Maura Johnston and Christopher R. Weingarten of the Village Voice have put together their list of the 20 worst pop songs of 2010. No 1: “Hey Soul Sister” by Train. Whether or not you agree with their list, you’ll find mucho laughs in some of their scathingly over-the-top descriptions of the songs they loathed. Nothing like disgust to bring out the best in a rock writer.

Here’s an example of the literary heights and lows that Johnston and Weingarten achieve in their all-out assault on music that gets them pissed off:

The chorus is jacked from an even worse place. “Hey Soul Sister” is an orgy where bad ideas trade STDs, and the most syphilitic brain-fart stumbled in drunk from a Smash Mouth show. (For those of you who arrived late, Smash Mouth was a band from the late ‘90s that was formed when a soul patch met cake frosting. Their wikki-wikki scratching and dorkpie hats did to music what blood-soaked clowns do to the dreams of sleeping children.) Listen to “Hey, Soul Sister” a few times and you’ll inevitably be reminded of the “whistling solo” from the Shrek house band’s inescapable “All Star.” From Smash Mouth, Train picked up an earworm that burrowed into society’s asshole, laid 4.7 million iTunes eggs, and gave birth to a grey cloud of banality that covers the Earth.

And just think: When your shitty kid marries someone you violently disapprove of 20 years from now, this song—with its references to blowjobs and songs that were ground into the ground before the kid was a twinkle in your eye—will serve as the couple’s first dance. As you watch your offspring and new in-law twirl around the dance floor, you will reach for a glass of Champagne Loko (President Kid Rock won’t try to ban the stuff until he’s up for re-election in 2032) and wonder how everything went so, so wrong.”

To see the list of 20 crimes against pop music and read more scorched-earth reviewing go to the Voice website here.

Train doing their big hit on the Ellen DeGeneres Show.