Sometimes an unexpected collaboration can add up to a refreshing sum greater than its parts. Beyonce and Jay-Z’s “Crazy in Love,” M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel’s She and Him, and John Legend and Andre 3000’s “Green Light” all come to mind.

Then there are the terrible ones. This list is dedicated to the top ten worst musical miscarriages of the last 10 years. Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry, some will make you scratch your head in confusion and some might compel you to punch in your computer screen. Without further ado, let the disastrous duos begin!

10. Weezer feat. Lil Wayne “Can’t Stop Partying”

This song hovers at the bottom rungs of the list because it sounds suspiciously like Weezer and Weezy know exactly just how terrible this is and that they’re secretly laughing along with us. But whether or not it’s so bad it’s good is off the table – it’s really just straight bad. The only idea more ludicrous than Lil Wayne agreeing to guest on this track is the image of the nebbish Rivers Cuomo (the man who wallowed in self-loathing on Weezer’s sophomore album “Pinkerton”) as a big league playa rolling with “the real big posse” to “V.I.P.” with some “Bottles of the Goose” while hot girls are “in the corner getting loose.” Ew, Rivers, ew.9. OneRepublic featuring Timbaland -- Apologize

Timbaland has done some stellar work with other artists throughout the decade – his producing for Missy Elliot and Justin Timberlake turned out some of the best pop the 21st century has seen so far. This one-off collaboration is not among such work. Apparently Timbaland selected some faceless band out of the sea of uninspired mopey white dudes, threw some old-school drum machine patterns over it, tossed off a couple “hey hey hey”s and chalked up another smash hit to his name. Timbaland FTW!

8. Lil Jon feat. Soulja Boy – G Walk

I had to dig deep for this one, but it was worth it so I could get my daily fix of musical masochism. Both Lil Jon and Soulja Boy are the kind of artists who are mildly entertaining in small doses – at the very least they can get you to chuckle at their clownishness. But when unleashed as a duo they turn into a cocktail of cracked-out screaming and garbled unintelligibility. Lay it all over an irritatingly heavy-hitting beat complete filled with buzz-saw synths and cracking drums and you’ve got a recipe for an instant headache.

7. Grizzly Bear feat. Michael McDonald -- “While You Wait for the Others”

Terrible pairings aren’t just the domain of hip-hop and R&B. The sweater-clad indie crowd often pulls it off pretty well too! This isn’t so much a collaboration as it is Michael McDonald barging in with his barrel-voiced schmaltz to take the place of Daniel Rossen’s far superior, nuanced original vocals. It sounds pretty funny for a second, but then it just turns into some surreal nightmare where all the good music out right now has been populated with singers that your mom listens to. Next up in your dream: Dirty Projectors’ “Stillness is the Move” featuring the vocal stylings of Tom Jones.

6. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne – Can’t Believe It

This inexplicable hit represents everything that’s awful about each of these artists without showing off any of their redeeming attributes or charm. T-Pain warbles all over the track in his grating Auto-Tune-laced blurts without finding any of the hooks that make many of his other tunes so catchy. And the lyrics are pretty questionable, even for T-Pain. Who the hell wants to live in a mansion when it’s in Wisconsin? Or a condo in Toronto? Is being able to afford upper-middle class abodes what constitutes braggadocio these days? Maybe it’s a recession thing. Then Lil Wayne mumbles his way through an awkward, codeine-informed verse, giving plenty of fuel for the anti-Weezy lobby. So yes, T-Pain, I also can’t believe it… I can’t believe that this directionless single got as high in the charts as it did.

5. Stevie Wonder and the Jonas Brothers -- Burnin’ Up and Superstition

Stevie Wonder isn’t one of those aging fuddy-duddy has-beens that just doesn’t get today’s music. He’s down with what the kids listen to. And by kids, I mean 11-year-old girls. This collaboration (fortunately) never made it to record. But that it even made it as far as a one-off Grammys performance is pretty odd. Was Stevie having some money troubles? I know he’s blind, but has he also gone deaf? As Nick Jonas himself says about a minute into the performance: C’mon Stevie…

4. Chris Cornell -- Part of Me (produced by Timbaland)

Like I said before, sometimes Timbaland has awesome tastes in artists to collaborate with. But of course that isn’t what this list is about. Enter ex-Soundgarden, ex-Audioslave, full-time ham Chris Cornell. Remarkably, this collaboration wasn’t just a one-time gig. They made a whole album of this shit! I could try to come up with some snarky description of the awfulness on display here, but Cornell’s machismo screaming paired with Timbaland’s formulaic beat embarrasses itself enough. Thanks for doing my job for me guys!

3. Nelly feat. Tim McGraw -- Over and Over

I almost admire the effort these guys are making. Marrying the most seemingly irreconcilable of Southern genres, hip-hop and country, seems like a respectable undertaking. Then the music kicks in and any disillusionment I had that this might’ve worked vanishes. The basic message behind the song and the video is that deep down inside, rappers and country singers are really the same. OK, I’ll buy it. But just because you guys both just got dumped doesn’t mean that McGraw’s twangy guitars and whiny crooning works in tandem with Nelly’s beats and sing-rapping. This is the musical equivalent of toothpaste and orange juice.

2. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony feat. Phil Collins “Home”

Whenever a hip-hop group features some old dude on a track, they usually have him lay a short hook over their beat. He comes to them, not the other way around. Which makes this track so great. Bone Thugs are basically rapping over a Phil Collins track with a snare on the 2s and 4s. World muzak beats and bubbly synths really don’t work under rhymes like “Casuse I’m ready for the kill on look out, look out / If you niggas try to run up on the Bone / I’ma show you like this I’ma pull out my chrome / I don’t wanna have to send a nigga home.” It’s curious to think about who the target audience for this song is. I can’t imagine either the soccer moms who like Phil Collins or the street-smart ruffians who listen to Bone Thugs enjoying this. At least we get to see Collins, in all black attire, staring deeply off into space for four minutes while the Bone Thugs strike gangsta poses around him.

1. Linkin Park and Jay-Z feat. Paul McCartney -- “Numb/Encore” and “Yesterday”

Well here it is… the worst collaboration of the whole decade. This veritable three-way clusterfuck of atrociousness set the bar pretty high for awful collaborations. The first part of this performance is just your run-of-the-mill bad. Sure, Jay-Z and Linkin Park make for a pretty terrible combination, but it isn’t until Macca himself saunters onto the stage that this affair becomes truly horrible. Sometimes seeing artists from different generations bond through music can be touching and sometimes it can be an utter train wreck. Priceless moments from this aural wreckage include the awkward “uh-huh”s and “that’s right”s Jay-Z spits over Sir Paul’s warbling, Chester’s overblown harmonizing (we get it, you’ve had singing lessons, now calm down) and Paul’s cringe-inducing attempt to hug Jay and Chester at the end of the performance.

I hope you enjoyed our stroll down memory lane, listening to all these gems of musical mismatches. If you can think of any terrible collaborations from the last ten years that deserve to be on this list, post them in the comments!

Links: YouTube