I used to do Worst of the Year in Music columns as a jokey little counterpoint to all the best of the year lists floating around. Then 2020 happened and I did the worst of the year in a general sense, more or less totally forgetting my five-item list and music rules.

Then 2021 happened.

I am absolutely not going month-by-month to list all the worst things like I did last year. The last thing I want to do is relive 2021 in any way. Also, apparently this is still a music site so I still need to make it relate to music somehow. So here’s the plan: Here’s five of the worst things that happened in 2021, along with an appropriate soundtrack. I don’t dare rate the events in terms of badness so they appear in chronological order.

Jan. 6: A bunch of idiots tried to overthrow the government

You remember, of course, but we started the year with a bunch of weirdo yokels and conspiracy theorists joining forces with a bunch of cops and soldiers to storm the United States Capital and try to forcibly overturn the results of a fair election.

So many million words have been written about the insurrection that it’s not worth writing even more, but it’s just not a Worst of 2021 list unless it’s included, so here you are. Many of the wingnut participants have been arrested, charged and some even convicted, but only the ones without power. The politicians and public figures who organized it before the fact, supported and aided it while it was happening, and supported it after the fact have entirely escaped punishment.

Ugh. Just ugh.

The musical accompaniment is of course Kid Rock’s “Don’t Tell Me How To Live” featuring Monster Truck. It’s out of touch, unnecessarily angry, sounds like garbage, and yet is celebrated despite its objective lack of quality due solely to political fandom. Also, it’s by a rich guy who grew up in the suburbs who pretends to be white trash to take money from rubes. And I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of the Capital insurgents was named Monster Truck.

May 26: A gunman killed nine people and himself at a VTA rail yard in San Jose

This was horrible, but it’s a stand-in for the near-constant stream of mass shootings across the country. Boulder on March 22, Indianapolis on April 15; Colorado Springs on May 9; Hialeah, Florida on May 30. From June 11 to 13 there were seven mass shootings in El Paso, Castroville (California), Beaver Falls (Pennsylvania), New York, Iselin (New Jersey), Detroit and Indianapolis. That’s a different one in Indianapolis than the April shooting.

But we can’t actually do anything about it because if we ban guns, then what would stop bad guys from shooting people at will nearly every day?

I’m not even going to be sarcastic about this one. Here’s a Lana Del Rey song about the horror of mass shootings.

June 15: California lifted the mask mandate for outdoor activities

Good news, everyone! The pandemic is basically over, so we can ease health and safety rules! Nothing bad could possibly come from racing to reopen!

Weary sigh.

There are a lot of instances of governments, California included, caving to business interests and “reopening the economy” at the expense of public health, but this seems like one of the most important because at the time it seemed like such a clear signal that we could relax. Spoiler alert: We shouldn’t have relaxed.

The anti-vaxxers and the horse paste people did the most damage, but this sort of thing is a big part of why the pandemic is worse than ever as I write this. Republicans openly flaunted public health measures while Democrats paid lip service to them but the result was the same. Everyone did what business interests told them to do rather than protect their constituents.

I would pretend this is innocent, but after the last couple years I really don’t have faith in the average American to grasp subtlety so I’ll spell it out: This song is about premature ejaculation.

If only governments had some stamina, maybe we wouldn’t be in the teeth of what feels like the eighth or ninth wave in 2022.

Oct. 13: William Shatner went to space

I have no particular beef with William Shatner. Sure, he blocked me on Twitter because my coworker tweeted that I made a joke about liking Picard more and tagged me in it, and he’s turned into the stereotype of an old white guy, but I’m a huge “Star Trek” fan and he’s got really good comic timing.

No, Shatner makes the list because Jeff Bezos has the money to send Captain Kirk to space for no apparent reason while more and more people struggle to pay for basic needs like housing and food. It’s disgusting.

People like Bezos and Elon Musk, who fight against paying taxes and blow unfathomable amounts of money on frivolities while people around them suffer, is the best example of why that amount of wealth needs to be taxed until it’s impossible for one person to hoard. Bezos could give a random person $100,000 every hour on the hour 24/7 and not run out of money until the year 2244.

We’ve reached the point where Bezos looks like Lex Luthor and multiple billionaires are publicly working on leaving Earth itself before they finish destroying it for profit. Every time we try to tax the rich they throw a fit, so if they don’t like that, there’s only one thing to do from there. I think they’d like it even less.

Dec. 22: My beloved Camaro got stolen

Yeah, the rest of these are serious, weighty societal problems, but it’s my column so I get one complaint: My beloved car got stolen. They found most of it five days later, but since it’s missing its entire drive train along with the seats and some other important features, it’s gone.

I’ve written about my love of my car before, but if you missed it, trust me when I say this one hurt. At the end of a really long year, days before Christmas, with a couple gift cards I was going to give to relatives inside… ouch. What an end to a profoundly exhausting year.

At least it’s 2022 now so we can find out how things could conceivably get even worse. It’s almost exciting! The universe has been so creative lately. Maybe Lana Del Rey will release two more albums.

Follow editor Daniel J. Willis at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.