The Worst Ten Singles of 2006

01) D4L – Laffy Taffy
I think I’ve only heard this about twice and yet it’s made such an impression on me that it’s still my worst single of the year. I have no idea who D4L are but they sum up everything that’s wrong with the absymal melody-less, tuneless, “crunk” that passes for R&B/hip-hop these days.

02) Fall Out Boy – Sugar We’re Going Down
The occasional Lostprophets or Panic At The Disco single I can stomach, but on the whole, I find the whole emo culture much more fake and cynically marketed than any manufactured pop group. Fall Out Boy are the worst culprits and this was their worst single, just a whiny mess of incoherent lyrics and nasal wailing with not a redeemable thing about it.

03) Black Eyed Peas – Pump It
When did the Black Eyed Peas become so excruciatingly unlistenable? This had the laziest and most uninspired use of a sample all year - remove it and you’re basically left with a big pile of nothingness.

04) Fratellis – Chelsea Dagger
Chas and Dave supported The Libertines a few years ago and I’m guessing The Fratellis were about the only group who thought a combination of the two would be a good idea. got their inspiration from. Chelsea Dagger was an awful type of leery, boozed up Cockney singalong with an irritating “duh-duh-duh” chorus which made my ears bleed every time I heard it. The kind of band the NME champion as the future of music, which tells you all you need to know.

05) Shayne Ward – Stand By Me
A single which typified everything that is wrong with The X Factor. Great TV. Lousy after-product. Not content with making his artists release straight-forward cover versions of Unchained Melody, Simon Cowell is now making them release watered down rip-offs of Unchained Melody. Shayne Ward should have gone in the UK Justin Timberlake direction. Instead he’s gone down the one-man Westlife route.

06) Sandi Thom – I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker
It's still hard to believe that Sandi Thom has had a #1 album this year. What possessed people in their hundreds of thousands to go and buy an album from such a blatant novelty one-hit wonder? And what an awful one-hit wonder it was. Patronising sixth-form lyrics, instrument-less verses, the whole thing felt like an unfinished demo from some throwback hippy student.

07) Kelis – Bossy
How the mighty have fallen. Before this year, she could do no wrong in my eyes. Her debut Kaleidoscope is probably one of my top ten albums of all time. So it was sad to see her turn into the predictable bikini-clad cliche that she has become. The inventive and innovative R&B she’d produced with the Neptunes had been replaced by the kind of formulaic one-note, tuneless and unimaginative dirges such as this. The year’s most disappointing comeback by a long shot.

08) Lemar – It’s Not That Easy
Not the worst single of 2006, but definitely the laziest. Lemar showed so much promise with his first few singles, combining old-skool soul with modern R&B. But he seems to have abandoned all that for the kind of easy listening Al Green knock-offs that Smooth FM playlist to death.

09) Michelle Marsh - Don't Do

OK, so no-one was expecting Imagine part 2 from a glamour model turned singer via Celebrity X Factor. But it still doesn't excuse the sheer awfulness of this tacky, dated pop single with a monotonous, almost painful vocal from Ms Marsh herself. It makes Jordan's attempts at a pop career look classy.

10) Brian McFadden and Leann Rimes – Everybody’s Someone
The aural equivalent of watching paint dry. I’ve heard this on several occasions and can’t remember one distinguishing thing about it. Rimes is capable of producing the odd lovely ballad (I Need You) or pop classic (Can’t Fight The Moonlight) so what she’s doing with a washed up ex-boybander on a comatose-inducing song such as this is anyone’s guess.