This is my list of the worst videos of the year. I decided to limit it to 40, although I could have made it a little longer. No less than seven artists—Rascal Flatts, Eric Church, Carrie Underwood, The Civil Wars, Beyonce, Blake Shelton, and Bruno Mars placed two videos apiece on this list. Ironically, eight artists on this list will also place on my year end “Phil’s Faves: Videos” list. It is quality that I am after, and even Taylor Swift cannot escape the “Q” Bomb rating………………………………
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Top 40 “Q” Bombs of 2011
1. Don’t Wanna Go Home – Jason Derulo
2. Colder Weather—Zac Brown Band
3. If I Die Young—The Band Perry
4. Dirt Road Anthem—Jason Aldean
5. Homeboy—Eric Church
6. Mama’s Song—Carrie Underwood
7. Hello World—Lady Antebellum
8. Poison & Wine—The Civil Wars
9. A Little Bit Stronger—Sara Evans
10. Remind Me—Brad Paisley with Carrie Underwood
11. Skyscraper—Demi Lovato
12. Run the World (Girls) – Beyonce
13. Footloose–Blake Shelton
14. Country Girl (Shake It For Me)—Luke Bryan
15. Smoke a Little Smoke—Eric Church
16. Moves Like Jagger—Maroon 5 with Christina Aguilera
17. Country Boy—Aaron Lewis
18. The Lazy Song—Bruno Mars
19. Barton Hollow—The Civil Wars
20. Shut Up Train—Little Big Town
21. Not Over You—Gavin DeGraw
22. I Love You This Big—Scotty McCreery
23. Good Life—One Republic
24. Pumped Up Kicks—Foster the People
25. Fake ID—Big & Rich with Gretchen Wilson
26. Keep Your Head Up—Andy Grammer
27. It Will Rain—Bruno Mars from “Breaking Dawn, Part One”
28. Bullets in the Gun—Toby Keith
29. Tomorrow—Chris Young
30. God Gave Me You—Blake Shelton
31. Blood Pressure—Mutemath
32. The Shape I’m In—Joe Nichols
33. I Won’t Let Go—Rascal Flatts
34. Countdown—Beyonce
35. E.T.—Katy Perry with Kanye West
36. You and I—Lady Gaga
37. Easy—Rascal Flatts with Natasha Bedingfield
38. Mine—Taylor Swift
39. Rope—Foo Fighters
40. Brown Chicken Brown Cow—Trace Adkins
1) “Don’t Wanna Go Home”—Basically, the video that was the inspiration for the start of the “Q” Bomb list. Judging by the amount of searches for this song as being the worst video ever, I think my assessment was correct—although it made the VH1 Year End Countdown.
2) “Colder Weather”—A video that was as cold and boring as the song. It also made the CMT Countdown of the Year.
3) “If I Die Young”—This one placed on both CMT’s Countdown of the Year for 2010 and VH1’s Year End Countdown for 2011. So basically, it has tortured me for almost two years now. And regardless of how many awards it wins, I will still feel that it is highly overrated and will be forgotten about by next year if not sooner. I have nothing against death or songs about death, except, you know, it’s death. So even from an English lit viewpoint, it remains one of my least favorite songs and videos of the past two years. Congratulations, though, to The Band Perry for getting as much out of a song that you can. And I’m guessing we will hear from them again. They have many good songs on their intro album. This isn’t one of them………………….
4) “Dirt Road Anthem”—This one placed at #3 on CMT’s Countdown of the Year. I, of course, disagree. It was a boring black and white video and a strange mixture of country and rap. Not that you can’t do a good job doing that. Just check out T.I.’s rap over the steel guitar on Kid Rock’s “Care.” I am all for merging different styles of music that most people wouldn’t think of combining. As a matter of fact, those are the area’s that I usually find most interesting and creative. I don’t think this one did a very good job of it….
5) “Homeboy”—A boring song with a boring video to match. There was some social consciousness going on here, I think, but it didn’t do a good job conveying it………..
6) “Mama’s Song”—A personal video that was so conceited, it even had Carrie’s mother in it. “C’mon man………………………………………..”
7) “Hello World”—This was a video that was bigger in 2010 but hung on for several months at the beginning of this year. If you felt like living after watching this video, you have a stronger inner strength than I do…………………..
8] “Poison & Wine”—Pretty much a one note song with a one shot video where the camera gets right in their face as much as they get in each other’s. I hate both the video and the song………………….
9) “A Little Bit Stronger”—Another video that placed on CMT’s Countdown of the Year. It was included on the “Country Strong Soundtrack.” This was pretty much Sara’s comeback song from a self imposed extended leave. The video was shot in washed out blue colors and showed a weepy Sara recovering from a breakup. Although, she may have had personal experience in the area, the song and video were yawners…………….
10) “Remind Me”—I have given a weekly opinion about this video since it started to be shown. My opinion has not changed. This placed on CMT’s Countdown of the Year at #4. Many lousy videos made the list…………………….
11) “Skyscraper”—A desert landscape could not help this screechy vocal of a song. It also placed on VH1’s Year End Countdown, so bad taste was rewarded in more than one place………………..……
12) ”Run the World (Girls)”—This video was so bad that it only surfaced for a week. Ah, if only all bad videos would disappear that quickly…………………
13) “Footloose”—A remake of a bad song from a bad movie. Nuff said………….
14) “Country Girl (Shake It for Me)”—This was another video that placed on CMT’s Countdown of the Year (#18). I think I’ve said quite a bit about this awful pseudo documentary about a bad song…………………………………….
15) “Smoke a Little Smoke”—Honestly, I disliked this song and video so much, I couldn’t handle watching it all the way through at one time.
16) “Moves Like Jagger”—This was a song that wasn’t on the original version of Maroon 5’s “Hands All Over” CD. Their original judgment was correct and it shouldn’t have been added to reissues. Wow, was it annoying………………….
17) “Country Boy”—This was a “boo hoo” song by Aaron Lewis, the former lead singer of Staind—a very successful alt/metal band, about how terrible the music industry is/was, and for some reason people bought it. He was even able to snooker George Jones into the video…………………
18) “The Lazy Song”—Speaking of annoying songs and videos, Bruno Mars was able to be both with this song. And why wouldn’t he have a right to be lazy? I mean he hauled that piano all over the place in the “Grenade” video……………………….
19) “Barton Hollow”—A type of song that Jean Ritchie may have recorded. But a video would never have been made. It would just have been passed on to future generations…..
20) “Shut Up Train”—This one wasn’t around for long and didn’t even make any weekly countdowns. Someone obviously made a very bad choice for a video…………
21) “Not Over You”—A mid-level video that made it on to VH1’s Year End Countdown. It seemed to have great staying power that was inexplicable to me…………………..
22) “I Love You This Big”—Scotty’s first post American Idol was far from being good or earth shattering. However, it was good enough to place on CMT’s Countdown of the Year (#15).
23) “Good Life”—A video that showcased a monotonous whistling hook. It made it onto the VH1 Year End list……………..
24) “Pumped Up Kicks”—A high placing year end video on VH1. This one would have placed higher on the “Q” Bomb list, but there was a stretch when I liked it………………..
25) “Fake I.D.”—A boring addition to the “Footloose” soundtrack. Nothing much happened here—just like the movie……………………
26) “Keep Your Head Up”—A somewhat amusing video about a guy trying to stay positive while bad things are happening around him. The downfall was the non-melodic song………………………………………
27) “It Will Rain”—Bruno Mars’ current over-dramatic video………………………….
28) “Bullets in the Gun”—I guess I like my Toby Keith videos to be humorous and not some double crossing outlaws…………………………
29) “Tomorrow”—A very pedestrian video of a relationship. It placed #11 on CMT’s Countdown of the Year…………………
30) “God Gave Me You”—Not terrible, but not good. A bombastic boring ballad………….
31) “Blood Pressure”—An unusual combination: A great song but a bad video……….
32) “The Shape I’m In”—This one is very unusual in the sense that the song was pretty good and the video concept about a war veteran was good and gutsy—but too realistic. It felt uncomfortable to watch………………………….
33) “I Won’t Let Go”—I don’t know if I ever watched this video without falling asleep. Better than Nyquil………………………..
34) “Countdown”—This one was around for about two weeks. I didn’t care for the song and the video was unmemorable……………………………….
35) “E.T.”—A huge video hit for Katy Perry that placed high on VH1’s Year End List. I guess I just didn’t care for what Katy Perry looked like at the end………………………
36) “You and I”—Lady Gaga usually cranks uncomfortable up to 11 in her videos and this one was no exception: plenty of disturbing images to go around. However, I did hear the song the other day and it sounded pretty good……………
37) “Easy”—A video that logically didn’t make any sense to me………………….
38) “Mine”—One of the possessive pronoun songs on Taylor’s “Speak Now” CD. I couldn’t stand this video or song. They both felt very forced and I heard and saw it way too many times on both VH1 and CMT: Taylor getting married and having children. It’s not that I don’t want to see Taylor grow up, but it’ll happen in time. There’s no need to rush it visually or musically……………
39) “Rope”—VH1 picked the wrong video by The Foos for their year end list. It should have been “Learning to Walk Again.” Dave Grohl said that they did it on VHS tape. Sometimes taking a step backward to move forward is actually just a step backward. I don’t see how many people thought this was such an exciting video…………………
40) “Brown Chicken Brown Cow”—This is the type of stupid video that I usually like. The stuffed animals on this farm, though, were way too hyper ………………….
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