This isn’t going to be the San Francisco treat….
Twenty-nine weeks of tolerating horrible music everyone else seems to think is awesome has all come down to this! Today, The Nest is rolling out the red toilet paper to honor the song we chose as the absolute worst in my Top 30 Iconic Songs I Can’t Stand countdown! DJ Scratchy and her Sponkies are standing by with hammers, blowtorches, chainsaws, bazookas, or anything else you might want to use on the most worn out piece of crappy vinyl ever pressed. Just be careful to avoid the groovy shrapnel. I know at least one of you knows exactly which song we’re going to be tarring and feathering…
Hottie, may I get a drum roll please!
#1. “Don’t Stop Believin'” – Journey
Forty years ago, a band from San Francisco became one of the kings of a musical genre that would later become known as arena rock. Arena rockers weren’t hardcore enough for heavy metal, nor pretty enough to be a hair band… but they beat out both of those sister movements in the one category that counts… commercial success. Record, release, tour, repeat was the credo these arena rock bands lived by before their parking meter of fame expired and they had to resort to playing county fairs. A number of these stadium icons were pretty good and still make us want to flick on our lighter cellphone when their music plays on the oldies station today. But not all of these groups aged well…
The illustration that accompanies “lame” in the dictionary.
Journey was that Bay Area band that dominated the Billboard charts in the late 70’s and early 80’s… and they did it with the largest collection of lame songs you’ll find outside of the Teletubbies soundtrack. There are a few gems in the Journey catalog that are alright, but most of their stuff doesn’t make me turn up the radio… and one of their songs makes me wish I could not only turn OFF the radio, but shoot the deejay who played the damn thing in the first place…
“Don’t Stop Believin'” was a #9 hit for Journey back in 1981. They had songs that charted higher, they had songs that were more popular…. but for some peculiar reason, at some point during the new millennium, this song was chosen as THE signature song of the band AND the entire arena rock genre that was full of so many better artists. Don’t Stop Believin’ is the absolute worst of Jouney’s annoying lead singer Steve Perry, and I can’t understand how anyone can voluntarily listen to this even once, let alone continue to request it… or God forbid, sing it with 30,000 of their closest friends at a goddamn baseball game.
No wonder people look down on the city of Detroit.
What is the matter with people that they seemingly want to willingly wallow in such an ear scraping, self respect shattering song that could have just as easily been swept under the rug like so many other generic hits of yesteryear? Well, I’m not going to tolerate this piece of shit music anymore… and neither should you! This record must go down, and it must go down hard!
Yeah, fuck this shit! Let’s play some Phil Collins instead!
I hope you enjoyed the Iconic Songs I Hate countdown, even though the songs were all ones I really hated to even post the audio of on my blog. A big thank you to everyone who came by to mock my taste in music, and share your thought for or against my choices in this rather unique musical theme. After this and my tribute to cover songs, maybe there will be another Top 30 music countdown in the future sometime! And who knows what I might choose to feature should I channel my inner Casey Kasum once again…
The Top 30 Singers Who Need To Become Mutes!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
Imagine sitting at an 8th grade graduation and listening to two girls on stage, who really can’t sing that well, singing this song. It went on and on and on and on. Bless their hearts. Seriously it seemed to last at least an hour. Yes, we all cheered loudly. Nobody threw anything.
YES I guessed it. I knew you’d pick this one. HA HA HA.
I’m a Northern California girl. Back in the day everybody had a Journey experience. The little sister of a boyfriend of mine was Grace Slick’s daughter’b best friend (stay with me here.) She said one of the guys from Journey (not Steve Perry) was always trying to pick up on teenage girls. They’d yell at him and call him a creeper and their moms would yell at him. I think it was Dunbar but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. There were so many Steve sightings. The guy was everywhere.
And yes, when I go to a Giants game I sing along. It just happens. I can’t help it.
That said, I’m a little offended that they guy in the song was from Detroit and not one of many gross California cities (Fresno, or Barstow, for example) that he could have been from. I mean, if there is a song about Lodi, there could be a song about a guy from South Fresno.
I gotta admit that it is fun singing along at a game. But I also have to admit that this song is overplayed. Well done. Damn, I’m going to miss this series. I’m going to really really really miss it. Thanks for the crazy fun.
The ballpark singalong is a phenomenon I never really knew existed until I began my little tour of the Midwestern ballparks last decade. I think the pair of games I saw in Detroit six years ago did me in on this song, because hearing all the fans make sure to emphasize the words SOUTH DETROIT made me nauseous. In St. Louis, our legendary organist Ernie Hays played “Here Comes the King” (aka The Budweiser Theme) during the 7th inning stretch of every game… which was a listenalong and not a singalong. It was blatant commercialism since the brewery owned the team, but I loved that rendition and miss hearing it played (The organists who have replaced Hays can’t touch his version)…
Thank you for your feedback and predictions on this series! Hopefully I can come up with something else just as fun and informative…
Nooooooo! Not #1. Seriously? This is one. of. the. best. beer drinking songs at a baseball game, evah. Mostly because you really need to be drunk swaying back and forth while singing along. LOL Thanks for a well done list of icky songs. Surprisingly I agreed with most of them…but sometimes I “stopped believin’ you on some of ’em. 🤣 This was a hoot! Sorry to see it end.
Well that would explain why I don’t like it since I’m a teetotaler! Bizarro me in an alternate universe who routinely gets sloshed would probably have not had this one at #1…. though hopefully still in the Top 10!
How in the world can anyone attend a baseball game and not have a beer?????
Even if I were of the drinking persuasion, the skinflint in me would refuse to pay ballpark prices for beer. Holy moly, you can buy a keg for the price of a single cup…
Good point. Being frugal AND sober…what a concept in today’s “I want it all” millennial world.
Moderation, what a concept!
It should also give you even more pause now to know that everything I come up with on this blog was done with a stone cold sober mind…
Impressive!
Never heard it before.
LOL! There are advantages to living in places where there is no Journey music…
Yes, sometimes I feel blessed. And then they play Christina Stürmer or another German artist singing shite in German … no, it is not better here. Different.
ody N biskit…984 pawz up ta dad…theez postz were fun….even if we did knot agreez all de time……thiz song….ehh….knot bad… but knot on de eye fone either….we lookz for werd ta another top 30 countdown !!!!! rock on ~~~~~~~~~ 🙂 ♥♥
Thank you! I’ll see if I can come up with anything else…
Not my favorite Journey song, I’ll admit that much. But, Journey is a part of my early years and I’ll always rock out to “Wheel in the Sky.”
That is a good one! 😉
😉
Wheel in the Sky is a pretty good song, and I believe I admitted as much when we were having one of our Journey debates. That one and Girl Can’t Help It are the only two Journey songs I will freely admit to liking… and I went over their entire hit catalogue before I made up this post!
This I believe…you do incredible research.
I actually don’t mind that one! (Sorry, I grew up with it. I was 22 when it came out).
I’d tolerate it if it wasn’t at the tippy top of variety and classic rock radio playlists. There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t have to hear this song several times, and it’s just not that good (to me) at all…
It is overplayed. Way overplayed.
This is more like it! A timeless classic. Just listen to that guitar riff. The “video uploader” has made this one available to me, on account of it being so awesome.
I guess with the end of this post series I must bid goodbye to my Alyans mates. And to decent music ha ha ha.
I went back and looked at the original post after I got my 487th jab at that crappy group, and was horrified to find out YouTube removed the Alyans video! That was comedy gold! Who in the heck submitted a takedown request, Putin himself? The singing guy in the audience? Maybe the family of the band who is beyond embarrassed?
No way! I’ve watched it since your post just to see the audience shots. Boo 😦 Good job I bought their album so I can still listen to it…
YES!!!!! Perfect #1!! I SOOO agree……there was a time when I thought if I heard that song just one more time my head would explode (and you wouldn’t believe how expensive a head transplant is when insurance doesn’t cover it). I know everyone thought Steve Perry’s voice was “awesome” but I found it ear-piercing most of the time. I think maybe I’m just too danged old…..! This series of yours was a majorly FUN one…..I hope you will do it again…..and again.
Pam
It’s weird, because I think Perry sucked with Journey, yet some of his solo stuff I actually like… so maybe it is the band after all. That said, his singing in this one is really, truly terrible. And the overplay just made this a slam dunk #1 for me. I may need a head transplant to come up with another awesome countdown… perhaps Buster will let me borrow his?
I’m sure there are any number of SCT troops who would be more than happy to REMOVE Buster’s cranium for you to borrow! 🙂
I don’t mind hearing this one, and as Mer said, the Wheels one is really good. Maybe if I heard it a bazillion times I’d get tired of it, but I don’t hear it much. Thanks for the fun series of bad (to you) songs! It was fun. 🙂
I agreed on Wheel, which is one of the rare Journey gems I alluded to. This song wouldn’t have even been on my radar ten years ago, yet radio (and my generation) seems to have absolutely fallen in love with it, and I never thought it was good at all…
Oh my, your #1 hated song and it’s the only one in the countdown that’s in my music library! 😱 But well buried. Although it’s one of the Journey songs I actually like, I don’t listen to it often. Only when reminiscing on the early 80’s.
I enjoyed this countdown and will miss it!
And this might be the first song in the countdown that more people have (in some way) commented to support rather than agree with me on! I thought this would happen more often, but I’m glad there’s something I considered iconic that the people actually did like! I’ll have to see if I can come up with another countdown sometime…
Don’t you feel a deep sense of relief now that you’ve finally hit the baddest one of all? Like that belch you couldn’t quite explode.
It’s cold as shit up here, by the way and someone just pointed out that today is NOT April 18th. It is the the 105th of January. OR the 137th of December.
I think April 10th is the 100th day of non-leap years, so this would be January 108th… and it does feel like January 108th. The silver lining in this never ending winter is that it’s keeping my lawnmower in the garage. By this point, I’ve usually had to cut the grass twice already… and the less I have to mow, the better.
OMP! This is like a horror story with an earworm that won’t get away. My ears!! XOXO – Bacon
Omg! Omg! Omg! I almost threw my phone down and ran away screaming in agony. You put that, that STUFF up there hence putting it in my mind for half a sec before I could block it out.
Oh and I’m sorry, but after I saw the song and group name I couldn’t read the rest. Too much of a risk.
But you are right on target with this ear-bleed-inducing song!
I knew you didn’t like this garbage, and this was as automatic a #1 as there was for me. This song and band is crap!
It came back over here a few years ago because I think it was used on one of the TV shows that involves kinds in a high school singing. Glee? Glum? Gripe-water? Something like that… Seemed like everywhere you went, pre-teens were singing it…
Yeah, Glee did a version of it. I’m glad that show has run its course…
Apart from the endless reruns that will be going on somewhere in the world…