The Infinite Dial

It's a sure-fire crowd pleaser of a topic, the worst songs of all time, and this month Spinner offers up its candidates. There was a time when any worst songs list would have reliably been made up of '70s bubblegum and novelties. But a lot of the usual suspects have lost their power to provoke, Few among us have been confronted with "Gimme Dat Ding" or "Heartbeat, It's A Lovebeat" lately; other once-reviled songs from that era, like "Baby Come Back" and "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" are reliable testers at radio now and not such easy targets.

A few '70s songs do make the list, and there's not much defending "Convoy" and "I Am Woman." A few songs that still generally test well (if a little crispy) are in there too: Creed's "With Arms Wide Open" and Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl." But a lot of Spinner's wrath is saved for the rhythmic novelties and reaction songs of the '90s: "Gettin' Jiggy With It," "Thong Song," "Macarena," "U Can't Touch This," "Wannabe," "Who Let The Dogs Out," and "Rico Suave."

Now, some of those songs aren't going to get any closer to any radio format than somebody's flashback weekend or retro mix. But "Jiggy" and "Can't Touch" usually make that list of big hits that nobody plays whenever kids-of-the-'90s start talking about the inevitability of a '90s-based format. That says something about why the '90s have been such a minefield thus far. To at least a few people, "U Can't Touch This" is the new "The Night Chicago Died."

Then again, programmers figured out the '70s format eventually, and they did it without "Seasons In The Sun," "The Night Chicago Died," or "Gimme Dat Ding." And as we've seen this year at KBZC (the Buzz) Sacramento, Calif., and now KHTE (K-Hit 96.5) Little Rock, Ark., some stations are moving ahead undeterred into that era. And if you check out the Buzz now, you can hear the "Songs Your Parents Hated" weekend.