1)Nickelback, “How You Remind Me”
SONG: Okay, this is the least-cool rock band to arrive on the scene since Styx, but I will confess that while they probably weren’t very good (I only know a couple of their hits anyway) this song isn’t really that bad. It has a passable chorus, at least. Obviously by 2002 “rock” was mostly dead in the water, but it could’ve been worse. Like that song the dude did for Spider-Man, that one really sucked.
VIDEO: The band plays in a dingy basement, coupled with dull soap opera scenes of Chad Kroeger (who has a crummy hangdog appearance and looks like he needs a shower) repeatedly watching some emaciated model chick disappear in front of him. He’s a better actor than Barry Gibb, I guess. Tellingly, the first comment in the comments section is “We all never really hated Nickelback, admit it.”

2)Ashanti, “Foolish”
SONG: I know I’ve been complaining about how all these R&B songs are interchangeable and simplistic and forgettable, but this one is at least based on an elegant elevator-jazz piano sample that I sort of liked.
VIDEO: Ashanti, whose nice breasts look like they’re about to fall out of every single thing she wears in the video, endures a tumultuous relationship with an abusive boyfriend played by Terrence Howard, the guy who played the sidekick in that shitty Iron Man movie a few years later before being replaced and completely destroying his fame by claiming that 1 X 1 = 2 instead of 1 in the new math system he made up. At least both of them are better actors than Chad Kroger, who is a better actor than Barry Gibb.

3)Nelly, “Hot In Herre”
SONG: Sort of nice to have that old school electric-piano sound backing things up, isn’t it? Almost makes you forget that the “(sic)” song title used to be the second-most made-fun-of title of anything in its era after 2 Fast 2 Furious. I’ve heard worse but I’ve heard better too, the guy’s vocals verge on being irritating in an Anthony Kiedis-ish manner, but never quite tip over into hell. The “girl my butt gettin’ big?” line is good for a laugh.
VIDEO: Have fun in the club, kids. Is the “burn mother burn” bit about the roof in the original song, or just the video? I wouldn’t know.

4)Nelly feat. Kelly Rowland, “Dilemma”
SONG: The chorus hook in this is so obvious and simplistic and lame, and backed up by shitty tinkly keyboards that belong in a little kids’ song, that between this and the scene in the following year’s Freddy Vs. Jason where Kelly Rowland had to call Freddy Kruger a “f@ggot,” it’s obvious why Beyonce is the one who became the big star.
VIDEO: “Welcome to Nellyville, U. S. A.” plastered on the screen in a cheap font. Why not use Comic Sans guys? Gets a laugh at the end when Kelly Rowland’s “mom” shows up to order her back into the house.

5)The Calling, “Wherever You Will Go”
SONG: Ugh, this damned thing. Never liked it. Another example of what a bad vocal influence Eddie Vedder was on subsequent rock music after 1991, although not as bad as Scott Stapp or Dave Matthews.
VIDEO: Just like Joe was talking about with oldies radio below, I didn’t know the name of this band or the name of the song or what they look like, but I did know the song. Now I see what they look like, and it’s not enough for the lead singer to be vocally another Eddie Vedder ripoff, but, on top of that, his appearance is a Leonardo DiCaprio ripoff…with the final blow being that he looks even more like a 12 year old than DiCaprio ever did. I didn’t know that was possible. Otherwise, some sort of plot where a girl stumbles upon her boyfriend making out with another girl, followed by generic drama.

6)Vanessa Carlton, “A Thousand Miles”
SONG: The worst fucking piece of shit ever recorded. Or if it isn’t and I should pick “Surrounded” by Dream Theater or “Achy Breaky Heart” or Guns n’ Roses’ “My World” or some shit instead, this is still the song that I will always think of as being the worst ever, when the idea pops in my head, just as Mars Attacks!! will never stop being the first thing to pop in my head when I think of the worst movie ever. And it’s still a fucking hit song, you still hear it now and then. Just having to do this song in one of these posts makes me regret that I ever did any of the posts. Pukey cutesy piano line, lame lyrics, dumb bombastic strings and the girl’s cloying, generic vocals on top of everything else. Die.
VIDEO: Also die. It had to have one of the dumbest videos ever too, with that stupid moving piano going past horses, bikers (?), joggers, break dancers, a marching band, really tall buildings…the only saving grace I can think of is that there aren’t as many obnoxious close-ups of her face as in those Alicia Keys videos from around the same time.

7)Linkin Park, “In The End”
SONG: I don’t think I ever knew anything by these guys that well, just that they were a sucky rap metal band. I can only say one potentially nice thing about the song, aside from that it’s not as awful as it could have been–the big overblown angsty guitars in the chorus would have sounded kind of cool if they’d been attached to a better chorus. The rapping is pretty mediocre too, though it too could have been even worse.
VIDEO: The band leaping and angsting around in front of a bunch of shitty temple/desert/post-apocalyptic computer-generated backdrops that not only look really cheap and lame…but also would be totally, unequivocally generated by AI if the video were made nowadays…and would possibly look even worse. See, I have AI Derangement Syndrome now, everything makes me think of how destructive AI will be. I wonder if that looks even more dated to kids today than the lead singer’s Eminem hair or the rapper guy’s boy-band quiff. Possibly not! It also rains on them near the end, to get dramatic.

8)Fat Joe feat. Ashanti, “What’s Luv?”
SONG: The backdrop to this mostly plain vanilla R&B song is a bunch of chintzy synthesizer bloops that would have sounded dated in 1985. Lyrics reference Tina Turner, which is sort of classy, I s’pose.
VIDEO: Generic R&B/hip-hop partying in a high school gym/locker room. Recurring theme in the video seems to be “let’s see a bunch of guys going down on girls, or falling on their backs and spreading their legs open in front of girls.” That’s sort of amusign, I s’pose.

9)Usher, “U Got It Bad”
SONG: Mildly boring R&B ballad with acoustic guitar (called “digi-coustic” in the Wikipedia entry) instead of chintzy synth-plops. I remember when he was a big deal, but it was for that other song of his, not this one. I don’t remember this one. Or do I? I might be confusing it with about ten other songs.
VIDEO: Usher in his underwear in a bed. Then he goes out onto the street in the rain in his leather overcoat and does some Wacko Jacko dance moves for a few seconds while a guitar solo plays, played by someone named Billy Odum. Hey, it’s better than Santana…

10)Puddle Of Mudd, “Blurry”
SONG: This song’s angsty chord sequence is a rising three-chord minor-key sequence that would have been accompanied by big Mike + The Mechanics type synthesizers of some sort had it been done in 1986 instead of 2002. Instead we get plinky guitars leading up to the “can you take it all awaaayyyyy” chorus, which, it’s occurred to me, is the boring mainstream Nickelback-era sell out version of…Nirvana? Pearl Jam? No, it’s clearly influenced by Alice In Chains’ Dirt and Jar Of Flies, minus some of the psychedelic grunginess, and of course it isn’t anywhere near as good as anything on those albums. But it is of note that a LOT of the shitty rock bands that became famous during this era were drawing off of AIC instead of Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Since I sort of respond instinctively to angsty rising three-chord minor-key melodies, I can’t entirely write off this song, just like I couldn’t write off Vertical Horizon’s hit in 2001.
VIDEO: The band jams in a warehouse or something while the blonde-ballcapped lead singer plays with his son on a trampoline in slow-mo. Also: domestic violence involving some other people. Uh?

SUMMARY: A little more “rock” this year, but still not very good “rock.” That Strokes/Stripes stuff that Rolling Stone so breathlessly reported on isn’t anywhere to be found in the Top 100.

SONGS I’M GRATEFUL TO NOT HAVE TO LISTEN TO SINCE THEY’RE NOT IN THE TOP 10:

Avril Lavigne - “Complicated” (though I love the Neil Cicierega version with XTC popping up halfway through, so I can’t be angry that this song existed in the first place)
Josey Scott & Chad Kroeger - “Hero” from Spider-Man (a movie I probably couldn’t watch all the way through today)
Enrique Iglesias - “Hero” (maybe there should be a moratorium on songs with this title)
Creed - “One Last Breath” and “My Sacrifice” - Like Train, this band seems to have NO good songs. In fact they’re even worse than Train–they weren’t even fun to LAUGH at.
No Doubt - “Hey Baby”
Jimmy Eat World - “The Middle” (worst “movie trailer” song of its time)
Sheryl Crow - “Soak Up The Sun” (“Iiiiiiiiii’m gonna suck off my son”)
Kylie Minogue - “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” (I’ll confess to finding this catchy when it came out…I didn’t have MTV in high school but that stupid MTV U network played these videos in my dorm complex’s cafeteria all the time)
Pink - “Get The Party Started”
Aaliyah - “Rock The Boat”
Avril Lavigne - “Sk8er Boi” (no Neil Cicierega masterpiece came from THIS piece of shit!)
Alan Jackson - “Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning” (lukewarm as I am on Trey and Matt these days, I’ll give them the Team America parody of this)

SONGS I ACTUALLY LIKED FROM THE TOP 100:

Eminem - “Lose Yourself” (I mean, I don’t MIND it…)
Eminem - “Without Me” (the video was funny too)
Nirvana - “You Know You’re Right” (oh wait…this didn’t make it)