1. Kidz Bop Kids, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" (Kidz Bop 23)
They did it! They made it more annoying! Congratulations to the Kidz Bop team of scientists for their tireless efforts at making the hardest possible things to listen to. They shouldn't play Metallica at Guantanamo Bay. They should play this. (Just kidding, they shouldn't torture people!) Not annoying enough for you? There's always the chipmunk version for super extreme masochists.
Grade: F
Best YouTube Comment: "Sounds better than taylor swift. Sorry swifties." — balayamegalaya
In the world of overplayed songs, a lot is gained via hindsight. It's easy to say you hate-hate-hate that Pink song when it's tearing up the charts, but by the end of the year its offensiveness may be but a faint, forgivable whisper next to the more lasting legacy of its pop superiors. With that in mind, we here at the Overplayed Song brain trust figure that now is as good a time as any to look back and see which of the monster tracks should truly hold the title of Overplayed Song of the Year. As always, the term "overplayed" isn't merely a measurable statistic of radio play or iTunes downloads, it's also a feeling, a arguable level of saturation into the fabric of popular culture.
In 2012, much like the baby Jesus, three gifts were brought to us from faraway lands: South Korea, Australia, and British Columbia. Which was enduringly brilliant gold, which was the sweet-smelling but cheap frankincense, and which would be better used to embalm dead bodies? We are about to find out!
Every week, Hollywood Prospectus editor and masochistically devoted mainstream-radio listener Emily Yoshida will pick an aging Top 40 hit that she has heard enough times to render the song meaningless, and thus likely to inspire otherwise inaccessible epiphanies.
So, I have to admit, I'm straying from formula today on the OSOTW. "How's that?" you may be asking. "I mean, sure, as summer hits go, 'Call Me Maybe' dwarfs Miss Rae Jepsen's collaboration with the man who gave us 'Fireflies,' but 'Good Time' is doing its part to hang on to its version of relevancy long after the leaves have turned."
To which I would say, yeah, but this morning was the first time I actually forced myself to listen to it all the way through. So in my experience, as personally curated by myself, "Good Time" is still freshly horrifying.
By Emily Yoshida at
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
It appears that Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively got married. If your first reaction was a brief eyebrow lift, possibly paired with an audible "huh," congratulations: That is the correct answer.
At the age of 35, Ryan Reynolds has now been married twice (Lively, Scarlett Johansson for 10 minutes two years) and engaged thrice (Alanis Morissette, way back in 2004). Reynolds is kind of like a groupie of female celebrities, except he happens to be a celebrity, too, which makes matters much more complicated and public. But there is something kind of lost and hungry about his romantic travails up until now, as if he's searching for that perfect name to attach his name to, and whose fame won't overshadow his own. One thing is for certain: The search is far from over. Here's a cheat sheet for the next 10 years.
Here's 2 Chainz, telling Complex about his relationship with his new mentor Kanye West: "I’m not officially signed, paperwork-wise, to G.O.O.D. Music. But I have a great rapport with 'Ye. He called me before Watch the Throne came out. I’m an only child. I've got trust issues. So I don’t have a best friend, a brother, sister — nothing. Stuff was happening in my life that I couldn’t tell nobody. I didn’t have anybody in my life that I could tell, like, "'Ye just called me." Okay, reality show pitch: 2 Chainz's My New BFF?
Swedish singer Loreen is the Eurovision champ forever until the end of time (or at least until next year's competition). Grade: A Best YouTube Comment: "Brilliant, brilliant song. The best in years! Single handedly drags Eurovision into the 21st century." — enfermera1971
There are only three reasons to listen to the Billboard Top 10 on a continuous loop for 10 hours:
1. You're 13 years old.
2. You love pop music.
3. You're a masochist.
Options 2 and 3 would apply to me. I'm not the type of masochist who locks himself in a room and blasts these 10 songs on a loop because he has nothing else to do but listen and cry. I'm the type who has the entire music library at his disposal, but decides to spend his long workday blasting the 10 most popular songs in America into his ears. That's me. The songs:
Hey, it's that song! I know this song! Grade: C Best YouTube Comment: "I don't always listen to soft Music but when I do it I listen to this" —metal103
