Writing a “bad” movie song is its own special art form. You have to make the audience understand that, within the context of the film, they’re listening to something “bad”, but you can’t just bash two trash cans together and call it a day. The song still has to begood, just in a recognizably “bad” way. It’s complicated. I’m doing a terrible job describing it. The process is just one of those unexplainable mysteries we’ll never solve, along with “why did nobody seePopstar: Never Stop Never Stopping?” and “why’d you come around me with an ass like that?”
To celebrate the arrival this week of Netflix’sEurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, we’ve decided to look back on the best of the bad that are actually good. Here are the unbendable criteria we applied to each entry: First, the song must be performed in the actual movie. So, for example, Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West”, a flawless work of art that should play on an endless loop in all major history museums, does not count. Second, and most importantly, the song must be understood to be a “bad” song in context. Many people might immediately think of, say, “Scotty Doesn’t Know” fromEuroTripor perhaps the title track ofThat Thing You Do!but those are bops both in and out of the movie. Keep in mind, these are hard and fast rules that cannot be debated, except for the few times I completely ignored them below.
So, with that in mind, here are the 10 best “bad” movie songs that actually rip.
10. “Through the Trees” - Jennifer’s Body
Look, I don’tusuallysupport bands that achieve fame and fortune by setting fire to small-town Minnesota bars then sacrificing a high schooler to the dark lord Satan. All I’m saying is that Low Shoulder—the indie pop-rock occultists fromKaryn Kusama’s criminally underratedJennifer’s Body—might have achieved the same fame and fortune with a little patience and marketing! “Through the Trees” is a pleasant little jam, led by the (also underrated)Adam Brodyin full mascara fuckboi mode. (Ryan Levineof he band Wildling actually provides the vocals but the gyrations are all his.)
9. “Start a Fire” - La La Land
Anytime a Very Serious Musician in a Very Serious Movie About Music makes the choice to “sell out” you’re basically guaranteed to hear an actual bonafide bop. Such is the case inLa La Land’s “Start a Fire”, a slice of pop perfection fromJohn Legendthat forces jazz hopeful Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) to play in a sold-out club instead of cornering women in bars to explain the discography of Thelonious Monk. Because two things can be true, it’s a pivotal moment in the film that symbolizes how far off-track Sebastian has faltered from his lofty L.A. dreams and a certified banger.
8. “Ring Around the Rosie” - Get Him to the Greek
Rose Byrneis a comedic treasure and we simply do not scream about this enough. She runs the hell away withGet Him to the Greek, the sort of sequel toForgetting Sarah Marshall, as tabloid-fodder pop star Jackie Q. This is a movie filled with pop songs designed to be as vapid as possible, but Byrne simply slays “Ring Around the Rosie”, an obscenely crude little diddly that I cannot stress enough is 100% about the joys of butt play.
7. “Ninja Rap” - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze
Okay, this is the first (of two, I’m sorry) kind of cheat options, because in the year 1991 nobody thought they were making a “bad” song, they thought it was unironically the hypest shit in the world ifVanilla Icerapped in the background as giant teenaged ninja turtles dance-fought two mutant beasts in a New York club. Here’s the thing we know now in 2020 with the gift of hindsight: They were absolutely correct. “Ninja Rap” is a priceless gem, a snapshot of a very, very specific moment in time when martial arts battles regularly took place on the dancefloors of Manhattan bars. Nostalgia, man.
6. “Inside of You” - Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Slimeball British rock star Aldous Snow—which turned out to be the only role thatRussell Brandcould play that made any sense—really brought back the idea of a movie built on “bad” songs. “Inside of You”, Aldous' sleazy innuendo ballad, is a genuine work of genius, somehow both the exact type of self-serious twaddle you’d expect from his type and a song that is almost impossible to forget. Folks, the irony!
5. “POP Goes My Heart” - Music & Lyrics
Oh my God, just look atHugh Grantgo. “POP Goes My Heart” might be the most fun song on this list, an 80s-to-the-core keyboard banger that represents the washed-up past of former icon Alex Fletcher (Grant) inMarc Lawrence’s rom-comMusic & Lyrics. Just a full-tilt earworm baked with a heaping portion of cheese. Look at that neckerchief. I simply cannot.
4. “Beautiful Ride” - Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
This is the second cheat entry on the list because there are no bad songs inWalk Hard: The Dewey Cox, both in the sense that A) In context, Dewey is a mega-star, and B) Literally the entire freaking soundtrack is filled top to bottom with wildly entertaining jams of every genre. But they are technicallyparodies, which means they’re playing up that genre’s tropes to 11. So “Beautiful Ride” is a send-up of the triumphant third-act return ballad that 99% of biopics must have, but it’s also…highly effective as a triumphant third-act return ballad. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve teared up asJohn C. Reillylists the good things in life: Flowers! Babies! Travelling not just for business! Excepting your mortality!
R.I.P Dewford Randall Cox, 1936-2007
3. “Why Did You Do That?” - A Star Is Born
Bradley Cooper’s iteration ofA Star Is Bornhas plenty of hits that stand on their own, but it also houses the #1 best entry in “Main Character Sells Their Soul by Performing a Very Good Song” canon. By the look on Jackson Maine’s (Cooper) face, we’re clearly supposed to understand that Ally (Lady Gaga) has abandoned the pure dream by resorting to lyrics like “Why’d you come around me with an ass like that?” Unfortunately for Jackson his judgment here is over the fuckin' line because “Why Did You Do That?” completely rips and wouldn’t be out of place on Gaga’s actual LPs, which historically also rip.
2. “Mona Lisa” - Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
The main problem in the planning phase of this list was avoiding writing down every single song inPopstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. This tragically underseen mockumentary is crafted around a pop idol Conner4Real (Andy Samberg) who cannot actually write a good song on his own. But with the Lonely Island boys at the helm and a script from Sandberg himself, it was all but guaranteed that even the “terrible” tunes would be a joke-filled earworm worthy of actual radio play. The choice basically just came down to which song gets stuck in my head most often, and that, friends is “Mona Lisa”, an absurdly catchy Top 40 send-up that’s solely about the experience of visiting the Louvre and being disappointed by Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”. It’s a shame that the full version was cut from the film because it also reveals that Conner just kind of hates most major tourist attractions, including the Great Pyramids of Giza. (Or, “A dirty pile of bricks.")
1. “Please, Mr. Kennedy” - Inside Llewyn Davis
“Please, Mr. Kennedy” from theCoen Bros.' indie-rock odysseyInside Llewyn Davisis the best “bad” movie song of all time and honestly it’s not even close. “Who wrote this?” asks Oscar Isaac’s title character, kicking off three-ish minutes of a three-chord astronaut tale that is impossibly lame and irresistibly replayable at the same time. There hasn’t really been a moment since the film debuted in 2013 that “Please, Mr. Kennedy” wasn’t at least a little stuck in my head. Adam Driver’s occasional “UH OH” punctuating Isaac and Justin Timberlake’s harmonizing is, without hyperbole, the funniest thing ever committed to film. This is the standard for “bad” movie songs that actually whip an incredible amount of musical ass. If aliens ever request our finest example of a jaunty tune, this song—against all wishes of its unnamed narrator—should be sent into outer space.
