Garbagemen

Crafting hip-pop and soft rock hits with such ease, they're often referred to as hit men--which would likely offend people that actually kill others for a living--this loathesome fivesome is responsible in large part for the continual dumbing down of modern music, and, most heinous of all their offenses, that godforsaken Hinder song.

If only Brian Howes would've just faded into obscurity like every other failed five years too late to the grunge bandwagon singer/songwriter whose debut album (that'd be under the alias Closure on TVT Records) totally flopped. ... Well, for starters, the world would've never had to endure the Hinder smash hit "Lips of an Angel" (he co-wrote it and produced it), which, is essentially, a weaker, lamer, more suicide-inducing version of the worst Nickelback B-side ever recorded. Given the other lifeless radio rock productions on Howes' resume--most recently Puddle of Mudd's latest masterpiece, as well as releases by newcomers Faber Drive and Rev Theory--his next venture isn't surprising at all: to create a new flavor of Vitamin Water derived from Nickelback front man Chad Kroeger's sweat.

JR Rotem: It'd be too easy to simply point out his last name is two letters off from rotten, which would describe all of the eerily similar productions on his hit list (don't the mind-numbed masses that eat this fodder up realize it's the same song over and over again?). Rotem, who may have hooked up with Britney Spears post-K Fed, rose to fame after producing one of her non-album tracks. He's since produced for other hot chicks that happened to get record deals that went nowhere: Christina Milian and Lindsay Lohan among them.

Closely associated with two of rock's most unfortunate sub genres of recent memory (emo and nu-metal) veteran producer Howard Benson is the go-to guy for sensitive man rock bands that like their guitars loud and their vocals fabricated. Odds are if you had the radio on in 2001, a Benson production was blaring through your speakers, though you'd likely be hard-pressed to differentiate (or even remember) the likes of Crazy Town, Hoobastank, P.O.D., Cold or Adema in 2008. Fittingly, as of late, Benson has produced trite emo acts My Chemical Romance and Saosin, the modern day equivalent of 80s hair metal acts like Bang Tango and Motorhead, two of his earliest resume entries.

Mutt Lange, far and away the eldest and luckiest SOB of the bunch, is inargubaly two steps up on the rest of the bunch as he actually landed Shania Twain (probably in return for writing a string of hits for her) and he produced several "classic" AC/DC albums (which is to say he wrote one song and varied one chord per song). But, unlike the other lowlifes, he's also the dude that cheated on Shania Frickin' Twain. To boot, Lange has had a hand in musical monstrosities for the past four decades (Boomtown Rats in the 70s, Loverboy in the 80s, Michael Bolton in the 90s and most recently Nickelback and The Coors).

Alas, if there ever was any justice in the world it's the sorta-downfall of Scott Storch. Storch, likely the world's only jewish hip-hop producer went from producing the likes of Paris Hilton, Lil Wayne and Brooke Hogan to bust in about five years flat. Despite charging upwards of $75,000 per track at his commercial peak, Storch failed--he argued it was due to financial mismanagement--to pay child support and property taxes and in turn had a yacht and Bentley repossessed. Sadly, things appear to be on the upswing for Storch, who was once romantically linked to Lil Kim, and, when not beefing with Timbaland over who actually wrote the hook on Justin Timberlake's smash "Cry Me A River," he's reportedly working on Ciara's newest genre-defying masterpiece.