It's never been my desire to devote an entire column to the rather negative task of exposing certain ugly truths of humanity. But as an old DJ on a radio show once proclaimed incessantly, "If the truth hurts, you will be in pain." It is my opinion that the worst song in the world has never really been exposed for what it is, and it is high time that someone addressed it in the open.

So it may come as some shock to know that you and virtually everyone you've ever met has sung the worst song in the world a number of times by now if they're old enough to read this. It's the song all of us will experience humiliation in singing, and even greater humiliation in hearing. It is a song of shame, disguised as celebration. It is a song which is never in key, never in time, and usually sung with the heartfelt enthusiasm of a child on Christmas morning having to say thank you for a sweater when he'd rather have a toy. It is a song that has been so overplayed, that in comparison, it makes every other song in history seem like a flash in the pan.

Like the great songs, it is also easily learned when we are small children, and is fun for a while - necessary, even. Insidious, really, because as the years go by, and we hear this song over and over, rather than getting better, it starts to produce an unsettling feeling that bothers us all just beneath the surface, that somehow, as a people, we can do better.

The song is "Happy Birthday," and something needs to change. It's too late to explain it to the children, and the best thing we can do is to sing it, when we must, with gusto, knowing in our hearts that any excuse to sing is probably a good one. As adults, though, we should start to replace it by asking our loved ones what song they would like to have sung to them on their special day. Perhaps then "Happy Birthday" could follow, once the weight of obligation has been lifted. And for the record, I'd like to kick things off from now on with a hearty "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."

The runner-up for worst song of the millennium is "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." Think about it - whenever that song is sung, you're more likely to get hit by a bottle than drink one. It inspires anger almost immediately. It's just dumb, which is why it's great to sing and even better to end as quickly as possible. The real proof of its badness, though, is this: nobody ever finishes it. Why? Not because it's too long, as one might expect. If that were the case, people would at least get past 97, or maybe 96. The only logical conclusion is that it's just a bad song. [Editor's Note: Incidentally, both of these songs were penned by the late Russian dissident composer Michael Eliot Gactin, sometime during the mid-czarist period. Their horribleness is understandable in light of the fact that toward the end of his life, when these songs were written, it was well known that as his mind was deteriorating, he took to walking around with dog shit crammed in his ears.]