The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2019 REDUX

 

The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2019 REDUX

Hey everyone, it’s Fire, back on Fire’s Flaming Hot Takes and today we’re reexamining the top 10 worst hit songs of 2019!!

I really didn’t think I’d be back doing another list redux after my 2021 ones, mainly because I came to the realization that like it or not, some aspect of all my articles is gonna age badly and I can’t change the past, so it’s not worth “(Taylor’s Version)”-ing my way through the entire history of my blog to try and correct every little wrong I may have made. But look, with my 2019 lists, when I reread them earlier this year, I knew I had to redo them, because they have NOT aged well at all. 2019 was, at least back in 2021 when I wrote those articles, the worst year of my life. I had really allowed myself to get really furious at the music that soundtracked an awful year for me to try driving home catharsis, but I think in the end, it made my worst list in particular pretty hard to read. And even if I can’t change the past, I hope I can at least learn from my mistakes and write better versions of those articles now. And look, even 6 years in the rearview and with me trying to adopt a more positive outlook on life and with the acknowledgement that I had some good moments in 2019 and that I’ve gone through some worse shit in the years since, I still look back on 2019 as a pretty rough year for my life. And I think it’s about time I finally go into more detail surrounding why I associate such negative emotions with the year. For the benefit of everyone involved, I’m not gonna go into too much explicit detail (even though I highly doubt anyone involved will ever see this). Basically, certain actions I took in 2019 opened a window for other kids in my school to exploit my insecurities (and honestly rightfully so, I was definitely in the wrong when I did what I did), making me even more dramatic than I had already been and creating this really distressing cycle that effectively wrecked my mental health and shaped my high school experience for the worse. And as much as I’ve tried to distance myself from my original theory that how much you enjoy the popular music in any given year comes down to how good or bad the year was for you personally, I really cannot lie; there were some hits near the very top of my list here that I found worse based on the events I went through in 2019, where I genuinely am unable to separate those messy emotions from the songs themselves. That said, I’d also be lying if I said every single song on the 2019 YE list is tied to those negative emotions. There were plenty of gems that we’ll get to in the best list redux. So overall, upon relistening to this list, this year isn’t quite as bad as I had originally pegged it to be, but it still is absolutely one of my least favorite years for pop music this century, possibly ever.

But anyway, now onto my criteria for what’s eligible for this list. The songs had to debut on the year-end Hot 100 list for 2019, and if any songs appeared on a previous year-end list, they had to beat or match its standing or be in the 2019 YE top 20. With that, let’s warm ourselves up by previewing my original worst list...

DMS:

Billie Eilish - bad guy

Cardi B - Money

Gucci Mane, Bruno Mars, & Kodak Black - Wake Up In The Sky

J Cole - MIDDLE CHILD

Blueface - Thotiana

Luke Combs - Beer Never Broke My Heart

Luke Bryan - Knockin’ Boots

10. A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie f/6ix9ine - Swervin’

9. Daddy Yankee & Katy Perry f/Snow - Con Calma

8. Taylor Swift - You Need To Calm Down

7. Jonas Brothers - Only Human

6. Chris Brown f/Drake - No Guidance

5. SHAED - Trampoline

4. Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber - I Don’t Care

3. Jonas Brothers - Sucker

2. Cardi B & Bruno Mars - Please Me

1. Ariana Grande - 7 rings

Okay yeah, there are some shifts that if you read my original 2019 lists, you might be surprised by. Anyways, let’s finally get things started with our dishonorable mentions!!

DM #1: DJ Snake f/Selena Gomez, Ozuna & Cardi B - Taki Taki (YE: #57, PEAK: #11)

Ugh, I used to like this song...I never loved it per se, but I thought the admittedly strong groove did enough to carry this song. But this has aged HORRIBLY. And most of that can be attributed to the really grating whistle drop which might have some energy, but is excruciatingly repetitive and nails on chalkboard annoying. But that’s not to say there aren’t other problems with this song; Selena Gomez, for as great of a singer as she can be when singing Spanish (her song “Ojos Tristes” from her new album might be her best song in years), is stuck with trying to carry this energetic party beat with her pitifully limited vocal range. She doesn’t sound sensual here, she honestly sounds more scared if anything. Cardi B has the energy to ride the beat pretty effectively and even Ozuna might sound less grating than usual here, but Selena and the beat really drag this song down. It’s not worse than something like J Balvin and Willy Williams’s “Mi Gente” from a couple years earlier because the drop at least has some energy to it, but this is still bad. But speaking of bad 2019 Spanish hits...

DM #2: Bad Bunny f/Drake - MIA (YE: #44, PEAK: #5)

I think the 2024 beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake has caused me to actively cringe whenever Drake tries to put on an accent. Not that I ever really cared for “MIA” anyway, which is just aggressively generic with Bad Bunny on autopilot, but Drake trying to put on a Spanish accent here just does not work at all. This isn’t as bad as “Meet Your Padre” with PARTYNEXTDOOR, which is just embarrassing in every conceivable way, but this is still really cringeworthy.

DM #3: Meek Mill f/Drake - Going Bad (YE: #18, PEAK: #6)

Am I the only one who thinks the beat sounds...musically broken? All it is is two non-chords being spammed over and over on an out of tune piano. And really, that’s the best description of why this song just doesn’t work at all for me. Drake and Meek Mill might have decent flows here but that beat just pushes this over the edge and onto this list. And considering the reputation and quality of Drake and his music has tanked off a cliff in the 2020s, “going bad” is probably more prophetic than Drake wants it to be.

DM #4: Flipp Dinero - Leave Me Alone (YE: #71, PEAK: #20)

I don’t know if there’s a way for me to really articulate how bad this song is other than saying “listen to it”. The production feels cheap with the trap percussion only making this feel all the more disposable and instead of leaning into that disposability, Flipp Dinero just starts to sing “leave me alooooone” in such a petulant tone that really comes off as whiny. And given this is Flipp Dinero’s only song to ever chart on the Hot 100 to date, I think he really regrets asking us to leave him alone. And given how crappy this shit is, I certainly don’t miss him or this song.

DM #5: Luke Combs - Beer Never Broke My Heart (YE: #63, PEAK: #21)

It kinda makes me feel bad to put Luke Combs on this list, especially since I still think he’s one of, if not the most talented male country singers working today. But I’m sorry, I still think this is one of his worst songs thanks to that ugly guitar and despite having such a potent voice, Combs just doesn’t sound good here at all. He doesn’t have any of the firepower in his voice that characterized some of his best songs to make this feel even remotely anthemic, instead opting to overdo his twang on certain words sounding quite obnoxious. There’s a place for these drinking anthems, even in Luke’s discography, and maybe if he released this song today, it might’ve been pretty solid, but as is, this still really sucks. Beer may have never broken Luke Combs’s heart, but this song broke my heart, Luke. You broke my heart by having a hit song as bad as this to put someone I find as talented as you on this list.

DM #6: Taylor Swift - You Need to Calm Down (YE: #39, PEAK: #2)

The Lover era rollout was a mess. 2023 proved that “Cruel Summer” absolutely should’ve been the lead single. “ME!” only got worse over time and was among the last cuts from this list, but I’ve always found “You Need To Calm Down” to be worse because while “ME!” was just trying to be a bubblegum pop song (it kinda failed in hindsight but still, it was harmless in the end), “You Need To Calm Down” goes the “Shake It Off” route of Taylor trying to respond to her haters by dismissing them and while Taylor certainly sounds more dismissive of her haters than she did in “Shake It Off”, where’s the energy here? Taylor’s attempt to frame this as an LGBTQ anthem feels more surface-level than meaningful, which makes the song’s message feel hollow rather than empowering. I don’t know, I’m not queer so it’s obviously not my place to say whether this is queerbaiting or anything, but I can certainly say that this song is really obnoxious and lethargic.

DM #7: Blanco Brown - The Git Up (YE: #56, PEAK: #14)

This is such an obvious attempt to rip off “Old Town Road” that it’s embarrassing. But what made “Old Town Road” work is that it leaned into its novelty and managed to turn into a huge phenomenon. But “The Git Up” doesn’t have any novelty to it, other than the fact that this man’s name literally translates to “white brown”. And thus we’re stuck with Blanco Brown trying to badly imitate Lil Nas X’s lower delivery on “Old Town Road” but singing with that throat voice just doesn’t work, he sounds awful. I’m not even opposed to this song in theory, a line-dancing country tune could strike some nostalgia chords and be pretty fun. But in 2025, when we had Beyonce get “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” to be a hit literally last year, we have no need for “The Git Up”.

DM #8: Blueface - Thotiana (YE: #47, PEAK: #8)

Okay, how is it that of all the slapdash Tik Tok hits from 2019 that weren’t “Old Town Road”, Blueface is arguably the most relevant artist today? From being the target of possibly the worst diss track I’ve ever heard in “MR. TAKE YA BITCH” by Lil Mabu and ChriseanRock to him still having ripoffs garner traction on the Hot 100 (“soak city (do it)” by 310babii, anyone?). Well “Thotiana” was never any good thanks to Blueface’s run-on non-flow that’s constantly on the verge of falling off the beat and the constant crashing of the cymbals (or maybe it’s a tambourine?) to try creating a sense of crescendo but only really succeed in making an already disposable track more of a headache. No girls should be busting down to this terrible song.

DM #9: Florida-Georgia Line - Talk You Out Of It (YE: #94, PEAK: #57)

Ugh, say what you will about Florida-Georgia Line’s bro-country hits, at least they had a sense of energy and fun to them, even if they were ass!! “Talk You Out Of It” is a sleepy song that’s trying to be a steamy hot sex jam where our duo is telling this girl that they’re trying to “talk her out of [the dress she’s wearing]” but the guys in Florida-Georgia Line are so obviously out of their depths and they really can’t create any sort of intimate atmosphere. If anything, it reminds me a lot of “She Likes It” by Russell Dickerson and Jake Scott in how uncannily it fails at being an intimate sex jam, down to the fact that both songs are/were record-holders for the lowest-peaking song to ever make a Hot 100 YE list!! There’s a reason why no one talked FGL out of breaking up over politics in 2022, just saying. Because this song is terrible.

DM #10: Chase Rice - Eyes On You (YE: #96, PEAK: #38)

Is it enough for me to just say that this song sounds like a Sam Hunt reject, down to the half sung half talk delivery, and move on? Or do I need to bring up how the production sounds really synthetic, with the finger snaps, the programmed handclaps, and the gummy synth? I could also bring up how Chase Rice’s voice sounds way too meat-headed to sell a boyfriend country track like this, but the real problem is how clunky this song’s lyrics feel. It’s about how no matter where Chase Rice and his girlfriend go, he’s always got his eyes on her...which aside from feeling really stalker-ish just feels clunky, like him literally saying that he blames his girl for him missing all the sights they visit. This isn’t as bad as “Drinkin’ Beer. Talkin’ God. Amen.” from 2021, which is just gross in its context and what it represents, but this is still terrible and only just missed the list proper because I ran out of space. There’s absolutely no point in Chase Rice in country music, just move on.

Okay, before the list proper, let’s look at our one singular ineligible dishonorable mention!!

IDM: Lil Dicky - Earth (YE: N/A, PEAK: #17)

This was a song I actually covered in one of my first Friday’s Chill Pick articles. Back then I described it as one of the biggest musical enigmas I’d ever heard and gave it a 6/10 because, to quote my review at the time, “it's too bad to be good yet too good to be bad”...in hindsight that was a gross overrating, because this song is a disaster on every level. It doesn’t work as a message song since there’s no real coherent message to the song because all the sex jokes undercut its central message of trying to save the environment and Lil Dicky’s verse sounds like an unfinished draft he had to scribble out hurriedly to meet the release deadline going off about orgasms and hoping reality isn’t a simulation...? The “jokes” are painfully unfunny, outside of maybe Kevin Hart just saying “and I’m Kanye West” which is just so stupid and random that you kinda have to laugh. Maybe some of the animal jokes are trying to get a bit of a kick out of the celebrities playing them, like Snoop Dogg playing a marijuana plant and Adam Levine saying “WE are the vultures, feed on the dead”, which could possibly be a jab at Adam Levine just being one guy disguising himself as a band being more prophetic of the state of modern Maroon 5 than it really should be (though honestly thinking any of the even remotely funny jokes here are intentional would probably be assuming Lil Dicky has a higher IQ than he actually has). But the real lowpoint in this song is the line “WE FORGIVE YOU GERMANYYYYYYYYYYY”, which even if Lil Dicky is Jewish (and I’m not so it obviously isn’t my place to say whether it’s offensive or not), it feels questionable at best, kinda grossly ignorant at worst. And I can’t even say the production does much to redeem this song, the rinky-dink tropical house leftover from 2016 does SOUND like something that would soundtrack an environmental message song but it only makes this feel like more of a parody, if anything. And that’s a bad thing because this is supposed to be a sincere charity song that happens to be funny. But yeah, this is a trainwreck and arguably singlehandedly drove Lil Dicky out of the music industry. And while it wouldn’t have topped this list, it would’ve absolutely been a lock if it didn’t bomb so catastrophically.

Now for the list proper...

10...So 2019 was a pretty bad year for country music. Where bro country started receding in dominance (finally) before blossoming fully into boyfriend country in 2021. But unlike 2020, where women and neotraditional country started seeing success, 2019 was an odd transitional year where the bro country artists turned down some of the energy and seemed to be veering a tiny bit into boyfriend country without having any of the balls to fully make the switch. “Old Town Road” wasn’t really a country song - let’s face it - and even if it was, that was more the exception than the rule. So at the center of all this, we’ve got the most confusingly terrible country hit of 2019...

10. A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie f/6ix9ine - Swervin’ Luke Bryan - Knockin' Boots (YE: #79, PEAK: #31)

Luke Bryan is such a frustrating artist because he has shown that he actually has some talent with a good voice that can effectively convey sincerity in a simple love song. But for some ungodly reason he chooses to waste his talent on awful bro country that doesn’t flatter any of his strengths. And ergo, we got “Knockin’ Boots”, a generic list-driven boyfriend country song about how [thing] needs [other thing] with no groove and all the sexual tension of a flaccid dick. Luke Bryan can sing decently, but this production is really giving him nothing to work with. There’s no real melody, and the melody we do get isn’t all that pleasant sounding. Yeah, not much else to say, boots need knockin’, doors need shuttin’, and people who listen to Luke Bryan need better fucking music.

9...The next song is one I’ve already talked about in my 2020 worst list redux and I’m not sure I can add anything new to my thoughts here. But if all I had to contribute to my lists was new thoughts, I wouldn’t be honest in my takes, would I? And this song is still a dumpster fire, so yeah, this absolutely deserves its slot on this list!!...

9. Daddy Yankee & Katy Perry f/Snow - Con Calma Jonas Brothers - Only Human (YE: #78, PEAK: #18)

The Jonas Brothers’ only good hits are their collabs. And their 2019 comeback still remains such an overhyped nothing of quality. And while this was not their worst hit this year - we’ll get to that - “Only Human” is still garbage. The production is so undercooked that it actively makes me angry. The little groove that’s there sounds like a bunch of farts and the brothers sound like Jason Derulo at his most punchable with how thin their falsettos are. This is trash and I’d be shocked if in 2025, this mess gets anyone to dance in the living room.

8...So, for this next song, I want you to think back to 2017 and think of two events that may have inspired this song’s creation: Witness by Katy Perry dropping and the Justin Bieber remix of “Despacito” dominating the summer. With that, ladies and gentlemen, I give you an act of desperation...

8. Taylor Swift - You Need To Calm Down Daddy Yankee & Katy Perry f/Snow - Con Calma (YE: #65, PEAK: #22)

I feel like if Witness hadn’t bombed so catastrophically in 2017, Katy wouldn’t have felt like she had to do this, because this is one of the most humiliating tracks she’s ever released. Katy Perry is so obviously trying to pull a “Justin Bieber on ‘Despacito’” move to notch herself another hit, but “Despacito” had color and energy that “Con Calma” severely lacks. It’s built off of a liberal interpolation of “Informer” by Snow and no one here sounds like they’re remotely invested in the song and Katy just straight up humiliates herself with somehow even worse Spanish singing than Drake on “MIA”!! Even Justin Bieber acquitted himself better with Spanish on “Despacito” and mind you, this is the man who at one of his live shows said “I ATE A BURRITO” and “I DON’T KNOW THE WORDS SO I SAY POQUITO” when performing that song. None of that is helped by the really stock reggaeton production that has no sense of liveliness that characterized the very best reggaeton hits. Yeah, “Con Calma” is an absolute dumpster fire and the fact that this was Katy Perry’s last Hot 100 YE hit to date instead of “Never Really Over” isn’t a good sign.

7...But speaking of desperation...

7. Jonas Brothers - Only Human A Boogie wit da Hoodie f/6ix9ine - Swervin (YE: #82, PEAK: #38)

Yeah, the desperation reeks pretty strongly here, because when you’re A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie and your last real hit was in 2017 with “Drowning” and you’re really wanting another hit that badly, why not pair yourself with the child abusing sexual predator and one-dimensional troll that’s 6ix9ine and give his 15 minutes of fame an extra boost just so you can get that teensy bit more money? It should go without saying that 6ix9ine and A Boogie clash sharply with each other. A Boogie might acquit himself decently with the more vibey production but then 6ix9ine comes in. He has only one real trick and that’s screaming. And while he does dial back his obnoxiousness a bit for this, he just sounds constipated. But he’d probably be better off doing that since he’s obviously not gonna repeat the “FEFE” experiment. So what we’re stuck with in the end is a desperate guy who only got two more hits this year by attaching his name alongside a one-dimensional snitching talentless hack of a troll. I’d say you’re not supposed to be swerving your vehicle because you could end up in a deadly accident but given the talent (or really lack thereof) on display here, maybe this song should be a casualty, if you know what I mean.

6...But back to songs I’ve already talked about in my 2020 worst list redux...

6. Chris Brown f/Drake - No Guidance SHAED - Trampoline (YE: #70, PEAK: #13)

This song is still a dumpster fire and just screams “I’m 14 and this is deep” in song form. It tries to cram so many metaphors into one chorus to try and disguise the empty commercial-core goop that it truly is. None of that is helped by Chelsea Lee’s deadpan lifeless delivery that makes the song feel super pretentious. The narrator is having dreams of jumping on a trampoline and splashing in the summer stream and all of a sudden she realizes that she’s on fire while being so deep in love while dreaming of dying...? What’s the narrative here? But really the main reason this song is so high on this list is that it’s cryptic in a really boring way where the more you pay attention to it the more things you find to piss you off, like that awful whistling, as if you couldn’t say “this is a commercial jingle” enough. This song is utterly worthless. At least “Royals” by Lorde had coherent lyrics to it, even if I still really don’t like that song. To quote my 2020 worst list redux, “This can jump off its trampoline into an active volcano.”

5...This song was really one where the overplay really highlighted the major flaws in the song, basically the “Heat Waves” effect. I don’t think I ever really liked this song that much, but it only got worse overtime...

5. SHAED - Trampoline Chris Brown f/Drake - No Guidance (YE: #21, PEAK: #5)

Drake doesn’t sound awful here, his delivery can handle the vibey production fairly well. But no, the reason this is so high here is Chris Brown, who oversings to an excruciating degree and the more understated production only highlights that. If we weren’t gonna kick Chris Brown out of the music industry for being a violent moron, why couldn’t we at least kick him out for having little to no real talent? I don’t wanna play no games either, so let’s stop streaming this asshole’s music and let him fade into irrelevance where he belongs.

4...So when two artists have a collab that nets them a ton of commercial and critical success, it’s  understandable that they’d try to collab again to see if magic strikes twice. I’m not opposed to this on principle at all, sometimes a second collab between two artists can be great, take Travis Scott and Drake on “MELTDOWN”. But other times, you get this...

4. Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber - I Don’t Care Cardi B & Bruno Mars - Please Me (YE: #37, PEAK: #3)

This song probably wasn’t dead on arrival. Cardi B and Bruno Mars did team up the year prior for “Finesse”, and it’s still great to this day, after all. And some of Cardi B and Bruno Mars’s best songs are sex songs. But “Please Me” is still atrocious because it’s a song that plays to neither artist’s strengths. Cardi’s best sex songs are something like “WAP”, where the quotability pops off the page and she can lean into all the provocativeness. And Bruno Mars is a guy who’s clearly got a lot of respect for the classics and knows how to make those sounds work. But “Please Me” is just so sluggish with no credible groove, sensuality or chemistry between Cardi and Bruno. Cardi sounds more bored than sexy and Bruno sounds more whiny than a man begging for sex with the woman he loves. II’ll say it again though, Bruno is the worst part of this song because while his vocals are admittedly impressive, his delivery really makes him sound like a 3 year old throwing a temper tantrum because his mom won’t buy him a candy bar at the store. Really, it’s a temper tantrum that’d make Caillou blush. But bleh, still atrocious. I’m not pleased at all, in case you couldn't tell!

3...But speaking of second collaborations that COMPLETELY miss the mark...

3. Jonas Brothers - Sucker Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber - I Don't Care (YE: #16, PEAK: #2)

Like with “Please Me”, this collab wasn’t a terrible idea in theory. Sure, you’re pairing possibly the whitest artists in the industry today together but Ed Sheeran helped write Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself” and that song has maybe the most cutting and scathing lyrics in Bieber’s catalog. So pairing Sheeran’s sharp songwriting with Bieber, a singer who can sell almost any sentiment that isn’t R&B, this might’ve worked. But no, “I Don’t Care” is one of those songs where the reason why it’s atrocious is because of the utter absence of any good rather than being a clattering annoyance. As infuriatingly basic as “Shape Of You” was, at least the writing could be seen as somewhat clever if you squint at it. “I Don’t Care” has literally nothing going for it, it’s just this basic ass whitewashed dancehall beat that never evolves or builds any swell that only highlights how little chemistry Sheeran and Bieber have and their attempts to harmonize with each other are just pitiful. Bieber is just a blank void of personality and he sounds like he’s only here to collect a paycheck. This is a soulless and worthless track that’s up there among the worst songs in either artist’s catalog. Saying that I don’t care about this would be understating how much I genuinely loathe this.

2...Okay, the last two songs are songs where I feel like my awfully messy emotions in 2019 contributed to how much I loathe them to this day, where I’m unable to really separate those emotions from these songs and I can’t really measure them on an objective scale. For this next one, I’m gonna have to reference what I said in a couple of my modern worst lists about inexplicable rage I feel to songs being signifiers that I was a happier person. But this time, it’s different, let’s explain why...

2. Cardi B & Bruno Mars - Please Me Jonas Brothers - Sucker (YE: #10, PEAK: #1)

Let’s start with the obvious: this song is produced like utter garbage. The groove is limp and underweight, the whistling is horrendous, and all of it just serves to highlight how shameless a ripoff of Portugal. The Man’s “Feel It Still” it really is. Every obnoxious inflection from the Jonas Brothers here makes me want to twist their necks like screws until they crack. But from the moment this song dropped, I felt the most inexplicable rage whenever I heard this. And given what I’ve said about “BANG!” by AJR and “Cry” by Benson Boone in recent articles, you would think that this rage would be a sign that I was a happier person, but that’s where you’d be mistaken. This song was still everywhere when I entered high school and that’s around the time my mental health took an absolute nosedive and I started feeling angry and upset every second of every day. This was also before I learned how to channel my negative emotions into passionately hating songs so instead what happened is that every time I turned on the radio I had a 99% chance of hearing this song and it only served to amplify my anger to new heights. And while thankfully, I don’t hear this song much in the wild anymore and am in an exponentially better headspace now, this song still makes me wanna viscerally harm anything and everything that moves. Now, don’t get this twisted, I don’t think it’s the Jonas Brothers’ fault for making me feel the way I did, they obviously had no control over that. I’m just trying to explain why my brain reacts the way it does when I hear this. Never before has a song title felt both accurate to the song’s quality while simultaneously being a huge understatement. This could’ve easily been my worst hit song of 2019, and for the longest time it was, but what’s worse?

1...You know, I had said multiple times in recent articles that I didn’t hate this song as much as I used to. As you can see, I was clearly mistaken because it’s topping my worst list again. But in hindsight, I think the reason I said I didn’t hate this song as much as I used to is that I’m really not proud of my original review. I really came off as out of my depth. That said, just because my anger was misplaced doesn’t mean that it’s not still there...

1. Ariana Grande - 7 rings (YE: #7, PEAK: #1)

Yeah, I’m really not proud of my original review of “7 rings”. Let me just get a few things out of the way first; I no longer think this song is “morally reprehensible” or exemplary of “white privilege” or even offensive to black women. I’m not black nor am I a woman so it really wasn’t my place to weigh into that side of the discourse surrounding this song. Don’t get that mistaken though, even though I don’t loathe this song for those reasons anymore, “7 rings” is still an atrocious song. The “My Favorite Things” sample is bastardized for this flexing anthem in a choice that feels less subversive or ironic than bullying. For as catty and very “mean girl” as “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” can come off as, I knew Ariana was playing the song ironically, I got a similar vibe from that that I get from “Want U Back” by Cher Lloyd. But with “7 rings”, Ari is playing the song completely straight and it only comes across as unlikeable and highlights just how bad Ari is at making a flexing anthem like this. And let’s think about why other rappers could get away with this while Ari isn’t getting away with it in this song (and it’s not because of her being white). Let’s take “Ric Flair Drip” by Offset and Metro Boomin for example. Offset brought solid flows and masked his flexing with charisma that made his flexing sound earned and like he took the listener along for the ride; he had personality. Personality that Ariana just doesn’t have. It feels like such a slap in the face after she showed her emotional journey on “thank u, next”. Now all of that would probably be enough for me to call this the worst hit of the year and believe me, off those grounds alone it’d likely still be in my top 5. But that isn’t why it’s #1 guys, it goes much deeper than that. The line that pissed me off the most when I first heard the song was “Whoever said money can't solve your problems must not have had enough money to solve 'em”, it’s a line that really taints the entire song. This means that whenever I turned on the radio and heard even 1 second of the song, even if I switched the station immediately, I thought of that lyric. Now while this song was well past its peak by the time my mental health took a nosedive, it was still every-fucking-where, whether it be through people I follow on Instagram’s stories, the radio, or whatnot. Now I was and still am financially stable, but honestly I think that made that particular lyric even worse. At the time, I figured that the solution to my problem was pretty easy and I had sufficient money to do it, however for various reasons, I couldn’t act on it and follow that solution. So whenever I heard the song it felt like a reflection of my awful mental health was following me everywhere I went. Like “if you can’t solve your problems with money, you can’t solve them at all, right?”. This song made me feel like my situation was hopeless and only made me feel more distressed in 2019, and while thankfully I don’t really hear this song in the wild anymore, it still brings back some REALLY bad memories. And don’t get this twisted, I’m not condemning Ariana Grande for her song making me feel the way I did. The artists have no control over how an individual might react to their music. I don’t expect at all for my reasoning for calling this the worst hit of 2019 to be valid, maybe I should shut up if I know what’s good for me. All I’m sure about is that for me, it truly is that personal. “7 rings” by Ariana Grande, the worst hit song of 2019.

And that’s that!! I hope this version of my 2019 worst list was much more enjoyable to read haha. Anyways, if you guys have predictions for my best list redux or your own lists of the worst hit songs of 2019, I’d love to read them in the comments below!! And the Spotify playlist of every song on this list is here. Until the next article, remember to keep it Fire!!