The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2011 REDUX

 

The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2011 REDUX

Yo guys, it’s Fire back with another list redux. Today, we’ll be taking a dive to reexamine the top 10 WORST hit songs of 2011!!

So 2011 was a year that back in 2021 I considered one of the best years for the Hot 100 of the 2010s, putting up stiff competition with 2017. And...revisiting this year, it’s aged pretty interestingly to be honest. It’s still absolutely one of the best years of the 2010s for pop music, where I found new appreciation for songs I may have liked but not loved and even songs I outright disliked before aging remarkably well! That said, the opposite was also true - more than a few songs that I had liked before will be appearing on this list - including at least one song that was on my original best list haha.

As I said in my original lists, 2011 is very much in the same vein as 2010 and 2012 with songs purely about partying. The club boom had just hit its apex in 2011, with many of the biggest hits this year being flashy, nightclub ready bangers. This was definitely the point it started hitting oversaturation levels though, as the year following it saw its significant decline, later completely dying out in 2013. That said, this year was flooded with club bangers - from pop to hip hop as well. And the nostalgia manages to overpower the fact that some of these songs are quite dated admittedly. It was also a year where pop stars like Katy Perry, Kesha, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna were duking it out to see who’s the main pop girl.  And I guess country was a bit split in this regard, the early seeds of bro-country were planted this year and the non-bro-country country songs were very sedate and bland; you know, perfect Macy’s or Target music. And this all adds up to a kinda chaotic, but overall great, year for the charts; even though if I were to make an overgeneralizing statement on the pop music trends of 2011, it’d just be club boom, club boom, and more electropop era (whatever term you use to describe the sound lol), to the point where I really am contemplating as of writing whether my #1 pick is really deserving of being called the worst hit of the year.

Now enough rambling, it’s time to start the list. In my previous list reduxes, I tried a rule that stated if a top 20 repeat was lower than it was last year on the Hot 100 year-end, it can only be eligible if it beat or matched its peak in the year I’m discussing. Well, guess what: I’m removing this rule; because I don’t think I can think of a single song that finished in the YE top 20 as a repeat from the previous year that finished lower and still beat or matched its peak from the previous year, which basically defeats the point of my top 20 repeat rule to begin with. So, my rules that are set in stone for now are that the songs had to debut on the YE Hot 100 list for 2011 to qualify. However, if a repeat from the previous year was higher this year than the last one on the YE, it’s also eligible. And if the repeat finished in the YE top 20, it’s eligible regardless of whether it finished higher or lower compared to last year. With that said, if you’re curious to see how the worst list reduxes for 2014 and 2016 would change under this new criteria:

Have fun!

2016:

The list would literally not change at all lol

2014:

DMs:

American Authors - Best Day of My Life Lorde - Royals

Mike WiLL Made-It f/Miley Cyrus, Wiz Khalifa, & Juicy J - 23

T.I. f/Iggy Azalea - No Mediocre

Jason Derulo f/2 Chainz - Talk Dirty

Florida Georgia Line f/Luke Bryan - This Is How We Roll

Sam Smith - Stay with Me

Jessie J, Nicki Minaj, & Ariana Grande - Bang Bang

YG featuring Jeezy and Rich Homie Quan - My Hitta

Chris Brown f/Lil Wayne & Tyga - Loyal

Kenny Chesney - American Kids

Inelligble DM:

Robin Thicke f/T.I. & Pharrell Williams - Blurred Lines

10. Jake Owen - Beachin'

9. Ed Sheeran - Sing

8. Jason Derulo f/Snoop Dogg - Wiggle

7. Maroon 5 - Animals

6. Brantley Gilbert - Bottoms Up

5. Jason Derulo - Trumpets

4. Naughty Boy f/Sam Smith - La La La

3. MAGIC! - Rude

2. Meghan Trainor - All About That Bass

1. Jason Aldean - Burnin’ It Down

Now with all that out of the way, let’s prep ourselves up by looking at my original 2011 worst list:

DMs:

Katy Perry f/Kanye West - E.T.

Rihanna - Cheers (Drink To That)

Keri Hilson - Pretty Girl Rock

DJ Khaled f/Drake, Rick Ross, & Lil Wayne - I’m On One

10. Foster The People - Pumped Up Kicks

9. Nicki Minaj - Super Bass

8. Jason Aldean f/Kelly Clarkson - Don’t You Wanna Stay

7. Mike Posner - Please Don’t Go

6. Pink - Fuckin’ Perfect

5. Pink - Raise Your Glass

4. Maroon 5 f/Christina Aguilera - Moves Like Jagger

3. Dr. Dre f/Eminem & Skylar Grey - I Need A Doctor

2. LMFAO - Sexy And I Know It

1. Luke Bryan - Country Girl (Shake It For Me)

Quite a few changes I can already see, and a few notable ones that I feel might surprise any viewers that read my original lists way back in 2021. But now let’s FINALLY get this fire started with our dishonorable mentions!!

DM #1: Jason Derulo - Don't Wanna Go Home (YE: #87, PEAK: #14)

Let me start by saying that on the surface, this is a pretty fun song. But dig a little bit deeper and this sounds like an utter mess. The biggest problem with this song isn’t even the fact that Derulo is saying that there’s a girl in his lap falling unconscious and the LAST thing on his mind being going home. No, the problem with this is the chorus; where it sounds weirdly like a muted cacophony if that is even possible. That’s when I discovered that apparently the song samples/interpolates 3 different songs (“Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” by Harry Belafonte, “Show Me Love” by Robin S, and, arguably most damningly, “Get Low” by Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz) and all of a sudden it makes way too much sense why this production sounds like such a mess. Not to mention, Jason Derulo at various points here sounds like he hates the party going on here and is trying to force a smile here, like you’re the awkward, shy kid forced into a loud raging rave against your will, especially on the “Burn it down to the floor oh, oh, oh”. He’s trying so hard to inject some presence into this song but he somehow winds up sounding so vacant, and I absolutely hate the way he says “errybody” here, you’re not Kesha on “Tik Tok”! You can’t make this work, you’re just Usher from Temu meets Chris Brown from Temu. Yeah, I think I’m ready to go home, screw this.

DM #2: Pitbull f/T-Pain - Hey Baby (Drop It to the Floor) (YE: #39, PEAK: #7)

It’s kinda shocking how bad this fails at working. You’d think that pairing Ptbull with T-Pain, two arguable household names of party music in this era, would be a slam dunk, but no, T-Pain plainly doesn’t sound interested in this song and it feels like he’s trying  way too hard to come off like he’s invested. And Pitbull on the chorus just really turns me off. Something about the way he sings “ooh baby baby” in such a deep voice just makes me imagine him at the club catcalling a girl in the most uncomfortable way possible. Skip this.

DM #3: Jeremih f/50 Cent - Down on Me (YE: #22, PEAK: #4)

Oh God, another song that just doesn’t work whatsoever. Starting with Jeremih, was “Don’t Tell Em” just a fluke of quality or something? He sounds like an utter non-presence here and his attempts to try being a bigger presence here just make him sound utterly obnoxious. But I can’t solely blame him for this. 50 Cent spends his verse talking about how this girl is edible in the creepiest yet most disinteresting vocal timbre possible. Yeah, this shit isn’t edible, more like a raw, uncooked, spoiled leftover, if you get what I mean.

DM #4: Rihanna - Cheers (Drink to That) (YE: #77, PEAK: #7)

Well, we’ve finally arrived at the first song that I didn’t used to like. This is far from the worst use of sampling in a pop song I’ve heard, but yeah, this song is pretty bad. It strips away any of the power that came in “I’m With You” by Avril Lavigne thanks to how unanthemic and ploddingly lethargic the production and Rihanna sound. The only time Rihanna gets even remotely close to anthemic is in the chorus and even there, she sounds weirdly muted in the mix. So basically put all of this into a homebrewing kit and you get an absolute failure of a song to convey any sort of good time happening. Yeah, I don’t say cheers to this, I think I’ll just pour my beer down the sink.

DM #5: New Boyz f/The Cataracs & Dev - Backseat (YE: #84, PEAK: #26)

Did we really have to make the New Boyz two hit wonders? Because this sounds like a bad hangover of a hyperpop song. But that may be an insult to hyperpop, the point of hyperpop is to basically act as a sugar rush in song form by combining all sorts of sounds to make very strange music that still had a pulse. “Backseat”, meanwhile, is a badly produced clunker of a song with no momentum or groove at all and the New Boyz clearly thinking they have way more swagger than they actually do. And then there’s the infamous lyric - “I heard you had a baby. You want a new boy in you?” - look, in a decade where we had a song where Rick Ross endorsed date rape, 6ix9ine being a white guy dropping the n word every like 2 seconds, and, well, all of “You Done Goofed” by Blood On The Dancefloor and “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke, I can’t in good faith call it the worst lyric I heard in a song in the 2010s, but it’s easily the most “what the fuck?”-core. Yeah, in this case I don’t think the backseat is the safest place in the car because this car accident of a song is not worth Geico’s 15 minutes.

DM #6: Rodney Atkins - Take a Back Road (YE: #90, PEAK: #23)

Musically, this song is actually quite pleasant, even good. But no, this made my dishonorable mentions all because of Rodney Atkins, who sounds like a cross between Kenny Chesney at his most faceless and Jessie Murph at her twangiest(?). Other than that, not much to say, Atkins’s delivery is pretty bad, and yet also generic enough to make this insufferably sedate. I can’t in good faith call this the worst country hit this year - stay tuned - but this still sucks.

DM #7: Bruno Mars - Grenade (YE: #6, PEAK: #1)

Oh gosh, this song was one of the last cuts from my original best list, but as the years passed, it started to dawn on me that holy SHIT, I hate this song!! I hate how melodramatic it is, and nothing about the production or Bruno Mars’s delivery can remotely back it up or justify it. Bruno is going off about how he’d die the most painful deaths possible for this girl but claims that she wouldn’t do the same for him. News flash Bruno, when your loved ones say they would die for you, there’s this word to categorize it, it’s called a HYPERBOLE, learn it, you idiot. And for all you know, this girl is probably thinking “I’d die for you Bruno!”, she just doesn’t want to convey it the way you do because she’s scared she’ll get locked up in a psych ward!! And yet here you are with your awful emo anthem that makes it sound like you’d die these deaths because you derive pleasure from self-harm. And that’s not to mention the shitty lyrics - “Had your eyes wide open, why were they open?”. Coupled with the most weepy production that still has a beat and Mars feeling like he’s trying to badly imitate Michael Jackson on some of his vocal inflections - especially on the “mad woman, mad woman” bit - without anything close to the swagger that MJ had, and you get an awful, AWFUL song. I’d catch a grenade before I listen to this shit ever again, NEXT!!!!

DM #8: Mike Posner - Please Don't Go (YE: #91, PEAK: #16)

You know, the song starts off promising enough with the more melodic verses and Posner’s decent enough singing, but then the chorus hits and the beat contorts into ugly sounding 8-bit synths that sound imported from an arcade game from the 90s in the worst way possible. I can’t quite call this the worst Mike Posner hit when his hit from the previous year exists, but while Mike Posner did realize his potential with the Seeb remix of “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” in 2016, but this is still a song that sounds imported, again, from a 90s arcade game that would be lucky if the player only got a Game Over screen.

DM #9: Lil Wayne - How to Love (YE: #23, PEAK: #5)

Did anyone ask for Lil Wayne to do this? Lil Wayne is at his best when he’s making bangers  with sharp wordplay and/or flows, not this hangover of an acoustic ballad. The acoustic guitar production makes Lil Wayne sound like he’s at various points about to puke from how bad this song sounds. Lil Wayne just sounds super insincere here, which adds an ugly layer to the lyrics, which are about a girl who could “never figure out how to love”, and it feels super condescending. Yeah, that’s about all I have to say here, I think the real lesson Lil Wayne should be teaching is how to love (this song).

DM #10: Foster the People - Pumped Up Kicks (YE: #13, PEAK: #3)

I never liked this song and yet I think it only gets worse with every listen for me. Let’s put the elephant in the room off to the side for now. This sounds like complete ass. Mark Foster’s delivery sounds like it’s being projected through a speaker about 100 meters under the ocean and the whistling makes me wanna twist Mark Foster’s neck until it breaks. The various sound effects throughout are unsettling as hell and that clashes really badly with the lightweight, jaunty production. And that takes us to the lyrics, which are written from the perspective of a school shooter - and that isn’t my issue, there was potential here - but it fails to provide any sort of insightful commentary on why kids might turn to this. Compare this to YNW Melly’s “Murder On My Mind”, a song I still don’t even like at all; that song didn’t really justify the narrator’s actions, but was equally dark in production and made genuinely insightful commentary on why one might turn to murder - again, it doesn’t excuse such a heinous act, but it at least provides a new angle on things - in “Pumped Up Kicks” all we get is “this kid is just very dumb and found his dad’s gun and is taking it to school” without any sort of commentary other than “this kid’s a psychopath”. Y’all said “NO” to “Sit Next To Me” in 2018, but you said “YES” to this jaunty quiet kid anthem, I hope you’re proud of yourselves, because you REALLY shouldn’t be.

Alright, now for the list proper...

10...So as I mentioned at the start, this list contains a lot of songs I used to like but found myself getting repulsed by the abhorrent sound on display when relistening to the 2011 YE, this one was shockingly and embarrassingly very close to my best list last time but yeah, the time is up...

10. Foster The People - Pumped Up Kicks Black Eyed Peas - The Time (Dirty Bit) (YE: #37, PEAK: #4)

This is probably the most obvious pick for a worst of 2011 list out there. You all know why this song is here, despite the pre-chorus sounding quite nice with the interpolation of “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life”, the drop sounds like a broken computer and every contortion of it sounds like someone installed a virus on that computer and then completely broke the anti-virus software. And then we get all the interludes courtesy of will.i.am, which makes it sound like the musical equivalent of getting to the very top of a rollercoaster but then before you drop, you are hit on the head with 10 million hammers without a helmet on. And as much as this song is trying to imply that this is only the beginning, it only really translated to one more badly produced hit in 2011 with “Just Can’t Get Enough” that only barely missed this list and then the Peas disappeared from the charts until 2020’s “RITMO (Bad Boys For Life)”, and with how terrible this song is, maybe it should’ve stayed that way.

9...This next song was another one that was embarrassingly close to my original best list. And even at the time, it was only because of the talent the two features brought here rather than anything the lead artist did here, but good talent can only carry your song for so long...

9. Nicki Minaj - Super Bass Chris Brown f/Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes - Look at Me Now (YE: #21, PEAK: #6)

Yeah, even back then, I knew Chris Brown was a TERRIBLE rapper, but I felt Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes carried it into greatness. But as time went on, Chris Brown’s lyricism plainly got too painfully shitty to ignore, where he seems to be extremely obsessed with his own penis:

“And she accidentally slip and fall on my dick

Oops, I said ‘On my dick’

I ain't really mean to say ‘On my dick’

But since we talkin' about my dick

All of you haters say hi to it”

But even Lil Wayne decides to drop the f slur in his verse, how lovely. This is nowhere near Chris Brown’s worst when “No Guidance”, “Deuces”, “Under The Influence” (I’ve really turned on this one since my 2023 worst list), or “Freaky Friday” exist, but this is still pretty terrible. In a just world, this song would’ve left Chris Brown’s dick flaccided so he’d stop obsessing over it and maybe we would’ve been spared an entire decade of him! Unfortunately, we don’t live in a just world so somehow Chris Brown is still making music.

8...When I made my worst list for 2009, my #1 pick was “I Love College” by Asher Roth for being pretty smug and privileged. But honestly, I can’t say I loathe it nearly as much as I did back then. I still don’t like it, but I’ve gotten a tiny bit kinder to it for what it is, a cliche, corny anthem for college parties. It’s a decent song, I guess. Now imagine if you came up to me and said “Hey Fire!! What if you took the smug attitude in that song, and made the artist very aware of that smugness and after that, turned up the smug factor to an 11?” Well...

8. Jason Aldean f/Kelly Clarkson - Don’t You Wanna Stay Bruno Mars - The Lazy Song (YE: #26, PEAK: #4)

I liked this song at first, until I realized that this song is like if the spirit of Jason Mraz possessed Bruno Mars’s body and turned him into Bruno Mraz to make an insufferable WGWAG song. This song is so punchably smug and privileged, to Bruno unintentionally revealing in this song that this isn’t a song about complaining about the busy work you have and more a song about complaining of being forced to have a standard of dignity, from him saying that on his “lazy” day that he’s gonna masterbate while watching TV and “take a strut in his birthday suit and let everything hang loose” and him saying he won’t comb his hair, the only remotely “lazy” thing he does is kick his feet up and stare at...the fan. And then the most sickeningly privileged part - he says he might “mess around” and get his college degree, yes Bruno, treat 4 years of crippling student debt and countless all-nighters as “messing around”, this song sounds so privileged that even frat bros would probably reject this. And then all the insufferable whistling and the “woo-hoo”’s that make me want to punch Bruno Mraz in the nose repeatedly until it starts bleeding.  I mean, the only remotely funny line here is him turning on MTV so he can learn how to dougie, but even that only dates this song badly. Apparently, even Bruno Mars hates this song, I can see why. This is TERRIBLE.

7...You know, before I relistened to this song, I was more inclined to be slightly charitable to it, especially when I realized that this artist’s main appeal, even back in her glory days, was being this wannabe cool mom that was just cool enough to not be uncool. But then I relistened to this, and all the venom I had towards this shit for years came flooding back...

7. Mike Posner - Please Don’t Go P!nk - Raise Your Glass (YE: #17, PEAK: #1)

You know, I think I figured out in my original lists way back in 2021 why I used to be so averse to P!nk. Even beyond the overplay, almost all her 2010s hits are in the same key!! Seriously, this, “Fuckin’ Perfect”, “Just Like Fire”, “Just Give Me A Reason”, “Beautiful Trauma”, they’re all in G Major!! And that made her so tiring when all these songs got placed as AC radio staples for the rest of the decade. Hell, my two favorite P!nk 2010s hits are “Try” and “Walk Me Home” just because they’re the only ones where she didn’t use that tired ass music key. And a part of me does want to be more charitable to “Raise Your Glass”, because in the end it’s supposed to be a harmless fun bop, but then my skin started crawling at her mouthing an air guitar and “don’t get fancy, just get dancey” and “if you’re too school for cool”. Yeah, this song is still terrible, as with “Cheers (Drink To That)” earlier, pour your glass down the sink.

6...In hindsight, a lot of people would tell you that the Recovery era of Eminem has aged really badly. And I’ll still stand up for “Not Afraid” and “Love The Way You Lie” but I’m not deaf. I absolutely get the hate for those songs, even if I do still think they are both very well-written even despite many of the lyrical miracle tendencies present in those songs. But I never liked this song from the first time I heard this...

6. Pink - Fuckin’ Perfect Dr. Dre f/Eminem and Skylar Grey - I Need a Doctor (YE: #51, PEAK: #4)

Production-wise this sounds like a worse “Love The Way You Lie” thanks to the vitals sound effects that make this sound like an utter cacophony, and like the production is actively burying Skylar Grey alive while she’s singing the hook. It’s a song where Eminem is thanking  Dr. Dre for all he did for Eminem, but he’s yelling to keep up his gimmick as an angry whiteboy and it creates a sharp tonal clash that’s really hard to ignore. And then we get Dr. Dre rhyming the f slur with “maggots” which I can’t even take offense to because it sounds so forced. But you know what, maybe I can make an argument that this song was what made Eminem stop doing this inspirational angry whiteboy shtick. Because this song really only translated to one more Recovery-core hit this year in “Lighters” with Royce da 5’9” and Bruno Mars with Royce and Eminem redefining the term “tonal dissonance” and completely wasting a good hook from Bruno Mars (that was the last cut from my dishonorable mentions btw, that song has really aged badly). Yeah this is terrible, I think I need a doctor to take this song off of life support.

5...So I briefly said back in the intro to this article that the early seeds of bro-country were planted this year in the country songs that weren’t sedate and boring, and while I’ll say that bro-country is no longer the worst genre I ever heard given that I discovered in the 1800s there used to be minstrelsy, it’s still a very bad genre that’s so artistically bankrupt and it’s kinda similar in a way to minstrelsy in that it co-opts black culture for a white audience somewhat. Bro-country co-opts black slang in rap for whites afraid of black people, while minstrelsy just literally is just taking black culture and turning it into a parody for white artists to make fun of, no probably not as reprehensible as minstrelsy-oh fuck it this intro is just unrelated to this song, let’s talk about an artist I’m convinced would’ve done minstrelsy back then if he was alive...

5. Pink - Raise Your Glass Jason Aldean - Dirt Road Anthem (YE: #43, PEAK: #7)

This wasn’t really dead out the gate. The production sounds melodically good but no, Jason Aldean, the man who did blackface for a Halloween costume himself, decided to rap a series of cliches in this song and he’s evidently convinced that he’s making a banger when this song is too slow and lethargic to resemble any sort of banger or anthem. I can’t call this anything close to Jason Aldean’s worst song, even this year, but it’s terrible nonetheless.

4...I don’t know if I can justify this song being higher than “Dirt Road Anthem”, or it being this high on this list considering some of the shit I’ve gone through. But if I can defend myself here, let me ask you a question: would you rather spend 50 hours in solitary confinement with an annoying person, or do it alone? Now think carefully about this, because if you’re with the annoying person in that room, you’re at least getting stimulation and aren’t gonna fall into psychosis...

4. Maroon 5 f/Christina Aguilera - Moves Like Jagger Jason Aldean f/Kelly Clarkson - Don't You Wanna Stay (YE: #68, PEAK: #31)

I swear this is not me just trying to make a hot take for shits and giggles, I truly think this duet with the talented Kelly Clarkson is even worse than the song Aldean tries to rap on. This song is so boring and unstimulating where Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson have the chemistry of two couch cushions. “Dirt Road Anthem” at least had a decent melody, “Don’t You Wanna Stay” is all grace but no beauty. NOTHING about this song sticks out, not even Kelly’s vocals!! Given how I haven’t heard this get a recurrent spin on any AC station I’ve listened to, this probably put even the AC radio hosts to sleep. I don’t wanna stay with Jason Aldean. Next!

3...I know some people might be shocked that this isn’t my #1, even if you knew that I liked the song (somehow) before, but I’ll admit, while I’ve come to acknowledge this song as trash, I don’t feel angry or even grossed out by this, but more a weird feeling of perverse amazement at thinking anyone decided to release this as a single and put their name on it...

3. Dr. Dre f/Eminem & Skylar Grey - I Need A Doctor Enrique Iglesias f/Ludacris and DJ Frank E - Tonight (I'm Fuckin' You) (YE: #16, PEAK: #4)

I genuinely hate Enrique’s club boom pivot. 2010’s “I Like It” is still atrocious and while I can’t say I think this song is worse, yeah, this is still pretty gross. It’s like if you took the horny rap from 2005 and club boom-ified it. The bluntness of the titular lyric isn’t sexy or smooth more than reminding me of the kind of guy who would walk up to any girl at a club and start drooling all over her. Even Ludacris can’t save this song, though I’ll admit that the interpolation of “Get Low” by Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz works better than it has any right to, only the second time we’ve seen one of those on this list! But honestly, I don’t have to even go into the lyrics to find this trash; the part that instantly knocked this down from a 7/10 to a 2/10 for me was the intro was Enrique while drowning autotune goes “yoooooooooooooooooouuuuuu yooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuu” and it’s unlistenable. And when you discover that this DJ Frank E motherfucker produced “Right Round” by Flo Rida and Kesha and “Airplanes” by B.o.B and Hayley Williams and yet THIS was the song he chose to put his name on, that makes all the mystifying qualities of this song shine brighter. As Spectrum Pulse said, “maybe once you tell girls you're going to fuck them and don't do it well, they don't want to hear you talking in a language they understand anymore. Both of these men should have known better and they've paid dearly for this mistake, let's move on.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

2..This was my original #1, and look, the only reason I didn’t put this at #1 again was simply because as I’ve said in multiple of my list reduxes now, cultural damage doesn’t play as significant of a role in evaluating a song as it used to, if I still analyzed music from that angle, this would likely still be my #1 because more than any song on this list, this one has stuck around for the longest...

2. LMFAO - Sexy And I Know It Luke Bryan - Country Girl (Shake It for Me) (YE: #81, PEAK: #22)

I’ll make (possibly) a bold take: if “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)” flopped hard, we might’ve been spared bro country across the 2010s. I mean think of all the bad bro-country artists we got in the 2010s - Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean, Brantley Gilbert, Sam Hunt, Florida-Georgia Line - and just ponder for a moment if this song had flopped, we could’ve escaped every one of these guys. And this song just so doesn’t work at all that I’m stunned it was able to start up the bro-country trend in the first place, the minor key guitars fail to convey any sort of fun time even if the production is admittedly fast tempo enough to the point where they could’ve worked on another song. Not to mention, Luke Bryan seriously misuses his talents here, he’s a good singer but his vocal timbre is very rich and doesn’t work for making these goofy ass anthems, it works way better on boyfriend country, which is why probably my favorite Luke Bryan song I’ve heard is “Waves” or “Most People Are Good”. The lyrics sound goofy in the same way Sam Smith singing very Kim Petras-sounding lyrics on “Unholy” felt goofy, from Luke Bryan telling the girl to shake her ass for the birds and the bees and for the people sitting in the honky-tonks. This was trash back when I first heard it in 2021 and it’s still trash now. So why isn’t it repeating as my #1? What’s worse?

1...So as I said, I genuinely considered if this song was really deserving of being called the worst hit of the entire year over “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)”. But at least “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)” has somewhat of a groove, it might’ve worked in the right hands! This one, just doesn’t work on any level whatsoever…

1. Luke Bryan - Country Girl (Shake It For Me) LMFAO - Sexy and I Know It (YE: #57, PEAK: #1)

This isn’t the worst song that anyone associated with LMFAO has ever made since Redfoo for some ungodly reason decided to jump on Play-N-Skillz’s “Literally I Can’t”, but “Sexy And I Know It” is still a migraine. This is a song that seems to confuse being unlistenable with being funny, like the beat that seems to take the drop and continually find new ways to make it a migraine. That’s not to mention the “wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle” bit which is honestly one of the worst uses of the word “wiggle” in popular music history. Yeah, “Sexy And I Know It” by LMFAO, the worst hit song of 2011 (I guess) for being an unlistenable trainwreck of a song that sounds way worse than every other song here. Screw this. They got no shirt and no shoes, they don’t deserve service.

Alright, another list redux checked off my list! Next up we got the list redux of the best hits of 2011! And I’ll just say there’s at least one twist that’ll be there. If you’ve got any predictions for what you think my best list redux will look like or you've got your own lists of the worst hit songs of 2011, feel free to comment them below! I’m eager to read them! And the Spotify playlist for this list is right below the article in the meantime. Until the next list redux, remember to keep it Fire!

Spotify Playlist