And now, finally, we can say with some certainty and not a little pride that the worst song of all time has been released in our lifetimes. Hey, Sting, Bon Jovi, Backstreet Boys? It's okay, you can quit trying now - Kid Rock has done it.
Who? Kid Rock (possibly not his real name). The song? "All Summer Long". It's been squatting atop the Irish singles charts, well, all summer long, like a blood-spattered magpie crouched over the still-twitching corpse of a songbird walloped by a boy racer's wing mirror.
"All Summer Long" isn't just the worst song ever because it's naturally, you might say accidentally, very bad. It's perfectly honed, mathematically calculated, precision-engineered bad. Badness is inherent to what it is: a premeditated, with-malice-aforethought, serious-minded attempt to craft an utterly cynical rawk'n'roll "classic".
See, Kid Rock sat down one day with his attorneys to discuss the big bucks Bryan Adams still rakes in from his perennial anthem to yee-haw youth, "Summer Of '69". This is a song which climaxes discos in the Philippines, revs up Afghan militants before each holy skirmish, and soundtracks every Western thirty-something's memory of soft-focus late-80s sexual awakening. The royalties are staggering.
Consumed with envy, Kid put on his magic nu-metal shorts and tried to replicate Bryan's formula. But he needed something to start from. Then there came a stroke of inspiration: Sweet Home Alabama!
Now, this particular Lynyrd Skynrd favourite is beloved by would-be good ol' boys worldwide, even those whose connection with Alabama is as meaningful and intimate as my postman's relationship with Catherine Zeta Jones. So if ever a song had a chance to compete with "Summer of '69", this was it. Kid just had to sample the basic riff, sentiment, tone, and fundamental shitkickingness, then cram in more Bud Lite token-rebellious nostalgic clichés than Keith Richards has had diseases.
Nothing too fancy, of course. Trouble finding words for that teenage feeling of widening horizons, that uniquely empowering sensation of dawning adulthood? No problem Kid: how about "We were tryin' different things"? How then to express in mere words the divine fire of wild abandon, the risky rites of modern passage, every day lived furiously and to the full? Umm, how about "We were smokin' funny things"? Wow, it even rhymes: "things" with "things"! To the studio!
The rest, as I said, is history. We’re privileged to witness it.