Most of the ones mentioned here aren't bad songs, just over-bloody-done, particularly by poor singers, so shouldn't be called "the worst." I don't know the category, but "worst" isn't in it.

That aside, I have heard dreadful songs, usually some kind of broadsheet that only exists because it was so dreadful that no one bought it from the street vendor selling the broadsheet, and the unsold copies were set aside to sell as toilet paper but were so bad they didn't even sell for that, and ended up in some upper-crust would-be collector's attic, where they were rediscovered and published by one of these twits whose taste is only in his mouth, but who needed one more old broadsheet song to add to his book. Add to it that the broadsheet says, "to a new and delightful tune" but the scan fits no known tune other than "To Anacreon in Heaven," and you have a candidate for the worst-ever folksong.

And, of course, you KNOW the kind of singer who would fasten on such a turgid piece of crap to learn and perform it!

THAT would be the world's worst folksong.

Unless it would be that some poor-singing, attention-getting schmuck decides to write his own turgid, repetitive, polemic song -- about something truly "controversial," like South Africa, years after apartheid has ended -- and insist on singing it at song-circles. With a vocal range of 20 notes (per octave).

THAT would be the world's worst folksong. Or two.

Needless to say, I have heard both of these, in my life. And the singers in question are NOT the same person, making it that much more excruciating.

Bob