’t like this one yet? If you’d like to take issue with anything we’ve written, please clamber on top of a train and graffiti your message on a wall. We’ll get round to it later.

Rocksucker says: One Quail out of Five!

Tich – “Dumb”

…in which various pop tarts named Kate or Jessie are brought to their logical, terrifying conclusion. If there was such thing as a music criminal – you know, like a war criminal – Tich would be Pinochet, Milosevic and Blair all rolled into one.

The song’s title is all you need to know about it: this is, for all intensive porpoises, Rebecca Black done by someone who is clearly, depressingly, older than 13. Everyone involved in this, in any capacity, including encouragement from family and friends, should be made to walk the plank in shark infested waters.

We can exclusively reveal the titles of the next seven Tich singles:

“Numb”

“Soulless”

“Limp”

“Dump”

“Bimbo”

“Arse Gravy”

“Dead Quail”

Rocksucker says: Have a Dead Quail!

Tune in tomorrow for The Rest of This Week’s Singles!

Artists: demi lovato, joe cocker, josh groban, lawson, shiny toy guns, stereophonics, tich

About the Authors

Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.