The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2013

The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2013

In the following few paragraphs, I go back to a year for the 2010s that’s honestly all over the place and look at the atrocious lows of that year.

(this list was originally created on August 3, 2021)

Hey guys, welcome back to Fire's Flaming Hot Takes with another list, I’m currently in Kauai, Hawaii as of writing this list, I just typed the 2013 best and worst lists up during the night when there was nothing to do. Today, we’re examining the top 10 worst hit songs of 2013!

Well...2013. This was just a complete mess of a year honestly. It’s not a terrible year like 2014, 2019, or 2018, by any means. But it’s not a fantastic year like 2011, 2015, or 2017 either. In some ways, this year-end list was better than I’d expected it to be, but it was also worse than I had hoped, at times. So what happened in 2013?

Well, bro-country was starting to rise into dominance fast this year. This was not exactly a great year for country music. It’s not the worst year of the 2010s for country, it’s not 2014. But still, not exactly great. Trap was starting to gain a little bit of traction on the Hot 100 before it finally started to break through in 2015. And pop was riding out the last spurts of the club boom. In its place, we ended up getting EDM music. The indie boom from 2012 was still riding out in this year, and this year we got an influx of viral novelty songs. 2013 to me feels like a blend of 2016 and 2018. It’s similar to 2016 in that the good and bad of this year balance each other out to make this fall towards the middle. But it’s also similar to 2018 in that its lows are absolutely atrocious and offensive.

So overall, 2013 is all over the place in terms of quality. It falls right in the middle along with 2016 since the good and bad of this year balance each other. Overall, there were 24 songs on this year-end list that fell into my “mediocre tier” or lower. I would say including 2012 repeats, but honestly the 2012 repeats were all pretty good, none of them would’ve made this list. That said, I’ve repeated the rule for all my other lists thus far, and I’ll do the same here, the song must have had to debut on the Hot 100 year-end list for 2013 in order to qualify, though again, none of the 2012 repeats would’ve been particularly close. So my last worst list was another one with atrocious and egregious lows, and this one is too, but we’re just gonna start with mediocre for now as we head into our dishonorable mentions.

DM #1: Darius Rucker - Wagon Wheel (YE: #54, PEAK: #15)

As I said, this wasn’t a good year for mainstream country. And “Wagon Wheel” lands on the dishonorable mentions because it’s honestly so uninteresting and unremarkable. Darius Rucker’s voice isn’t very distinct or memorable, and the song just feels so generic. The backing vocals aren’t blended well, and honestly, this is just boring.

DM #2: Thomas Rhett - It Goes Like This (YE: #90, PEAK: #25)

One generic, boring country song into another. Funny how that works. Thomas Rhett’s vocals here are really grating, especially in the chorus. And I also have to mention that opening guitar riff that does a good job at tricking you into thinking that this song was gonna be good, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

DM #3: Blake Shelton - Sure Be Cool If You Did (YE: #80, PEAK: #24)

Just copy and paste whatever I said about the last two entries. Seriously, when the country music wasn’t bro-country, it was unremarkable...how is that possible?

DM #4: Lorde - Royals (YE: #15, PEAK: #1)

I’ve said in multiple lists at this point that “Royals” is one of the most overrated songs of the 2010s and I meant it. This song allowed other songs that are more alternative-leaning to use this sound. Notably SHAED’s “Trampoline” for me, a song so ridiculously boring it pisses me off. “Royals” is just so minimalist and basic, Lorde’s whispers are very frail, and the production has basically nothing going for it. Despite an admittedly pretty good bassline, the song just doesn’t go anywhere, the synthesizers have a very odd effect on the song - doesn’t help it out at all. Now, why did we let “Green Light” underperform in the US?

DM #5: Miranda Lambert - Mama’s Broken Heart (YE: #89, PEAK: #20)

This song is just a disappointment for me. The rock elements are honestly very obnoxious and super compressed in the chorus. Miranda Lambert has a very limited range and she doesn’t have the range to sell the rage that this song needs. Instead, she sounds super obnoxious. And I can’t be the only one that feels that this song has more of a square-dance vibe than an angry vibe, right? Yeah, give this to maybe Carrie Underwood, and it probably would’ve worked well. Really disappointing.

DM #6: A$AP Rocky f/Drake, 2 Chainz, & Kendrick Lamar - Fuckin’ Problems (YE: #41, PEAK: #8)

2 Chainz ruins this song. That yelling in the chorus sounds really bad. Nobody sounds like they care throughout it, and the bass in the chorus just feels so swamped out. Yeah, not much to it, not good at all.

DM #7: Pink f/Nate Ruess - Just Give Me A Reason (YE: #7, PEAK: #1)

Another year-end with Pink on it, another entirely generic song just like most of the rest of her 2010s material. But really, I think Nate Ruess is the bigger problem with this song, he doesn’t suit this at all. His vocals are better suited for indie rock, which is what made fun.’s hits all so damn fantastic. But pop? Nah, not a chance. The song doesn’t build up anywhere, Pink and Nate Ruess don’t have any chemistry, and it’s another song that was an adult contemporary radio staple for the rest of the decade, pretty much what ruined most of Pink’s generic ass material this decade.

Now time for the list proper!

10...Justin Timberlake is the most overrated artist in the music industry. I don’t care what you guys say...

10. Justin Timberlake f/JAY-Z - Suit & Tie (YE: #20, PEAK: #3)

It’s rare that you get an artist as overrated and nothing special as Justin Timberlake. “Suit & Tie” is far from the worst song I’ve heard from him, but it’s still pretty bad almost purely because of how generic it is. The intro is super lethargic, JT sounds ass on it, and the processed vocals are terrible. And that production returns again for JAY-Z’s verse, which just confuses me because that makes it even worse. Beyond that, look, the rest of this production is super unremarkable and not catchy. I don’t get why people always come for Ed Sheeran at times unfairly when JT is right there with less charisma and more genericity. So yeah it’s crap and overrated, next!

9...Okay, how does this have a longevity record?

9. AWOLNATION - Sail (YE: #25, PEAK: #17)

Going back to artists that I have no idea why they get so much praise, we have AWOLNATION. Seriously, I don’t get why Imagine Dragons always get so much hate for their material when AWOLNATION has all the same aspects but worse. “Sail” is just a cheap version of “Radioactive”. Aaron Bruno’s vocals are awful on this. At least Dan Reynolds actually has a good singing voice to help “Radioactive” out and he isn’t screaming the entire song. And the production is crap too. And the sad thing is, I see how this could’ve worked. The eerie vibe this song is going for would’ve been a great idea and hell, maybe it could’ve helped Aaron Bruno’s vocals not completely tank this. Shame that this beat is so damn unlistenable. The percussion swamps out the rest of the mix, the synths are so buried, and the dubstep inspired beat is terrible. Yeah, this has all the reasons that “Radioactive” has not aged the best - even if I still like it - but even worse.

8...In the construction world, you can have a perfect blueprint of what you want the structure to look like. But one poor decision or flaw in the design, the structure will topple over. The same thing applies to songs as well. You can have a blueprint of a great song, but one poor production decision can ruin it entirely. And this song probably perfectly encapsulates that...

8. Wale f/Tiara Thomas - Bad (YE: #59, PEAK: #21)

For simplicity sake, I’m just gonna use Tiara Thomas’s version of “Bad”. And, well, I guess it lives up to its title. Wale actually sounds alright on it, and he actually rides this R&B production pretty well. Tiara actually has a really damn good voice. The song is trying to be a hot jam, and Tiara Thomas can sell that really well. So why is this song on my worst list? I have to say it’s due to the bed springs. They are what the beat is supposed to be and they continue throughout the entire song. It already sounds terrible from the jump, and hearing that for a full four minutes makes it utterly rancid. This is here mainly on disappointment, this should’ve been so much better.

7...I think I’m one of the few people who likes Eminem more than I should. Hell, I’m still a defender of the Recovery era despite the general consensus that that era hasn’t aged very well. That said, even I don’t like this song at all...

7. Eminem - Berzerk (YE: #67, PEAK: #3)

I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of diss tracks. They always seem quite petty to me. So it’s really no surprise based on that that I think “Berzerk” is quite terrible. The lyrics are a bunch of nonsense, especially in the 2nd verse, where Eminem resorts to speaking gibberish in order to fill time. And outside of a few minor jabs here and there, there isn’t really any diss track in this song. Which means this song simultaneously fails at what it tries to do along with being incompetent. If you’re making a song with nonsense lyrics, at least have the production sound good. Well, for the production we got a rap-rock production with a sample from “The Stroke” by Billy Squier that sounds super out of place. The guitars come in out of nowhere in the chorus and sound super jarring, they don’t really improve on that much. Also, Eminem’s vocals. Now obviously they’re gonna be abrasive, that’s his style of rapping, but this one kinda crosses a line for me, he sounds angry quite frankly for no real reason, there’s nothing to get angry at! Ah well, at least it slaps at parties maybe?

6...So a quick timeline of bro-country’s popularity. Its earliest seeds were planted in 2011, and it started to gain some traction in 2013. It fully dominated the country scene in 2014, but as quick as it rose, it collapsed, with diminishing returns that somehow are still present to this day. And as you should probably know by now, I don’t like bro-country. So let’s get one right out of the way!

6. Blake Shelton f/Pistol Annies & Friends - Boys ‘Round Here (YE: #60, PEAK: #12)

God, can anyone make a bro-country song that’s actually fun? Seriously, this may not be the worst of its sub-genre I’ve heard, but it’s easily the most lethargic one. The guitar sounds ridiculously generic and doesn’t help the song go anywhere. Blake Shelton has the most smug and unlikeable presence on this song I can think of off the top of my head. He tries to sound laid back, but he just sounds ridiculous, especially the way he pronounces “tobacco”. These lyrics are so ridiculous, asinine, and impressively stupid, like “red red red red red redneck”. Then we got Pistol Annies, who is just utterly wasted on this song. She sings just the bridge, which is so small there’s literally no point. Actually, no, I take that back, it’s the sole redeeming quality of this terrible ass song.

5...Just because he decided to make a blatant retread of this song in 2015 called “Kick The Dust Up” which was even worse than this song, doesn’t make this song any good...

5. Luke Bryan - That’s My Kind Of Night (YE: #78, PEAK: #15)

Granted, this is definitely better than “Kick The Dust Up”, because at least I can appreciate the bassline, it’s actually quite solid. That said, the rest of this song is an absolute turd, so much so that Zac Brown of the Zac Brown Band called this the worst song he had ever heard. The lyrics are a blend of luxury rap and just utter nonsense, which just confuses the hell out of me. One thing I can give Luke Bryan is that he has more presence on this song than usual, which means it’s not the worst bro-country song I’ve ever heard, but the production is so bad that Luke Bryan can’t save this. The guitars are soulless and the melody line has no flow, this is just a complete mess of a song.

4...This song becoming such a huge hit amazes me, bewilders me, confuses me, and annoys me all at the same time...

4. Baauer - Harlem Shake (YE: #4, PEAK: #1)

If you wanna talk about the lowest point of the boom of the novelty tracks in 2013, it’s “Harlem Shake”. And really, there’s not much to talk about here. This is just an instrumental track with an obnoxious synth line and a trap production attached to it. Yeah, this is just ridiculously annoying and there isn’t much for me to say about it. I will say that I was shocked to learn that Joji was the person who made this song so popular.

3...Alright, these next three songs are all ridiculously low lows from 2013, it really makes all the sense in the world why they almost always end up on worst of 2013 lists. This is probably the “best” of the three, but that doesn't mean it’s any less horrendous...

3. Lil Wayne f/Drake & Future - Love Me (YE: #39, PEAK: #9)

It’s a shame because it’s not like there isn’t anything redeemable about this song. Future’s flow, if nothing else, with different lyrics, could’ve actually worked. But god, the rest of this song is an utter trainwreck. The production is genuinely awful. The synth is an utter sludge, it’s aggressively creepy yet incredibly boring at the same time. The percussion has no punch or power, it’s just too heavy. But the real issue with this song is its lyrics, which are something else, to put it lightly. This song is essentially Lil Wayne having a bunch of women ready to fulfill his desires at any given point, which should pretty much say all that needs to be said. I’m just gonna highlight a few that stood out to me in a very bad way. “I fuck who I want, and fuck who I don’t” - why would you want to screw someone you don’t want to screw? This is also exposing Lil Wayne as a player with no loyalty, this is implying that he screws whoever the hell he wants to screw regardless of what others think! Then one more,  “All my bitches love me, and I love all my bitches”. Or “can’t treat these hoes like ladies, man”. None of this implies a healthy relationship with women or one night stands, or anything! This is just misogynistic, awful in nearly every way possible. Trash.

2...Wait, this song didn’t top my list? Well, okay...I’ll carry on.

2. Rocko f/Future & Rick Ross - U.O.E.N.O. (YE: #87, PEAK: #20)

Only in a year where the lows were as egregious as they were in 2013 would this song not be my worst pick this year. Seriously, even disregarding its problematic lyrical content - which I’ll get to later - I don’t see how someone could possibly enjoy this. This is just a lifeless luxury rap song where everyone just starts to brag about how they have everything and you don’t even know it. Let me deal with one thing quickly, you know what “U.O.E.N.O.” stands for? Nothing, it’s a slurred together pronunciation of “you don’t even know it”, that’s a lovely note to start off on. Now onto the production, this is absolutely atrocious. The synths sound like farts, there is no energy anywhere, the song has zero momentum in it, and it’s just so uninteresting that it hurts. Now for the obvious lie. If you say a line, then follow it up with “you don’t even know it”, I do know it now. YOU JUST TOLD US. Then the elephant in the room, the reason this song appears on so many worst lists. There’s one line in Rick Ross’s verse, “put molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it, I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it”. And do I even need to explain why this line alone is so morally reprehensible? IT’S ABOUT DATE RAPE. And after the line baited controversy, and Rick Ross’s verse was dropped from the radio, multiple other artists were jumping up to try and take his place. Only what happened was that this song tainted everybody that was involved. Rick Ross’s solo career never recovered, only jumping on remixes and features in order to score hits, Rocko never had a solo career at all, but thanks to a messy legal case against Future, he won a huge piece of Future’s success in the 2010s, hell even some artists on the remix weren’t spared. Wiz Khalifa managed to only score a hit thanks to a Paul Walker tribute after 2013, A$AP Rocky started having diminishing returns after 2013, and Lil Wayne’s material was super hit-or-miss afterward. This song tainted 6 careers because of desperate attempts to save it even though it was worthless garbage from the get go, and the funniest part of it all? They don’t even know it. And with all that, what could be worse?

1…”U.O.E.N.O.” has all the components to be a pick for the worst hit song of 2013. For a song that has tainted everybody involved with this song throughout the 2010s and with a line that managed to bait that much controversy, it should’ve been a clear cut for my #1 without a doubt. And believe me, this was very close, I was considering both of them for my #1. But what it came down to was the fact that “U.O.E.N.O.” has been mostly forgotten by the general public and I’m yet to find someone who actually does like that song. This song, on the other hand, was one of the top 15 biggest songs of the decade, it had and still has its defenders, and people also defend what it’s about, and...well, let’s remove the blurred lines and talk about this.

1. Robin Thicke f/T.I. & Pharrell Williams - Blurred Lines (YE: #2, PEAK: #1)

It’s incredibly rare you find a song that already has no redeeming qualities to it and yet every single time you listen to it it finds new ways to piss you off. And yet, we got “Blurred Lines”, a song that somehow managed to become a gigantic smash hit in 2013 despite being morally and objectively wrong in nearly every way possible. First the production. The bassline is the only thing this song has going for it, and a bassline isn’t enough to make a song out of. It’s so sparse that I can’t even consider that a redeeming quality. The rest of the production is too limp to be considered sexy, which is what the song is trying to go for, with that annoying as hell cowbell being the only other thing in this mix! Then we go to the vocalists, which are all awful. Robin Thicke spends most of the song in his ridiculously airy and thoroughly unsexy falsetto which I’m convinced only turns people away. Pharrell Williams only adds the annoying as hell “woo” in the background every now and then, and I can’t help but think what the hell was the point of him? Then we got T.I.. He goes off the beat a lot, he sounds oddly muffled on this song, and he just doesn’t fit the rest of the production at all. Then the part that pretty much everyone has torn apart, the lyrics. This song’s lyrics are essentially glorifying rape culture and are disgusting, misogynistic, and just plain horrendous all around. The song’s lyrics include lyrics are rapey as “tried to domesticate ya” and “Imma take a good girl” or just outright stupid like when Robin Thicke tried to rhyme “hug me” with “hug me”. But back to those first few lines, this song is about trying to “domesticate” this girl while complaining about the blurred lines of sexual content, not exactly a good look there guys. And like “U.O.E.N.O.”, this song did some serious damage to everybody involved. Robin Thicke’s career collapsed immediately after this song faded away, and how he handled the controversy was just the final nail in the coffin. T.I., he was arrested for sexual abuse allegations in early 2021, which makes this song that much more uncomfortable to listen to now. Pharrell Williams, he stated that he regrets making this song, and you know what, good on him for distancing himself from this song, his career is free to bloom more unlike the other two. However, unlike “U.O.E.N.O.”, there are people who stand up for this song and what it represents. Hey ladies, let me ask you a question. Do you want to be objectified like this? Do people really think that trying to “domesticate” a woman in the most uncomfortable and borderline creepy way possible is justifiable? Look at the end of the day, this song is just insufferable for me. I never liked this even as a kid when I didn’t understand the lyrics, and it’s only aged worse over time. And with all that, “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke, T.I., and Pharrell Williams is the worst hit song of 2013. It’s worthless in every way possible and quite a deserving finish to both Robin Thicke and T.I.’s worthless careers.

So those were the worst hit songs of 2013, and man, the lows were low. That said, the highs of 2013 were very damn great, my best list will be up shortly!