Today is the 11th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, a moment in American history that was pretty horrifying for reasons that have been enumerated countless times. Their effects on pop music weren't as tragic, to be sure, but they were pretty unfortunate—artists on both sides of the aisle manned their battlestations and put forth musical invective and sloganeering pap that diminished everyone involved, and turned the radio into a potential lightning rod for angry disagreements about the state of American politics. Even Aaron Carter got into the fray, which probably gives you an idea of how dire things got. Our nine picks for the most offensive pieces of music brought forth by the attacks below.

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via MTV

This week's candidate for The Internet's Worst Song Ever (At Least Until The Next One) is the inaugural musical offering from an MTV reality star: Teen Mom's Farrah Abraham. The young mother released the more-processed-than-Velveeta "Getting Up From Rock Bottom" on Friday, and before you could say "recapping culture," the Internet had stabbed a thousand downward-pointed thumbs in its direction. But does Abraham actually know what she's doing? Time to fire up The Trollgaze Index, in which we attempt to figure out whether or not people are deliberately getting caught up in the Internet's seemingly endless cycle of hate.

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The R&B singer Aaliyah died in a plane crash 11 years ago this month; last week Drake announced that he'd be executive producing a posthumous album for her, and the first taste of that album, "Enough Said," arrived online yesterday. Lest you think that the song would be a chance for people to remember her legacy, think about how singular her voice was, and reflect on how she'd be pushing R&B forward today, it is instead a testament to Drake's ego; it starts with an "uh" from the former Degrassi star, who then, in response to her letting loose a particularly lovely "yeah yeah yeah," offers up a "yo, whassup" that is annoying-guy-at-a-bar-level cringeworthy, and made even moreso when it's repeated. I actually had to shut the song off before my first listen hit the 30-second mark, so irritated was I by Drake's attempts to act not just as its executive producer, but as Guy Steering The Ship And Don't You Forget It, Okay.

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@deftonesband/Instagram

Not to be one of those people who talks about the weather, but has this summer's concert-going season seemed sorta... washed out to you? Multi-day festivals from Lollapalooza to Catalpa to Pitchfork have been plagued by rain delays, and other outdoor concerts have been similarly doused. Shows at the Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, which is right on the South Shore of Long Island and surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, are rain or shine, though, so last night's Deftones/System of a Down show went on despite a pounding rainstorm that turned part of the venue's plaza into a pond and made plastic ponchos the merch booth's hottest commodity. The Deftones, who went on first, gave a master class in keeping a soaked crowd as happy as they would be on a starry 75-degree night. A few lessons from last night that any band thinking about playing an outdoor show should learn.

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23. Acid

22. Alternative

21. Progressive

20. Angular

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Daughtry
Citi Field
Friday, July 20

Better than: Johan Santana's ankle.

In this hyperdistracted age, it would only seem logical that heading out to the ballpark has become an experience where any action happening on the field has competition from other forms of entertainment—fancier foods from brand-name restauranteurs, swathes of the club turned into sports bars, boutiques offering clothing that's a step up from jersey replicas and baseball caps.

The musical extension of this strategy came on Friday night, when, after a lengthy, frustrating game played on a cool, damp night that brought to mind early-season contests rather than post-All-Star Break tilts, Daughtry—led by Chris Daughtry, the fourth-place finisher on American Idol's fifth season, and one of the Fox talent show's most successful alums, post-show-visibility-wise—performed on a stage set up near second base. A clutch of people in attendance were allowed up-close-and-personal access; the rest of us (an impressive amount, given the weather and the game's late ending time and frustrating result) sat scattered throughout Citi Field's lower bowls.

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Everclear. (In case you didn't figure it out.)

Summerland Tour: Everclear, Sugar Ray, Gin Blossoms, Lit, Marcy Playground
Roseland Ballroom
Wednesday, July 18

Better than: Watching Empire Records on basic cable.

We make the "remember the '90s" joke around these parts a fair amount, but this week the alt-rock strain of that decade has been stuffing the air almost as much as the recent wave of hot-mildewed-towel humidity. Green Day, No Doubt, and the Afghan Whigs released new songs on Monday; Tuesday's relaunch of 101.9 WEMP as a station proudly branding itself as "alternative" brought with it a slew of recurrents that blanketed MTV and in-car cassette decks for the past 15 years, but have been absent from this area's airwaves for a minute. Among those golden oldies were the biggest hits by the five bands on the bill for the Summerland tour, a traveling carnival of nostalgia led by the daddy-issues-laden SoCal act Everclear and including Marcy Playground, Lit, the Gin Blossoms, and Sugar Ray.

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Squeeze / The B-52's
NYCB Theater at Westbury
Sunday, July 15

Better than: Writing in a diary.

Last night the British pop band Squeeze took the slowly rotating stage at Long Island's NYCB Theater at Westbury (a.k.a. Westbury Music Fair) to their debut single "Take Me I'm Yours," a grand proclamation of romance that could be filed in a particularly obsessive record store's New Wave Tango section. It was introduction as seduction, and it could have very well set the table for a night of love songs, where "forever"—or at least until the crew called curfew—"there'll be a heaven in your kiss."

But Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford, the two men behind the stalwart pop outfit, wouldn't be hailed as the MTV era's finest songwriting duo if they kept everything lovey-dovey. As they showed last night, their strength lies in pairing chiming, but not cloying pop with plainspoken lyrics that outline even the most mundane expressions of heartache in a way that combines humor with genuine pathos—the aural equivalent of Sour Patch Kids, or maybe those all-day suckers vending machines sell that cause the mouth to pucker just before they're spat out.

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The top three catalog albums of 2012 so far. (Whitney Houston's Whitney The Greatest Hits is No. 1.)

This week the news came out that sales of catalog albums outpaced those of new records during the first six months of 2012. Current (less than 18 months old) albums sold 73.9 million copies between January 2 and June 1, down from 82.8 million in the first six months of 2011; catalog albums sold 76.6 million copies, up from 72.6 million over last year's first half. My Seattle Weekly colleague Chris Kornelis went in-depth about how pricing of new releases vs. catalog titles helped create this scenario; deep discounting of certain older albums, in both physical and digital form, certainly makes the prospect of buying them more alluring to those people who simply want to add something, anything to their libraries. There's also the simple fact that there are simply more albums by well-known artists in the "catalog" side of things, not to mention the corollary that labels are getting more savvy about exploiting their vaults. (Hey, it saves money on recording!) But there are a few other factors at play that involve how people discover music in 2012, and they run the gamut from radio to the iTunes Store to the shelves at Target.

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You're in the British pomp-rock act Muse, and you've been charged with writing the official song for the 2012 Olympics, which will be held in London and which will be a massive event for your home country. How do you respond to this honor, especially in the wake of creating outrage among your loyalists by releasing a trailer for your upcoming record that hints a flirtation with dubstep? By crafting a five-minute epic that sounds like a mash-up of film scores and Billy Joel records, of course!

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