Songs don't exist in a vacuum. They can be bad because they're all wrong for the time and place.

A couple years ago I was standing on a sidewalk of hot, white concrete, watching our luggage while my husband got the car. I was forced to listen to some guy belt out

tum tum tum tum ti tum aftTER the lovin'

over and over. Every time he got to the 'TER' he blasted it out, grining the 'r' nearly to death. Like there was a danger he would be mistaken for an upper-class twit, and he wanted to make that wouldn't happen.

Standing on the hot, white concrete, I was in no mood for the picture he brought to my mind - a big naked guy sitting on the edge of a bed with his floppy #^&^^& half upright and a glistening drop of *%^$#@ on the tip of it.

One final thing - belting has two parts. Part one is belting out a syllable. Part two is stopping. A lot of people, like this guy, have not figured out stopping, which is the harder part. He belted out 'TER' and then his control failed each time, producing a sick swoop. This effect was played again and again, as repetitiously as a cuckoo clock going 'cuckoo.' (No doubt a sound engineer had simply recorded the same bit over and over.)

Was there anything in the book '1984' about Big Brother making people listen to music they didn't want to hear?