Is there such a thing as an objectively ‘bad’ song?

Everyone has a song which irritates the hell out of them – but Achy Breaky Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus was found by one 2005 study to have been nominated most often as “the worst song ever”. The authors, academics from New Zealand and the US, listed a few reasons: awful lyrics, an overly simple melody, negative personal associations, but they also found that their respondents “wrestled – unsuccessfully – with the problem of providing a reasoned, rational analysis of a visceral response”.