Jan Terri and the 10 most unintentionally brilliant YouTube music videos ever

YouTube can be an amazing platform for musicians to showcase their tracks on. Love him or loathe him, Justin Bieber for instance used the video hosting site to find fame, going on to become a worldwide superstar at the tender age of just 15.

But for every success story, there are inevitably a hundred failures riding a wave of mediocrity down the drain and out into the great ocean of musical sewage. YouTube is a veritable goldmine of unintentionally hilarious music videos, and today here at Tech Digest we’ve been compiling our ten favourites. Some of these are well known virals, some of them have not enjoyed such widespread “acclaim”. The one thing they all have in common? They’re all truly, truly awful.

Jan Terri – Lose You Tonight

We’ll kick proceedings off with a classic. Limo driver by day, Jan Terri’s crooning vocal sees her turn into a rock vixen by night. By “vixen”, we mean she sings with a shriek similar to that of a brawling urban fox after a night on the tiles round the back of the bins behind the kebab shop. Jan Terri apparently played at one of Marilyn Manson’s birthday parties. Confrontational as he is, we can only imagine Manson had a soft spot for Terri’s unique “having an argument with my own song” performance style. Keep an eye out for the shot by the sewage-run off too, a superbly apt location we feel.

Majela Ze Ze Diamond – Show Me Your Genitals

Firstly, a word of warning. This video, lyrically at least, is pretty NSFW. Call me prudish, but Majela Ze Ze Diamond, surely an internet star in the making, has a knack for slipping in the odd below the belt anatomical detail into the words of her songs. It all gets a bit hypnotic by the end, and by the 500th time Majela offers to show you her genitalia, you’re all but ready to submit. Key line? “Men are good for money, sex and vagina”. Indeed. Make sure to check out Majela’s other “hit”, Tickle My Vagina, when you’re done.

Manakin – Something is Locked Inside of My Soul

Disregarding the musical “wizardry” going on in the background (which incidentally sounds more than a little bit like the theme tune to kids’ dungeons and dragons TV show Knightmare), the real star of 70s rockers Manakin is their rather limber frontman and his collection of creepy masks that appear to be made of human flesh. Keep an eye out for Jerry Lewis at the end of the performance, his usually uber-professional TV persona stunned into a faltering mess. If Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill were ever to start a prog-rock band, it’d probably sound a lot like this…

Maxine Swaby – Pardon Me

It’s hard to put my finger on what makes Maxine Swaby such an important force in music today. Sometimes I think it’s the “end of the pier” production sound her songs carry, other times how she brings some much needed glamour to the video’s rural locales with her array of nautical-themed costumes. But the truth of the matter is, they don’t call Maxine Swaby “The Voice” for nothing. YouTube commentator manbearpigisalive sums it all up far more eloquently than I ever could: “She sounds like she’s being microwaved”.

Rap Against Rape – What Did I Do Wrong?

In what is surely the most unintentionally unsympathetic treatise against rape of all time, Dublin-based Rap Against Rape attempt to fight sex crime with this banging 90’s dance tune. “What did I do wrong?” cries the refrain. Going ahead with this ill-conceived mess for starters. Rumour has it this inspired the short-lived “Rape Against Rap” movement. Oh, and keep an eye out for Tom Selleck’s cameo freestyle halfway through too.

Reh Dogg – Why Must I Cry?

With nearly 4 million YouTube views, Reh Dogg enjoys a level of notoriety few other “stars” on this list can lay claim to. A pioneer of “emo rap”, Reh Dogg’s lyrics deal with poverty and issues relating to accepting an unsatisfactory body image, as well as wanting to get with Asian women, and failing to get with said Asian women. He’d probably have a better chance sorting out that last problem if he didn’t keep posting videos of himself all-but naked in the shower.

Anonymous 80s bizarreness…

Words cant really do justice to this one. While the initial purpose/meaning behind this video may forever be lost in time, at least we can all sleep safe in the knowledge that floral shirts, shorts, white knee-socks and red pumps are no longer considered a legitimate outfit for a full-grown man.

Steklovata – Novi God

Just like with the complete works of Shakespeare, give a gang of monkeys access to a bluescreen, the internet and infinite amounts of time, and one day they’ll strike pop-gold with an MTV-defining music video. The problem with humanity is that offer the same parameters to four men and they’ll settle with giving birth to the hellspawn that is Russian boy-band Steklovata, seen here with their hit “Novi God”. That said, I’d choose Steklovata over Justin Beiber any day of the week…

Lori Watt – Chill in my Veins

I was in two minds whether or not to post this video, as I just couldn’t be sure that mental illness, which isn’t at all funny, didn’t factor into proceedings somewhere along the line with this tune. Thankfully, for the sake of my soul, I’ve been reassured that Lori Watt is perfectly healthy, and just a shockingly bad musician. Amazingly, this was played on TV in New Zealand, supposedly without a hint of irony.

Speak – Stop the War

If only Hungarian rapper-cum-anti-war-philanthropist Speak had been around before all of history’s greatest conflicts! We’d so be living in the post-nuclear apocalypse wasteland, overrun by mutants, that I’ve been training for my entire life! Oh, and just so you know for next time Speak, doves are the international symbol of peace, not white pigeons. An easy mistake to make when you’re this damn cool though we suppose…

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