I think a lot of these "worst songs/most hated songs" are based on received wisdom: the idea that you shouldn't like Ed Sheeran or Coldplay or whoever. And while it's true a lot of that stuff does nothing for me, I also find it really easy to ignore stuff I don't like because, in 2021 if you don't like something you don't have to endure it. Back when there was only the radio, a handful of music programmes on four channels and The Box which cost 75p per minute to call for a request, I couldn't escape things like Boyzone etc. But now - it's all at my fingertips between Youtube, Spotify and less legitimate sources. I don't need to listen to that stuff. When people rant about how awful something really boring is I find it very performative now: just don't bother with it and save yourself the hassle.
I agree with this. I mean even in the 90s I remember seeing the (otherwise totally brilliant obviously) Human Traffic and there is that scene where he has a long rant about the Spice Girls or something and I found it totally embarrassing. The Spice Girls were not for him, they were not for the people watching that film, it was such an easy target, but more than that, so unnecessary, it felt like if I were to suddenly interject a monologue about how much I hate the Teletubbies into a discussion of new wave cinema. Who cares.
The only exception perhaps is people who work in shops or whatever, yesterday we were in the Vodafone shop in a shopping centre trying to do something I don't understand with our contracts (I let the gf deal with that stuff cos she used to work in phone companies) and they have these adverts on the walls, just visual, no sound even, but each wall or pillar has an advert on a loop, and the loop is, I dunno, a minute long, and in the half hour I was there they started to drive me mad, I don't how people who work there put up with it. At least you can turn your back and try and ignore them, but if they had sound....
But it reminded me of working in warehouses when I was a student and having to listen to eight hours of Radio 1 every day, the play-listing is so heavy that there are certain songs you hear again and again and again. And so I truly hated Dodgy - Good Enough, of course it's a terrible song anyway but the perfect storm for utter loathing is to have a song that you strongly dislike, and then have it forced on you so often that it would be utterly ruined even if you loved it to start with.
And I dunno how shop workers put up with the Christmas playlist which kicks in, in I dunno, late September and is on an insane loop until January. I am of course a very mild mannered guy but that is something that would drive me to Falling Down style collapse and possibly a spree shooting.