It was a lazy summer weekend of grilling, napping and plotting the demise of Joel McHale’s wife for me so as that-we did not have a Monday feature preemptively ready for you. Shame on us.

So, as such, we had to dig deep into the depths of our (despair &) expertise and we came up with this jazzy little number. Lucky You.

After all, the summer is here, and while the ever increasing airfare prices and miserable amounts of vacation time you have are making it extra hard to take that tropical vacation, fear not because with the help of some (major) drugs and with these videos playing, you can almost pretend you are on a sandy beach somewhere.

Now, the fine art of the “Horrible but Inevitable Summer Hit” has been around forever.
It tends to involve at least several of the following elements:

1. Hot female singers who cannot sing
2. Hot and not so hot (but delusional) male singers who cannot sing
3. Videos filmed on beaches
4. Over-choreographed dancing (which you are supposed to practice in the privacy of your own home so you can unleash it onto unsuspecting bystanders in clubs)
5. Too many samples
6. CRACK
7. MORE CRACK

Note: here we will tackle only the TRULY bad, bad songs.
So, no Justin Timberlake, no Will Smith (or Jazzy Jeff), no Wham, no Telepopmusik, no Spice Girls, and no Sisqo (yes, you actually had to do something more vile than “The Thong Song” to make it on here, my tolerance is THAT high).

Now, for kick off, I was a child in the 80s (and in Europe) so the first summer song I actually remember is

Sabrina “Boys”
Now, the fact that I (and everyone in my first grade) saw this and now, twenty years later you have to sign into youtube to view it since “some of its material may be unsafe for kids under 18 years old” is saying something. The whole operation involves lyrics limited to “Boys, boys, boys - I’m looking for a good time, Boys, boys, boys-I’m looking for some fun” and a video that is basically a Fitsum photo shoot wet dream come true. Nipples slipping will not seem special anymore after this, I promise.

after that, the only way was up. A few summers late, we got the original “summer dance” bad song hit

Kaoma “Lambada”
Which involves something I like to call “salsa dancing for people with two left feet” and was such a huge hit that I remember the Sunday paper for the kids in Yugoslavia publishing phonetic lyrics to this so we could sing along even though we did not understand a word. And yes, I saw the movie as well.

naturally this was to lead to a cavalcade of other horrible “summer dance” songs which always tended to abuse both the fact that a. majority of people cannot dance and b. the fact that “spanglish” appears to make everything seem exotic and summery.

In no particular order we have:

Las Ketchup “The Ketchup song”
Which I actually sort of secretly like and have in fact spent some time making sure I do the “knee shiver” move properly. You never know when it may come in handy

Cheeky Girls “Hip Hip Hooray “Its a cheeky Holiday”
Which inexplicably adds “heidi, heidi ho” at the very end of each verse and is probably the worst song on this whole list.

and of course, the inevitable:

Los Del Rio “Macarena”
(not wasting any actual words on this one)

which came riding in on the Latin invasion wave which brought us J.Lo’s first album, some more Gloria Estefan, Thalia and

Ricky Martin “La Bomba”
I am going with a Spanish speaking song here because
a. these are Ricky’s bad summer song roots, and I want to stay true to them
and
b. All youtube clips for “La Vida Loca” and “She Bangs” have disabled embedding.
I WONDER WHY????????

and

Enrique “Bailamos”
which shows us Enrique before he started doing it to Anna Kournikova and got rid of the mole
(see the video for Push for evidence) which he tended to use for his patented “hand on the head, turn 45 degrees, swivel” move

and the most unholy of all:

Lou Bega “Mambo #5″
which, fascinatingly enough was not his only hit but cause “I’ve got a girl” and “Tricky Tricky” to somehow be successful also.
I owned the full length album.
Seriously.

New Zealand’s only contribution to the genre, from all I know, was

OMC “How Bizzare”
but it was a worthy one.

which leads us nicely into our “delusional male singer category” where we can find

Shaggy “Angel”
which is the song that first taught me the meaning of the word “peeps” through the magic of the verse “closer than my peeps you are to me”, and for that I will never forget it.

and Britain’s “boy under the waterfall”

Peter Andre “Mysterious Girl”
Look at his hair! Seriously, look at it.

now that we are in Europe we can turn to the phenomenon of the “Techno Summer Dance Song” where inexplicably formed bands from Germany and Holland like to pretend that they are really from the tropics.

we kick off with

2 Unlimited “Tribal Dance”
Now, I will admit to being kind of a 2Unlimited fan for about 2 months when I was 9 (and “Are you ready for this?” is still pure genius) but this one just has no excuse:

Loona “Bailando”
Tu y Yo a la fiesta…Bailando, Bailando, Amigos vamos, vamos…..etc, etc..
THESE PEOPLE ARE GERMAN.
I SWEAR.

the disaster that was

Whigfield “Saturday Night”
…i feel the air is getting hot, likely baby.
Which, SOMEHOW, was #1 in England for forever and actually allowed this girl to have enough money to pay for the right to cover Wham’s “Last Christmas”.

the mortifying video of
Dario G “Sunchyme”
had to be included just because it is the scariest thing you’ll see all day.

and I had to throw
Ace of Base “Cruel SUmmer”
in because no “best of worst” of anything in music is complete without them. I just found their “Greatest hits” CD i have had since I was 15 and every song on it, I still can sing word for word. I want this part of my brain back.

having said that Americans are equally as guilty, especially when it comes to horrifying boy group manufacturings like:

LFO “Summer girls”
with its white boy rhymings, shitty chorus and endless product placement

or

O-Town “We fit together”
Which is kinda so bad, it is glorious.

+ as an added bonus, I just discovered (while catching “VH1’s “Top 20″ this weekend) that not only are New Kids on The Block back, they are #1 on the charts and we have THIS to blame for it:

New Kids on The Block “Summertime”
And yes, they do the “swooshy sychronized boy band” move in it too.
How old are they now? 35? 40? 90?
Shouldn’t they be ashamed of themselves?
Shouldn’t I be ashamed of myself for watching this?
The answer is yes…

And that is that.
I left some stuff out on purpose (finding bad summer songs on youtube is like shooting fishes in a barrel, or easier) so hit us with your favorite shots. NOW.
After all, the rain just stopped and it is going to be a hot and humid day in DC today.

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