Sometimes we love a song because it's stupid. When the Flaming Lips immortalized a girl for not using jelly, for instance, we treasured the witty idiocy of it all. These are not those songs. These are the radio hits that tortured us with their inane babbling, with lyrics that sound epic and sentimental at first but are ultimately as shallow as a kiddie pool. There are a few stinkers here by some legendary artists, and there is also the rare unicorn of a mostly decent song being unfairly matched with some cringe-worthy lyrics. Keep reading for the first ten of the fifty worst rock/pop lyrics of all time.

See also:
- The 50 worst rap lyrics of all time: 50-41
- The 50 worst rap lyrics of all time: 40-31
- The 50 worst rap lyrics of all time: 30-21

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The best frontmen and -women all have something in common. Whether it's their ability to connect with a crowd or the swagger with which they carry themselves, their fashion sense, the intrigue that surrounds them or their reckless disregard for their own well-being, they all have that ineffable "it" factor. We recently conducted a highly scientific examination of a host of individual performances, and we took the data we gleaned from that analysis and combined it with our own anecdotal observations over the years and came up with the ten traits of the perfect frontperson. Keep reading to see what they are.

See also:
- The five best local musical missed connections on Craigslist
- Five more biggest concert buzzkills
- The original ten biggest concert buzzkills

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Celebrity fandom is almost always based on inaccessibility. Whether it's a rock star, an actor or a politician, desire is created when you reach out for the object of passion and come up a few inches short. So what happens when you have a fanbase that is made up of people who long to find themselves, and transfer that longing onto a man who is famous for having the most enigmatic identity in recent memory? You get Morrissey fans. While they cried for Sinatra, screamed for the Beatles and do God-knows-what for Insane Clown Posse, there are few non-religious icons who have inspired the level of personal devotion in their followers as this celibate Brit, who romanticizes getting hit by a bus and equates eating meat with child abuse.

See also:
- The Smiths '80s radio station takeover: What happened per the police report
- The story of Smiths fan who held a station here hostage in the '80s? It's true...sort of
- SmithsBusters: Did a Smiths fan really hold a Denver radio station hostage in 1987?

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Gateway Acts is a new ongoing series on Backbeat in which we examine the music that served as an entry point for our burgeoning musical obsessions, a gateway drug that tuned us in and turned us on. Today, guest columnist and Flattery Festival founder Ian O'Dougherty (Uphollow, Ian Cooke, TaunTaun, Eolian) asserts that if there were just one band, that band would be Fugazi.

By Ian O'Dougherty

I started playing guitar at the age of eight after seeing La Bamba in 1987. Brian Setzer's cover of Eddie Cochran's song "Summertime Blues" on the soundtrack got me excited about guitar and led me to discover Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly. I heard Nirvana on the radio in 1991 and then started playing guitar loudly. In junior high, I met a kid named Whit Sibley, who also played guitar loudly. He put the Descendents "Silly Girl" and Fugazi's "Long Division" on a mixtape for me, and in return, I gave him a Godflesh cassette to check out. We eventually decided to start a band together called Uphollow. We ended up playing hundreds of shows and did more tours than I remember.

See also:
- Saturday: Flattery Festival at 3 Kings Tavern, 2/2/13
- Q&A with Minor Threat, Fugazi and Dischord Records founder Ian MacKaye
- How Beck opened up a whole new world to an evangelical boy from the Midwest

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Gateway Acts is a new ongoing series on Backbeat in which we examine the music that served as an entry point for our burgeoning musical obsessions, a gateway drug that tuned us in and turned us on. Today, Noah Hubbell gives us the goods on a Rush to judgment that he made early on.

Aaron Thackeray

Okay, hands up: Who here loves Rush? (Spoiler alert: It's this guy.)

I grew up in a house of somewhat traditional music, where I was exposed to everything from jazz to classic rock to soul. It provided a great background for me, but for the most part, the impetus was on the importance of instrumental or vocal talent. My father was, and still is, a fanatical guitar player. I cannot remember an extended period where he wasn't practicing. In fact, he practices more at playing guitar than I've ever seen anybody practice anything. Wanting to someday be able to play an instrument like my father, I began drumming when I was twelve, and it was then that I realized how much work it takes to be a great player.

See also:
- Gateway Acts: How Beck opened up a whole new world to an evangelical boy
- Ten essential gangsta-rap albums
- Review: Rush levels Red Rocks with three hours of power and precision

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Tom Murphy

The Walkmen on stage last night at the Ogden Theatre in Denver.

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THE WALKMEN @ THE OGDEN THEATRE | 01/21/13

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Like a punk band scoring a gothic Western, the Walkmen delivered a set at the Ogden last night that came off as a unique chemistry of contrasts. Blending all the feverish energy of rockabilly inside a tightly controlled package of casual style, the band turned a crowd of hard-drinking, high-energy maniacs into perfectly still lapdogs, staring wide-eyed and perplexed at a group executing the impossible by achieving grand, explosive sentiments at a fast tempo without losing their delicate, hypnotic intimacy.

See also:
- Hamilton Leithauser of the Walkmen on his early experiences with DC punk
- The Walkmen's Peter Bauer on how Skrillex, Bassnectar and dubstep seem so foreign
- The 25 best concerts of winter/spring 2013

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Gateway Acts is a new ongoing series on Backbeat in which we examine the music that served as an entry point for our burgeoning musical obsessions, a gateway drug that tuned us in and turned us on. Today, Josiah Hesse gives up the goods on his Beck jones.

There is no way to listen to the music of Beck Hansen without, either actively or passively, becoming aware of the whole of 20th century American music. It's all in there: the Delta blues of Mississippi's John Hurt and Son House (One Foot In The Grave), the b-boy electro-hip-hop of Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa (Midnite Vultures), the lachrymose, orchestral folk of Townes Van Zandt and Nick Drake (Sea Change), the experimental art-noise of John Cage and Suicide (Stereopathetic Soulmanure) and the goofy punk-rock of the Frogs and the Butthole Surfers (Mellow Gold). For me, and surely for many others, getting into Beck albums was not only a joyful explosion of the senses, but a life-long infection of curiosity for the encyclopedic landscape of pop-music history.

See also:
- Anton Newcombe on Beck, living in Germany and Bright Channel
- Beckstra! Beckstra! Have you heard about Beck's record club?
- Velvet Underground & Nico turns 45 today

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Tiffiny Kallina

About three years ago, Scooter James was at a point where he'd done a few shows with Pinhead Circus, the well-regarded punk band he formed in 1988, but wasn't really set on pursuing music full-time anymore. Then he saw his friends in Tin Horn Prayer, and the band just completely inspired him. "They had that soul and that edge that I grew up with and that we all still loved," he recalls. "They still had a real folky kind of undertone to it; I always like to call it 'outlaw folk.' I saw them open up for William Elliott Whitmore at the Larimer Lounge, and something about it -- they just had such good energy; it was amazing. I literally told my wife that night I was super-jealous and that I wanted to join this band. And a week later, I got the call to join."

See also: Tin Horn Prayer album release at the Bluebird Theater, 11/30/12

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Catch Alice Cooper tonight at the Paramount Theatre.

Vincent Furnier has gone by Alice Cooper for more than four decades. During that time, two different versions of his on-stage persona emerged: the early one, when he was kind of meek; and the later one, when he became more of a villain. The change came when he stopped drinking.

"It was so distinctive that I didn't even notice it until after I was sober for quite a long time," Cooper says. "I kind of looked at Alice in videos from TV shows, and I always noticed how bent over I was. I kind of had this beaten-dog sort of attitude on stage, which I made work. I made that work because I think the kids out there that were the disenfranchised kids related to Alice. He was disenfranchised. He wasn't even accepted by rock-and-rollers. So there he was, a sort of victim of society, and a lot of kids related to that.

See also:
- Photos: The twenty most ghoulish Alice Cooper fans at the Paramount Theatre
- Slide show: Alice Cooper at the Paramount Theatre
- Tonight: Alice Cooper at the Paramount Theatre, 11/23/12
- The ten best concerts this weekend: 11/23-25

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Steph Thompson

"The first time I dealt with a major label, I thought I had all the answers," recalls Tyler Ward. "I thought I was so good at what I did that they couldn't tell me what was going on. There were two or three offers on the table, and I said, 'I know better than you guys. You're trying to change me. You're trying to control me.'"

It was an audacious stance for the singer-songwriter/producer to take. The then-26-year-old was still making music in his parents' basement when the labels came courting more than two years ago. Working from a bare-bones studio in Aurora, Ward had quickly built up a rabid following online with his do-it-yourself approach to performance, music production and songwriting.

See also:
- Tonight: Tyler Ward at the Bluebird Theater, 11/23/12
- The ten best concerts this weekend: 11/23-25

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