Year-End Post #2: The Top 10 Worst Hits Songs of 2018

2018 is officially over kinda. Well, the Billboard Chart Year is over and since I blog about music I'm basing the year being over on that. This year was basically the first year I got into popular music. But oh god why did I have to chose this year to get into popular music? 2018 had a ton of terrible songs, and quite a few of them became hits. In order to qualify for this list, a song had to appear on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End list for 2018. So basically that's my way of saying Without Me will not be not be on here. See you next year, Halsey!

But there is one other qualification. On basically every other worst list, the five collective Year-End songs from XXXTENTACION and 6ix9ine are on the list, and for good reason. All five of them suck. But you see for my list I want to do something different. I just honestly don't have fun writing about these guys, so I've decided to do a worst list without them, ya know so I can include songs that are fun to talk about. I did, however, include their songs in the first draft of this list. Here are their original positions:

• XXXTENTACION - changes (#7) (I did review this one, tell me if you'd like to read it)
• 6ix9ine/Nicki Minaj/Murda Beatz - FEFE (#5)
• XXXTENTACION - Moonlight (#4)
• 6ix9ine - GUMMO (#3)
• XXXTENTACION - SAD! (#2)

Without further ado, here are the top 10 worst hit songs of 2018:


You know who I don't like? Imagine Dragons. They're a boring sell-out band with absolutely no life to them. They had quite a few Year-End list songs, and while I don't mind Natural at all, the other two are not good. But the worse song stands out pretty clearly:

10. Imagine Dragons - Thunder

.....Actually, I'm putting both their songs on the list:

10b. Imagine Dragons - Whatever It Takes

Yeah I'm putting two Imagine Dragons songs on here. They had another year-end list appearance in Natural, but I honestly do not mind that song at all. These two songs are a very different story though. I guess we'll tackle Thunder first, as I suppose if I HAD to choose Thunder is slightly worse. Everything about this song is just stale and boring, and it's been done better by other artists. Sure, the lyrics about how Dan Reynolds was bullied as a child are fine, but the big problem is there's no detail. The lyrics are just a bunch generalities. The production is basically a rip off of Royals in the verses, and oh god that chorus. The high pitched vocals are so awful. Like I don't know how this got green-lighted. Also, in the verses Reynolds does this really annoying thing with his voice where he goes up on the last note of every line, which leaves an unresolved conclusion to the measure and is very unsatisfying. Also, there's the problem of Dan Reynolds himself. I don't like his voice. Whatever It Takes is also extremely generic. Here Reynolds tries his hand at speak-rapping. But that's just in the verses. In the pre-chorus, he annoyingly repeats every word at the end of each line, which once again is just not enjoyable to listen to. The lyrics are extremely generic, but it's Imagine Dragons what do you expect. The chorus is grating as all hell. And honestly, these songs are both so damn generic it feels wrong to pick one over the other. So they're both here.

I seem to be the only one who really doesn't hate Maroon 5's new music. I don't mind Cold or Don't Wanna Know, and Girls Like You and What Lovers Do are both great. But even I can't defend this:

9. Maroon 5 - Wait

I did have this in blue for quite a bit of it's countdown run. But I re-listened to it for this list and oh my god what I was thinking. I think the best way to review this is to see what worked about the two singles from this album I liked.

Girls Like You:

Great guest verse from Cardi B

Slick guitar line

Generic lyrics, but not actively bad ones

Blocked Lucid Dreams from hitting #1

What Lovers Do

Great guest vocals from SZA

Awesome bassline

Generic lyrics, but not actively bad ones

Wait

No guests. Just Adam Levine

Skittering trap beat

Levine whines about his ex and talks about drunkenly crashing a part of hers

But you know what else made me hate this song even more? Hearing it over. And over. And over. And over. And over. And over again. When I was at camp over the summer, we had one pop station. And Wait was like their most played song. So yeah, while I don't hate this just due to overplay, that certainly didn't help. I have absolutely no desire to ever hear this song again, which makes it worthy of a spot on this list if you ask me.

.....yawn

8. Ed Sheeran & Beyoncé - Perfect Duet

Yes I'm reviewing the duet. It was credited as such for a while, and oh my god the duet is so much worse. The original has nice simplicity and overall while I don't like it, it was never gonna be on this list. But the duet. It's really awful. First of all, the elephant in the room is Ed Sheearn and Beyoncé stunning lack of chemistry. Ed is trying to sing this as a very genuine song. But Beyoncé is on a whole different wave length. She completely oversings here. Almost every line she sings has some sort of vocal riff that are all completely unnecessary and totally take me out of the song. There is one thing that isn't overdone though: the production. It just doesn't go anywhere. It's the same weak guitar the entire damn time. I don't mind acoustic guitar songs, but they need two things for me to like them. The first is that the main guitar riff has to be good, which it is not here. And secondly, the chords needs to change. I barely here a single chord change here. Also those gospel vocals are unnecessary. In the end, I doubt Perfect would have gotten as big as it did if it weren't for this duet. And maybe we would have all been better for it.

You know who I didn't need in my life? A man who is a mix between Eminem at his worst and G-Eazy.

7. NF - Let You Down

NF kinda just takes the worst elements of the biggest male "pop" rappers (aka non-Drake rappers who get radio play(aka white rappers)). He's a blatant copy of Eminem's worst era, he has G-Eazy's charisma but none of his good choice in guest features, and he takes all of Macklemore's awkward flows without any of the charm. So yeah. I don't like this guy. I don't think he brings anything to the music scene and I'm baffled why he's becoming a thing. But this is his first (and likely only) hit. While I hate Lie much more than this, that's not saying much as this song still sucks. First of all whyyyyy with the chipmunk vocals. Who genuinely likes those ear-piercing, screechy sounds that artists use all the time. And the worst offense of them all is that he put it in the hook. Like Jesus Christ who is the producer making all these terrible choices? Well apparently both producers who made this track have NF as the biggest name they've produced for and yeah I can see why (except one of the guys co-proudced Meant To Be as well which yeesh back track record). The production is dull and has no life to it whatsoever. But the thing I've always hated most about NF is his lyricism. He spends the verses going off against his father trying and he does the thing I hated about him in Lie as well: he paints the whole situation desperately trying to get sympathy. But then it all switches up in the hook where he "sings" about being sorry for letting his dad down. NF, what side do you want us to take here man? Honestly, I'm probably going to forget this in a year, so let's just move on with the list.

There's people in the blogging community who seem to dislike almost all modern rap music. While I do like quite a bit of rap music, I really don't get the appeal of this guy:

6. Juice WRLD - Lucid Dreams

I did originally have this spot going to All Girls Are The Same. But then that missed the year-end list so we're talking about Lucid Dreams today. I don't like it, in case you couldn't already tell. There was a good period of time when I didn't hate this. Sure, Juice WRLD is not a good singer. And sure, the lyrics are god awful (more on those in a minute). But hey at least it has a decent beat. Then I found out he stole the beat from Sting. Also no, this is not sampling. Sampling implies modifying and retooling the borrowed element from another song. He just ripped this beat straight off of someone else's song. So now let's get into the real meat of the song: the lyrics. Because they really suck. A lot. Here are a few of my personal *favorites*:

• "It's to the point where I love and I hate you And I cannot change you so I must replace you (oh)"

Real classy there, Juice.

• "I know that you want me dead
  I take prescriptions to make me feel a-okay"

Great impression for young people Mr. WRLD.

• "I have these lucid dreams where I can't move a thing"

Why does it not surprise that a man calling himself Juice WRLD doesn't know what a "lucid dream" really is.

• "You were made outta plastic (fake)
  I was tangled up in your drastic ways
  Who knew evil girls have the prettiest face?"

I got nothing here. Just like read the lyric for this one. So yeah this all seems pretty bad. But you know what's even worse? The song spending 25 weeks in the top 10. It has a legitimate chance to make the decade end list. I wish I could say I was surprised

Plenty of previously established artists continued to have success in 2018. Drake being the most obvious, but we still had people like Ariana Grande getting top 10 hits. But there's one established artist who got a top 10 hit that I really didn't need back in my life.

5. Lil Dicky/Chris Brown - Freaky Friday

This should be fun. I'm going to start with the actual musical elements of this one, and then we'll get into the main attraction. I don't hate the beat here. I don't like it, its generic as hell (hi DJ Mustard), but its not terrible. What are terrible are our performers. Lil Dicky has made songs I at least find funny before. I don't think he's a good rapper, but he can be funny. But here he just sucks. He struggles to stay on beat, which is almost impressive because this is like the world's easiest beat to stay on. Chris Brown uses more autotune in a single line here than basically everyone on the rest of my list combined. Now let's get into the fun part: the lyrics. We start off with Lil Dicky suddenly waking up in Chris Brown's body. And he (and by that I mean Chris Brown) spends the rest of the song talking about how great Chris Brown is. Dicky as Brown is where things are really bad though. He talks about his "controversial past" which is just uncomfortable to think about. At the end of the song, we get the true moral of the story: Chris Brown just needs to love himself more. Hey I'm all for self-love, but Christopher already seems to love himself quite a bit. Is it even possible to love yourself more than Chris Brown loves himself? I don't know. These are the questions that keep me up at night. So yeah this song sucks in pretty much every aspect. Next!





Shit I should probably talk about the outro. I mean, I don't want because this outro involves people I like, but there's really no getting out of this one. First up to the mic is Ed Sheeran, who sings about how lame being Ed Sheeran is compared to being Chris Brown which yeah.... Sheeran has been involved with one of the top 2 biggest songs of the year since 2015. Chris Brown has to collaborate with Lil Dicky to stay relevant. I think we know who's winning this one. Next up is DJ Khaled, and not gonna lie this part is kinda funny. He basically just jokes about how he yells so much. But any small amount of good will Dicky had gotten from that punchline is immediately thrown away with the Kendall Jenner part which is just gross. For real this time, next!

I'm honestly very impressed by the single choice of Drake's team this year. Scorpion was not a good album, but his team was able to cherry pick some of the best songs as singles. But they also made this a single:

4. Drake - I'm Upset

Where to begin with easily Drake's worst song to date... I guess we can start with the two reasons why this was a hit: stupid beef with Pusha T and Scorpion dropping. Aka two events I'd rather not re-visit, as I find rap beefs pointless and Scorpion was mediocre as fuck. You can tell with this song that it was put together in like a day to respond to Pusha. The production tries to be dark and minimalist, but just ends up being underwhelming. Drake loses anything that ever made him interesting as he mumbles through passive-agressive disses at Pusha and defending himself. Then he complains about having to pay child support. Real classy there Drake. He also does the annoying thing where he goes higher on the last note of every line which once again leads to a really unsatisfying conclusion. I will never understand why we allowed this to make the Year-End list.

Before I cut all the 6ix9ine and XXX out, this wasn't on the list because I had forgot it existed. But now that I had the misfortune of remembering it...

3. Lil Pump - Gucci Gang

Awful song, ooh, yeah, Nick Perkins, yeah, Awful song, ooh

Awful song, Awful song, Awful song, Awful song, 

Awful song, Awful song, Awful song (Awful song!)

Spend two minutes listening

My friend love play the song, ooh

Listen to it, I forgot the tune

I won't buy a Lil Pump album now

Rather go and buy good tunes

Awful song, Awful song, Awful song (Awful song!)

Awful song, Awful song, Awful song (Awful song!)

Awful song, Awful song, Awful song (Awful song!)

Spend two minutes listening

My friend love play the song, ooh

Listen to it, I forgot the tune

I won't buy a Lil Pump album now

Rather go and buy good tunes

Awful song, Awful song, Awful song, Awful song

My ears hurt after hearing, ooh

Would much rather live in a tent, yeah

Than hear this song again, huh

Me and my grandma hate it, ooh

None of this shit sound good to me

Wow this line is messed up

Bought some good tunes, sound hella good

Fuck this song, fuck it's follow-ups
But not I Love It because its great
I'd rather listen to some other songs
They kicked someone off a plane because they tried
To play Gucci Gang on the flight
Everybody screaming "fuck that guy!"
Nick Perkins still skip this song
But seriously America
How did this become a hit again?

Awful song, Awful song, Awful song, Awful song, 

Awful song, Awful song, Awful song (Awful song!)

Spend two minutes listening

My friend love play the song, ooh

Listen to it, I forgot the tune

I won't buy a Lil Pump album now

Rather go and buy good tunes

Awful song, Awful song, Awful song (Awful song!)

Awful song, Awful song, Awful song (Awful song!)

Awful song, Awful song, Awful song (Awful song!)

Spend two minutes listening

My friend love play the song, ooh

Listen to it, I forgot the tune

I won't buy a Lil Pump album now

Rather go and buy good tunes

Awful song, Awful song, Awful song, Awful song

Nick Perkins, yeah, Nick Perkins, ooh

Not gonna lie this was really close to being my #1.

2. Marshmello/Anne-Marie - FRIENDS

If you expected this to be my #1, I totally understand that. Because I hate this song. And I had it in orange for months during it's countdown tenure. Fun fact: I liked this song the first time I heard it. But after a week, I was wondering what the hell I had been thinking? Technically this song is credited to Marshmello, so let's talk about his part first. It sucks. The production is clunky and he seems like he put no effort into the song. The awkward build up into the chorus highlights this fact. Next up we have Anne-Marie who delivers what must be her worst vocal performance to date. She barely even sings here, as most of the song is dominated by her incredibly grating speak-rapping. Now let's talk about the part of the song that both of these artists get blamed for: the lyrics. Basically its all about Anne-Marie friendzoning some dude, hence it being the "Official Freindzone Anthem". But here's my question: why the fuck would you want to brag about making that song? No likes friendzoning or being friendzoned. Hell, we had a song this year that dealt with the topic of friendzoning very well (more on that during my best list), but of course this was the bigger hit. But ok, friendzoning. I guess it could've worked. But not the way they do it. The guy in this story comes off as obsessive and creepy, so the logical move would just be to cut him off right? Well, yes. But Anne-Marie is determined as fuck to friendzone him. I don't get it, man, I don't get it. I will never understand how this got so big.

Throughout this list, I've complained about many things. Some of my picks are on here because they're lifeless dregs. Some are here due to their terrible lyrics. Some are here due to their terrible vocals. A lot of my picks has multiple of these characteristics. My bottom 5 (including my #1) have all of them. But I can say one thing to defend my other picks: they don't waste 7 minutes of my time.

1. Casper Magico/Nio Garica/Darell/Nicky Jam/Ozuna/Bad Bunny - Te Boté Remix

Yeah, this is my worst song of the year. I hate the beat here. It's lifeless and has no energy to it. The producer here doesn't even have a Wikipedia page, which is probably deserved. Also the song is 7 FUCKING MINUTES LONG. 7. Minutes. Of. Pure. Torture. Anyways, since we've got 6 different artists and 7 minutes of lyrics to break down let's go through it piece by piece. First up to the mix is Ozuna. I don't like him. I think he sounds like hot garbage here. Who said he should try elongating his syllables exactly? Because if you can't sing in general, that's probably not a good idea. Anyways, what insight into this breakup does Ozuna have for us? Well, just that he dumped this girl and sent her to hell. You know, the normal reaction for a breakup. Up next is Bad Bunny, who does his typical slurring syllables together and doesn't sound good at all here. Also, he brags about not recycling. Now we have lesser known artist Darell sounding just as terrible as the rest, but he may just have the worst lines out of anyone so far. He brags about nailing his ex's friend and then just flat out says "fuck you, bitch". In his verse, we just kinda get more of the same from Darell, which for the record is a very bad thing. Also the third hook is incredibly grating. Now we have Casper Magico talking about how he doesn't get heart broken anymore, he breaks hearts....and then says "you broke my heart". Also he brags about having "lots of $100 rolls" which feels very out of place with all their "angst". Well fuck Ozuna is back. He talks more about how much this girl broke his heart, along with bragging about nailing her friend. Sadly, Ozuna may be the best part of this song. He's not good. At all. He's extremely awful. But like the rest of them suck more. Nio brings us a bitter verse, while Nicky Jam brings us... another bitter verse. Then we get almost a minute of all the taglines of the artists involved. The song goes fucking nowhere. It's the same stationary beat with the same notes being "sung" about the same shit for 7 god damn minutes. 

I hope you all enjoyed reading this! I know I had a lot of fun writing it. Next up we have my best list, where I get to be positive. That'll be fun.