The Most Unwanted Song (FULL VERSION)

FraKctured2 HN recommenders · 2015–2024
2.1M views · music · evergreen · Uploaded 2012-09-25

The 1997 novelty song by Komar and Melamid with composer Dave Soldier, built from survey results on what listeners dislike most in music. It features bagpipes, an opera singer rapping, and a children's choir urging shopping at Wal-Mart.

Cited in threads about taste and terrible music as a famously engineered 'worst song', mostly for its curiosity value.

Watch on YouTube

7 comments from Hacker News

@InclinedPlane2015 · in “List of music considered the worst”

If you want to listen to The Shaggs: [LINK] Also, someone figured out all of the least generally desirable aspects of songs and made a song featuring those, calling it The Most Unwanted Song: [VIDEO]

@cpeterso2016 · in “An experiment in crowd-sourced songwriting”

Somewhat related: "The Most Unwanted Song" is a novelty song created by artists Komar and Melamid and composer Dave Soldier in 1997. The song was designed to incorporate lyrical and musical elements that were annoying to most people. These elements included bagpipes, cowboy music, an opera singer rapping, and a children's choir that urged listeners to go shopping at Walmart. [LINK] Most Unwanted Song: [VIDEO] Most Wanted Song: [LINK]

@jpfed2017 · in “What Are the Most Disliked Programming Languages?”

The next step is obviously to take the most-disliked technologies and combine them into something so bad it's good, like "the most unwanted music" ( [VIDEO] ).

@tinus_hn2017 · in “Electric Sheep on Ubuntu Linux 17.10”

Reminds me of the process used to build the most wanted and unwanted song. The most wanted song is a terribly cheesy pop song, the most unwanted song is a bizarre mishmash that is kind of interesting to listen to. [LINK] [VIDEO]

@Sohcahtoa822021 · in “Is there such a thing as good taste?”

> written by a team constructed by a label to create the most generically likeable music possible A few years ago, a group engineered the most un likeable song ever: [VIDEO] Featuring bagpipes, a rapping opera singer, country music, and a children's choir singing holiday music that ends with telling you to do your shopping at Wal-mart.

@jonnycat2023 · in “”

A tangent from the point of the post, but Komar & Melamid did a similar "experiment" with music to produce both the most wanted and most unwanted songs, and the results are amazing/hilarious. The most unwanted song, for example, features all the thing people dislike in music (according to their surveys): opera singers rapping about cowboys, bagpipes, uncomfortably slow tempos, and choirs of children singing ad jingles among other things. [VIDEO]

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@endgame2024 · in “An oral history of "We Built This City," the worst song of all time (2016)”

I know your description includes "still get regular radio play", but one of my favourite pieces of troll music is "The Most Unwanted Song". They surveyed people to find the things they liked least in music and put it all together. I don't want to spoil just how creatively awful it is or what's in there, so I'll just drop the link and go. [VIDEO]

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