The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of the 2010s

The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of the 2010s

In the following few paragraphs, I take a look at the music that filled the decade I grew up during...and take out the trash once and for all.

Hey folks, welcome back to Fire’s Flaming Hot Takes. And it’s time to take this on. Yes, it’s a really big one, today we’re looking at the top 10 worst hit songs of the 2010s!

Yes, we’ve done it. We’re now examining an entire decade’s worth of hits. Over 900 songs were hits in the 2010s, and yet, I’ve managed to narrow this list down to just a select few. These are the songs that really inspire a bunch of rage out of me, the true atrocities that managed to become hits for all of us to suffer. And in my opinion, this decade was super diverse in terms of both quality and complete garbage. It may be my own bias, since I did mainly grow up with music from the 2010s, but from the club boom that dominated from 2010 to 2012, to the transitional period that is 2013 to 2015, to the trap takeover from 2016 to 2019, there was both plenty to love and loathe.

This was quite a difficult list to compile, because when measuring degrees of “atrocious”, there are multiple factors that I have to consider. I’ve said in the past that unless a song is already that atrocious, the cultural impact a song inflicts is negligible, I don’t look at that. Most of the time, my lists are based on what songs are the “least good”. When looking at an entire decade, cultural damage will definitely be a factor for this list, with songs that have inflicted more damage faring higher on this list. That’s not to say that every song here inflicted cultural damage, because we do have quite a few “least good” songs here, but the point is if the song lingered, or kickstarted a bad trend, it’s definitely gonna place higher on this list. And another thing, music tastes evolve. Yes, I did create all my best and worst lists for this decade’s years in literally two months, but even then, opinions can change a lot. For example - spoilers - I wouldn’t have put “Watch Me” by Silento that high on my worst of 2015 list had I done it now, it’s still bad but it’s not the garbage that keeps me up at night. So when you’re reading through this list, don’t be surprised if my #3 pick for a year manages to sneak on, yet my #2 pick for a year doesn’t. However, all my picks for this list have made one of my worst lists in the past, and with the exception of one year, all my #1 worst picks landed on this list.

Oh yeah, and don’t be surprised if one year gets more representation on this list than others, there are great and terrible years for the Hot 100. But anyway, it’s time to start this list off. As a rule, the songs had to debut on the year-end Hot 100 list from any year spanning from 2010 to 2019 in order to qualify, so any 2009 repeats will be reserved for the 2000s if I ever end up doing that. I’m only gonna stick with 10 songs because I really don’t wanna torture myself too much, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be quite a few dishonorable mentions scattered amongst the lot...

DM #1: Enrique Iglesias f/Pitbull - I Like It (#12 2010)

This very narrowly edged out “Please Me” by Cardi B and Bruno Mars for this spot, but in the end, as truly awful as “Please Me” is, it’s “I Like It” that really encapsulates the worst and most dated aspects of the club boom. The horrendous levels of autotune, the beat that is way too heavy, the synths that sound too compressed in the chorus, this song really is all of the worst parts of this era in one song. It’s fitting that Enrique’s English solo career effectively collapsed.

DM #2: Lil Dicky f/Chris Brown - Freaky Friday (#55 2018)

This song becoming a hit was really all the proof you need to tell that 2018 was a bad year for not only the Hot 100, but for society itself. It’s an absolute failure of a song trying to be a joke song about Lil Dicky and Chris Brown switching bodies, but nothing sticks the landing here at all. Just a bunch of stereotypical and unfunny jokes about race, across a recycled DJ Mustard beat from 2014. And what’s the joke in this song? That Lil Dicky can now say the n-word? That Chris Brown can chill because no one is judging him for his controversial past? (and that is well-deserved and you know it). That Kendall Jenner has a vagina and you’re gonna explore it without her consent? The only consolation that I can make is that this song missed the list proper...and even then only barely. But let’s stick with 2018 for now!

DM #3: Lil Pump - Gucci Gang (#44 2018)

Somehow we got 2 hits from 2018 this early, and neither were in my top 3 worst for that year. But good god, “Gucci Gang” is so insipid, the type of stupidity that isn’t even funny, it’s just annoying. Lil Pump just repeats the phrase “gucci gang” until it becomes mush in your head. And Lil Pump isn’t even enjoying himself here, so you know what...why should I enjoy myself in this song? If you don’t even enjoy your own song - and it really shows on this song that he doesn’t give a shit - you don’t deserve to release it.

DM #4: Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber - I Don’t Care (#16 2019)

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the most autogenerated song of the 2010s. This song sounds like it was specifically designed to just act as radio fodder, it’s so painfully basic. The bass is so sparse and awkward, Ed and Justin both sound absolutely soulless on this song and have little chemistry with each other, and the chords aren’t exactly impressive. Not to mention both Ed and Justin’s incredibly embarrassing attempts at harmonizing with each other on the final chorus. Yeah, Ed has had an incredibly hit or miss discography throughout the decade, and this song, along with nearly everything else from No 6 Collabs, is pure garbage.

Don’t worry guys, there’ll be way more dishonorable mentions coming down the line, but for now let’s knock out a few entries from the list proper...

10...I’ve said before that if I already think a song is good - or if I can successfully ignore the immediate flaws with that song - the cultural impact the song has is negligible in my eyes. It’s why I like “Dear Future Husband” and “Treat You Better” despite their very blatant and toxic lyrical flaws. But you know what, if you want a song that’s so awful from the jump that the lyrics are the only thing you can focus on...

10. Lil Wayne f/Drake & Future - Love Me (#39 2013)

I mean, I could start with the obvious: the production is garbage. Courtesy of Mike WiLL Made-It, we got an incredibly slow beat and incredibly eerie synths that sound genuinely awful. And that’s it really, just two awful elements of a song put together to make a truly unlistenable production. So then we have to turn to the lyrical content. Now, who the hell wants to hear Lil Wayne rapping about how he fucks people he wants to and also who he doesn’t want to, or how he can’t treat these hoes like ladies, or him going into frankly very explicit and disgusting details of him having sex? I don’t see who’d want to listen to this. I mean, the beat is still garbage, but at the very least, if it were tweaked slightly, it could’ve been way better. No, I don’t see who’d want to listen to or associate themselves with Lil Wayne in this song. Also, his delivery in the third verse is so bizarrely terrible that I really have to point it out. Yeah, the fact that this was one of the top 40 biggest songs of 2013 speaks volumes of how much damage this had on the culture at the time, and I can only hope that this song has slid its way out of everyone’s memory 8 years later because...eww.

9...This is probably the only song on the list proper that managed to make it solely because it had the “least good”. Hell, I’m surprised it actually managed to make it on at all, but still, if you really want to talk about the dregs of 2016 and a song that was one of the biggest reasons that the music from that year is so badly looked back upon...

9. Kevin Gates - Really Really (#92 2016)

I’ll defend 2016’s music until my dying breath. Hell, 5 years in the rearview, I still think there are a lot of genuinely amazing songs to be found on the year-end for 2016. But I can’t defend “Really Really”, which topped my worst list for 2016 because of an absence of good qualities. And listening to it again...yeah this is still quite atrocious. Despite an admittedly solid bassline, the rest of this song is super lethargic, with Kevin Gates slurring through the chorus through excessive levels of autotune, the incredibly leaden beat, the incredibly awkward and soulless organs and the eerie synths that creep up at the very end of the song, this is a slog to sit through. And back to that autotune, it drowns out any of the fun that Kevin Gates could possibly have here! He sounds utterly disinterested and like he’d rather be anywhere else. If you yourself are not engaged with your own song, why should I be? Now thankfully, hip hop in the mainstream today is not churning out songs like this anymore, but this was emblematic of everything wrong with the genre during 2016.

8...You know, for as much as I thrashed this song in my worst of 2017 list, I don’t think I went far enough then. And really, like “Really Really”, this was one of the biggest reasons why the year it was a hit from is so badly looked back upon, except unlike with “Really Really”, this was additionally outright offensive...

8. Kodak Black - Tunnel Vision (#55 2017)

Kodak Black is an incredibly vile human being, and even if you separate the art from the artist, he is easily one of the worst artists working in hip hop. And this was truly the lowest of the low when it came to the trap takeover in 2017. I’ll deal with the production quickly, all it is is a guitar with a limp trap beat and insufferable flutes. And then we got Kodak Black himself, who’s absolutely unlikeable here. This isn’t even the worst I’ve heard him - seriously if “Roll In Peace” was a legitimate hit it would’ve had a serious shot at making my top 5 here - but it doesn’t make his delivery on this song any less horrendous. His incredibly nasal-filled flow and his disinterested and lifeless tone throughout it all, again, if you’re not interested in your own song, why should I be? And even though I called out the utterly abysmal lyrics in this song like “I’m the shit, I need some toilet paper” and the later edited - but still very much implied - “I get any girl I want, I don’t gotta rape”, I really didn’t take a deep enough dive into them. In the second verse, he mentions that his mom actually encourages his behavior in this song, and that made me realize that Kodak Black didn’t have a single person tell him what he was doing was wrong, and it’s incredibly telling given that he stood trial for sexual assault charges and kept violating his parole. And with a presence as unlikeable as Kodak Black has on this song, it really brings up the true ugliness in this song, that it legitimately encourages this behavior. It’s really sickening that this was a top 10 hit, and that Kodak Black would continue to score success after this.

But let’s take a quick break and knock out a few more dishonorable mentions for now...

DM #5: Toby Keith - Red Solo Cup (#82 2012)

You know, for as much as I absolutely dragged bro-country throughout multiple of my lists now, I’m surprised this is the only song that’s representing that genre on this list. If anything, it was definitely gonna be either this or “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)” by Luke Bryan that would represent this genre though, that’s for sure - which means, yes, 2011 is dodging this list entirely. But what made me choose this song is that “Red Solo Cup” is representative of everything possibly wrong with bro-country. Toby Keith’s obnoxious spoken word “rapping” is insufferable, the instrumental is just a guitar loop that includes one of the worst key changes I have ever heard, and the lyrics are absolutely mindless - “you sir don’t have a pair of testicles”. I’m stunned this is actually liked by some critics, because this song is just...bleh.

DM #6: MAGIC! - Rude (#7 2014)

If you want one of the biggest pieces of evidence as to how 2014 was an awful year for the Hot 100, it’s that this atrocity was one of the top 10 biggest songs of that year. I’m absolutely stunned that this was a #1 hit, even though the list of things wrong with this goes on for miles. The basic ass reggae instrumental, John MAGIC!’s pissy and whiny as hell vocal delivery, the manipulative lyrics about how the daughter’s father says no to our narrator marrying the daughter, and then John MAGIC! just says “screw it, I’ll marry her anyway”, all while the girl has absolutely no say in this whatsoever. Truly hideous song, and I really hope this girl got the hell away from this frontman as quickly as humanly possible.

DM #7: Naughty Boy f/Sam Smith - La La La (#82 2014)

I’m definitely nowhere near the level of popular enough where I get literal backlash for my picks, but I can imagine that this song finishing so high on my worst of 2014 list is probably my most unpopular opinion ever. And continuous listens to “La La La”...I’m sorry, I don’t get it. The child’s vocal sample is incredibly irritating, Sam Smith’s falsetto makes them sound absolutely pathetic, the song is so painfully slow, the lyrics are super childish, and every listen to this song makes my skin crawl even more. An absolutely awful song in every way possible, I’m very impressed this is so liked.

DM #8: OT Genasis - CoCo (#79 2015)

There’s no way this was a legitimate hit, it’s astounding. Even in the avalanche of viral vine tracks that got popular in 2015, I don’t get how this was a year-end hit. OT Genasis’s flow is terrible, especially when he tries to rap in his higher register. The organs try to build swell but this trap production makes them fall flat. The song is the stupidest of the stupidest, and yet there’s nothing funny about it. It’s music for the people who think a cereal box cover is legitimate art. Absolutely unlistenable.

Now to go back to our list proper...

7...The benefit of making a decade-end list for the 2010s nearly 2 full years after the decade ended is that you get the benefit of hindsight. So that way, you can take a proper look at the cultural impact a song had. And as such, this song actually dropped a bit in my rankings thanks to this artist completely moving on from this. But still, if you wanna talk about the song that really tainted my overall view of the artist and truly encapsulated “white privilege”...

7. Ariana Grande - 7 rings (#7 2019)

The song title is “7 rings”, it was #7 on the 2019 year-end, and it’s what I call the 7th worst hit song of the decade. I swear I did not script it like this. But onto the song itself, “7 rings” is quite easily the worst song of Ariana Grande’s career, and every time I listen to it I just feel the gross wrongness of it all come back to me. People might attack “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” more often, but “7 rings” is here because it’s the type of song that really should’ve killed Ariana’s career. Butchering a “My Favorite Things” sample with icky synths, Ariana throws all the growth of her becoming mentally stronger that she built from “thank u, next” out the window in favor of a cheap flexing anthem that truly highlights the “white privilege”. Ariana’s rapping is awful, her fast-singing in the bridge is irritating as hell, and her mocking tone in the chorus does nothing more than make her look like an asshole. Then we got lyrics like “whoever said money can’t solve your problems must not have enough money to solve them”, “happiness is the same price as red bottoms” and “you like my hair? Gee thanks, just bought it”, you have to think that Ariana received tons of backlash for this...right? Well, that’s not what happened. Oh yeah, the song did receive mixed reviews from most critics, but it was still a #1 hit, one of the top 10 biggest songs of 2019, and a song that to my unpleasant surprise became a fan favorite among Ari’s fans. And when you think of other flex anthems, particularly flex anthems by black artists, take a moment to think about how many worst lists that “7 rings” has appeared on, as opposed to how many those other flex anthems by black artists have. This song has the icky and rampant undercurrent of white privilege, I doubt that if this song were by a black artist, it would’ve had anywhere near the amount of success it received. Quite sickening that this apparently is now the fan favorite. Now thankfully, Ariana Grande is not making this anymore, but that fact that she did...yeah you’re still getting a bit of sideye for that, and with this song now having a billion views on YouTube...not a good sign at all.

6...And speaking of artists who I am quite grateful have moved on from their true atrocities...look, this next artist has pretty much had her career implode today, and that’s why this song didn’t finish in the top 5. But man, if you wanna talk about a low point in a really bad year for the Hot 100 that really was one of the worst additions to the culture at the time...

6. Meghan Trainor - All About That Bass (#8 2014, #28 2015)

You know, in my 2014 lists, I said that 2014 was a great, fun-filled year for me, but the more I look back on that year, the more I realized that this year was when my self-esteem issues that I continue to struggle with to this day first appeared. And if you want to talk about an absolutely horrendous “self-esteem” anthem that was simultaneously possibly the worst debut single and first impression I’ve ever heard, it really is “All About That Bass”. And also, this song is in the top 70 on Billboard’s all-time list, an indictment of how big this really is...and how it shouldn’t have ever been nearly as big. This song disguises itself as a self-esteem anthem and promoting body positivity, or at least it would if the entire song didn’t sound like legitimate ass. The weak ass bassline and the incredibly irritating melody are already not a very good start, but the part where this song truly falls apart is the way it’s written and the way it’s delivered. The lyrics are supposed to be about body positivity, but in reality it’s about skinny shaming! Seriously, we got lines where Meghan claims she won’t be no Barbie doll and that we should tell them “skinny bitches” that. And all of this could possibly be excused if Meghan Trainor’s delivery was encouraging, but instead it’s super condescending. I think I go out to defend Meghan Trainor more than others, but this song is still beyond unlistenable. And it really doesn’t help that it allowed Meghan to generate hits until 2016 that even though I just said that I’d defend them more than others, I can’t deny that they’re all mostly problematic in their lyrical content. Let’s leave Meghan Trainor as a thing of the 2010s, and just move on.

5...Songs that enabled some of the most problematic artists of the 2010s to break through and collect a string of hits for a few years will almost certainly fare higher on this list. But you know what, say what you want about “Deuces” by Chris Brown, that had decent enough production that saved it from making this list and at least Chris Brown’s early 2010’s material like “Yeah 3x”, “International Love”, and “Look At Me Now” were all good. And say what you want about “All About That Bass”, Meghan’s career flamed out at this point and at least I can somewhat acknowledge that the song had good intentions in mind. But this decade, I don’t think there was a more worthless artist that managed to attain success than 6ix9ine...

5. 6ix9ine - GUMMO (#56 2018)

The fact that 6ix9ine managed to get hits in the latter half of the 2010s still astonishes me quite a bit, given that he is a one-dimensional hack with no talent in the slightest. And while I could go into the details as to how 6ix9ine is an absolutely loathsome human being, there’s no need to, really, because the truth is that “GUMMO” was insipid garbage from the very jump. 6ix9ine’s earbleeding screaming across those earsores of synths wears out its welcome in record time. He can barely even stay on the damn beat. This song becoming a hit in 2018 is all the proof you really need that 2018 was a truly awful year for the Hot 100, because enabling this dude to score more hits and even later get his first #1 hit in 2020 really just made society worse off. We’ll get back to this.

4...Did I mention that “GUMMO” was only my #3 worst pick for 2018? Yes, 2018 managed to be so terrible that three of the worst songs of that year are among the top 5 worst hit songs of the 2010s. And we’re gonna stick with 2018 with our #4 pick for the worst songs this decade, because this is absolutely indicative of the worst aspects of reggaeton...

4. Casper Magico, Nio Garcia, & Darell f/Bad Bunny, Nicky Jam, & Ozuna - Te Bote (#81 2018)

I asked this in my worst of 2018 list, and I’ll ask it again: who the hell legitimately asked for this? 6 of the most interchangeable, generic, and annoying reggaeton artists working together to make a 7 minute long song about how they are whining about how they dumped this girl...who wanted this? The beat is absolutely lifeless, none of the guys on this list have any energy to make this interesting. And somehow this was the biggest reggaeton song of 2018, this absolute lifeless dreck. Reggaeton as a whole is a genre that’s more “not my style” if anything, but “Te Bote” is a song that even some reggaeton fans have said that they dislike. It’s not only boring, it’s atrocious, it’s lifeless, it’s low effort, there’s absolutely zero redeeming qualities to its name. This isn’t placed up here though simply because it has no redeeming qualities, it’s a point where I’d say that reggaeton artists just stopped trying with their music. They know that whatever the hell they release, the song will get successful, have you seen the YouTube views these low-effort reggaeton songs get? Yeah, this is indicative of the worst aspects of the genre, and I’d rather we leave this as a thing in the wasteland that is 2018’s music. Next!

But before we get to our final three, let’s run through the last of our dishonorable mentions, shall we?

DM #9: OT Genasis f/Young Dolph - Cut It (#91 2016)

So there’s been a considerable absence of 2016 from this list. Sure, we had “Really Really” earlier, but as I said before and will say again, 2016 is an overhated year for music and I’ll stand by that assertion until the day I die. But songs like these really make it difficult for me to continue defending this year, because “Cut It” is intolerable. I can’t decide whether I prefer this or “CoCo”, but I can say that at least “CoCo” wasn’t supposed to be taken seriously, it’s a novelty song in the end. Still an absolutely atrocious one, but a novelty song nonetheless. But I don’t get who “Cut It” is for. OT Genasis’s flow and voice are somehow worse here than in “CoCo”. And the rest of this production is so awkward and lethargic. It’s for the best that OT Genasis just faded immediately after this.

DM #10: Rihanna - Needed Me (#13 2016)

As much as I ranted about DJ Mustard’s generic production that plagued 2014, I’ll gladly take 10 of those beats over this. The synth is irritating as hell, the beat has absolutely no momentum to give Rihanna the badass vibe that she really needs on this song, and the bassline just doesn’t support this track at all. This a boring, lethargic slog of a song that only succeeds in giving me a headache every time I listen to it. But we’re not done with Rihanna just yet!

DM #11: Rihanna f/Drake - Work (#4 2016)

I can’t believe this song still gets so much appeal and praise to this day. It’s a tossup between this and “Needed Me” as to which song annoys me more in any given hour. Rihanna just repeats the phrase “work” in the chorus until it becomes absolute mush in your head. And Rihanna sounds absolutely checked out on this song, both her and Drake sound like they’d rather be anywhere else. The rest of this production is so boring, just a dancehall beat with nothing to elevate it at all. And when you add the fact that as soon as my parents found out I hated this song they proceeded to annoy me with this song for several months to the point of it being absolutely rancid for me today, yeah this is absolute garbage. And you know what, there’s a very similar case of “annoyed by it for months on end” that’s right next to it to round out the dishonorable mentions...

DM #12: Jonas Brothers - Sucker (#10 2019)

The Jonas Brothers have continued to see success to this day and they have a new mediocre as hell song out, 2 years after this misshapen and naked “Feel It Still” ripoff managed to become one of the biggest songs of 2019. All of this only for adult contemporary and pop radio to make this song a recurrent staple to this very day. A song where none of the Jonas Brothers sound good at all, across one of the worst productions of the decade, and every single listen I give this song makes the limp horns and awful whistling sound even worse if that was even possible. And just watch the Jonas Brothers continue to churn out more awful material like this that the radio will almost certainly eat up...just fuck everything.

Alright, down to the last three, we’re almost done with this.

3...I’ll admit that when I was originally putting together this list, this ended up finishing lower than it did now. But the more I listened to it, the more I realized there wasn’t a single thing redeeming about it. And while the song itself has been mostly forgotten, the damage that this inflicted on multiple careers is absolutely undeniable...

3. Rocko f/Future & Rick Ross - U.O.E.N.O. (#87 2013)

This is one of those songs where even if you somehow manage to find something to like about it, you just feel incredibly gross even admitting to it. And my point is that “U.O.E.N.O.” is a song that transcends just having no redeeming qualities, it has an incredibly reprehensible ugliness attached to it. But first, the production. The synths sound like farts, the percussion is super underweight, there’s no momentum or energy anywhere, and on the surface this is just a lifeless luxury rap song. Except it’s so much worse. The only reason as to why one could actually remember this song is the line in Rick Ross’s verse “put molly all in her champagne, she don’t even know it, I took her home and enjoyed that, she don’t even know it”. It’s a lyric endorsing date rape. Now obviously, this line got controversial and got dropped by the radio, so the logical thing would be to allow this song to just die in a hole by itself. But what happened afterwards is why this song landed so high on this list. A bunch of artists tried to come up to replace Rick Ross’s verse, and it absolutely wrecked everyone’s careers in the process. Rocko never had a career after this, and thanks to a messy legal fight with Future, he managed to get a bunch of Future’s success throughout the 2010s. Rick Ross never managed to score another solo hit. And even a few artists on the remix weren’t spared! A$AP Rocky and Wiz Khalifa, they never saw another hit outside of scattered pop success, and Lil Wayne’s musical quality took a complete nosedive after this, you’ve already seen me talking about “Love Me” earlier on this list! The only reason this song didn’t top this list proper is that the song itself is pretty forgotten and I’m yet to come across a person who will legitimately defend it, but the ugly reprehensibility that this song had and the damage it had for all careers involved is the reason that this worthless song managed to place all the way up here. So what two songs could be worse?

2...As much as “GUMMO” was the song that enabled 6ix9ine to get success, in some weird twisted way, I somewhat see the appeal. 6ix9ine has a lot of personality, it’s loud, there’s an audience for this stuff. So what happens when you take a song and then strip away every bit of “appeal” that 6ix9ine has, and make it a song that has become quite an embarrassment for pretty much everyone involved, yet make that same song a top 3 hit on the Hot 100? Well...

2. 6ix9ine f/Nicki Minaj & Murda Beatz - FEFE (#31 2018)

The fact that “FEFE” is still 6ix9ine’s biggest hit to date absolutely is quite frankly disgusting, because even though this dude has never made a good song ever, this is by far his worst song to date. Who the hell told 6ix9ine that autotune would be a good addition to his voice? The beat is so stiff, it’s just two notes repeated over and over throughout the entire song. If you give any attention to the lyrics and try to analyze them, you’d kill off all of your braincells in record time. The ones that are not nonsense, on the other hand, make you imagine the most uncomfortable and unsettling sexual encounter you can ever think of. And when you think you can turn to Nicki Minaj to potentially help this out...would you look at that, she lost all her personality to do this song as well. And for what? To throw away your legacy? To sacrifice your dignity? All to just get a #1 hit that you wouldn’t get until you two collaborated again for “TROLLZ” in 2020? Yeah, this being a top 40 year-end hit in 2018 proved that society as a whole in 2018 effectively just collapsed, and while “GUMMO” enabled him to get success, “FEFE” is what proved that 6ix9ine was gonna stick around. And it’s an embarrassment for everybody involved, Nicki actually took it off of her album and 6ix9ine even admitted that the song made absolutely no sense. It’s so devoid of anything good, and it’s just an absolutely icky song all around. So what’s worse?

1...Somehow 2018 and 2013 managed to take up all the slots in my top 5. I don’t know how else to say it, it just happened like that. Now, if you know me personally or on Pulse Music Board, you know very well how much I detest this song, and I’m willing to bet that no one’s gonna be surprised that it ended up seizing my #1, hell, I’m certainly not surprised it did so in the slightest. But when I had to compare the four “no redeeming qualities” songs that ended up making up the top 4, what it came down to was that “Te Bote” is a song that hadn’t set a precedent as to how reggaeton would eventually evolve into, “U.O.E.N.O.”, as reprehensible as it is, has been largely forgotten, and 6ix9ine’s success dried up relatively quickly after the dumpster fire that is “FEFE” became a hit. Plus, I’m honestly yet to find many people who would willingly defend any of those songs. This song, however, I still hear its defenders to this very day, both of the song itself and what it represents. It was one of the top 15 biggest songs of the entire fucking decade, it broke the record for the largest radio audience of all time, and it still gets radio play to this day from time to time. Hell, some of you guys just don’t wanna remove the blurred lines...

1. Robin Thicke f/T.I. & Pharrell Williams - Blurred Lines (#2 2013, #83 2014)

I tore into this song hard in my worst of 2013 list, but I’ll be honest: I don’t think I’ve gone far enough. You can’t make a song out of just a bassline, yet this is basically the only instrument in this song! Outside of that, we got a clumsy cowbell. The production doesn’t make this song sexy at all, it just makes it unlistenable. And all three of our frontmen are awful. Pharrell Williams doesn’t do anything on this song outside of the awful “woo” sound effect that appears after every line. T.I. sounds so quiet on this song. Robin Thicke spends most of the song in his horribly airy and thin falsetto, which I feel actively tries to turn people away from the song. Oh yeah, and the elephant in the room, all three of these guys sound like rapists. But then, we got the lyrics. And oh boy, they really are a treasure trove if you wanna find new ways to absolutely loathe this song. They essentially glorify rape culture and are plain misogynistic and creepy all around. We got the stupid lyrics like when Robin Thicke tries to rhyme “hug me” with “hug me”, and when the lyrics are not stupid they make me want to call the damn cops. Seriously, with lyrics like “tried to domesticate ya” or “Imma take a good girl”, I wonder who the hell would legitimately wanna associate themselves with this song?! The song is essentially three dudes aiming to “domesticate” this girl while whining about the blurred lines of sexual content, gee what a wonderful thing to think about. Now, when you have a song this devoid of anything good and this filled with fucking horrible, you’d think that the logical next step would be to let the song just sink. But...that’s not what happened. Instead, it spent 12 weeks at #1, it broke the radio audience impression record, and it became the 14th biggest song of the decade. Yes, this misogynistic catastrophe of a song. And it’s not like the people who associated themselves with this song were spared either! Pharrell Williams publicly admitted that he regrets working on the song and tried to eliminate as much of a connection to the song that he could. Robin Thicke’s career imploded shortly afterward, and T.I. got arrested for sexual abuse allegations in early 2021, which makes these lyrics even more unsettling if that was even possible! And let’s not forget that this song’s lawsuit ruined songwriting credits for the years to come, and it’s still happening today. And just as one very recent example, Hayley Williams and Josh Farro were tacked on as songwriting credits for Olivia Rodrigo’s “good 4 u”! And yet, to this day, I still hear the defenders of this song. They always claim that the song is “catchy” - which is bullshit because I already tore into why it is absolutely not that - and thus, this song managed to get enough of a pass to survive. And that’s really what’s that reprehensible about “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke, T.I., and Pharrell Williams, the worst hit song of the 2010s: it was worthless, misogynistic, rapey garbage right from the jump, and it got enough of a pass to become a legitimate hit. And it was a toxic plague that tainted everything that it touched, from songwriting credits to people’s careers. My only hope is that we never get a song like “Blurred Lines” even remotely close to becoming a hit ever again. Let’s just make sure we never acknowledge this song’s existence, and just move on.

But, that’s the list! Well, that took way longer than I was expecting it to. But my next list will be the best hit songs of the 2010s! I hope I can get that out soon. Also extreme apologies that I’ve put Friday’s Chill Pick on the backburner, I’ve just been busy with getting this list out and with school, I’ll say ahead of time that I won’t be having it next week either, but they’ll be back the week after. But until then, you’ve been reading Fire’s Flaming Hot Takes, let’s leave this all behind us, and I’ll see you next time.