The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1990

 

The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1990

Hey everyone, it’s Fire here and we’re continuing our 90s dive with the top 10 worst hit songs of 1990!!

I really couldn’t find much about what people generally thought of 1990 for pop music when doing my research. The few worst lists I found didn’t mention a thing about the year in general in terms of quality and were from channels/blogs/sites that have been long abandoned. But my take is that 1990 wound up genuinely being among the worst years of pop music I’ve ever looked at. Literally only 2019 and 2014 have worse averages in my big spreadsheet. But why exactly was that? Well, the best I could put together was that 1990 was a very transitional year for the charts. Rock hadn’t been reshaped by grunge yet so the rock we got was the backwash of 80s hair metal and hip hop was only just starting to break through, to rather mixed results. This meant that there was a big gap that needed to be filled in the music scene. And of course, as we all know, when mainstream music is in the throes of transition, what plugs in the gap is sedate and boring easy-listening schlock or bizarre novelties.

So let’s scrape the bottom of the barrel here!! The songs eligible for this list must have met one of these rules:

• Debuted on the 1990 Hot 100 YE

• Repeating songs must have beat or matched their previous standings on this YE

• Songs in the YE top 20 are eligible regardless of the first two rules

• No Hot 100 airplay rules again!! I swear, I scoured for hours until I found confirmation that Hot 100 airplay YE’s did not exist until 1992 haha

So with that, let’s get things started with our dishonorable mentions!!

DM #1: Aerosmith - What It Takes (YE: #91, PEAK: #9)

This is such a weak attempt at a country/rock fusion. Steven Tyler’s vocals sound excruciatingly strained, especially with that twang. The way he’s screaming with that twang makes it near impossible to understand what he’s singing. The production also sucks, it’s a boring soft rock wallow with absolutely no intensity. When Steven Tyler says “guitar!”, I expect something with at least more edge, not something that sounds like it was played on a keyboard synthesizer’s cheapest presets!! Tell me what it takes to never hear this shit again.

DM #2: Bad English - Price Of Love (YE: #68, PEAK: #5)

This is just a cliche and tedious soft rock/glam rock song that doesn’t do a single thing to differentiate itself from any other ballad. Even the guitar solo, which I’ll admit is pretty impressive, sounds so dull thanks to the song’s achingly slow tempo. If only these guys had bad English, that might’ve actually made this somewhat interesting.

DM #3: Cover Girls - We Can't Go Wrong (YE: #87, PEAK: #8)

I’ll say this much for this song: unlike the previous two ballads, this sounds sincere and that does save a lot of it. But the real reason this made the list is that...hook. The way the vocals are mixed on the hook makes it sound like the Kidz Bop version of itself. So no, you CAN go so, so SO wrong with singing this song.

DM #4: Paul Young - Oh Girl (YE: #84, PEAK: #8)

Yup, yet ANOTHER boring ballad! This really made it for the simple reason that Paul Young sounds so faceless and he doesn’t make this interesting in the slightest. There’s literally a line in this song where Young says he tries to be hip!! I’m not even trying to exaggerate for comedic effect—he literally uses the word “hip”!! And I bet you didn’t even notice it—I certainly didn’t!! It’s not even that it kills the mood, it’s that it doesn’t even register!! Oh girl, I don’t know where to look for love, but I know that this certainly isn’t the right place.

DM #5: Linda Ronstadt f/Aaron Neville - Don't Know Much (YE: #20, PEAK: #2)

Can I just say that Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville have negative chemistry and move on? Or do I need to also bring up how Aaron Neville’s vocals sound so willowy and weak that he makes John Mayer sound like Bruno Mars? The production is also dreadfully boring and generic. I don’t know much, but I know that this song is very bad. And maybe that’s all I need to know.

DM #6: Jon Bon Jovi - Blaze Of Glory (YE: #10, PEAK: #1)

Full disclosure: I don’t like Bon Jovi very much at all. I like “Livin’ On A Prayer” for how anthemic it is, but outside of that, I just find their music so tedious to listen to with Jon Bon Jovi’s awful fucking voice. And I certainly am not much kinder to Jon Bon Jovi’s solo single “Blaze Of Glory”. And the thing is that I genuinely see a timeline where this could’ve been good, maybe even great! The song is trying to be a cinematic Southern Rock track, which could flatter Jon Bon Jovi’s vocals decently. It’s trying to sound huge to cultivate a sprawling atmosphere. But the main problem is that the best Southern Rock songs (think “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac or “White Horse” by Chris Stapleton) resolve into a satisfying percussion breakdown that’s kept uptempo to make it feel like you’re galloping through the South. “Blaze Of Glory” has all the huge sprawl but it defaults to the stodgy percussion breakdown of a classic rock song and that makes this feel like a slog. Jon Bon Jovi might think he’s going down in a blaze of glory, but really, he’s just melting in the hot sun in a dry grassland.

DM #7: Mötley Crüe - Without You (YE: #96, PEAK: #8)

But speaking of the backwash of 80s metal...yeah we got this. “Without You” is an extremely corny song that doesn’t even have the balls to lean into its corniness. Frontman Vince Neil doesn’t sound believably grateful for having his partner in his life, he sounds like a whiny frat bro. It’s a bad sign that when in my songwriters’ club when we split into groups for a songwriting challenge my group literally did a pisstake and we still more believably conveyed the intended emotion than Mötley Crüe here.

DM #8: Michael Bolton - How Can We Be Lovers (YE: #52, PEAK: #3)

Spoilers, but you can expect Michael Bolton to be a staple of my 90s worst lists—he easily has one of the worst voices I’ve ever heard. And while “How Can We Be Lovers” is very far from his worst hit this year, it’s still very bad. Bolton’s oversinging is atrocious and it doesn’t match the lyrics about wanting to repair a relationship with a partner. Bolton’s screaming sounds like he’s literally telling his girlfriend “YOU BETTER NOT FIGHT WITH ME ANYMORE OR I WILL FUCKING DESTROY YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”. And the horrible vocals get even worse with that key change. At least this song has a halfway decent guitar solo and driving percussion. But no Michael Bolton, we can’t be friends, and certainly not lovers.

DM #9: KISS - Forever (YE: #92, PEAK: #8)

When I was about to write this review, I was gonna make a comparison to the previous song and the vocals. And that’s when I found out that Michael Bolton co-wrote this!! And that makes all the sense in the world, because this really sounds like a Michael Bolton song, with the horrible oversinging. And yet this is somehow worse than “How Can We Be Lovers”. How is KISS a metal band and yet this sounds more like a trite AC pop ballad than “How Can We Be Lovers”? The guitars sound cheesy as fuck and the percussion has almost no power save for a really squandered percussion breakdown around the 2.5-minute mark. This terrible song surely lives up to its title—it does feel like it lasts forever.

DM #10: Faith No More - Epic (YE: #75, PEAK: #9)

Yeah...I know that people seem to like this a lot. But I’m sorry, this sounds terrible to me. The rapping sounds obnoxious and I don’t see how it sounds any different from Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit’s shitty rapping. And when frontman Mike Patton starts singing, he just sounds like SpongeBob singing “Ripped Pants”. Just be grateful that this missed the list proper, because this was literally the last cut.

Alright, now for the garbage proper...

10...So for years, I’d mention on my best lists that certain song(s) made the list because they hit my weak spots in songwriting—that being about the loss of a loved one. I can admit that nowadays it’s much harder for me to like a song based on those lyrical themes alone. As I’ve gotten exposed to more and more music, I’ve gotten to sample a vast array of songs about loss, from the genuinely fantastic to the pretty terrible. Lyrics that express these themes can certainly enhance a song, but I’m not gonna just ignore fundamental flaws about a piece of music just because it’s about loss. Case in point....

10. Michael Bolton - When I'm Back On My Feet Again (YE: #88, PEAK: #7)

“When I’m Back On My Feet Again” was written by Diane Warren about the death of her father and she gave the song to Michael Bolton to be the messenger for her grief (I’m making assumptions here, I don’t actually know if Warren wanted Bolton to sing this or not). And yeah, Michael Bolton’s voice is atrocious. When he isn’t “belting”/singing while shitting out pinecones, he sounds way too impressed with himself. It’s like he’s saying to himself “yeah, I’m nailing it *smug smile to self*”. And when the production is just crushingly boring and dismal, the song entirely rests on the nonexistent talents of Michael Bolton. Michael, you might be singing about what you’ll do when you’re back on your feet again, but based on how you sound like someone stabbed you in the balls, the question isn’t when, it’s if.

9...So perhaps the most hated band of the 2010s is Maroon 5. I’ve gone out on a ledge to defend them multiple times on my blog in the past, and while I can’t say I really stand by those defenses that much nowadays, I still don’t hate them as much as I should. Part of why people hated Maroon 5 is that they started out as an interesting funk rock-leaning band in the 2000s before selling out and turning into a glorified Adam Levine solo project in the 2010s, which led them to having a ceaseless decade-long string of generic radio hits. Do you wanna hear the Maroon 5 of the 80s?...

9. Chicago - What Kind Of Man Would I Be? (YE: #71, PEAK: #5)

If Chicago was the Maroon 5 of the 80s, “What Kind Of Man Would I Be?” was their “Beautiful Mistakes”—the final hit they’d ever get before vanishing off into obscurity, ending their sellout run with one final gasp in the next decade. Except at least “Beautiful Mistakes” was generic in almost a comforting way!! “What Kind Of Man Would I Be?” is soul-crushingly bland with an even worse sounding frontman than the lifeless Animatronic doll voice of Adam Levine of Maroon 5!! Frontman Jason Scheff sounds so screechy that I’m shocked the song doesn’t have background noise of glass shattering!! Yeah, not much else to say, I don’t know what kind of man you’d be Jason Scheff, but you certainly seem like a bad singer if this song is any indication.

8...But speaking of boring ballads with awful singers…

8. Tommy Page - I'll Be Your Everything (YE: #39, PEAK: #1)

This song made the list pretty much entirely because I hate the way Tommy Page sounds. How does he sound more like a little kid than young Justin Bieber? Complete with the total lack of personality that can’t do a thing to sell the declaration of love here! Tommy Page was 20 when this was released, but he could pass for 12 here! But I also just hate his falsetto. Justin Bieber, as faceless as he often is, at least has a credible falsetto!! A part of me feels kinda bad for Tommy Page never really being able to blossom into a more mature version of himself with his music though. He had only two songs chart outside of this, one at the same time as this and not cracking the top 40 and the other being in 1989 but missing the YE. And that makes it all the more tragic that he...died in 2017 at the age of 46. I still think this song is terrible, but I hold no ill will to Tommy Page as a person—I have no reason to. Rest in peace.

7...In my 1999 worst list, I really tore into “The Hardest Thing” by 98 Degrees as a manipulative attempt to gaslight the audience into sympathizing with an unfaithful partner. I didn’t think I’d have to deal with another insincere load of bullshit this soon, but here we are....

7. James Ingram - I Don't Have The Heart (YE: #36, PEAK: #1)

That title alone sent rage down my spine. And then the actual song started...this song centers around James Ingram “not having the heart” to break up with his girlfriend. I’m just gonna say it, if you’re gonna make a song like this, an overwrought ballad is the objectively incorrect way to deliver it. I’m not even sure there is a right way, because the point of pop music is to sell your songs as earnestly as you can, which means that you HAVE to have the heart to say it. But this being a ballad makes it even worse because it entirely lives and dies on how well Ingram can sell the emotion. When he says “I don’t have the heart to hurt you”, I don’t buy it one bit because he’s being SO LOUD about it!! It’s so skin-crawlingly insincere. Every adlib feels so contrived. And the opening lines set this song up as the girl smiling because she’s dreaming of how good it’s gonna be. That forces me to think that maybe they’ve been together for a while and she’s thinking of getting married to the narrator. And that’s the nail in the coffin for me. Let’s buy for a sec that Ingram is serious that he doesn’t have the heart to hurt his girlfriend. WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU WAIT FOR HER TO THINK OF MARRYING YOU TO COME TO THIS REALIZATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????????? You could’ve...you know, said early on in the relationship “Hey, this isn’t really working out. I think we should see other people” instead of forcing yourself and her to remain in a relationship that’s making one of you miserable!! Could this all be projection on my part? Maybe. But it was projection I came to because listening to this dud over and over just to write this review BORED ME TO TEARS. I absolutely have the heart to call this song fucking terrible.

6...Imagine having multiple hits in a given year and having literally every single one of them landing on the worst list, if only that could happen. Could you imagine how bad of an artist you’d have to be? Okay yeah you already know where this is going...

6. Michael Bolton - How Am I Supposed To Live Without You (YE: #12, PEAK: #1)

Michael Bolton had 3 hits in 1990, and they all made my worst list. Congrats Michael on being a shitty artist, I guess. But seriously, even with how awful his other hits were, “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You” is by far the worst of the 3. Part of why it’s the worst of them is that it sounds the blandest, which makes Bolton’s screaming unlistenable. The song is about how Bolton is told by his girlfriend she wants to break up. And to say he isn’t taking it well is...understating it. I’ll say this much, he certainly puts the anguish someone would feel of getting dumped, namely the feeling of sobbing your eyes out at 3AM while downing 234567654567654654567654567654565456765434565434565434565434565434543456543456543456543234565434565434567 tubs of ice cream blasting Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, and Phoebe Bridgers on repeat. I haven’t had to experience the pain of getting dumped (or getting a girlfriend at all lol) yet, but I do know that if I ever do, I’ll definitely be blasting Olivia, Billie, or Phoebe as I down my ice cream tubs instead of this. I can definitely live without it.

5...So as I implied in my intro, rock in 1990 hadn’t been reshaped by “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, meaning that the rock scene was dominated by the dirges of 80s hair metal/glam rock. I’ll admit that this brand of metal and rock has rarely ever worked for me. So I’m well aware there is probably some hidden genius to the music I’m missing. At the same time though, this song sounds like complete ass to me and from the RYM reviews I don’t think anyone actually likes this song so I feel considerably less bad about bashing this!!...

5. Poison  - Unskinny Bop (YE: #32, PEAK: #3)

“Unskinny Bop” is the sleaziest of sleaze rock and sleaze rock as it is sounds so gross to me. The instrumentation is aptly more sleazy than sexy. But that also makes it sound considerably uglier. And then the titular lyric...what the fuck is an unskinny bop? Well, guitarist C.C. DeVille said that it’s a meaningless phrase. And that makes all the sense in the world. That phrase sounds sexual in a way that can only be disgusting. With all the other lyrics, I’m inclined to think that it’s supposed to mean…”erection bop”? I mean, what else am I supposed to infer with lyrics like “what’s got you so jumpy?” and “like gasoline, you wanna bump me”? Basically, “Unskinny Bop” is the 1990 version of “moonbeam ice cream”. And at least there Benson Boone kept the production boppy enough to where you could see how someone might find it fun!! “Unskinny Bop” isn’t fun, it’s ugly and sleazy where the frontman sounds like he got his pants lit on fire. And it's those terrible vocals coupled with one of the worst lyrics of the entire year that immediately made this a lock for this list. And yet...

4...Okay, we’re reaching the point of the list where these songs are so overexposed in how awful they are. So I don’t think it’ll be a shock that this song is this high on this list. But remember how I said that 1990 was when hip hop was only just starting to break through in the mainstream? I present you with the first ever hip hop song to top the Hot 100. Surely it must have been a dangerous banger, oh wait...

4. Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby (YE: #45, PEAK: #1)

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear “Ice Ice Baby” is the first day of 11th grade, when my teacher was telling us about the plagiarism policies in the school and used the example of how Vanilla Ice basically jacked the beat to Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” and got sued. The controversy surrounding the songwriting royalties is very common knowledge at this point. But can we also talk about how Vanilla Ice really puts the “vanilla” in his name? He’s a terrible lyricist—the lyrics have no connective tissue, they vaguely sound dangerous but aren’t actually saying anything. And that alone isn’t necessarily a deal-killer for me—if you can curate an atmosphere that supports the intended vibe easily in your flow, I can forgive nonsensical lyrics. But Vanilla Ice doesn’t sound threatening, he sounds like the whitest kid you know trying to rap. Say what you will about the numerous other white rappers we got in the years since—at least Eminem sounded dangerous!! At least Macklemore was wholesome in his corniness! At least Masked Wolf had a tight flow!! But hey, if you’ve heard this song, you already know why it’s terrible. And I think I need a little sunlight to melt this ice.

3...But speaking of artists from the early 90s whose legacy today is only as dated relics...

3. M.C. Hammer - Have You Seen Her (YE: #47, PEAK: #4)

M.C. Hammer is arguably only remembered today as a dated artifact of the early 90s. And while I really like “U Can’t Touch This” (stay tuned for my best list), “Have You Seen Her” is a song where every single decision it makes is the biggest question mark to ever exist. M.C. Hammer trying to “rap” his way through an AC ballad is cringeworthy as hell. He’s not so much rapping as rhythmically talking his way through a poem in a monotone voice. The fact that he’s on a song that’s as soft and gentle as your average R&B AC song is inexplicable. I could go on and on, but I think I’ve made my point. Every single musical element and decision of this song cannot be explained by modern science. And yet there are two songs I found worse...what are they?

2...So this list has mostly been boring AC ballads that caught a brief window to gain traction because of the transitional state of every genre. But remember, when everything’s in transition, we also get bizarre novelties. And you thought Vanilla Ice was the worst example of this in 1990, think again!!...

2. Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers - Swing The Mood (YE: #97, PEAK: #11)

This is just a clusterfuck. What “Swing The Mood” is is a mashup of 15 different early rock and roll songs. And they mash them all together in a way that only serves to highlight their most irritating aspects. It sounds like a fucking YouTube Poop!! I can see how this might’ve been novel at the time, but nowadays when we have actual mashup artists making legit great year-end mashups, I have no use for this. Every single one of the songs that was featured in this mashup deserves better than this. So what’s worse?

1...To understand why this song is at the very top of this list, you have to know the fundamental reason why charity songs are so widely despised. No matter how good of a cause it’s for or how sincere the artists are, they always come off as self-impressed and insincere charity that was only done as a PR move. Look no further than that trash “We Are The World” from 1985. I thought that song was enough to prove that no one actually likes these singles, but in 1990, a charity single actually lasted long enough to be among the 100 biggest songs of the year. And who else for it to come from than an 80s act who lasted into the early years of the next decade and clearly didn’t learn that no one likes these types of singles?...

1. New Kids On The Block - This One's For The Children (YE: #90, PEAK: #7)

“This One’s For The Children” is a charity single for the charity United Cerebral Palsy. And I’ll say this first: if this song helped anyone in need in any way, its existence is only a benefit. I can say that while also saying that this song is fucking horrendous. The phrasing of the lyrics is so skin-crawlingly condescending and smarmy. “This one’s for the children!!”, “do this for the children!”, “Some children have no food to eat!”. See what I mean? Saying “the children” comes off as unbelievably condescending!! And for good measure, the Kids felt the need to make this pretentious as hell as well with the opening line “This is a very serious message so all of you please listen”. I’m not even denying that there are children in the world who are suffering, but this song doesn’t offer solidarity or even empathy, it’s just saying “suffering children exist, retweet if you agree!”. If this was truly showing empathy or solidarity, there’d be at least ONE lyric expressing that, but no, the most you get is “this one’s for the children” And that’s why this song topped this list. It’s an insincere PR move that doesn’t even bother to properly offer empathy or solidarity that people still bought. “This One’s For The Children” by New Kids On The Block: the worst hit song of 1990.

And that’s the worst list done!! Next article should be, if not my Chill Pick article, the best list for this year. Stay tuned for that and until then, if you have predictions for my best list or your own lists of the worst hit songs of 1990, please comment them below!! I’m eager to read them. And until then, the Spotify playlist with every song on this list is linked right here. And until the next article, remember to keep it Fire!