Irrationally Hating Certain Singers

In Anne's case - Jennifer Rush. A quick perusal of wikipedia suggests this has been going on ever since the early eighties when a young Jennifer had an acrimonious split from Liverpool's goal sensation Ian Rush. Broken-hearted she broke up her eponymous Canadian heavy metal band and returned to her native Germany to perfect the power ballad, something she achieved with the Power of Love in 1985, at that time the biggest selling load of bollocks ever, and stayed that way until Frankie Goes to Hollywood's marvellous cover a few months later. Huey Lewis would later treat the song to a prance dance re-mix which rightly led to him being airbrushed out of musical history completely.

Anne hates her so much and so irrationally that Jennifer has become the benchmark of awfulness in our house, as in: "Brussel sprouts really are the Jennifer Rush of vegetables", or " Peter Crouch really is the Jennifer Rush of footballers" (although to be fair Jennifer is probably better at holding the ball up. And heading.) My guess is we've invoked her name more times than we've made love, and even once during: "For God's sake Gary, I'll do it myself,. You really are the Jennifer Rush of fucking."

My personal irrational hatred is Eva Cassidy. It's little known that Eva was the product of a brief liaison between David Cassidy and Suzi Quatro, whose dalliance in the toilet of a Texaco garage on the outskirts of Droitwich was later immortalised in Suzie's seminal punk classic "In the Can".

It's not just Eva's ability to suck all the soul and meaning out of hitherto pure and simple songs that is unparalleled, but that once a song has been Eva-ed we have to put up with a thousand reality TV contestants badly covering her own terrible covers. Of course, we shouldn't forget that Eva died tragically young, the victim of a vicious attack by her next door neighbour driven over the edge by a decade of incessant warbling and ridiculous phrasing.

Which singers do you irrationally love to hate?


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