What's the music industry equivalent of a Razzie--the top spot on our year-end worst songs countdown? 2010 honorees Salem may have just taken the top spot on this year's list with their "remix" of Britney Spears' apocalyptically catchy jam "Til The World Ends." It's hard to even call their version a remix, because it appears that the "witch house" gang just ran the original through GarageBand and slowed it down (a la others' treatment of Bieber). Britney's voice is absolutely wrecked, with the effects making her sound more like a dying whale than a pop superstar.

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Yesterday the Internet lit up for a bit with news of a new track from the draggy, divisive outfit Salem. "Nite Daze," according to the email blasting it around the Internet, was "all about the drag environment of being incredibly tired, in a dream-state, wasted or on something, and forcing something creative from the mutual confused experience," and it sure sounded like at least one of those words. (Its "demo" form also didn't sound all that different from finished tracks by the outfit.) But just as soon as it popped up, links to it went dead, because as it turned out the snare-heavy track wasn't a Salem demo but... the result of an NYU project. On "culture jamming"!

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The year in music, circa 2010, started at the Cake Shop, with a shred-down to the New Year courtesy of Siren Festival MVP-to-be Marissa Paternoster and her band Screaming Females. After a tour through the NYE fetes of the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, that night ended amidst a marathon show at Bushwick's Shea Stadium, right around the time the Blastoids' drummer poured paint on his kit and started splattering away.

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F2K10 is a countdown of the 20 worst songs of 2010. Track our progress here.

The face of rap in 2010. Photo via MySpace.

Here are five compelling reasons why Salem is the worst new band of the year:

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Yup

Salem
Ramiken Crucible
Wednesday, October 20

Better than: Black Kids at the R Bar, 2007.

Salem are referred to by some as witch house, drag, haunted house, or. . . never mind. The point is that people are actively referring to Salem. Curmudgeons who turn typing into rent checks are arguing about Salem. Snobs who speculate about formative moments in art movements are conversing about Salem. Terence Koh, who showed up in his white sheet, is certainly referencing Salem. Not sure what Liv Tyler is talking about, but she's definitely in line for the bathroom here whispering about something.

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Fresh off a brush with the microgenre that dare not speak its awful name (now officially stricken from the Pitchfork and Creep websites, banished from whatever dark virtual place it came), incredibly polarizing, journo-fight-inspiring Michigan three-piece Salem will actually be in New York next week, doing whatever it is they do live. One show, at Chinatown's Ramiken Crucible, is with fellow alleged-African-American-music-appropriator and SOTC pal How To Dress Well; the flyer is, confusingly, written strictly in Roman numerals:

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One guess as to what they call the expressions they're making in this photo

Readers of this morning's Salem review on Pitchfork might have recoiled a bit as the piece's writer, Larry Fitzmaurice, casually rattled off a few terms commonly used to describe the gothy Michigan band's sound--"witch house, drag, haunted house, rape gaze, and so on." Rape gaze? What could that phrase possibly describe? Not knowing ourselves, we called up local DJ Lauren Flax, who along with Lauren Dillard plays music in the frequently-tagged-as-witch house ("I think we've graduated from that sound," Flax avers) Brooklyn duo Creep. They're the ones who first coined the term, posting it on their MySpace page earlier this year. So what does it mean?

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M.I.A. and Die Antwoord, respectively; you'll never guess who was better. All pics by Rebecca Smeyne, way more below.

I'm still not 100 percent sure what the Creators Project is, exactly, other than a perfectly fine excuse to cram a ton of big-shot artists (and Salem!), a few film screenings (Spike Jonze!), and multiple tremendously colorful and technologically imposing art exhibits (The xx: A Sculpture of the Album!) into multiple floors of Milk Studios Saturday, providing lucky guests with plenty of shit to point their iPhones at. Luckily our own Rebecca Smeyne has a slightly better camera. Here, a mostly visual recap of the overwhelmingly hip proceedings.

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Last time this happened, Vice blew threw $250,000 and Titus Andronicus's Patrick Stickles ended up with red handprints on his neck and a sad, outraged story to tell. This time, semiconductor manufacturing unit Intel will foot the bill, and it's hard to imagine crazed South African rappers Die Antwoord being much fazed by a surly bouncer. Those dudes would seem to be the most exotic musicians on the bill for Vice's free Creators Project New York show June 26th, which also features locals Gang Gang Dance and Sleigh Bells, a newly revamped Interpol, Mark Ronson, Neon Indian, the Rapture, Salem, and "very special guests." Why not guess M.I.A. for that last one, in order to complete the chillwave-downtown-joke rap zeitgeist trifecta? Register here; ogle endless pictures of cute girls from the announcement event over at Brooklyn Vegan, where the hipsters/coke/Rapture-are-still-a-band? jokes are already well underway down in the comments section. [Creators Project]

The deathgaze, Gucci Mane-remixing, mystery-goth act Salem played Glasslands last night and found themselves experiencing the classically weird New York experience of playing in front of representatives of every major media outlet in the city, plus artist Terence Koh (who's photographed the band before, though one imagines he doesn't make it out to Brooklyn much) and REM's Michael Stipe, because it was his 50th birthday on Monday, and why not? We'd have photographs but our photographer returned with a frustrated report of there being "nothing but synthesizers and fog machines" for visuals. Sounds about right. More overheated Twitter chatter below. [@selftitledmag]

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