And I’m okay with that, largely because my views on what constitutes truly bad music have changed considerably. It all started when I heard the Big Generator title track and thought to myself, “Wow, this has to be one of the worst songs ever written.” Now I feel that there’s a big difference between a song that’s easy to mock, and a truly bad song. “Big Generator” clearly falls into the former category (it’s clunky, to put it lightly) but I’d say it’s too harmless to be the latter.

I’d now define a truly bad song as one that has a significant deleterious impact on the listener’s emotional well-being. “Without You” by Asia would probably count as that, due to giving the title phrase a dramatic “shock, horror!” kind of emphasis.