It's stunning to learn that others don't share our tastes. Then again, how did an entire generation embrace faux wood paneling, shag carpets and putting thick plastic on their furniture? Well, someone thought it was a great idea!

Hey, I like Bob Dylan's voice and kept him off this list because I could! Instead, I found the ten singers most likely to make you drive off the road.

Now that's a terrible fate. Not only are you stranded in some ditch, but you're stuck listening to one of these ten singers, who it would seem are singing that way just to mock you. Oh, the injustice.

10) Celine Dion: I know there are millions of people who would beg to disagree, but let's get real, people. She sings 15 notes where one would suffice and turns every song into an anthem for self-empowerment. It's like getting an hour of Oprah condensed into four minutes. She sings. It's time to start the lawnmower.

9) John Mayer: Young people are impressionable. I'm not sure where John Mayer learned his vocal craft. I hesitate to call it singing. It's more like whimpering. And for some reason, this has become a trend not stopping anytime soon. As you'll sadly learn as we go further down this list.

8) Conor Oberst: As the wunderkind who leads Bright Eyes, Conor Oberst was given a certain amount of leeway since he was a young teen when he started out and his precious singing--so sensitive and intimate you could hear the post-nasal drip--was mistaken as precocious. Well, he's in his 20s now and he still sounds like he's swimming back to the womb for protection from this hard, harsh world. Come on buddy, stand up straight and stop trying to imitate the Cure's Robert Smith. He got there first. And even he must know he sounds a little silly.

7) Lily Allen: Contrary to this column, I want to like fresh, young talent. I want to hear singers bring true commitment to their material. The first time I heard Lily Allen I thought it was quaint. Then it seemed every young female singer was determined to sing just like her, as if they're running out of air in their lungs and have to get back to the respirator before the next verse begins. Sure, she's bouncy and spunky. But if I might quote what Lou Grant once told Mary Tyler Moore: I HATE SPUNK.

6) Devendra Banhart / Tiny Tim: I'm not convinced they're not the same person. Tiny Tim was a novelty item singing with that stupid ukulele something about tiptoeing through the tulips. Anyone with any half sense would know it was novelty item that shouldn't be used as the basis for an entire recording career. And for thirty years, it wasn't, until freaky-folk dude Devendra Banhart showed up and started warbling in that unlistenable, untrained vibrato the kind of nonsensical lyrics that didn't sound all that great back when people were taking the kinds of drugs you're supposed to be on in order to enjoy it.

5) James Blunt: All this talk in the media about whether or not waterboarding is torture is moot. Forcing anyone to listen to "Beautiful" on repeat constitutes torture. You want my darkest, deepest secrets? This guy's quivering voice gets you my social security number, my mother's maiden name, my personal PIN and any random government secrets I'm currently harboring.

4) Frankie Valli: Frankie Valli was a hero to some back in his day. I grant you this. He was consistent! He consistently sang in a voice designed to send dogs running for cover and perfect for breaking glass. "Rag Doll, " "Sherry," "Dawn," "Big Girls Don't Cry," the list is enormous. He very well could be tried as a war criminal. Who would object? Seriously? Who?

3) Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins): Yes, despite all his rage he's still just a rat in a cage. Unfortunately, that cage came with a microphone for him to transmit his Smashing Pumpkins hits to a helpless, hapless world at large. While Billy could orchestrate grand walls of guitar and write albums of endless tuneage, he insisted on singing it himself. Except this is not singing in any conventional sense, but rather the sound of a petulant, whiny child. This is what happens when parents don't tell their kids to shut up often enough. Children need to know you don't like them.

2) Scott Stapp (Creed): We could probably start laying the blame on Bono, Eddie Vedder, Jim Morrison and that guy from Blood, Sweat and Tears, but in the end it's Scott Stapp who epitomizes that macho bellow that sounds like a man who's gone overboard at the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet and has just received spiritual orders to let everyone know they're going to hell if they don't save themselves somehow. His spiritual torment becomes your problem. Thanks, pal.

1) Michael Bolton: OK, this was easy. C'mon, you knew Mr. Bolton would top the list. Who else can take a love song and turn it into a hernia? When a man loves a woman he doesn't do so by screaming in her ear--so why should it be acceptable for a man to sing a sensitive love song as if he's directing traffic for the hearing impaired? R&B classics deserve their place in musical history and should be protected from this man's desecration of all that is holy. It's only right. Let's make it a law.

The Ten Cheesiest Singers Of All-Time

Using the word "cheesy" to describe someone's singing isn't often looked upon as a compliment. However, this is show-biz and a certain amount of Velveeta is often necessary if you're going to be an entertainer. People come to your shows to see something larger than life. If they wanted to watch a bunch of average joes in everyday threads shyly singing into their armpits, they could attend a Yo La Tengo concert.

But some singers take cheese beyond one of the basic food groups and turn it into a way of life. Donny Osmond and his entire oversmiling family have made "corny wholesomeness" an accepted media trend. Donny (not even "Don") makes John Denver seem nutritious by comparison.

Over the years, there have been plenty of obvious ham and cheese puffs. Anyone who performs a showtune is embedded with cheese. So when devising this list of the cheesiest singers, it was important to choose singers who didn't have to resort to such over-the-top drama, singers who could've just sang the damn song and been done with it. But no--they insisted on a little Feta, a little Provolone to go along with the act.

10) Billy Joel: Billy Joel could've been a convincing rock 'n' roll guy, but he had too much of the "drunk uncle at the wedding" in him to tone it down. He's a natural born ham likely to give himself a heart-attack-yack-yack-yack with all his extra showbiz flourishes. It hasn't done him any good with critics, but his fans love the extra schmaltz.

9) David Lee Roth: David Lee Roth is perhaps the only hard rock singer who actually gets it. There are plenty of other hard rock singers, including his eventual replacement in Van Halen, Sammy Hagar, who are cheesy without wit, without self-knowledge. But DLR knew what he was doing and he reveled in his role as not only the lead singer of a hard rock band, but as the carnival barker eager to sell you whatever you might be interested in purchasing. Not just a gigolo, but the gigolo.

8) Barry Manilow: You can't sing "Mandy" or "Looks Like We Made It" or "Daybreak" or just about anything in this man's catalog without feeling a little foolish, without breaking into a laugh with friends. Yet we suspend out belief and pretend it isn't silly, as if somehow beyond the hallmark sentiments rests a universal human truth that at heart we are all made of blood, water, skin, bone and perpetual corniness.

7) Morrissey: Whether solo or with the Smiths, Morrissey turned every hangnail into a life or death situation. He over-dramatized getting a job. As if somehow applying for employment steals one's soul, rendering them useless to the rest of humanity and to their true self. He blames the failures of his love life on what? Getting caught wearing a Wal-Mart smock?

6) David Clayton-Thomas (Blood Sweat And Tears): Yes, he's made us so very happy, he's so GLAD he's come into our lives. Aside from inspiring an entire generation of future grunge rockers (Eddie Vedder, call the main office), DCT with Blood, Sweat and Tears helped redefine the schmaltz of ‘70s AM radio. While they never ventured into the icky love sentiments of Bread (responsible for "Make It With You" and "Baby I'm A Want You"), DCT with just that vibrato-laden voice of his made everything from "Spinning Wheel" to "And When I Die" sound like it was coming from another planet of emotionally distraught aliens.

5) Tom Jones: Everything Tom Jones touches turns to kitsch. Whether it's Rod Stewart ("Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?"), Prince ("Kiss") or one from the Bacharach-David songbook ("What's New, Pussycat?"), Jones delivers it all with the shameless come-on of a guy with an over-obvious one-track mind. There's no studied aloofness here, no "cool guy" routine. He's letting you know why he's in the room. The men don't know, but the little girls--and the older ones with the blue hair--understand.

4) Meatloaf: From the sound effects of the motorcycles revving to the play-by-play announcements from Phil Rizzuto, Meat Loaf albums are jammed with overwrought details and emotion that suggest he's likely to suffer a coronary before he finds true love. He makes Bruce Springsteen sound restrained. I'm still not sure what he won't do for love, but I do know that he'll tell us with every last melodramatic trill he has left in his still-beating heart.

3) Cher: You always know it's Cher. She's incapable of singing anything without sounding overexcited and like she's being beamed in from another era. She vamps, she tramps, she sings like her gaudy, risqué stage outfits coming to life. When they added the vocoder to her voice for "Believe," coming from her it was as if it was completely natural.

2) Neil Diamond: He's a living legend and he deserves to be in the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame as much as the Dave Clark Five, the Lovin' Spoonful, the Eagles and Billy Joel. But for some reason, Neil's considered too showbiz. Yeah, a band that sang about "Me and You and Rain on the Roof" isn't too cutesy, but the guy who gave us "Solitary Man" and "Cracklin' Rosie" is taking things too far. Of course, he is. He's a cornball! If you don't act like a complete idiot singing along to "I Am, I Said," then you simply aren't singing it right!

1) Michael Buble: I've bestowed this honor on Michael because he's the most recent addition to our canon of shameless audience pandering performers--those who give the people what they want whether they really should or not. Frank Sinatra he's not. Dean Martin? Not even close. His pick of tunes makes Kenny G look like a music connoisseur. But everything he sings, he sings as if the past five decades never happened. And that is an accomplishment all its own. Cheeze-whiz for everyone!