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Billboard's Top 20 Songs of The Summer 2026 - Ranked WORST to BEST

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  Billboard's Top 20 Songs of The Summer 2026 - Ranked WORST to BEST Hey guys, it’s Fire back with something new!! I’m ranking Billboard’s 2026 Songs of the Summer from worst to best!! Every summer, Billboard compiles a 20-song list of the best-performing songs of the summer. They use Hot 100 data tracking from Memorial Day through Labor Day. When I was still on Pulse, I would participate in their annual rankdown of the list. But since I left Pulse earlier this year, this article is kinda my way to still stay in touch with what’s popular during the summer. It’s also a way to assess my thoughts on a year in popular music about halfway through before my year-end lists in January of next year. And as for my thoughts on 2026’s pop music...WOW, I can’t remember the last time in my 9 years of chart-watching where I was this off from the consensus. I’ve seen so many critics and TikTokers call this one of the worst years ever for music so far, and I genuinely don’t agree. I guess 2019 is t...
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The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1994

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  The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1994 Hey everyone, welcome back to Fire’s Flaming Hot Takes for another retro year-end list! Today, we’re looking at the top 10 worst hit songs of 1994!! So 1990-91 were flat-out awful years for the Hot 100, 1992 was very good, if kinda overrated, and 1993 was very...okay. Now as for 1994...it feels like a blend of 1992 and 1993 in a way. Like 1992, it seems to generally be considered a good year for the Hot 100 and I see why—you’ll see much of the great trends in 94 on my best list. But I also ended up seeing a LOT more duds than people remember. This ultimately balanced everything out to make 1994 a pretty okay year for music, like 1993. Music trends rarely, if ever, neatly fall into one decade. It often takes a few years for the biggest trends of the decade to really start. 1994 is probably what you could consider as more or less the start of the 90s. The 80s backwash that plagued the early 90s was finally gone, save for a select few legacy acts. ...
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Fire's Chill Pick - August 2026

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  Hey guys, it’s time for the monthly Chill Pick article!! It’s almost the end of summer, but I’ve got a nice end-of-summer banger for y’all!! Hoang & Stefan PVDS - Distance Release: June 5, 2026 Genres: Dancefloor Drum and Bass, Melodic Bass So I didn’t really do an anniversary post this year (I was just too busy this summer), but this past July 4 marked the 5th-year anniversary of my blog. And that got me reflecting on my evolution and journey as a blogger. When I started, I was just an angsty teenager trying to channel his energy into something he loves. And I’ve kinda been reading my old articles for nostalgia’s sake. Like from my very first post... “My music taste definitely doesn’t always align with the popular opinion, and I’m not one to bow down to it, there will be a few wild takes on these lists.” I see you, 16-year-old Fire, trying to mask your insecurity about your own music taste by pretending to be above the critical consensus, how adorable. And from my worst list...
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The Top 10 Best Hit Songs of 1993

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  The Top 10 Best Hit Songs of 1993 Hey y’all!! It’s Fire here, and you know what time it is!! Today we’re looking at the top 10 BEST hit songs of 1993!! So as I expressed in my worst list, I wouldn’t consider 1993 a bad year for the Hot 100 at all—there were plenty of great songs to choose from here. That said, I wouldn’t exactly call this a great year either. Grunge had yet to take hold of rock, meaning that the genre fell into this weird divide between sliding into parody and being the leftover dregs of 80s hair metal. But if you knew where to look, you could find stuff in rock to really enjoy! And you all already know how much of a sucker I am for eurodance and diva house—they’ll obviously have plenty of representation on this list. Two things you’re definitely gonna see a lot of on this list though are hip hop and R&B, the former of which had g-funk and gangsta rap utterly taking over to fantastic results and the latter mostly holding up thanks to 90s legends running the t...
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