In mid January 2023, we talked about who gets to decide what is a "good" or "bad" song (we agreed that each person gets to decide for themselves), but that in general, most people have similar ideas about what would be unpleasant to listen to.
We listened to some Schoenberg, a composer who broke a lot of rules about writing music, and his use of "sprechstimme" or speak-singing in Pierrot Lunaire, which some students loved and others thought was strange,
...we listened to some John Cage, another composer who broke a lot of rules about writing music, and his piece Water Walk, and we disagreed more strongly about whether or not it was music,
...and then we worked on creating our own Most Unwanted Songs (here are our recordings),
...and then we listened to The Most Unwanted Music which was an avant-garde novelty song created by artists Komar and Melamid and composer Dave Soldier in 1997. The song was designed to incorporate lyrical and musical elements that were annoying to most people. Some classes only got through a minute or so, others listened to more of it.
It was a lot of fun, and we learned a lot!