It’s that time of year again–Top 10 music lists are out in force, and everyone’s got their own best and worst songs to showcase their wonderful taste. Well, what if you could do both–have a best worst songs list? Yes, a celebration of guilty pleasures, of songs so bad they’re good–songs you have no excuse for liking and listening to over and over again. As a connoisseur of all things musically trashy and lowbrow, I present to you the 10 Best Terrible Songs of 2011. Read, intrepid audience; read, listen, and weep.

10. Korn (Featuring Skrillex) – “Narcissistic Cannibal”

This is a decision so bad it had to time travel from 1998 to get here. Sure, Korn’s popularity may be lagging, but is that really a good reason to intentionally imitate Nine Inch Nails imitators like Filter or Stabbing Westward? Nu metal and electronica do not mix, especially toothless, uninspired, most-likely-merely-contractually-obligated nu metal and electronica. This one makes the #10 slot on the list because it’s mostly just bad, but since I’m not above tawdry dubstep, I usually at least make it to Skrillex’s breakdown after a few choruses. (more…)

What happens to an artist whose creative peak has long past? That is the question which looms like a sustained E chord over the new documentary It Might Get Loud, a strange and wonderful cinematic ode to the electric guitar by director Davis Guggenheim. whose previous credits include An Inconvenient Truth (don’t hold that against him).

It Might Get Loud’s central conceit is simple and elegant in principle, but surprisingly messy and complex on screen: Take three eminent guitarists of differing styles and generations, interview them individually, get them to open up about their relationship with their instrument and then, for the film’s climax, throw them together on a sound-stage surrounded by guitars and see what happens.

Guggenheim’s choice of guitarists is a surprising one that somehow makes sense; Jack White of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs (in his 30’s), The Edge of U2 (in his 40’s), and Jimmy Page of The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin (in his 60’s). (more…)