Awful Pauls

I have discovered an important theme in modern music. If I should die, please pass this on. People need to know. (See Boring Pauls here and Gorgeous Pauls here.)

Paul Rodgers

Rodgers qualifies for this list because he was a member of one of the worst rock bands in the history of all planetary axe-weilding. He co-wrote All Right Now which got the spirit of raaawk into a headlock and squeezed all the breath out of it. The single ummed up the sanitised, by-numbers music that later led to similar fayre in the form of Lenny Kravitz and posthumous Bob Marley singles.

Sean Paul

The ever-blazin' dancehall megastar imprinted himself onto the public consciousness like he was branding cattle. It doesn't change the fact that his hits such as We Be Burnin' and Baby Boy were the audio equivalent of listening to Stephen Hawking plugged directly into a malfunctioning karaoke machine. He had such a messiah complex, he called his third album The Trinity and gibes biblical-level wisdom to his Twitter followers: "If it glitters it dosnt have 2 B gold!!! It can B a fish scale! Carefullllll of dem fish!!!"

Paul Young

I don't need to tell you that this silk suited soulboy achieved an amazing feat of perfoming self-strangulation to get that distinctive vocal inflection. To say his saccharine pop slop has made the world a better place is akin to suggesting UB40 have made it immensely easy for ginger white musicians to be taken seriously for their reggae songs. He is now a member of some Mexican-themed 80s revival band (pictured) who recorded the song Do We Really Want The Same Things? Yes, Paul, you do: you'll never change.

Paul Gadd

I am a massive believer in astrology. So for example, I am a very typical... er... um... no, I have no idea about astrology, although I do have all the signs and dates memorised for pub quiz purposes. I do believe that the number one single at the time of your birth has an important bearing on your life and its various successes. So I will never forgive Paul 'Gary Glitter' Gadd for declaring "I'm the leader" at the moment my placental juices flopped onto the hospital table of life.

Paul McCartney

This pouting thumbs-alofting wannabe frog chorister destroyed all known music in the 1960s when he played a key part in a band that had a nice line in production techniques, boasted an uber-talented bespectacled songwriter, gave the world a Thomas The Tank Engine narrator, and yet was continuously thwarted by McCartney's attempts to turn every single track of the greatest group of its time into a simplistic, bedtime song predecessor to his pièce de ridiculance Mull Of Bloody Kintyre.

Paul Simon

If only The Sounds Of Silence had been taken literally. I'm crying as I write this. He wasn't only satisfied with playing carbunkle to the Garfunkle with the drippiest pairing in the history of drips, he then released the audio equivalent of the Guardian newspaper in the smug cloud formation of Graceland, an album so plainly awful and worthy, Coca Cola's pillaging of the developing world can only be seen as some kind of misplaced revenge attack.

More Pauls

This is not over, Pauls. I have a massive list of Pauls. There are more Pauls, although be assured the Pauls will get better from this moment on. What about the Pauls that are neither here nor there? The Boring Pauls? And then, there's the Gorgeous Pauls...