Talk:List of music considered the worst/Archive 9

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RFC for album inclusion

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

First of all, per WP:RTP, I have moved the subsection "Further discussion re: Sgt. Pepper's" to its own section for clarity without changes to the text of any comments. The discussion there is only partially-related and the proposed edits and other remedies discussed there are only partly about inclusion criteria but mostly about normal page editing. As such, the discussion doesn't really deserve getting the "Please do not modify it" treatment and should be outside the close tags so that further discussion (if any) can take place. This refactoring is not technically part of the close but normal good-faith editing.

Regarding the discussion below, there are a lot of opinions that have been challenged by various editors but nothing I see there indicts the objected-to opinions as irrelevant arguments ...that flatly contradict established policy, [that are]]... based on personal opinion only, ...that are logically fallacious, ...that show no understanding of the matter of issue. These opinions are essentially ones of interpretation of the Core Content Policies, mostly WP:V and WP:NOR. The ambiguity inherent in those policies and in the term "considered" means that the editors' arguments below are justifiable interpretations of policy on both sides. Therefor, the preponderance of opinions to oppose these qualifications as written has to be taken as the rough consensus of the discussion. There is certainly support even within the opposes to the possible future creation of other proposed criteria. (non-admin closure) Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:44, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

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For many years, the requirement for a music album to be included in the article "List of music considered the worst" has been that there must be at least one source that calls the album, "the worst". While many albums considered bad are correctly included in this list with this unique requirement, many others which have a mixed or positive reception are also included, since at some point a critic called it "the worst", contradicting the general reception of the album.

We propose that the inclusion criteria changes, per the following:

1. If an album contains a Metacritic score (being the original, remastered or new remix version), it has a score below 40, and at least three reliable sources call it "the worst", then it can be included in this article.
2. If the album does not contain a Metacritic score, then a discussion will be made to review sources from WP:ALBUM. If >= 70% of the sources have a negative review of the album, and at least three of them call it "the worst", then it can be included in this article.
3. If an album does not meet any of these requirements, and it's currently in this article (in any section of it), then it will be removed from the article, because it's understood that it is not considered to be "the worst", which is the title of this article.

WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 21:17, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Survey

With this proposal, please vote Support or Oppose. If you're opposing the criteria, please recommend a new one in your comments, to help us improve this article. WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 21:17, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose - I’m fine with tightening up inclusion criteria - there were none before I implemented the “at least 1 source calling it the worst” criteria - but this is too much. Too many arbitrarily chosen percentages, and just too much jargon in general. Asking anyone/groups to determine “whether or not 70% of sources call something negative” is going to lead to all sorts of disputes and arguments. It’s not practical. (And no surprise, most of the people who came with it have never written or enforced inclusion criteria before, and don’t know how these discussions go.) Sergecross73 msg me 23:16, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
• Support The criteria is reasonable, practical, doable, and is the same basic common sense criteria used by other "worst" lists on WP. Furthermore, the notion that it can't/shouldn't be up to editors to determine if the critical response is mostly positive or negative is laughable, since if you go to damn near any page for any moderately known album, movie, television show, video game, book, etc., you will find a critical response section where editors have made such a determination with "_______ has received generally positive/mixed/generally negative response from critics". (And no surprise, those pages didn't explode into chaos and need to be destroyed to prevent the outbreak of World War III, because it is not that hard to determine which way the wind is blowing when it comes to critical responses. If review after review after review are calling it great, it doesn't belong here.) 2600:1700:B280:B1C0:6D7E:DC53:B39A:9B47 (talk) 16:39, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

  Thats easy to say, but that’s simply not how things have panned out over the 5 years of maintaining this article. Look no farther than these talk page archives to see how editors argue over single entries for months on end for this on this list. Yes, this proposal was obviously written with the ulterior motive of removing one of the contentious items on the list, but it’s not workable for the list on a whole. For years I’ve struggled to even get editors to provide a reliable source or two for entries. They’re not going to jump through all the hoops of finding every source they can, reading them, assessing them, and then crunching numbers to see if they meet at arbitrary percentage point. Whether pass or fail, there’s simply no one going to be motivated to do all this. Sergecross73 msg me 17:08, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

  Is it remotely possible you can rein in the control-freakery and not try to get the last word in at every single damn exchange here ... You suggest looking at the talk page archives, well, I have, and it's a near-constant stream of people saying the article's a joke or stating their incredulity over the inclusion of Sgt. Pepper, especially, and you trying to justify the status quo on both issues. You consistently trumpet your role as if expecting some sort of credit – okay, but the article is shit, so you can have the blame too. You now say there's an "ulterior motive" behind this RfC – are you deliberately trying to be disingenuous? Of course, this RfC – like almost every thread above and in the most recent three-plus pages of talk archives – is in response to that album's inclusion in the list. FFS ... There's a question mark with that second question but, as with the first, it's purely rhetorical. JG66 (talk) 17:38, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

  If editors are arguing for months on end about a single entry, perhaps that is a giant tip-off that entry should not be on the list. And whether or not the criteria was created with the ulterior motive to remove certain entries (which is a gross mischaracterization, as the editor who initially suggested it is the neutral party who ended the RFC from hell as no consensus [1]), the fact is the current criteria for this list is unbelievable pathetic. There are over 7.5 billion people alive today, so the notion that a grand total of two people calling an album the worst warrants inclusion is a joke. Furthermore, the actions by various users and a certain banned troll have made it to where creating a specific, stringent written criteria is necessary so common sense edits will finally be allowed and the article can be improved. 2600:1700:B280:B1C0:6D7E:DC53:B39A:9B47 (talk) 17:46, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

  Alright, I’ll make no further comments on how unrealistic this proposal is then. As I’ve said, it doesn’t matter anyways. Whether it passes with flying colors or fails miserably, there’s simply no one out there who is going to take the time to implement and uphold such a convoluted criteria. Sergecross73 msg me 18:04, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

• Support. I want to make a few comments here. First, for the user who's saying that is impossible to follow this criteria, perhaps you should look at other Wikipedia pages. Similar requirements are made there, for similar lists. And yet, people work together to make Wikipedia a better and more logical place. If you're not willing to do it, because having 1 source is easier than a specific requirement, maybe you should analyze that other users can follow it. The state of this article has suffered because the current criteria. It has been discussed over and over that it's ridiculous, and yet you have done nothing to improve it. Not even a suggestion.

Returning to the inclusion criteria itself, the one we have proposed seems logical to determine if an album is "considered the worst" - the exact title of the article. "Considered the worst" doesn't mean "called the worst by at least one source". It's considered the worst: the worst of albums. Albums who many, many people agree that they're bad. Also, the end is not to remove one specific entry from this list. Several entries suffer this problem - albums that had mixed or positive reception, and yet they appear in this list. Those should go. And this should never happen again, if we want to build Wikipedia and have people consider it reliable. WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 18:28, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is an improvement over the current standards, but it is still not good enough due to the arbitrary inclusion criteria (possibly violating WP:SYNTH), especially the impractical-to-test requirement that [at least] 70% of the sources [at WP:ALBUM] have a negative review. It would be much easier and more accurate to adopt a criterion scheme comparable to that of List of films considered the worst, whose talk page specifies that entries should be widely considered one of the worst films by a broad spectrum of both casual and professional film critics. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 16:53, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

  I understand, but the problem is that, according to previous discussions, it is impossible for a particular user to understand that. When we have suggested that, he has said that "global consensus" is not defined, so he has opposed that. That's why we have come up with the solution of 70% of WP:ALBUM, because it is measurable. WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 19:04, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

• Support This addresses a long standing problem with this article, namely that it violates WP:NPOV. Currently, in order to be on this list, you only need a single source claiming a piece of music is worst - regardless of whether there is any consensus for this opinion among reliable sources. In other words, the article is presenting WP:FRINGE opinions as mainstream viewpoints. I will support any proposal that helps address this problem. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:25, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Sorry but this is a very shallow attempt to impose someone's idea of order on the article and pretend it's rigor. This is a totally arbitrary standard. It only looks surface-level Objective™ because there's (ad hoc) quantification, but this is not the kind of thing you can throw numbers at in the first place. This is quasi-scientific measurement applied to a decidedly non-scientific problem. Please note that "List of films with a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes" and "List of films considered the worst" are two different articles—Film Wikipedia got that one right, folks. A few problems that come to mind:
  • Why is 40% the bar? Who decides that threshold? Notably, Philosophy of the World by the Shaggs fails this test—the recent remaster has 86% on Metacritic—but any attempt to survey "music considered the worst" that omits the Shaggs is simply not credible.

  But you could fix that by carving out another exception, right? Maybe, if an album has over 40% on Metacritic but five (or ooh, maybe six!) sources say it's "the worst", then it's still on the list. But then we're just contriving whatever "neutral", "purely numerical" standards we please. We make it seem like we're just calling balls and strikes, but really we're jerry-building our own set of "Objective Rules" that just so happen to produce the results we want.

  • Why "the worst", why is that the magic phrase that has to appear? What if the reviewer wrote "the worst thing I've heard this year"? Or "... this week"? What if it's "the worst thing I've ever heard in my life," but the writer is only 20 years old? What if they write "the most abhorrent, god-awful trainwreck you can possibly imagine"? Oop, then it's "Simon Didn't Say!"—I guess?
  • Why only WP:ALBUM sources, i.e., critical reviews (that can be found online, privileging recent music)? So we're excluding history books, academic articles, literally any other category of reliable source—why? Won't this result in a horrible case of recentism?
  • The failsafe in step two is silly. I get that it's trying to correct for the recentism bias inherent to using Metacritic as a yardstick, it's trying to allow an entrance for older albums that aren't necessarily on Metacritic's radar. But it's an absolutely preposterous mechanism: "if there's no Metacritic score, then we simply huddle and form our own phantom Metacritic of the Mind"? How is this not obvious WP:SYNTH? Are we going to ascribe scores, too, are we to decide the degree of badness an old review intended to signal? Again, are we only looking to reviews, historical analysis is cheating or something?

So, yeah. Oppose. This would be worse than the article's current state. —BLZ · talk 07:15, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

• Comment The reason the magical phrase "the worst" has to appear is because that is the current criteria. Right now, for an album or song to be added, at least two people must call it specifically "the worst". That's it. Critical reception doesn't matter, public reception doesn't matter, just two people calling it "the worst". If it is the best selling album in history ten times over and a survey of every living person on Earth ended with 7.7+ billion calling it the greatest album ever made and just two people calling it the worst, it can be included in this article. In an ideal world there would be no need for percentages and specific phrases and this article could operate under basic common sense standards likes List of films considered the worst and List of video games notable for negative reception which only includes entries that are widely regarded as being among the worst ever made, but certain editors and a very persistent troll will not allow that here. Thus you have the specific 40% on Metacritic because "widely regarded as negative" is "too vague". So while it may not be perfect, the proposed criteria is a hell of a lot better than the current standard, because someone merely calling a critically praised album the worst is not notable. 2600:1700:B280:B1C0:49E1:5AC6:CFFA:74A9 (talk) 19:16, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

  Actually, it's worse than that. To be in the current article, a single critic must have named the album as "the worst", regardless of the rest of critics or public reception. Your example still applies. That's the state of this article. WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 19:56, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. Music "considered the worst" is a cultural condition, not a mathematical condition. We should not be looking at statistics of an album. The only thing that matters is that several reliable sources called the music "the worst". Binksternet (talk) 14:55, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

  We agree with this, but an album being called "the worst" by two or three critics should not be put here if the rest of the world believes that the album is one of the best, if not the best, of all time. That weights more. But according to the current inclusion criteria, it doesn't. WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 18:33, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

  "We" who? If an album is called "the worst" by two or three reliable sources then it absolutely belongs here. The article is not called Music considered the worst but not the ones that are also good. If the music in the entry is also reviewed positively, even overwhelmingly postively such as Sgt Pepper, then we certainly should tell this to the reader. But don't start making a barrier for entry based on statistics. Binksternet (talk) 01:21, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

  Really? So you'd agree if I put The Godfather in List of films considered the worst, because I can find one or two underground critics that called it 'the worst' (and I have found them, I have brought up this example a few times before). But of course not, because that movie is considered one of the best. General consensus matter in these things. WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 06:35, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

  Sounds like your problem is with the word "considered", which is a general term. What about if this article is moved to List of music that has been described as the worst? In that case, anything described as the worst by a few sources would be included, without the onerous task of weighing every source to see whether it was really the worst. Binksternet (talk) 03:44, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

  Why are we still discussing statistics and trying to figure out what a Metacritic-based inclusion criteria would look like? It's a waste of time since "music considered the worst" has nothing to do with statistics. The RfC should be closed soon so to save energy. Binksternet (talk) 12:53, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

• Support. Basically, I'll support any firm criteria for inclusion that lifts this article from its current deplorable state. I like the idea that LaundryPizza03 proposes above about adopting criteria comparable to List of films considered the worst, where entries are widely considered one of the worst films by a broad spectrum of both casual and professional film critics. But I don't see the need to differentiate between "broad spectrum" and what's been proposed here, and I feel the feet-dragging that's been taking place here for months on end is reflective of how this article has no place on Wikipedia – it's a magnet for people to ensure a song or album gets the stick they feel it deserves. As I've said before, List of films considered the worst has a genuine place on the encyclopedia because of the level of attention the concept of "worst films" receives outside of individuals' personal opinions (the lead section there makes that clear). There's no comparable logic to any worst songs or albums list – music critics (and some we're using don't deserve that description) just shoot from the hip, and we're buying into that vacuousness and turning it into a credible subject. Imagine this: We have, similar to films, an article/list titled "Music considered the best", and because a couple of critics state in passing or with tongue firmly in cheek that Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music or Kylie Minogue's Enjoy Yourself is the best album in the world, ever ever ever, those albums would appear in such a list, alongside 20 or 30 that are undisputedly most critics' best albums of all time. It's ridiculous. JG66 (talk) 15:40, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

  I agree, that's the whole point of this. If we leave the criteria as it is now, then we could later create a "List of music considered the best" article. And it would follow the same criteria: only one critic has to name it the best and it appears on that list. You know how many albums would appear there? Probably more than 60% of all music albums ever created, because at some point some critic named it, in his regard, "the best". It's ridiculous. The same logic applies here. We have to determine *how* can we say that an album is considered the worst, and that's why we have proposed a new inclusion criteria. People who are opposing it aren't proposing anything new. This all reminds me of the last RFC. WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 16:14, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

  While obviously it would be ideal if those in opposition were coming up with better ideas, it's still sensible to oppose an idea if you think it would make things worse. Popcornduff (talk) 23:01, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

  They're not opposing it because they think it's better; they oppose it because it keeps certain entries on the list. 2600:1700:B280:B1C0:49E1:5AC6:CFFA:74A9 (talk) 00:38, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

  JG66, I take your point about pop-music criticism being less rigorous than film criticism, and the counterfactual posed by both you and WKMN?L imagining the kind of standards we would enforce for a "best" music list—although that would be unmanageable for an entirely different set of reasons. I still see the new proposal as a very bad and arbitrary standard, but these last two comments do have me rethinking some of my earlier stances on Sgt. Pepper's (but for other reasons; may unpack later).

  I follow the ongoing non-RFC discussions on this page on and off, so help me out if I'm wrong—but, this is still fundamentally about Sgt. Pepper's being on the list, right? Because Sgt. P's aside, in my view the list of albums as currently composed is a pretty unobjectionable round-up of the consensus musical Anti-Canon. I haven't seen much fuss over Federline being there. The few I haven't heard of, like the Eoghan Quigg album, seem adequately justified. If anything, it's missing a few obvious candidates like The Glory (????) of the Human Voice by Florence Foster Jenkins—again, Metacritic's no help there. I don't see how this proposal would improve the list overall, other than excluding the most controversial entry. —BLZ · talk 01:24, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

  There are several albums that don't belong in this list, because they're not considered "the worst" by any means; they just happened to be named the worst by one or two critics. But the rest of the albums got a mixed or positive response. And yet they appear here. The focus on Pepper is that it is the most ridiculous example here. 99.9% of the reception was positive, if not excellent, and yet one or two sources named it "worst", so it can appear here. WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 18:43, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose as per BLZ's rationale. If there is a problem here, this isn't the solution. Popcornduff (talk) 23:00, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

  What is the solution then? We have spent months arguing about this. We finally concluded that if an album appears in this list, it should be because its general consensus is negative. However, a certain editor and a troll said that we can't put albums here based on that, because "general consensus" can't be measured and it's "too vague" (the kind of things we have to discuss...). So when we discussed in the section #Defining general consensus, what "general consensus" should mean, we all agreed that Metacritic is a fine indicator, and mostly everybody in that discussion agreed. So that's why I'm proposing now to adopt that criteria. If you didn't agree back then, why didn't you say anything back then, and only now, with the real RFC? It seems that people omitted voting back then, just to oppose the current RFC, just to leave a certain entry in the article (ridiculing Wikipedia), without proposing anything new. You say that the proposed criteria is incorrect; well, guess what, the current criteria is 100 times more ridiculous, and yet you have said nothing to improve it. WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 18:38, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

  There seem to have been similar objections in the pre-RFC discussion, like Mr swordfish's objections to arbitrarily privileging Metacritic above other reliable sources. —BLZ · talk 22:57, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

• Support This proposal is a step in the right direction. I'm not swayed by arguments that the lines it draws are arbitrary; it's no more arbitrary than requiring one article calling something the worst or four articles calling something the worst. We must do our part to ensure we're not giving WP:UNDUE weight to WP:FRINGE idea. That's something that this article has spent years doing.LM2000 (talk) 01:05, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

  "It's arbitrary, sure, but it's just as arbitrary as other, extremely similar arbitrary alternatives" is perhaps not as compelling as you intended. Hard numerical requirements are inherently arbitrary and ill-fitting for subject matter like this. —BLZ · talk 01:35, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose Any album noted for being "considered the worst" should merit inclusion. However, sources that are simply stating an individual's opinion should be avoided. In other words, limit inclusion criteria to sources that are speaking about a group of people who view an album as "the worst". No further criteria necessary. ilil (talk) 00:38, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - (Summoned by bot) "Worst" is subjective when it comes to opinion of music so to make it on the list, multiple reliable sources need to describe it as such. Meatsgains^(talk) 22:35, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Isn't that what we are proposing? The current criteria is that only one source must name it the worst. WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 22:22, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. Overly arbitrary criteria. How do we decide which sources (and/or reviews) to consider when determining e.g. whether >70% call them bad? feminist (talk) 07:40, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose/comment/alternative: I came here with a view to possibly closing this RfC. I have previously briefly looked at the article in consequence of a notification about Sgt Peppers. I left with a very negative impression about the article - even to the extent that it probably should be deleted as a consequence that I don't believe that it complies with core policy. The music industry has a fascination with superlative lists - usually for the best or top, where songs or albums can be ranked by at least nominally objective criteria such as sales. The article title therefore creates an intrinsic or implied expectation that it will be a compilation of lists. This is not the case. Worst is largely subjective. As a superlative, it is also an exceptional claim that might reasonably require exceptional sources. Critics are are partial to hyperbole. There are some dozen odd albums and three-dozen odd songs listed in the article, where the basis for inclusion appears to be, how many critics have used hyperbole in their reviews of individual albums or songs. Individual reviews do not have, as their objective, an aim to be comparative. To conclude a superlative, one should do so from a comparative basis.

I applaud the intent of the RfC to make the basis for inclusion more objective, however, the proposed criteria do not address (I think) the issue of hyperbole in reviews. Further, the criteria seems too much like WP:SYNTH. I also note that the reference to a Metacritic score is unclear to an outsider but assume that it is per the link? I therefore oppose the proposal but also oppose the status quo.

I would propose that the criteria for inclusions be based on published lists rather than individual reviews, requiring inclusion in at least two lists published in well recognised sources. However, some care and discretion may be needed to ensure that this is not biased to the US or UK but inclusive of the English speaking domain (on the basis that this is En WP) - ie it should strive to be inclusive of, say the top five or so nations contributing within the domain. The finer detail may need further discussion. Regards Cinderella157 (talk) 10:36, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose, at least until we have a list of Marmite music article. Guy (help!) 10:38, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Under the Metacritic criteria, what would the list look like?

The discussion is getting a bit too abstract and is becoming a referendum about the value of having any criteria, not the effects of the proposed criteria. We don't need to speculate, because it's very easy to find out what the article will look like if these criteria are adopted. The list will have 15 entries and it will look like this, sorted chronologically:

• Testify (2002) – Phil Collins

Metacritic score:  34  based on 7 reviews: 4 mixed, 3 negative

• Results May Vary (2003) – Limp Bizkit

Metacritic score:  33  based on 11 reviews: 1 positive, 4 mixed, 6 negative

• Puddle of Mudd (2003) – Puddle of Mudd

Metacritic score:  37  based on 7 reviews: 1 positive, 4 mixed, 2 negative

• One (2004) – Dirty Vegas

Metacritic score:  35  based on 8 reviews: 4 mixed, 4 negative

• (ONe) (2006) – The Panic Channel

Metacritic score:  39  based on 14 reviews: 1 positive, 9 mixed, 4 negative

• Playing with Fire (2006) – Kevin Federline

Metacritic score:  15  based on 7 reviews: all 7 negative

• Slick Dogs and Ponies (2008) – Louis XIV

Metacritic score:  37  based on 10 reviews: 6 mixed, 4 negative

• Graffiti (2009) – Chris Brown

Metacritic score:  39  based on 12 reviews: 4 positive, 2 mixed, 6 negative

• Rebirth (2010) – Lil Wayne

Metacritic score:  37  based on 21 reviews: 1 positive, 9 mixed, 11 negative

• United Nations of Sound (2011) – RPA & The United Nations of Sound (credited on Metacritic to Richard Ashcroft)

Metacritic score (link broken):  39  based on an unknown set of reviews; the link is 404 even in the Internet Archive

• Famous First Words (2011) – Viva Brother

Metacritic score:  34  based on 17 reviews: 9 mixed, 8 negative

• BAYTL (2011) – Gucci Mane & V-Nasty (credited only to V-Nasty on Metacritic)

Metacritic score:  39  based on 8 reviews: 4 mixed, 4 negative

• Fortune (2012) – Chris Brown

Metacritic score:  38  based on 14 reviews: 2 positive, 9 mixed, 3 negative

• Nine Track Mind (2016) – Charlie Puth

Metacritic score:  37  based on 7 reviews: 4 mixed, 3 negative

• DUMMY BOY (2018) – 6ix9ine

Metacritic score:  38  based on 11 reviews: 1 positive, 6 mixed, 4 negative

Some noteworthy aspects of this list:

• 8 albums from the 2000s, 7 from the 2010s. No albums from the 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, 1960s, or earlier.
• No reissues. All of the surveyed albums are "the worst" on the basis of contemporary reviews only. The one album that has been reissued, Collins's Testify, has no reviews based on its 2016 reissue (which may well be because there were none, but the point stands that these are all first-impression reviews).
• Only one album in common with our list so far: Federline's Playing with Fire, which is on the list in part because it is the very lowest-rated album on Metacritic.
• All of the scores are in the 30s except for Federline's, the only true outlier at 15. The second-lowest, Limp Bizkit's, is 33.
• Four of these albums are scored at 39, which is one point away from the cutoff. Just over the line at 40 is Liz Phair's 2003 self-titled album, which received a rare 0 from Pitchfork but also an A from the Village Voice's Robert Christgau.
• Six of the albums received fewer than 10 reviews. Of those, five were in the bottom 10 and three were in the bottom five. Therefore, most of "the very worst" are also the least-scrutinized. (I'm not saying they would have been saved from their low scores by more reviews, because the reasons publications overlooked them or chose not to review them are too varied and may or may not have had nothing to do with quality, e.g. some may have been genre-specific publications, while some may have chosen to skip the album based on the terrible early reviews or word-of-mouth. Besides, imagine how Pitchfork would treat Kevin Federline. Nevertheless, it's true to say that the lowest-ranked also have some of the smallest pools of consensus.)
• One of the albums, United Nations of Sound, seems to have a broken link on Metacritic and isn't even retrievable through the Internet Archive. Currently, we have no idea what reviews they included or how they came to that score. This especially matters because Metacritic assigns its own scores to unscored reviews.
• Very few, if any, of the individual reviews directly critique the albums as "the worst". Only the accidental composite effect of the scores condemns them as such. This potentially exacerbates a concern about relying on sources that don't demonstrate a clear critical intention to label an album as "the worst". It makes me wonder about albums with Metacritic scores in the 40–49 range or so, which may have had more virulently negative reviews overall yet were saved from the 40% cutoff by one or two isolated high scores.
• Related to the above point: reading the excerpted reviews, recurrent themes are blandness, staleness, high forgettability, unremarkableness. Like I said in an earlier comment, there are many different forms of "badness". This is just an observation.

The thing is, all or almost all of these could be added to the list no problem. "Lower than 40% on Metacritic" could be a useful inclusion criterion for this list, but it's still a very bad exclusion criterion that, by itself, would lead to a very narrow, skewed list. —BLZ · talk 22:57, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be easier for us to determine what albums merit inclusion if we could guage the percentage of negative reviews left, rather than fixating on an album's Metacritic rating. The Grand Delusion^{(Send a message)} 23:05, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

The Grand Delusion: What you're proposing sounds like reverse-engineering a Rotten Tomatoes-style score using Metacritic's review aggregation. (For those who don't know: Metacritic averages critics' actual scores, while Rotten Tomatoes deems a review either positive or negative and gives a score based on the percentage of positive reviews. For an album/film/game to get 100 from Metacritic, each review would have to give a perfect score, while a film can achieve 100% on Rotten Tomatoes without receiving any perfect scores from individual critics. For example, a movie with 50 three-star reviews would get 60 at Metacritic and 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.)

So: I'm throwing out United Nations of Sound, because the link is dead and we have no idea how to re-score it. Out of the 14 remaining, seven received at least one positive review. That includes Results May Vary, the second-worst ranked. That leaves seven:

• Testify (2002) – Phil Collins
• One (2004) – Dirty Vegas
• Playing with Fire (2006) – Kevin Federline
• Slick Dogs and Ponies (2008) – Louis XIV
• Famous First Words (2011) – Viva Brother
• BAYTL (2011) – Gucci Mane & V-Nasty
• Nine Track Mind (2016) – Charlie Puth

More editorializing: What strikes me about this Tomatoes-style list is that, perhaps counter-intuitively, it filters out a lot of the "bafflingly terrible" entries and leaves a concentrated pool of the "profoundly mediocre" ones. Rebirth, a head-scratcher for the ages, is expunged. However anyone feels about Limp Bizkit or 6ix9ine, there's no doubt that they evoke visceral reactions, but they're both gone; meanwhile, Charlie Puth's music may be awful but it's also the kind of anodyne stuff that plays from speakers in grocery stores without incident.

Another important difference between Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic is that Rotten Tomatoes counts reviews as either positive or negative and does not have a category for "mixed" reviews. "Mixed" reviews seemed to be those valued in the 40–60 range; I think score up to 59 would all default to "negative" at Rotten Tomatoes (given that a film with an overall score of less than 60% is deemed "rotten"), but some would have been counted as positive (a review at Rotten Tomatoes is considered positive—and again, remember that Metacritic assigns its own scores to unscored reviews and a different person may interpret an unscored review's "value" differently).

Only Playing with Fire received exclusively "negative" reviews under Metacritic's definition of "negative", so it would definitely get the Rotten Tomatoes 0%. Whether any of the other ones would also get a Rotten Tomatoes 0% depends on how Rotten Tomatoes would sort the mixed reviews.

Assuming all "mixed" reviews on Metacritic are counted as Rotten Tomatoes "negatives", then albums with scores of 40 or higher on Metacritic could achieve a Rotten Tomatoes 0%. Behold:

• Somethin' 'Bout Kreay (2012) – Kreayshawn

Metacritic score:  42  based on 15 reviews: 9 mixed, 6 negative.

No positive reviews under Metacritic's reckoning, so Somethin' 'Bout Kreay would get 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Three of the reviews were scored as "60", which I think would be weighted positive on Rotten Tomatoes, so the score could also be 17% on Rotten Tomatoes, depending on which parts of either site's systems you choose to adopt.

For comparison:

• Liz Phair (2003) – Liz Phair

Metacritic score:  40  based on 21 reviews: 6 positive, 4 mixed, and 11 negative.

Liz Phair would get roughly 29% on Rotten Tomatoes, well above Somethin' 'Bout Kreay. It could also get 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, because two of its "mixed" scores are 60 and would tip into the positive side.

These two albums can be scored very differently with the same datasets, all depending on the methods by which the data is measured, weighted, averaged. This effect, by the way, is exactly what I mean about Metacritic's system being essentially arbitrary. It's true that the outcomes produced by a given system are not arbitrary; they reflect the system's chosen procedures for weighting and averaging numbers. However, the choosing of certain procedures and not others is where arbitrariness seeps in.

It's okay for Metacritic's system to be (essentially) arbitrary! It's still a valid, self-contained system of measurement and a valiant effort to roughly quantify critical consensus, something that is not truly measurable. But it wouldn't be okay to exclusively rely on one arbitrary system at the expense of others. —BLZ · talk 00:52, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

The proposed criteria establishes that if an album doesn't appear on Metacritic, it can be included if the >=70% of WP:ALBUMS has a negative critic of it. As I said in the beginning, many albums don't appear on Metacritic, so that fallback can be applied. WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 16:26, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Suggestion

May I offer to nominate Naomi Campbell's Baby Woman

Sources are now hard to find much since it was released 25 years ago

like her novel, was her attempt to diversify from her modeling career.

[2] - Daily Mirror reportedly wrote in it's review, “don’t give up the day job, Naomi”; it apparently only sold 175 copies in the first two weeks of its release; and perhaps most damning of all, was “big in Japan”

Telegraph, Daily Mail - enlisted PR company to edit her Wikipedia page to remove comments about her better-forgotten past exploits which includes a reference to her 1994 album Baby Woman, as a "critical and commercial failure"...

Guardian - it was Campbell’s attempt to diversify ... Baby Woman was an inspired (if deeply flawed) attempt at making an interesting pop album, as musical collaborator Gavin Friday told Hot Press in 1994, “She doesn’t want to make a typical record.”

Q magazine - 6th in The 50 Worst Albums Ever! Q238 – May 2006

NYT Style Magazine - One notable feat was picking up a microphone and recording a full-length album in 1993 called “Babywoman.” Met with ridicule in her native England, and not even released in the US, Campbell’s questionable musical adventure did pay off in Japan, where the album scored high in the charts.

News.com.au - 6th in list for a Bolan cover - Not many people know Nay Nay made an album back in 1994, because it was savaged by critics and sold by the thimbleful. That was one of the things her PR team airbrushed out of her Wikipedia page. You think throwing phones at your assistant and being an absolute mole would be more problematic if people are Googling you. Her album, Babywoman, also included a cover of Sunshine on a Rainy Day as well as her attempting to cover T-Rex. She had great producers, but as a singer, she makes a great mobile tosser.

The Independent - Not content with supermodel status she cast around for recognition, ... making a sad attempt at rock stardom with a spectacularly unsuccessful album called Babywoman.

The Independent - Naomi Campbell tried her luck in the mid-Nineties with her debut album, Babywoman. It failed to dent the charts in the UK; Q magazine later wrote it off as an example of "gobsmacking hubris". 82.26.220.45 (talk) 22:26, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

None of the sources you provided says that the album is "the worst ever". Poydoo (talk) 23:17, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps if the article were named "List of music notable for negative reception", it could be listed. But considering the current scope of the article, I'd have to agree with Poydoo on this one. The Grand Delusion^{(Send a message)} 23:22, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Agree with Poydoo and Grand Delusion. It doesn't suit this article, but you've clearly done the research that would make the Baby Woman article itself more complete (and quite entertaining). I'd recommend drafting a "Reception" section for that article. —BLZ · talk 00:13, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

The underlying problem with this article.

After reviewing the article and the songs it lists, I have determined that the article seems to be biased. I believe that this is because of the large amounts of songs that have been more polarized in their reception or were considered better than the reputation they have received over the years.

One example of the former is "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da." This article cites both John Lennon and George Harrison's positions on the song as negative and also cites a 2004 poll by Mars, Incorporated and the "50 Worst Songs Ever" article by Blender However, this ignores positive opinions by professional critics. For example, Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner referred to "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" as "fun music for a fun song about fun" , while the song was praised by Record Mirror as the album's "most pleasant and best recorded track"

In the case of the latter, this article also lists Vanilla Ice's 1990 single "Ice Ice Baby" as among the worst songs ever. Despite this, "Ice Ice Baby" is considered groundbreaking in the realm of hip-hop, as it was the first rap song to top the Billboard charts, thus introducing hip-hop to the mainstream. Entertainment Weekly reviewer Mim Udovitch commented that the song was such quintessential hip-hop that Vanilla Ice "probably would have scored with his hit rap single 'Ice Ice Baby' even if he hadn't been white. There's just something about the way its hook – a sample from Queen and David Bowie's 'Under Pressure' — grabs you and flings you out onto the dance floor." However, as time went on, and Vanilla Ice began to be seen as a pop/novelty act, his reputation, and that of "Ice Ice Baby," would be tarnished. Thus, VH1 and Blender would rank "Ice Ice Baby" fifth on its list of the "50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever".

So, what can be done about this? Reviewing songs by a concrete bad/good system, as we have done with movies, wouldn't be the best option because of the subjectivity of music. This can be seen with Philosophy of the World by The Shaggs. Although the album has been cited by professional critics as among the worst albums ever recorded, the album has been accepted with open arms by people such as Kurt Cobain and Frank Zappa I think the best course of action would be to only include albums and songs that have consistently been ranked negatively.

Well, that's my two cents. Have a good day. --I am Proto, your security is my motto. (talk) 23:59, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Agreed, music is too subjective to determine "the best" or "the worst". I really do suggest that someone delete this article, it is too subjective and controversial to have either a "best of" list or "worst of" list on music. X-ma998 (talk) 05:38, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Please note that the article has already survived 6 deletion nominations/discussions. Sergecross73 msg me 05:48, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

References

Critically loathed music artists

Can there be a section about critically loathed music artists (ex. Limp Bizkit, Nickelback, the Black Eyed Peas, Imagine Dragons, the Shaggs, Insane Clown Posse, Brokencyde, Blood on the Dance Floor, Kenny G, LMFAO, Justin Bieber, Creed)? X-ma998 (talk) 07:15, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

I would think that would fall outside of the scope of the article, as they would be musicians, not music itself, which is the subject. I also think that could also get into some murkier WP:BLP issues are that point too. I wouldn’t move in that direction, especially when about half those artists are already mentioned somewhere in the article anyways. Sergecross73 msg me 17:17, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Where is "Muskrat Love"?

I've been hearing this is one of the worst songs ever for years. At least the Captain and Tennille version. Which I like.

Some of the songs on this list are actually GOOD!

Some of the songs I actually like.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:27, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

I imagine no one has proposed reliable sourcing verifying that it has been considered “the worst” in any capacity. Feel free to find reliable sources that assert that. Sergecross73 msg me 18:40, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

That is the answer I was expecting.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:51, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, it seems to be the answer to 90% of the questions about entries. Sergecross73 msg me 00:22, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Once I started editing I found the "official" rule. There were several reliable sources but I'm not absolutely sure these met the qualifications. And the people who considered it worst of all time aren't respected critics. I assume anyone can say anything on wordpress.

Naturally, while doing my research I found a lot of songs I like on the various lists.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:19, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Neither of the sources you provided called it the worst song though. We need at least one source to call it #1 worst for inclusion. Also, the list is ordered by release year, so it wouldn’t go at the bottom of the list either. Sergecross73 msg me 17:29, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

See, this is the advice I was hoping for when I first asked. Unfortunately, everyone who calls it the worst song is on Wordpress.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:10, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Apologies, I thought I conveyed this in my first response. Sergecross73 msg me 21:18, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

I see that now. Also, there was the order, which I hadn't noticed.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:52, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

"Best of" music article

Why isn't there a "best of" article based on music? If there is a "worst of" article based on music, then why can't there be a "best of" article based on music? X-ma998 (talk) 04:27, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

If you think you have sufficient coverage in reliable sources, feel free to start one. - SummerPhD^v2.0 12:12, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

It’s probably just that no ones ever done it. Its easy to argue about individual entries, but it’s quite an undertaking to create a whole article on it. But it’s viable - they exist in other mediums, like best films or best video games. Sergecross73 msg me 12:45, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

I have some starting points on where to look for information on music considered the best:

• Rolling Stones's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
• Consequence of Sound's 100 Greatest Albums of All Time
• NME's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

If there are any more you'd like to add, feel free to do so. The Grand Delusion^{(Send a message)} 18:22, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

It would be impossible to make due to different opinions,making it probably offensive(subjectively)to someone Tee wew28 (talk) 14:29, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

RfC on proposed name change

The consensus is against the proposed name change.

Cunard (talk) 23:20, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I feel that we should probably change the name of the article from List of music considered the worst to List of music notable for negative reception. As it currently stands, the article's criteria for inclusion only allows music that has been explicitly considered "the worst ever" by reliable sources, and thus is too confining. The proposed name change would allow more flexibility in listing critically-lambasted music. Thoughts? The Grand Delusion^{(Send a message)} 18:45, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose - This rename has been rejected in the past. It completely changes the scope of the article. And because recent attempts to alter the inclusion criteria did not garner a consensus, that would leave at an impasse - inclusion criteria that doesn’t even match the article scope. (This article doesn’t document “negative reception”. It documents being considered the worst in various capacities. There’s no definition or inclusion criteria for what “negative reception” needs. Additionally, virtually every RFC or noticeboard discussion the proposer has put forth, has failed pretty strongly. I really wish they’d think these things out better. Sergecross73 msg me 19:25, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Can you point me to previous discussions before I throw my hat into this one? Zero Serenity ^{(talk - contributions)} 19:37, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

• Less than a year ago this same rename proposal, by the same editor, failed unanimously.
• Less than 6 months ago, a massive discussion to change the inclusion criteria failed to change in any direction. Sergecross73 msg me 19:46, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose because as Sergecross73 has noted, the current name and the proposed name are not the same. That a song or an album could be considered the worst now does not mean that they are famous for having received negative reviews. Chinese Democracy received many positive reviews on release, so how do you define a "negative reception" in order to qualify for the list? Richard3120 (talk) 00:31, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Worlds Worst source clarification

Asking about this second revert here. I don’t really care if a SPA added it if it’s a legit source. Looking for explanation/proof that it’s self published. Sergecross73 msg me 22:04, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Bristol Green Publishing Limited handles a very short list of books, and has exactly one corporate officer, who happens to be the author of the book in question. - MrOllie (talk) 22:10, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 June 2020

The worst rapper in the world is Callum Rooney 49.197.133.132 (talk) 05:37, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. TheImaCow (talk) 05:42, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Needs to be broadened beyond Western English-language music

This is almost entirely concerned with music released in English-speaking, 'Western' countries. Unsurprising for the English-language Wikipedia, but I think it'd really benefit from having a wider scope. I wonder if there sre comparable articles in Wikipedia's non-English versions which might provide music from beyond the 'West'. 88.109.65.152 (talk) 16:09, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Feel free to write up some suggestions with sources. The problem is that there’s just rarely interest in writing valid entries. Most participation is arguing about entries already on there, or proposing non-notable flavor of the week Youtuber stuff. Sergecross73 msg me 16:57, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Should we add these?

Birthday Cake - Rihanna ft. Chris Brown
Fack - Eminem
Sweatshirt - Jacob Sartorius
It's Everyday Bro - Jake Paul
Stimulated - Tyga
Gucci Gang - Lil Pump
Body Like a Back Road - Sam Hunt
Tell me what you think.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by TTTUser (talk • contribs)

Inclusion is based on whether or not reliable sources directly call albums/songs “the worst” in some capacity. So the answer would be “no” until you can provide any sources for any entries. Sergecross73 msg me 01:13, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Fair enough, I’ll try to look at some stuff. TTTUser (talk) 16:39, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Philospohy of the World

It seems there's debate over whether Philosophy of the World should be included. This section can be used to debate whether or not it should eb included. LoneWolf1992 (talk) 20:05, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Where is this debate? - SummerPhD^v2.0 02:31, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

What’s the debate? I don’t recall this concern being raised at this talk page before. Sergecross73 msg me 02:51, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

There's been some back and forth editing involving it. LoneWolf1992 (talk) 19:50, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Where? Context would be helpful if you truly want input. You haven’t given us anything to work with here. Sergecross73 msg me 23:53, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

In the history there have been several back and forth edits.LoneWolf1992 (talk) 19:48, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Where? Please provide WP:DIFs. Sergecross73 msg me 00:08, 26 September 2020 (UTC)