Great songs can be spoiled by awful production and bad songs are made unbearable with awful sound. There’s millions of them out there, all making your ears’ life a misery and doing their best to make you wish you were deaf.

Some of the greatest, most forward-thinking producers have been responsible for awful sounding records. The picture to the right should give you a clue about one such chap!

And so, the folks behind the ASUS Sonic Master campaign asked us to have a think about some dreadful sounding records, which saw one hecklerspray writer being thrown into the street with a copy of ‘Pet Sounds’ and the imprint of a size 10 in his posterior.

See, what got us thinking about dreadful records was the fact that this new ASUS Sonic Master laptop has been designed with music in mind. Good news for music enthusiasts… bad news for anyone responsible for the list of music below as with louder, clearer speakers, you’ll be able to hear every single glaring mistake.

Of course, it’ll be a dream if you have a well-produced record, like the Vengaboys debut album for example.

Before we start listening to badly produced records, you can play with the ASUS Musicbox site and send your chums some silly e-cards. Go to the Musicbox site and choose one of six music characters and upload your ugly face into it!

Now, let us check out some badly made tunes that could very easily shown up by the ASUS Sonic Master.

1. River Deep Mountain High

What happens when you get a whole host of brilliant instruments and turn them into soup? You get Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound at its most gloopy and impenetrable. Obviously, Tina’s performance is wonderful, but the rest of the record sounds like it has been recorded in a corrugated iron bomb shelter. Spector clearly peaked with ‘Be My Baby’.

2. Rolling Stones ‘Exile On Main Street’

‘Exile’ is arguably The Rolling Stones’ greatest album (okay, ‘Aftermath’ and ‘Let It Bleed’ ain’t bad either), but weirdly, it is also the worst recorded. The whole album is covered in a layer of sludge, the bass is often mixed so badly it sounds like leaves on the line and vocals dip in-and-out leaving you unable to work them out and… for the fan of the enthusiastic amateur, this is a dream, but for those that want a cleaner sound, this must be hellish in places.

3. Sly and the Family Stone ‘There’s A Riot Goin’ On

What happens when you promise girls a singing gig on your album in exchange for sexual favours? Well, if you’re Sly Stone, you gleefully accept those favours and then wipe all the recordings of the girls who sang and thereby ruin the tapes making your final recording very muggy indeed. Or so the legend goes. Of course, the production has its own charm and the album is an absolute classic, but you can imagine some studio jerk weeping over this ‘imagining how good it could have been…’

4. Velvet Undergournd & Nico

Don’t get Andy Warhol to produce your record, okay? You may well invent the punk aesthetic for generations to come, but seriously, you won’t hear most of what’s going on and, importantly, the loudest, heaviest group at the time will occasionally come across like weeds.

5. Hips Don’t Lie

Shakira and Wyclef’s dreadful pop-monster is one of the worst production jobs in music history. The whole backing track and Wyclef’s voice all nestle in with each other very nicely, but then, POW, Shakira’s voice comes along twice as loud as everything else and sounding for all the world like it has been recorded in a different room, in a different country, on a different planet. So separate is Shakira’s voice is that it sounds like she’s turned her back on the rest of the song!

6. The Beatles ‘Let It Be’

Oop! Here’s ol’ Phil Spector again, taking a pretty enough Paul McCartney ballad and covering it in so much syrup that one listen will give you instant toothache. Props also need to go to those awful stereo mixes of a whole bunch of Beatle LPs that made it impossible to share headphones on the back of the bus. We’re looking at you ‘Revolver’.

7. Iggy & The Stooges ‘Raw Power’

When David Bowie was given the task of producing Iggy and the Stooges ‘Raw Power’, someone really shoulda told him that he need not bother turning up. The best way to record The Stooges is to stick all the faders up to 10 and then go for a smoke. However, in Bowie’s hatchet job, he squeezed all the life out of the band leaving a record full of great records bordering on weak. In later years, Iggy Pop would remix the whole thing (as below), turning everything up to 10 as nature intended.

8. Husker Du’s ‘Flip Your Wig’

Take one thunderous band and stick them in a recording studio and then, magically, take the nuts off everything they record and make the drummer sound like his tap-dancing on a biscuit tin. Shame.

9. De La Soul ‘Three Feet High And Rising’

Deep funk and cartoon rhymes made for one of the greatest LPs ever made… however, once Prince Paul had done a fine job in the studio, someone decided to print the LP on vinyl so quiet that the static hum of your speakers was likely to drown out the music. Mercifully, this was rectified on the singles and remasters.

10. Anything by Kenny G

Do we really need to explain?

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Here’s a guest blog by Josh out of Interestment…

Contrary to what your destroyed and embittered careers advisor screamed into your face – flecks of saliva spattering your cheeks – becoming an actor isn’t just a hobby, it’s a job.

Just look what happens when non-actors like Britney Spears, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston give it a bash – they ruin films. Completely ruin them.

And yet, while those three were totally rubbish, every once in a while a marvelous young pop star will come along and blow our minds. Here are four great singers/actors…

1. Prince, Purple Rain

2. Eminem, 8 Mile

Stealing ever so slightly from Purple Rain, Eminem goes about proving to the competitive hip hop world that he’s got what it takes to win rap battles in small clubs in Detroit. Along the way he gets up to all kinds of mischief with his buddies – one of whom was the doctor in ER. And he has some mind-blowing sex with Brittany Murphy, who was presumably cast because she looks exactly like a prostitute. The scene at the end where he makes the middle-class rapper look like a ninny is the stuff dreams are made of. Eminem has never been so excellent.

3. Tina Turner, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Before he became drunk with power, Mel Gibson starred in some great films, and this is one of them. Not only does it find the Australian at the top of his game, but it also finds Tina Turner on amazing form as Aunty Entity, a mean-spirited woman who is making hay in the apocalyptic sunshine. Not only does the singer – whose voice is like a packet of gravel, by the way – put in the performance of her damn life, but she also provides a moving soundtrack. Excellent.

4. Ice T, New Jack City

You probably know Ice T for his biting rap lyrics, and gangster posturing. But in 1991, he wowed the entire planet by taking the role of a big city cop with street smarts in this tale of drugs and Judd Nelson. Only a few short minutes into the film, and the power of Ice’s acting allowed him to morph effortlessly into the character of Detective Scotty Appleton. Some say that they couldn’t tell where Ice ended and Scotty began. Powerful stuff.

This was a guest blog by Josh Burt from Interestment. Hot damn that’s a good website!

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We hereby take back everything negative we've ever said about the Grammys.

Yes, the Grammys are dull, overlong and self-congratulatory, but if the Grammys didn't exist, then Aretha Franklin's demented tantrum over Beyonce calling Tina Turner 'the queen' instead of her wouldn't exist either. And that's just too priceless to live without.

Especially now that Beyonce's dad has gotten in on the act, too – Matthew Knowles has called Aretha Franklin "childish and unprofessional" for her outburst. We're expecting Aretha's "That's childish, unprofessional and super-super morbidly obese to you," retort to come any second now.

When it was announced that Beyonce was to duet with Tina Turner at this year's Grammys, at best you probably expected an under-rehearsed medley of power ballads performed by an elderly out-of-breath woman and a woman hell-bent on swamping everything with all sorts of needless "woooahoahwhooah"ery.

But ha! That's not what you got at all. In fact, what Beyonce and Tina Turner gave us on Sunday night was an under-rehearsed medley of power ballads performed by an elderly out-of-breath woman and a woman hell-bent on swamping everything with all sorts of needless "woooahoahwhooah"ery containing an introduction that made Aretha Franklin flip her shit.

In case you needed reminding, Beyonce introduced Tina Turner as 'the queen.' And this managed to rile Aretha Franklin senseless because she's supposed to be the queen, and Tina Turner can't be the queen as well otherwise there'll be two queens and people will get confused. What if Tina Turner and Aretha Franklin both went to the same party and there was a snack trolley labelled 'for the queen'? Would they have to share? We get the feeling that Aretha Franklin would rather take her own life than share any snacks. Mainly, we think this whole brouhaha is snack-based.

Anyway, Aretha Franklin was so upset by all this that she made a public statement about it. And now it's the turn of Beyonce's father Matthew Knowles to make a stand, and he seems as bewildered about all this as the rest of us:

"Something this ridiculous – it's childish, it's unprofessional. And it's a sad day when egos get bruised because somebody used the word king, queen, prince or princess."

And now Matthew Knowles has followed it up in an interview with CelebTV making his views even clearer:

"I am not taking something this ridiculous to Beyonce. Beyonce referred to Tina Turner as a 'queen.' Not queen of gospel, queen of soul, queen of blues, Queen of England. I consider my wife a queen and sometimes call her that. Does Aretha have a problem with that?"

In fact, Aretha doesn't have a problem. She eats problems for breakfast. She eats a lot of things for breakfast, though, so maybe we shouldn't we shouldn't judge that too harshly on that. 

So now just about the only person not to have spoken out about this kerfuffle is Tina Turner. There could be any number of reasons for this – perhaps she's decided to rise above it, perhaps she's continuing her pattern of not responding to anything that happens to her, or perhaps she's still out of breath from her Grammys performance – but we're not so sure.

We think that Tina Turner is quietly preparing for battle. you see, if Tina Turner is now queen, then it makes sense for Aretha Franklin to upgrade to Super-Queen. And if that happens, Tina will need to think fast and upgrade too, to Ultra Mega Super-Queen. And so it will continue, until the fateful day when Mega Super Hyper Condor GalactaQueen Aretha Franklin and Ultra Ultra Thundersaurus Omegamax Queen Tina Turner wrestle each other in the middle of New York, knocking down buildings and punching heads off statues and whatnot.

Read more:

Beyonce's Dad Weighs in on 'Queen' Flap – Associated Press 

If you saw the Grammys last weekend, you'll have witnessed Beyonce duetting with a panting, apple-faced pensioner wrapped in a scrap of tinfoil who Beyonce claimed was Tina Turner.

And that's got Aretha Franklin thoroughly narked. You see, Beyonce introduced Tina Turner at the Grammys by calling her "the queen." And Aretha Franklin is under the impression that she's actually the queen.

The queen of what, we don't know. Although judging by her performance at the Grammys, our first guess would be that Aretha Franklin is the queen of competition-standard sausage-gobbling.

Although the rightful focus of the Grammys on Sunday was the way that Amy Winehouse managed to sing two songs without falling over, throwing up, smoking any hard drugs or hacking away at any of her bodyparts with a razorblade, other people found different things to concentrate on.

And, although the Grammys duet between Beyonce and Tina Turner wasn't especially pleasant, that's what Aretha Franklin has focused her mind on, anyway. Luckily Aretha Franklin isn't too concerned with the performance itself, or the way that Tina Turner's borderline-obscene silver corset pulled her 68-year-old torso in so tight that she made a noise like a choking baby rather than singing, but the way she was introduced.

You see, Beyonce's spoken-word introduction of Tina Turner mainly involved listing other female singers and saying that none of them are as good as Tina Turner, because Tina Turner is "the queen." And since Aretha Franklin thought that actually she was the queen, she's started getting shitty about it to anyone who'll listen. According to The Associated Press:

When Aretha Franklin is unhappy, she does not mince words. On Tuesday, the longtime Queen of Soul slammed Beyonce Knowles' intro to Tina Turner at Sunday's Grammy Awards, in which Knowles called Turner, not Franklin, "the queen." "I am not sure of whose toes I may have stepped on or whose ego I may have bruised between the Grammy writers and Beyonce," Franklin said in a statement issued by her publicist. "However, I dismissed it as a cheap shot for controversy."

If it was a cheap shot for controversy, then might we suggest that it isn't actually a particularly good one, since the only person to show even a flicker of anything approaching outrage is Aretha Franklin herself. Everyone else was probably wondering how long it took for Aretha to grow her upper arms to get to the size of a fat man's thighs.

Perhaps the organisers of the Grammys will pay attention to Aretha Franklin's tantrum, though, and in the future only refer to Tina Turner as a duchess or low-ranking marchioness or something. And maybe Aretha Franklin should think of copyrighting this queen thing – we hear several monarch states, a rock group, a scallop and a chess piece are already encroaching on her territory.

But, you know, maybe 'queen' isn't a big enough word to describe Aretha Franklin. Maybe 'planet' or 'galaxy' would be better – after all, we're pretty sure that Aretha Franklin does exert her own gravitational pull now.

Read more:

Franklin Slams Beyonce Grammy Intro – Associated Press 

The good news is that the striking writers aren't going to picket the Grammy awards this year, meaning that the show can go on as normal – no, wait, is that the good or the bad news?

Because now that the writers won't be picketing, we'll all be free to witness the arse-numbing, life-sapping 52-hour marathon of back-slapping, lecturing and ill-thought-out musical collaborations that the Grammys have all but copyrighted.

And one of those ill-thought-out musical collaborations will be a frankly terrifying-sounding duet between Beyonce and Tina Turner. Hold us.

The writers' strike has made a mockery of many of the things we love – like 24 and The Daily Show. It has also made a mockery of many of the things we don't particularly care about but are contractually obliged to professionally follow – like the Golden Globes and potentially the Oscars.

So it stands to reason that the writers' strike should also make a mockery of stuff we honestly can't bloody stand, like the Grammys. But nooo, apparently the Grammys are going to get off scot-free. Brilliant.

The Grammys are terrible for so many different reasons – but mostly because of the way they routinely throw random groups of musicians together to create 'happenings' that are generally as sonically appealing as listening to a distressed newborn baby jamming a vinegar-soaked javelin through a kitten's eye again and again.

Like the Sly And The Family Stone reunion at the 2006 Grammys where Steven Tyler was so busy like an idiot that nobody noticed that Sly Stone was making his first public appearance for 19 years in the background. Or the 2005 all-star rendition of Across The Universe that was so bad that it was basically a direct insult to the people of Sri Lanka.

And this year, to try and reach those insanely high peaks of dreadful taste, the Grammys will feature a duet between Beyonce and Tina Turner. People reports:

Beyonce Knowles will join forces with the legendary Tina Turner for a performance at the Feb. 10 Grammy Awards, a source close to the show confirms to PEOPLE. News of the A-list duet comes just one day after the Writers Guild of America announced it will not picket the awards show – clearing the way for stars to attend the Los Angeles ceremony. 

Perfect, a Beyonce/ Tina Turner duet is just what we've been waiting for – given the age difference and Beyonce's fondness for ripping off every single thing that Tina Turner did, chances are the performance is going to end up looking like one of those before and after posters for crystal meth addiction.

But maybe we're wrong. Maybe Beyonce and Tina Turner will pull something truly memorable out of the bag – like if Beyonce continues her trend of badly injuring herself onstage by falling off a 30-foot balcony onto her chin while Tina Turner suffers an attack of stagefright from being semi-retired for close to a decade and hallucinates that Ike Turner's ghost is chasing after her with a slice of cake until she wets herself and shorts out all the electricity to the venue. 

Alternatively Beyonce could just wail like a panicking tightrope-walker while Tina Turner sings Steamy Windows just like she did with Purple Rain when she duetted with Prince at the 2004 Grammys. We can't possibly imagine which one it'll be.

Read more:

Beyoncé & Tina Turner Will Duet at the Grammys - People 

Ike Turner – the man who invented rock and roll but is best known for that film where Laurence Fishburne dressed up as him and punched a woman – has died.

Although no cause of death has been stated, it's thought that Ike Turner was suffering from emphysema. He was 76. Drug addict, jailbird, wife-beater and the man who made Tina Turner a star – therefore ultimately responsible for Steamy Windows – Ike Turner had a hell of a lot to answer for, but the stamp that Ike Turner left on music will be remembered forever.

OK, we're just saying that because we're scared of Ike Turner's ghost beating us up in our sleep. Really, have you seen What's Love Got To Do With It?

There's no denying that Ike Turner shaped music fundamentally. It was Ike Turner who wrote the first rock and roll song, Rocket 88. It was Ike Turner who first used distorted guitar in a recording. It's Ike Turner's songs that were sampled by hop-hop pioneers and changed the direction of that genre. Beyonce has cribbed Ike Turner's creative vision for Tina Turner wholesale. Um, and it was Ike Turner who played piano on that last Gorillaz album that you liked for a couple of weeks and then forgot you owned. 

However, that's not what instantly springs to mind when you think of Ike Turner. No, the first thing that springs to mind is What's Love Got To Do With It, the Tina Turner biopic that's like watching Coyote Ugly interspersed with all the domestic abuse scenes from the Christmas Day 2001 episode of EastEnders. Laurence Fishburne's portrayal of Ike Turner was visceral enough for the world to see Ike Turner as nothing more than a drug-abusing woman-beater for the rest of his life.

So up until yesterday, basically, because that's when Ike Turner died.

It's being reported that Ike Turner died yesterday at his house in San Diego aged 76. A cause of death has yet to be identified and no other plans have been made. But what does Tina Turner make of all this? After all, her feelings towards Ike Turner must be bittersweet – although he was endlessly violent and controlling towards her, Tina was professionally never better than when she was under Ike's wing. Handily Tina Turner has put out a statement regarding Ike Turner's death, through her spokeswoman:

"Tina is aware that Ike passed away earlier today. She has not had any contact with him in 35 years. No further comment will be made."

Maybe in death Ike Turner's music will be reevaluated and appraised for its undeniable influence. Maybe someone will even make a reputation-saving Ray-style biopic about Ike Turner based on his autobiography Takin' Back My Name. But probably not. He really did seem like a bit of a bastard, you know.

So let's remember Ike Turner the way that suits him best – as a booming giant disembodied head floating behind Tina Turner's back…

Read more:

Ike Turner Dies in San Diego at Age 76 – Washington Post