‘Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)’ is literally the worst

Nowhere is safe.

I was sitting on Bear River high school’s metal bleachers having an otherwise lovely evening. Cool autumn air, good company, a bag of assorted candy and a fairly entertaining football game combined for one excellent way to start a weekend.

Then the first half came to a close, and the musical equivalent of getting poked repeatedly in the face by an older brother began blasting over the grainy PA speakers. The song was so awful I thought it may have been a joke, like maybe there were some rowdy youths loose in the press box executing their plan to prank their parents and student body on senior night.

This inescapable aural assault caught me completely off guard. I’d heard this particular nauseating tune before, both from dumb YouTube videos circulating my Facebook newsfeed and on Sportscenter because ESPN is in the midst of a sad free-falling identity crisis. But those instances always gave me the option to scroll past, or mute, or fling whatever device the noise was coming from out of my second-story apartment into the parking lot below.

You’ve probably heard it too, and I’m telling you — “Watch Me Whip” is literally the worst song in existence.

Officially, the name of the song is “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” but I’d rather slam every one of my fingers in a car door before typing that again — which coincidentally would still be less painful than listening to this freaking song.

It’s an atrocity. It’s an insult to the monks thousands of years ago who first thought to themselves, “This silent world is boring, let’s make some tunes.” Overhearing it on a classmate’s phone even for a few seconds means you probably shouldn’t be friends with that person. The song is a high eight on the medical pain scale, above watching Friday’s Aggie football game but below testicular torsion.

If high school kids think something is awesome, it should probably be our natural response to immediately forsake that very thing — I’m looking at you, Mr. Macklemore haircut. Once you’ve seen small-town marching band kids try to “Whip” and “Nae Nae” during halftime at a football game, you will never un-see it. It will haunt you so bad you’ll wonder if the ensuing migraine came from the song jabbing mercilessly at your eardrums or from physically cringing so hard you literally squeezed some of the juices out of your brain.

“Watch me Whip” is worse than longtime consensus-worst-song-ever “Achy Breaky Heart.” It actually has me missing the Black-Eyed Peas — not the good “Elephunk” Black-Eyed Peas either. I’m talking about the senior year of high school, Will.i.am shouting the days of the week because he no longer feels the need to write real lyrics Black-Eyed Peas.

I would rather sit through another summer of “I’ve Got a Feelin’” dominating every TV commercial and radio station than hear “Watch Me Whip” even one more time. If deleting every app on my phone was somehow guaranteed to rid the world of “Watch Me Whip,” I’d do it.

I tried to pull the worst of the worst lyrics from this song to share with you all how ridiculous it is in its written form, but it’s impossible to pick just one section since it’s pretty much all this —

Now watch me bop. Bop. Bop. Bop. Bop. Bop. Bop. Bop. Bop. (x2)

“Watch Me Whip” is what you get when a kid goofs around with Garageband on their new MacBook for a few minutes and discovers the microphone function. Hours of production and promotion went into creating a song you probably could’ve written by accident in a single afternoon by napping on your keyboard up on the third floor of the library.

It is an affront to everything good about music. It exists solely to back cheerleading routines and, evidently, to get high school student sections pumped up for the second half of a football game. And you know what the worst part is? After reading this column, you’re going to look it up to see what the heck I’m talking about, and then you won’t be able to get it out of your head.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

— Logan Jones is a junior majoring in journalism, because “being a hater” isn’t a major offered here at Utah State. Contact him at Logantjones@aggiemail.usu.edu or on Twitter @Logantj