On Deaf Ears

With three of our illustrious critics submitting lists so far, it looks like the On Deaf Ears best albums of 2008 are:

TV On the Radio – Dear Science (Two number one votes!  Guess I ought to buy it…)

Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight

Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes

MGMT – Oracular Spectacular

Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago

Each of these got a vote from more than one us.  This doesn’t mean much, as we obviously didn’t hear everything out there, or even the albums on each other’s lists, but it does mean something.  I’m looking forward to checking out multiple albums from the lists of both Jason and Normalnorman, and I hope I’ve piqued curiosity about one or two from my list.

Congratulations to the winners.  I have donated my spare change to McDonald’s House in your honor.

But what was the worst of 2008?

Envelope please.

The Inaugural On Deaf Ears Justin Moore Award for Worst Song of 2008 goes to…

Ahem. [Rustling of envelope]

JUSTIN MOORE!!!!!1!!!!!  For his stellar performance of “Back That Thing Up.”

Back in November, Jason wrote the following about this song:

Kid Rock can create all the Warren Zevon/Lynyrd Skynyrd Frankenstein hybrids that he likes as long as I never have to hear one song that I was exposed to today on what was otherwise a beautiful Sunday morning.

The song I speak of is by an artist named Justin Moore, and it reminds me of everything I hate about modern country music, farming metaphors, and Sunday mornings.  The title of the song is “Back That Thing Up,” a devilishly funny and clever (sarcasm still set to HIGH) take on rapper Juvenile’s “Back That Ass Up.”  However, where Juvenile’s song was a straight forward attempt to get a woman to put her butt in his face, Justin Moore apparently wants to clean his song up a little bit and make it about a girl learning to drive a truck on a farm.  But the innuendos abound.

My personal favorite of the bunch:  “Back that thing up/Throw it in reverse, let daddy load it up.”  There those country music artists go again, trying to take a thing as filthy and immoral as anal sex and disguising it as an innocent instructional video on how to handle a piece of farming equipment.  Makes me long for the days of David Allan Coe (link is NSFW).

Seriously, this has to be one of the worst songs ever.

I wrote in the comments:

I really have tried hard, but you beat me hands down. That is the worst thing ever posted on this blog.

“Shine on Me” by Chris Dane Owens was expected to put up more of a fight, but in the end, the opening line of “Back That Thing Up,” “I know you’re scared of that cock-a-doodle-doo,” (when he really means cock!) scored a first-round knockout punch.

Congratulations to our winner.  In his honor, I have shipped a copy of “Back That Thing Up” to Guantanamo Bay for use in interrogating terrorism suspects.