The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2016

The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2016

In the following few paragraphs, I take a look at the most overhated year of the 2010s for the Hot 100 and try to understand why people might have not liked this year.

(this list was originally created on July 4, 2021)

Hello guys, welcome back to Fire's Flaming Hot Takes for my first list! Today, I will start with the top 10 worst hit songs of 2016!

So if I’m being honest, I don’t consider 2016 to be nearly as bad of a year for the Hot 100 as pretty much every other critic says. Outside of music, that’s a different story, but honestly I found a lot to like about the year-end list in 2016. Granted, this is definitely due to my personal biases, this was the first full year I started listening to songs on the radio. I would later listen to American Top 40 with Ryan Seacrest starting towards the end of July. This was the first music chart I followed, and it ended up being a stepping stone for me to later start following the Hot 100 the next year. 2016 was definitely a defining year for my music taste and growth as a listener, as if it weren’t for this year, I probably would not have gotten into chart-watching, which to this day has become a huge hobby of mine. It might have been the reason I have a high tolerance towards the tropical sounds and adult contemporary sounds at the time?

But that said, while I feel that the songs I like on this list are pretty nostalgic for me, I will not dance around the fact that some of these songs really have not aged well. I was not a huge fan of some of the rap this year - again this may be my own personal bias since 2017 was the year I was into trap the most - and country was pretty much nonexistent on the year-end, and while I did like a couple of the very few country songs that made it, you could make the argument they are more pop if anything. So with all that said, I will not say 2016 is anywhere near the worst year for pop music of the 2010s, but I cannot really say it is among the best either. In total, there were 32 songs on this year-end - including 2015 repeats - that I would consider to be “mediocre tier” or lower. The good and bad of this year pretty much balanced each other out, so this year falls towards the middle in terms of the 2010s.

Alright, enough rambling, time to take a look at some of the songs that may have been the reason the Hot 100 was not well-liked during 2016. As a rule, the songs must have debuted on the year-end Hot 100 for 2016 to qualify - so “Watch Me” is reserved for 2015 - so let’s get started with our dishonorable mentions!

DM #1: Jeremih - Oui (YE: #55, PEAK: #19)

I will still stand up for “Down On Me” and “Don’t Tell ‘Em”, but I really cannot stand up for this. The whole song is midtempo, incredibly lethargic. Jeremih’s vocals do not fit this either. This song is a mess, next!

DM #2: Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello - I Know What You Did Last Summer (YE: #86, PEAK: #20)

Something to note is that I do not look at cultural impact when making my lists unless the song is already bad - then the cultural damage it inflicts makes it worse. It simply is based on how much I like the song. This means, spoiler, “Treat You Better” will not be on this list, even if I definitely see why one would hate it. This means that flat out annoying or boring might be enough to land on this list, and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is definitely a combination of both. The production doesn’t take off so much, so the main focus is on our two singers, who both do not sound good on this at all. Yeah, given that “Senorita” has overtaken this in relevance in pretty much everyone’s mind, I don’t think anyone’s missing this song at all.

DM #3: Tory Lanez - Luv (YE: #70, PEAK: #19)

Tory Lanez managed to score two hits in 2016, and while I do like “Say It”, I do not like this at all, and yes this was tanked down to here because of the “mmm ahh mmm ahh mmm ahh” bit which doesn’t fit anything here. Nothing much else to say about this, pretty bad.

DM #4: Sia - Cheap Thrills (YE: #11, PEAK: #1)

One thing that will almost certainly impact this list is overplay, and if you want one of the many songs that sufferred from ridiculous overplay in 2016 and never recovered from it, “Cheap Thrills” is one of them. To this day the tropical beat and the notes at the beginning still make me change the channel immediately and given how it’s been 5 years at this point and that hasn’t changed...yeah this hasn’t aged well at all. And while we’re on that subject…

DM #5: ZAYN - Pillowtalk (YE: #22, PEAK: #1)

I used to utterly despise this song in 2016, and while I briefly ended up liking it sometime in 2017 or so, I think it’s safe to say that now in 2021, this song is just fucking terrible. The electronic noises that appear in the chorus do not match the R&B production at all, and ZAYN’s vocals don’t sound good here either. America, “This Town” by Niall Horan got caught between years, yet this mess made it!?

DM #6: Chris Brown - Back To Sleep (YE: #89, PEAK: #20)

The one thing that kept this from the list proper was the 80s inspired production, I’ll admit it sounds pretty good. But whoever thought it was a good idea for the line “fuck you back to sleep” to be in the song, let alone having fucking Chris Brown of all people sing it, is truly an idiot.

DM #7: Kevin Gates - 2 Phones (YE: #57, PEAK: #17)

Kevin Gates does not sound good on this song, and he makes the chorus fall super flat. Can’t really say more about it, it’s very unpleasant to listen to. And somehow it’s not the worst of Kevin Gates on this year-end...go figure...

Alright that’s a nice start, now onto the list proper…

10...Alright, this is where “overplay” is going to really affect the songs that appear on this list...and somehow it still gets decent recurrent play to this very day!

10. Adele - Send My Love (To Your New Lover) (YE: #26, PEAK: #8)

This, along with “Cheap Thrills”, fall into territory of “songs that I liked back then but have never recovered from the overplay that made me get sick of them”. The guitar lick is pretty much all this song has, it is very repetitive and wears out its welcome quickly. Now imagine that guitar lick on loop constantly for an entire fucking year...yeah this was one of those songs that I really hated in 2016, and it hasn’t changed one bit to this very day.

9...Okay, I admit I like my fair share of stupid songs. This, however, isn’t one of them...

9. Yo Gotti f/Nicki Minaj - Down In The DM (YE: #69, PEAK: #13)

The production on this song is incredibly limp and annoying. Not to mention Yo Gotti sounds super checked out on this song. He sounds like he would rather be anywhere else. The one thing I can say is that Nicki was the reason this song wasn’t higher on this list. This song just doesn’t really give me much to talk about, it ended up landing here on sheer annoyance and an absence of good qualities rather than being an outright atrocity. In any way it’s terrible, next.

8...Up next we got another song that I liked back then that was killed due to overplay. But honestly, I rarely hear the song on the radio anymore, so unlike “Cheap Thrills” and “Send My Love”, I don’t think it was radio overplay that made this song so unlistenable for me to this day. It’s just potentially one of the worst aging songs of the past decade...

8. Pink - Just Like Fire (YE: #33, PEAK: #10)

If there’s one thing I can say about the bad of 2016, it’s that quite a few of the songs on this list have aged really badly, and this may be one of the worst victims of it. Now, I’m honestly not a huge fan of Pink overall. Most of her music kinda just blended together for me and consistent radio overplay on adult contemporary stations did not help matters. But if there’s one thing I can confidently say, it’s that “Just Like Fire” is the worst song she has ever made. It’s completely soulless and bland and painfully generic. The acoustics at the beginning try to capture a calm moment before exploding in anger and intensity in the chorus...only it absolutely fails at that because the acoustics are so gutless and bland and the production in the chorus is so overproduced! And overproduction doesn’t add intensity, it just adds annoyance, not helped by Pink’s shrill vocals. And then Pink’s rap bridge...here’s a bit of advice - if you can’t rap, don’t rap. I didn’t like it when Taylor Swift did it in “Shake It Off”, and somehow I like it less here. Seriously, in 2016, Gwen Stefani had “Misery”, Lady Gaga had “Perfect Illusion”, and Katy Perry had “Rise”, yet this trash was the one that became a hit...what!?

7...So that last entry was from Disney’s live-action “Alice In Wonderland”. Let’s go to another movie that was a thing that year, “Suicide Squad”. That movie saw two songs become year-end hits...one that continued Twenty One Pilots’ top 5 streak in 2016 that is - spoiler for my best list - fantastic, but the other was a dreck of a collaboration between 6 acts that I don’t recall anybody asking for...

7. Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, & Imagine Dragons w/Logic & Ty Dolla $ign f/X Ambassadors - Sucker For Pain (YE: #68, PEAK: #15)

This song definitely is trying to capture the vibe of “creepiness” and being “haunting”, but it instead winds up as a heavily boring dirge of a song. I’ll deal with Imagine Dragons quickly, I’m comfortable calling this some of Dan Reynolds’ worst vocals to date, granted this is nothing compared to the atrocities that are “Machine” and “Cutthroat” that would be released several years later, but that doesn’t make this song any better, in fact I’d argue that this song has only gotten worse for me over time. Now for X Ambassadors...okay they barely make an appearance outside of Sam Harris singing the outro, so what’s the point of adding them if he’s just going to sound like Dan Reynolds? The other four acts, look I can just say the same thing about all of them, lifeless rapping over a lifeless beat. Nothing about this song captures the spookiness it thinks it is capturing and just makes things unpleasant for the listener. There’s a reason that “Heathens” was the one that ended up making the Hot 100 Decade-End and not this.

6...So I don’t think I can talk about 2016 - or 2017 for that matter - without talking about The Chainsmokers, an EDM act that had 5 consecutive top 10 hits and are notorious for recycling the same beat over and over again. And I usually don’t mind that...maybe it was because I grew up during the club boom of the early 2010s where pretty much every song had the same personality and same club vibe. But going back to The Chainsmokers, they had three year-end hits this year. And back in 2016 I used to despise “Roses” and “Don’t Let Me Down” and love this song...man, things change a lot in 5 years, huh.

6. The Chainsmokers f/Halsey - Closer (YE: #10, PEAK: #1)

So back when I was talking about “Just Like Fire”, I mentioned that that song was one of the worst aging hits songs of the 2010s...and I think this may be the worst aging song of the 2010s period. The Chainsmokers managed to have “Roses”, “Don’t Let Me Down”, “Paris”, and “Something Just Like This” as hits, yet “Closer” was the song that was one of the top 5 biggest songs of the 2010s. Andrew Taggart’s vocals are so emotionless, he doesn’t sound sexy or like he wants to be here at all. And usually, I wouldn’t mind this, I do really enjoy “Paris” and “Honest”, despite the latter’s very problematic lyrical content. But on a production this ridiculously basic and a drop this annoying, it doesn’t fit in the slightest. Halsey is probably the only redeeming quality I can give this song, quite frankly, she deserves much better than this song being her biggest hit to date.

5...I felt like the fun police by putting this song on this list, and this high at that too. But I also know I’ve always found this song atrocious, even back in 2016. And I know many people are going to be really mad at me for putting this on a worst list, but you know what this is my list, I hate this song a lot, too bad...

5. D.R.A.M. f/Lil Yachty - Broccoli (YE: #34, PEAK: #5)

Let me start this hot take off with another hot take...Lil Yachty is the only redeeming factor of this song, but even then the “we gon’ turn this shit to Columbine” line just undercuts anything I may like about it. The low notes that appear frequently sound disgusting, if I’m being honest, I only think of farting - and no, don’t ask why - when I hear it. The piano keys are annoying and the flute does not fit this at all. And D.R.A.M...oh don’t get me started, his yelping does not sound pleasant at all. Yeah, this song is not fun in the slightest, if anything it’s an utter chore to sit through, and I’d honestly rather eat actual broccoli than listen to this song.

4...The one thing I can say about this song is that it was better than his 2015 hit...

4. O.T. Genasis f/Young Dolph - Cut It (YE: #91, PEAK: #35)

At least this song isn’t “Coco”? This doesn’t make this any less annoying. O.T. Genasis cannot rap, going off the beat often and when he goes “your price is way too high you need to cut it” he sounds annoying. All across a standard generic trap beat...if you’re going to use a standard trap beat at least do something more with it, like rap with a consistently good flow. Let’s not do...this.

3...This song was ridiculously huge back then, but to this day I am yet to see why people like this so much...

3. Rihanna f/Drake - Work (YE: #4, PEAK: #1)

Seriously, a production that’s merely boring but not the worst thing in the world isn’t enough of a reason for this to be good, especially with annoyingly repetitive and obnoxious lyrics - such as Rihanna repeating the word “work” until it drives you insane - and Rihanna and Drake both sounding like they would rather be anywhere else. This entry is also where my personal bias and experiences come in, because as soon as my family found out I disliked this song, they proceeded to annoy me with it every day for the rest of the year, turning a song I thought was merely bad into utterly rancid over time. I’ll be perfectly fine if I went the rest of my life never hearing this song again.

2...Speaking of Rihanna...

2. Rihanna - Needed Me (YE: #13, PEAK: #7)

Really, whether this or “Work” takes my #2 comes down to a pure tossup between which song annoys me more during any given hour, they are interchangeable any day of the week. The production on this song is awful, like “Sucker For Pain”, it tries to bring off a “badass” vibe but ends up being a boring, slow dirge instead. It is super lethargic. In fact it’s really the annoying production that puts this song all the way up here on my list. Rihanna does not sound like the “savage” she thinks she is in this song. I mean, this may not have the cultural damage that “Birthday Cake” had, but at least “Birthday Cake” had a catchy production going for it...this is a slow, boring, annoying dirge with nothing to help it out.

1...I admit, I’m really surprised that this song was what became my #1. Most of the songs that are more common picks for worst lists - “Treat You Better”, “Me Too”, “One Call Away”, “7 Years”, and “i hate u, i love u” just to name a few - I actually like them, I will admit. So thus, things kinda ended up with this song on top...and even if it is surprising, it’s no less deserving...

1. Kevin Gates - Really Really (YE: #92, PEAK: #46)

As I said back at “2 Phones”, Kevin Gates cannot rap, especially in the chorus where he sounds less like he’s having fun and more obnoxious. When he says in the song that he can sing...yeah this song proves otherwise. Along with many dropped rhymes and a production that sounds really bad, this song is thoroughly difficult to sit through. This song landed at the top of my list not because it is outright offensive, or is the biggest atrocity in the world. It landed at the top due to a sheer lack of good qualities to counterbalance any bad ones. With all that said, “Really Really” by Kevin Gates is the worst hit song of 2016. And given that he has not had a real hit since, I don’t think anyone’s missing this song.

So after making this list...maybe 2016 was in fact a bad year. These songs certainly let me know why this year is so disliked by everyone. We will check if my original statement is in fact true in my best list which should be up in a little bit.