The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs Of 2023

 

The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2023

In the following article, I look at a year for the 2020s that’s all over the place in quality and look at some of the horrendous lows that drag it down.

Welcome back to Fire’s Flaming Hot Takes. And I’m gonna try getting this list out as fast as possible. That’s right guys, today we’re looking at the top 10 worst hit songs of 2023! I’ve thought of about a million different ways to write the intro to this article and about a million different things to put in this intro. I promised myself at the beginning of this year that I would not get personal in this article. Honestly the reason I started getting personal in my year-end lists is because at the time, I didn’t know how else to justify my opinions, And while there may still be a little truth to that, now I feel that me becoming more personal in my year-end lists has enabled this blog to feel like a journal for me. Where I can reflect on the year I had and how that reflects in my song opinions. Plus, I feel that this personal aspect helps my articles not feel like ChatGPT could just generate them. And to be fully honest, this was the year I actually considered quitting blogging, Let me start my reasoning as to why with a conversation I had with my dad at the very beginning of the year, where he was telling me to start weaning off this blog because I would start getting busier with college, and he used an example of two graduates from Stanford he hired that slacked off watching anime during work. I do get why he was telling me this, he just wanted me to be successful in life. And that is part of the reason why I attempted to take such a long break between my best list of the 2000s and now, I just wanted to see what else I should do, but you can probably tell, in that “break” I had too many ideas for articles to write and I couldn’t wait to write them, like that album review stretch. That also isn’t helped by the fact that I was reading some of my old articles and severely cringing, my worst of 2019 list was probably the worst case of this, when I at the time called it the “worst year of my life so far”. And even my 2022 lists when I said the same thing about that year, it made me realize that I can’t in good conscience put an entire year into just one term of “good” or “bad” as whichever you call it as, ignores all the other stuff that happened to you that year on the other side of that binary. For example, I could refer to 2022 as the worst year of my life so far or I could refer to it as the year I got a second chance at life. And branding that year as the worst year of my life, I feel ignores all the good stuff that happened to me. Or I don’t know, for all I know, in like 15 years or something, some bigger challenge could hit me and make my 2022 challenge seem like a cakewalk in comparison. I don’t know, maybe all of that’s just stemming from the 2023 I’ve had which had some moments I will cherish forever, but also moments I felt really sad about. Please don’t take this as me saying this year was rough for me, it was quite honestly, if anything, the opposite, and it did teach me some important life lessons as well.

And I know it’s pure coincidence that this happened, but that just about sums up 2023 for the Hot 100 too. The best songs this year were genuinely songs I believe defined my year in a great way, but the worst...it reached genuinely offensive territory. I feel like we get at least one year like this every decade, in the 2000s it was 2005, 2010s, 2013, and now 2020s, 2023. The charts this year were pretty defined by two main genre surges on the Hot 100 in my mind - Regional Mexican music and country music, as both genre audiences realized streaming exists and pushed in a huge surge for this genre. Country this year produced both genuinely offensive crap and some of my favorite songs of all time. Regional Mexican music...well I’ll get back to this later.

Overall, there were 22 songs on the 2023 year-end list that fell into my “mediocre tier” or lower. So now it’s time to get started on this list. In the past my only rule was that the songs had to debut on the year-end Hot 100 list for the year I’m covering to qualify, but this year, I’m changing it up a little bit, the pool of songs I’m pulling from is the 2023 year-end list, but the Christmas songs are replaced by the songs just below the year-end. So, if there are 6 Christmas songs, #101-106 are eligible too. The tabulations are completely based off of @AustinRioux3’s predictions on Twitter. Additionally, if the repeat finished higher on this year-end than the previous one, it’s eligible too. But if the repeat is in the top 20 on this year-end, regardless of whether it finished higher or not compared to last year, it’s also eligible. So, if a song was #8 on 2022’s year-end and #11 on this year-end, it’s still eligible for this list. This rule change was overdue since 2022 when two of the top 3 of the year were repeats from 2021. Also, I will be using @AustinRioux3’s 52-week predictions since apparently the people at Billboard are on crack and decided to cut the tracking period for this year off at 49 weeks. So Let’s get started by looking at my worst list from 2022 and seeing what would change

DMS:

Gunna f/Future & Young Thug - Pushin P

Bad Bunny & Chencho Corleone - Me Porto Bonito

Becky G & Karol G - MAMIII

Muni Long - Hrs & Hrs

Morgan Wallen - Wasted On You

Kane Brown - Like I Love Country Music  Sam Smith & Kim Petras - Unholy

Doja Cat - Woman Drake f/21 Savage - Jimmy Cooks

10. Adele - Oh My God Kane Brown - Like I Love Country Music

9. Kodak Black - Super Gremlin Doja Cat - Woman

8. Bad Bunny - Despues de la Playa Adele - Oh My God

7. Sam Smith & Kim Petras - Unholy Kodak Black - Super Gremlin

6. Dove Cameron - Boyfriend

5. Elton John & Dua Lipa - Cold Heart (PNAU Remix)

4. Morgan Wallen - You Proof

3. Russell Dickerson & Jake Scott - She Likes It

2. Lil Durk f/Morgan Wallen - Broadway Girls

1. Walker Hayes - AA

Yeah, I don’t hate “Unholy” nearly as much now because...well I’ll get back to that later. And the AJR comparison for “Despues de la Playa” I made last year was admittedly a very stupid one. I listened to Un Verano Sin Ti this year finally and that song honestly kinda went off. Also, somehow I was a dumbass last year and forgot to put “Jimmy Cooks” on my list, so this is me rectifying that: “Jimmy Cooks” is an awful Certified Lover Boy reject. Other than those three, not really anything else that changed. But anyway, finally it’s time to begin the hellscape that is this list.

DM #1: Drake - Search & Rescue (YE: #46, PEAK: #2)
To put it in the most nutshell way possible, this sounds more AI generated than that literal AI generated song that appeared on Spotify earlier this year. Drake may have never sounded more bored on a song than here. He clearly put no effort into this dud, I mean, did he really have to reference Pitbull to make this somehow dated to both the early and late 2010s at the same time? This wasn’t Drake’s worst contribution to pop music this year by any means, considering “Circo Loco” and from For All The Dogs, “Gently” exist. This isn’t something worth searching for and rescuing, more like deserting and abandoning, if anything. This deserves that treatment. NEXT!!!

DM #2: Parker McCollum - Handle On You (YE: #87, PEAK: #30)
I’ll keep this short, Parker McCollum may have one of the most painfully nasal voices I’ve heard in my life and this song is just as bad as the only other song I’ve heard from him, “To Be Loved By You”. In particular, the “Tenesseeeeeeeeeee and Kentuckyyyyy” sounds extremely whiny. Yeah, that’s all I’m willing to give this song. I’ve got a handle on this song being awful.

DM #3: Kane Brown - Bury Me In Georgia (YE: #92, PEAK: #34)
This is a country rock stomper that admittedly had a bit of promise with the stomping percussion, but unfortunately we have Kane Brown who just simply doesn’t sound good against this production. And the distortion on his voice sounds horrible. And there’s what I swear sounds like an elephant blowing its trunk at some point in the middle of the song? Yeah this had potential but this is just a slog instead. I’d be happy to bury this in Georgia, or you know, anywhere in the world, preferably in the deep Arctic Ocean or the Marianas Trench so it can’t be found.

DM #4: Jelly Roll - Need A Favor (YE: #31, PEAK: #14)
We truly live in the worst timeline if now that MGK squandered his pop punk pivot, this is the face of rock music on the charts. While Jelly Roll showed a bit of promise with “Son Of A Sinner” in 2022 (it wasn’t particularly great, but I liked it enough), he released “Need A Favor” in 2023 and it’s been cited by quite a few people I’ve seen online as what will bring rock music back into the mainstream. But the rock music I’m thinking of when listening to this is the absolute sludge of the post-grunge scene in the 2000s. And then the titular lyric. He’s making such a big deal about him only talking to God when he needs a favor and there isn’t any bombast to help it at least feel huge. Thus, the stakes feel nonexistent, yeah, this sucks, next!!

DM #5: Metro Boomin & Future f/Chris Brown - Superhero (Heroes & Villains) (YE: #42, PEAK: #8)
This is comfortably the worst song on Heroes & Villains. This production is painfully lazy, just the same horn loop played lethargically ad naudeum. I mean, “Hot” by Young Thug and Gunna at least had more to the loop! I mean, I may still not love the song, like at all, but still, it was better than this. Future does actually surprisingly go off, but then there’s Chris Brown, who I assume is intentionally cast as the villain in this song, but it doesn’t stop me from getting repulsed by it given Brown’s past. Yeah, none of these guys are superheroes, and even if they were, I think the villain actually wins here

DM #6: Morgan Wallen - Thinkin’ Bout Me (YE: #17, PEAK: #9)

One Thing At A Time is a mid album. A 36 song long album that should’ve just been cut in half, especially when half the album is pretty much crap like this. This isn’t even the worst song on the album - we’ll get to that soon - But this still sucks. Todd In The Shadows described “Last Night” as a song where Morgan Wallen tries to be country music’s Drake. But no, this song is him trying to be country music’s Drake, down to the sterile as hell trap percussion. Say what you will about “Last Night”, at least I got enjoyment out of badly imitating his twang on that song, generic as it was. I can’t get any sort of enjoyment like that out of “Thinkin’ Bout Me”, it’s just so sour and sterile. Again, not the worst song on the album, but this still sucks. No one should be thinking about this. Everyone would be better off if they didn’t.

DM #7: Sam Smith & Kim Petras - Unholy (YE: #11, PEAK: #1)

This song was #7 on my worst list last year, but somehow it became bigger this year, and while I’ll admit, this did fall back for me because I did grow to appreciate this song in concept and the more I listened to the song, the more I realized that my issue was more in the way that Sam Smith and Kim Petras played this safe to get this play on the radio than anything about the sound of it. Even though yeah, in practice I still think this song is an utter trainwreck, the wub-wub of the bass, Sam Smith sounding outright goofy on this track, it just doesn’t work for me at all on aesthetic alone, but then the missed potential I was referring to, if you’re gonna get a trans artist and non-binary artist on the same song and make a song about cheating, you could’ve taken so many interesting paths with this. But instead, this feels like it’s trying its hardest to be a song by a trans artist and a nonbinary artist without it pissing off your ultra Christian conservative mom. I mean, Lil Nas X didn’t let him being gay stop him from making a song like “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”, which leaned directly into that gayness. Yeah, I still don’t like this song at all, but I think I can say I’ve developed a newfound appreciation for this while still saying it’s a bad song.

Onto the garbage proper now!

10...In late 2022, we had a little 2015 revival, or at least what felt like one. We had a collab from David Guetta and Bebe Rexha and even a mid-2010s-esque self-empowerment anthem in “Victoria’s Secret” by Jax - which also sucks ass but that’s besides the point - but unfortunately the public decided that we needed Meghan Trainor in that batch too, and thus...

10. Meghan Trainor - Made You Look (YE: #54, PEAK: #11)

Here’s a genuine question: Was anyone, even fans of Meghan Trainor asking for a Meghan Trainor revival in fucking 2023? Even as someone more inclined to defend some of her hits from her peak, like “Dear Future Husband”, than most, this was just unnecessary. I will say that this isn’t nearly as bad as “Mother” which thankfully flopped into oblivion. Todd In The Shadows described this song as “white Lizzo” but this honestly sounds like the white version of itself if anything. For as much as “Made You Look” is trying to assert Meghan as a confident person in all her looks and that she’s super stunning and will make your neck break upon looking at her, it all just sounds so plastic and fake and unconfident. And I can assign most of the blame here to the production, which doesn’t sound like something that would soundtrack a woman being confident. It sounds like a Christmas sale at Target commercial. Even Jax understood the assignment better with “Victoria’s Secret” - which is also a pretty bad song that thankfully got caught between years. I mean, while I do get a little chuckle at “But even with nothin' on/Bet I made you look” - Meghan, if you have nothing on, yes you will make people look and have them think you’re a psycho. Do you just walk around in public with nothing on? I can just picture her making people look with jaw-dropped expressions as they see her just walking around like that. I know what she’s trying to say with this line but there must be better ways of writing it, right? Let’s leave Meghan Trainor and her retro doo-wop style back in the mid-2010s and move on with our lives.

9…Tik Tok, if you can’t tell, has kinda played a huge part in the pop music industry in making old songs huge hits years after they were released. That said, sometimes you could get something good or even great, like “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac or “Telepatia” by Kali Uchis, other times you get repugnant shit like this...

9. Chris Brown - Under The Influence (YE: #19, PEAK: #12)

If Chris Brown is really gonna stick around, can he at least go back to making something like “With You” or “Forever”?  But if we’re gonna get utter garbage like this from him, we should’ve just let his career rot in a ditch. But no, instead some genius at Tik Tok decided to take this utter slog of an album track from 2019 a hit 4 years later, a track where Chris Brown’s unlikeable little turd of a presence just oozes all over this track and it’s so insufferably slimy. Also Brown says that he’s gonna make this girl “cry like a baby”. If this is what being under the influence feels like, I dread the morning hangover.

8…I’ll just say it, one artist I don’t really like is Cardi B. While I have gotten kinder to her over the years (“WAP” has actually aged rather well), I still really don’t like her voice, but I think even I can agree that she was far from the worst part of this song…

 

8. Glorilla & Cardi B - Tomorrow 2 (YE: #76, PEAK: #9)

Yeah, I’ve only heard two songs from Glorilla, including this, and I’ve liked neither of them. And while I think “FNF (Let’s Go)” is slightly worse, this song is still bad, a remix of the original “Tomorrow” with Cardi for the crossover into the mainstream, and honestly all of my issues with this are because of Glorilla herself. The production is stock bare-bones trap piano that leaves Glorilla’s blunt delivery that feels like she’s always about to fall off the beat, she’s trying to deliver every line with intensity without finding a healthy balance of how much intensity to have and all her bars just blend together as a result. Yeah, this is awful. NEXT!!!

7…So near the beginning of the year, I pegged the regional Mexican music surge as the worst genre trend in mainstream music of 2023, admittedly a close-minded assertion, as I did eventually find plenty of stuff to like from that umbrella term of a subgenre, suffice to say though, this was the worst of the surge...

 

7. Peso Pluma & Natanael Cano - PRC (YE: #95, PEAK: #33)

This just irritates me so much and there isn’t much to say about why. With the farty trumpets, and Peso Pluma’s voice sounding very squeaky and insufferable here, this is a migraine. NEXT!!!

6..Last year, I put a song on my worst list that I described as dated to the mid-2010s in the worst way possible. This year, I have a song that reminds me weirdly of the late 2010s for some reason I’m unable to put my finger on....

 

6. Young Nudy f/21 Savage - Peaches & Eggplants (YE: #94, PEAK: #33)

Not even lying; this song was my dad’s realization of the dirty meaning of the “eggplant” and “peaches” emojis. And yeah, the song is awful, from Young Nudy who sounds like a weird cross between Lil Baby and I think...D.R.A.M. without the personality that at least made “Broccoli” somewhat fun in 2016? And then there’s the weedy production that reminds me too much of “Rake It Up” by Yo Gotti from 2017. But really, this is on the list because of that “baow” sound effect which sounds like he’s choking on his own vomit because he’s choking on a dick.

5...Oh I’m willing to bet that this is a lot lower on my list than people expect...

 

5. Oliver Anthony Music - Rich Men North Of Richmond (YE: #74, PEAK: #1)

I think it says a lot about how negative of a connotation the word “Conservative” now has that when I first heard of this song and that conservatives co-opted it for their own, I immediately pegged this as the worst song of the year without even taking a second to listen to the lyrics of this song. And yeah, now that I actually am listening to the lyrics of this, this is just a man who’s clearly out of his depth trying and failing to make a song about the working class struggles and pandering to the audience while doing it. I mean, he’s blaming the working class struggles on fat people buying fudge rounds of all things for fucks sake. And the lyric “Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do/And they don't think you know, but I know that you do” just gives both a baseless conspiracy about the government with no actual evidence to back it up and intentionally pandering to you to try getting you to side with this song. Doesn’t help that Oliver Anthony is screaming off-key the entire time. Yeah, I’m cutting this some slack only because I pity how this guy has been dissected thoroughly by politicians, both the right and the left, as if he’s a political thinker. Yeah this is really just a headache, not much else to say, it sucks, even if not for the reasons I thought before.

4...Not lying, the first time I saw the music video for this song from Hot 100 videos, I thought this guy got Daniel Radcliffe to star as Harry Potter for a shot where he literally looks like he’s fighting a dementor...

4. David Kushner - Daylight (YE: #56, PEAK: #33)

You cannot tell me this isn’t just Harry Potter fighting a dementor in this shot:

Ok, but for real, onto the song itself, Dollar Tree Harry Potter here sounds like Dollar Tree Hozier crossed with Dollar Tree Joji. Guess he’s...Jojier Potter. His lower register sounds utterly lifeless and he only gets more expressive in his higher register, And that lifelessness makes the entire song sound pretentious as fuck - “you and I drink the poison from the same vine” “Oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time”. This is so insufferably pretentious and yes, if Taylor Swift sung this instead, I would probably praise the songwriting, mainly because Swift is an actually competent singer who’s able to sell her lyrics unlike Jojier Potter here. And believe me, as someone who actually listened to his follow up single to this, this isn’t even the worst his vocals can get. This was how I described his vocals in his followup “Dead Man”:

I don’t think anything else I could say about this dreary, lifeless trash is harsher than that. Even as someone who likes some of this brand of pop soul more than most, “Daylight” is a terrible song, Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift outtalented.

3...So back with “Unholy”, I said that my hate for that song actually fell back a bit for me this year, but if you want a song that was #4 on my worst list in 2022 and may have only gotten worse for me, if anything?..

 

3. Morgan Wallen - You Proof (YE: #12, PEAK: #5)

My issue with this last year was the sharp tonal dissonance between the happy guitar tones and the sour lyrics, but now? I think that may be the BEST part of the song for me now! No, this is so high here because of those vocals. Wallen has never had the greatest voice with his twang and I’ve noticed that often his worst songs are when he leans into the twang, and he really is doing it on the hook. Yeah, terrible in 2022, terrible now, but there’s still 2 songs worse...

2...This was my frontrunner for my #1 worst hit song until right around the summer, and yup, it’s still absolutely atrocious! But remember what I said about Morgan Wallen’s worst songs being the ones where he leans into his twang? Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with Morgan Wallen’s worst song...

 

2. Morgan Wallen - Ain’t That Some (YE: #99, PEAK: #11)

Yes, I’m serious when I say that this is Morgan Wallen’s worst song. At least “Up Down” and “Heartless” had a foundation. But “Ain’t That Some” doesn’t even have percussion, all it has is a sour minor key guitar and Wallen’s twang as he sing-raps through this utter slog. And the part where he spells out “country” is my pick for the worst 2 seconds of 2023. Also, not lying, when I played this song for my uncle recently, he thought Wallen was about to yodel the entire time. This sounds like it’s trying to replicate the feeling of being under the influence and the morning hangover at the same time and utterly failing! Yeah, this atrocity is by far the worst song of Morgan Wallen’s career, and yet it still wasn’t my pick for the worst hit song of the year. Now ain’t that some shit?

1...I don’t think this #1 pick should surprise anyone at all but it’s a #1 pick that I, at least find gives me a different emotion than some of my other #1 picks, yes I’ve had #1 picks that caused societal harm like “Have You Forgotten?” and I’ve had #1 picks that I just simply hated the most like “Blurred Lines” or even last year with “AA”, but I honest to god cannot recall another time my #1 pick actively made me fear for my safety...

1. The worst singer in the mainstream right now - Attempt It Within The Walls Of Some Miniscule Village (YE: #59, PEAK: #1)

I’m gonna make it my goal to not mention the artist's name or the actual song title at all throughout this review because as far as I can tell, the reason this was a hit was due to the attention this song sparked when people dunked on it. It’s not even gonna be in the Spotify playlist for this list. If you wanna know what the actual song is, just look at the predictions for a 52-week year. But I’ll start off with the fact that this artist has become my least favorite artist to ever work in music. At least with Uncle Kracker, I get the sense that if he were to invite me to his house for coffee, he’d be a pretty chill dude. But this guy, if he were to invite me to his house for coffee, I feel like he’d use it as an excuse to murder me for being a minority. Speaking of which, the song itself, and look, this guy is still not a good singer at all but his vocal delivery here is also so forceful that it feels threatening. That threatening nature crystalized why I now consider this guy my least favorite artist of all time. At least Morgan Wallen seems remorseful of his racist outburst and I get the sense that he’s trying to better himself. I don’t get any sense of remorse or a sense that he’s trying to better himself from this guy. Which takes us to the content, which is promoting violence against people who try to take guns away, and with the racial and lynching undertones this song picks up due to the video, he might as well be saying “boys, let’s hurt those who try to take our guns away! And while we’re at it, let’s get non-white people too!!” This is not at all helped by the antics this guy has gotten into the last few years, such as an incident where he did blackface for a Halloween costume. This is what I mean by the fact that this song makes me fear for my safety, as an Asian living in America, this song makes me feel that the guy who made this will hunt me down and actually kill me...and even if you somehow ignore all of that, musically it’s also just a pale ripoff of his 2014 hit “Burnin’ It Down”, which as is was trying to be a sex song but ends up less sexy than a used, soggy piece of toilet paper. Yeah, fuck this vile garbage, worst hit song of 2023 by long shot. And it isn’t even close. The success of this song only makes me scared of the possibility we get more songs like this. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen.

The best list should be up tomorrow! And also, I now have an Instagram account!! I’m not sure how active I’ll be, but I’ve created it now haha. Until then, you’ve been reading Fire’s Flaming Hot Takes, and as always, the Spotify playlist will be  below this article with (almost) all the songs I’ve mentioned in case you wanna listen to the songs here! and I’ll see you next time!

Spotify playlist

Follow my Instagram!!!