"Yeah, obviously I hate them and all they stand for, but it's a good song."

No it's not. It's a fucking awful song. Why? Because I say so. I don't understand how it is that people can not even like a record but still think it's a 'good song'. It assumes that there is something which you can justifiably refer to as a good song, regardless of whether or not you actually like.

Some examples. David Gray. A man possessed of an infinite capacity for writing 'good songs'. Completely bland, uninteresting and emotionally vacant good songs, but apparently good songs nevertheless. No. David Gray does not write good songs. He writes fucking awful songs. Why? Because I don't like them.

If there's one thing I always try to stress, it's that no one can tell you what good music is. You can only have music which you like, and music which you don't like. Take Burt Bacharach. Everyone, regardless of indie credentials, is falling over themselves to say how 'good' his songs were. No they weren't. They were fucking awful. They were clichéd musically retarded pieces of commercial made-to-order sentimental shite. Just because lots of people like them it doesn't make them 'good songs'. It makes them songs which many people think are good, which is not the same thing. No one ever tells me the records I listen to are 'good songs' when they don't like them, so I don't see why I should.

I hate being expect to bow down to supposed greatness of 'songsmiths' like fucking Bacharach and the rest of those shitheads who turn out 'classics' on their little production lines. That's not music. The same goes for Ira Gershwin and Tin Pan Alley. Why am I expected to say how great the 'songs' produced by Tin Pan Alley were? They were all shite! Tin Pan Alley was a disgusting little music factory and did not produce anything I would call 'good'.

So, fuck them. I like 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' because it's good, not because it's 'a good song'. Similarly I piss on David Gray, Coldplay and the other crap Radiohead knock-offs because they write songs which I'm obliged to say are 'good' or at least 'okay'. There's no such thing as the 'good song', and Burt Bacharach and his friends can spend an eternity twatting around, rhyming 'to' with 'you' and making a billion, without capturing a single atom of the power of the Sex Pistols.

Good songs? Bollocks. I like bad songs.