The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1991

 

The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1991

Hey everyone, it’s Fire here and yup, it’s that time again—we’re counting down the top 10 worst hit songs of 1991!!

So in my lists for 1990, I made my point that 1990 was one of the worst years for pop music I’ve ever looked at. To directly quote from my worst list for that year, “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.” With that, I have two questions: How was 1991 somehow worse? And once you answer that, my second question is what the fuck were you guys even doing in the early 90s for you to go through back to back awful years for music?

Well, I can try answering that myself: the charts were still in transition—rock hadn’t been reshaped by grunge and still was the backwash of 80s hair metal, and there were TONS of sedate, bland, and boring AC ballads. Hip hop may have finally been out of its novelty era, but most of that scene, with very few exceptions, I found good but not great. And on top of that, the New Jack Swing that at least redeemed 1990 felt overexposed and lacking in that same magic in 1991. That’s not to mention the CCM crossovers we ended up getting—which is never a sign of a good year for the Hot 100.

So let’s dig through the dumpster of this mess of a year!! The songs eligible for this list must have met one of these rules:

• They debuted on the 1991 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!! Remember, Hot 100 Airplay YE’s didn’t exist until 1992!!

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

DM #1: Extreme - More Than Words (YE: #7, PEAK: #1)

I can say this much for this song: as far as acoustic love ballads go, this is far from the worst I’ve ever heard courtesy of frontman Gary Cherone having more grit in his voice than many other WGWAG-type artists who’d do this song way worse. But outside of that, this song is dull and colorless as fuck. Despite Cherone’s more distinct vocal timbre, he sounds so bored and as un-lovestruck as one can sound. The phrase “I love you more [than any cliche] words [can express]” is so overdone that it itself has become a cliche. This song doesn’t try to lean into more corniness or rise above its cliches—it just sits there in aggressive contentment, not aiming to accomplish more and thinking it doesn’t have to prove itself further. I have three words for this song. They go as follows: “dull”, “as”, and “dishwater”.

DM #2: Tesla  - Signs (YE: #73, PEAK: #8)

This is the backwash of 80s glam metal I was talking about. “Signs” at least attempts to evolve with the times with an acoustic rock composition in a vein similar to many of the adult alternative acts of the late 90s, but this song is as deep and insightful as the bus station water fountain. I don’t like glam metal vocals and frontman Jeff Keith may very well define that aesthetic, he sounds awful. The song is about how...there are signs, as in stop signs, signs that say you need a membership card to enter...and what’s the point? Is it a joke because signs fuck up the scenery and break your mind? There’s not even an attempt at a punchline if it’s a joke and the entire concept of the song is genuinely lost on me. Signs govern what you’re supposed to do and not do...and what? Do you not wanna read the sign and follow directions? What if this was the sign in question?

Are you gonna ignore that and run into that area and bathe in it? Sorry, I know it reads like I’m overthinking this, but this is the only way I can read this song—as a rebel anthem. And the tempo is too achingly slow to feel like a satisfying rebellion. Take this review as a sign that this song sucks ass. Then you can read the Exit sign. Next!

DM #3: Natural Selection - Do Anything (YE: #32, PEAK: #2)

Man, this is a song that by all means I should like a lot. I like the synth funk Minneapolis Sound a lot and I’ll even say that the singers here have a good call-and-response trade-off going on. But the real thing that utterly sinks this for me is the production—it’s more percussion than synth and that makes it feel like it’s bashing you over the head with a big thud. There’s no groove or anything sticky. Every time it feels like you’re about to find a way to enjoy this song, the loud thud of the percussion just kills the momentum and enjoyment. The best we can say about this is that natural selection has written this song out of the evolutionary cycle.

DM #4: Timmy T - One More Try (YE: #5, PEAK: #1)

GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET OVEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR YOURSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELF. I could leave it at that, really, it accurately sums up the insincere attempt to get back with an ex that this song is. Or should I also bring up how Timmy T is an utter void of charisma or how the production is the most generic AC ballad schlock that only exists to drive you into psychosis the more you pay attention to it. So no Timmy T, I’m not giving you any more tries.

DM #5: Firehouse - Love Of A Lifetime (YE: #43, PEAK: #5)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Yeah, I literally cannot think of anything else to say about this. What else could I say? It’s yet another boring, cliche, and badly-sung AC ballad that was all too common throughout the 90s.

DM #6: Another Bad Creation - Iesha (YE: #54, PEAK: #9)

This feels like the New Jack Swing moment of the early 90s really curdling. Why we got kids to sing about trying to pick up a girl who was playing on the monkey bars mystifies me...I’m honestly not convinced that this isn’t some sort of cruel joke at the kids’ expense. It feels like the Kidz Bop version of itself—Kidz Bop wouldn’t be created for another 10 years but if it existed back in 1991 I don’t think they’d even have to change any of the lyrics!! Yup, this sure is...another bad creation alright (look the setup was unavoidable here).

DM #7: Hi-Five - I Can't Wait Another Minute (YE: #60, PEAK: #8)

I actually liked Hi-Five’s other hit this year, “I Like The Way (The Kissing Game)”. But “I Can’t Wait Another Minute” is lousy. It’s hard to put your finger on why, but the high tenor vocals just hit the ear really oddly when the lower tenor vocals are added. And otherwise, this song is so boring. I will say that this group has had a very...let’s call it interesting...post-peak career, with two of the members dying after the group split up, then the group reuniting when the first member died, and then another member got charged with first-degree murder of his wife. Yeah, all of a sudden I don’t feel that bad for putting this song on the list.

DM #8: Gerardo - Rico Suave (YE: #89, PEAK: #7)

Yeah, this song is so infamous in how terrible it is that I’m willing to bet there’ll be people shocked this missed the list proper. Gerardo’s flow sounds so painfully white and the accordion sounds broken. Gerardo isn’t nearly charming enough to make his painful corniness work as a strength like Macklemore or even make it fun like Pitbull. And the production is so repetitive and it gets old quickly. But really, if you’ve heard this song, you already know why it sucks so I don’t even know why I’m bothering trying to analyze this. It only missed the list proper because I ran out of space.

DM #9: Surface - The First Time (YE: #9, PEAK: #1)

Surface is just a black hole of presence with a very weak voice and the production is generic. He’s at least not the worst artist to be associated with the name “Surface” considering Forrest Frank of Surfaces sadly exists, but this is still boring as shit and doesn’t do anything to differentiate itself from any of the 34567876567656545676546765456765456754567654654567545654567656765456545654567654565456545654567654567654567654567654676545676545654565456765675676567654565656765676567656765 other AC ballads of the time.

DM #10: Color Me Badd - I Wanna Sex You Up (YE: #2, PEAK: #2)

This was a lock for my list proper for most of my listen to the 1991 YE. And trust me, this was the final cut—this is terrible. I just hate the way the guys in Color Me Badd sing, they sound like garbage, cranking the boyband nasal whine up past the Backstreet Boys, past *NSYNC, to COLOR ME FUCKING BADD. Also the phrase “I wanna sex you up” feels gross. This wasn’t even Color Me Badd’s worst hit this year—stay tuned. The 1991 YE top 2 was particularly terrible, possibly the worst combination of songs to hold down those two spots in the history of the Hot 100, and this isn’t even the worst of the two songs. But while we’re in that territory...

Now for the real trainwrecks...

10...But let’s quickly tackle the other terrible song in the 1991 YE top 2, why don’t we?....

10. Bryan Adams - (Everything I Do) I Do It For You (YE: #1, PEAK: #1)

Song of the fucking year. Bryan Adams is in a similar category as Michael Bolton (who shockingly missed this list) for me—an overwrought balladeer with a big voice who oversings to an excruciating degree. And while Adams at least has “Summer of ‘69” which elevates him to being better than Bolton, who I’ve never liked a single song he’s done, “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)” is an incredibly cheesy and cliche song without a single interesting bone in its body. Adams’s singing sounds terrible—this song is obviously out of his range and it makes the song feel like such a slog. It’s a song where I’m already checking my watch at the 1-minute mark, when I realize that I’m only 0.167% of the way done because this song goes on for SIX AGONIZING MINUTES. It plods on and on for so long, cliche after cliche, it feels like it takes six DAYS. Coupled with some of the weakest guitar solos I’ve heard in recent memory, and you get one of the absolute worst YE #1’s ever. Everything I do when writing worst lists is to give dull garbage like this the righteous flogging it deserves, next!!

9...So in the middle of writing this list (right after I wrote all the DMs, actually), I actually started binging Bizaardvark because I may or may not be planning a discog dive soon. If you know anything about the show, you probably know which artist I’ll be doing—the show is honestly very funny so far in a bit of a charmingly dated way. I bring this all up because one of the episodes featured a song called “So Dramatic”, where the main characters were doing an overwrought cliche 90s ballad and listing off all the cliche signifiers as they come, “key change”, “another key change”, and it was brilliant because it highlighted why these dramatic ballads largely have not stood the test of time. So in the spirit of that, for every remaining cliche ballad on this list, I’ll just say “So dramatic”. So let’s start here, SO DRAMATIC...

9. Stevie B - Because I Love You (The Postman Song) (YE: #12, PEAK: #1)

Yeah, you can practically copy paste everything I’ve said about the other ballads on this list here. The song is about how Stevie B is doing all these things because he loves his partner. The only thing related to a postman in this song is the first lyric, where he receives a letter from the postman from his girlfriend, which inspires him to write a letter with a song (presumably this). He says he’ll be by her side, that his heart’s an open door, to be alive, to be her guide because he loves her. Well...duh? Why else would you be doing this for her...are you her sex slave? Her parole officer? Her fucking houseplant? If only, that could’ve actually made this interesting.

8...So dramatic…

8. Poison - Something To Believe In (YE: #78, PEAK: #4)

All of a sudden I think I get why people hate Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” so much. It’s got that piano riff just without any joy or positive vibes and frontman Bret Michaels has way too much grit in his voice to sell a somber ballad like this. For what’s supposed to be a tribute to his bodyguard and good friend who passed away, he sounds like he’s singing “Livin’ On A Prayer”! It’s ultimately a similar reason to why “7 Years” by Lukas Graham from 2016 doesn’t really work—the vocal inflections are at complete odds with the song’s tone and they sound awful. It’s obviously no one’s (including my) place to judge how one should honor their dear friend, but I’m not judging the way Poison is honoring their friend, I’m just judging the art, and when I hear this, I just hear a complete mismatch in tone that takes something that could’ve been beautiful and utterly squanders it.

7...So cod reggae was a subgenre of reggae that rose to prominence in the late 60s (I think? Google gave me 3 different decades give me a break) and it unfortunately was able to last a while in the mainstream. It was used to denote notably white appropriation of reggae and Caribbean rhythms. It’s kinda faded from popularity today, with the last cod reggae song to be a hit being…”Rude” by MAGIC! arguably. So you wanna hear maybe the biggest cod reggae band ever? Who’d that be? UB40, of course....

7. UB40  - Here I Am (Come And Take Me) (YE: #72, PEAK: #7)

Full disclosure: I’ve never liked nor understood the appeal of UB40. “Red Red Wine” is a strong contender for one of the worst songs of the 80s and their music defines whiteness, co-opting Reggae for the whitest audiences on the planet in a way that reminds me way too much of Pat Boone in the 50s with rock and roll. The frontman has an atrocious voice—from what I can tell, he was in his late 30s/early 40s when he recorded this, but he could pass for 65 with his awful voice!! He sounds like a dying old lady and there’s no groove to be found anywhere. The horns sound fucking pathetic. How the fuck is this only #7 on this list?! Fucking TERRIBLE, move on!!

6...SO DRAMATIC...

6. Styx - Show Me The Way (YE: #68, PEAK: #3)

Let me just start by saying that this instrumentation is painfully dull—the guitar solos sound weak as hell and the keyboard tone is so schmaltzy it hurts. However, you could say the lyrics aren’t terrible even as a CCM song—it’s a plea to God to give the narrator strength. It’s more focused on the person singing than the glory of God. Hell, this characterizes some of Jelly Roll’s better songs like “Son Of A Sinner”. But the real reason this song fails is the delivery—John Styx has no firepower in his vocals and as a result the song falls flat. The performance on “Show Me The Way” just has no passion to properly sell the lyrics. So I’ll show you the way...just follow the exit signs.

5...UB40 continues to be the fucking worst...

5. UB40 - The Way You Do The Things You Do (YE: #71, PEAK: #6)

And that’s TWO duds for UB40!! Once again John UB40 has an atrocious voice, the white cod reggae production makes me shrivel up into a raisin, the horns sound like fucking garbage, and somehow there’s even LESS groove here than on “Here I Am (Come And Take Me)”! You hear how the frontman sings “the way you do the things you do”, right? That’s not singing, that’s mumbling!! It’s also quite fitting that a band as painfully white as UB40 has possibly the whitest and worst name origin story I’ve ever heard: “The band members initially formed friendships while attending various schools across Birmingham, England.[3] The name ‘UB40’ was chosen in reference to an attendance card issued to individuals claiming unemployment benefits from the UK government's Department of Employment. The designation UB40 stood for Unemployment Benefit, Form 40.[3]”. Now does this have anything to do with “The Way You Do The Things You Do”? No. But did I find that out when listening to the 1991 Hot 100 YE and had to find a way to shoehorn it into this article? Yes, because the fact that we had a guy named RITT MOMNEY have a hit on the Hot 100 several years back and that’s somehow NOT the worst name origin story I’ve ever heard is a phenomenon that can’t be explained by science.

4...So seeing CCM crossovers has historically been a sign of bad times for the Hot 100. It’s a sign that the creativity well has run dry and stagnated. See 2019, 2025, and of course, 1991, and one more thing—SO DRAMATIC...

4. Bette Midler - From A Distance (YE: #15, PEAK: #2)

Uh...sorry Appa. For some reason my dad loves this song, and I really don’t see why—like with all CCM, it’s oversanitized and like almost all cliche 90s ballads, it’s dull as dishwater, so this combination is just deadly. But then you actually pay attention to the lyrics...the song centers around how God is watching us live in peace and harmony and happiness from a distance. First of all, way to frame God as an ignorant and delusional being. And second of all, you do know that we don’t actually live in harmony, right? We still have people suffering, some of us don’t have enough!! And that’s the entire song—we aren’t really suffering if we’re relishing in the glory of God, right? And that’s what vaulted this song so high on this list. This trash represents a genuinely toxic mindset that you can simply “pray your suffering away” and if you’re still suffering, you’re not praying hard enough!! Spectrum Pulse said this about Forrest Frank & The Figs’ “Lemonade”: “faith is not a free ‘make pain go away button’, it’s trivializing real struggles people have to suck it into this ‘well, my Jesus does it for me’ cloying dreck”. And this garbage is exhibit A. It’s quite literally trivializing real struggles to say that if you believe in God, he can magically make your struggles go away!! I mean, forget Christianity for a sec, regardless of whatever religion you may or may not follow, overcoming your struggles requires YOUR self-effort. You can obviously find comfort in praying to God in times of strife and trauma, but your God cannot magically make your life better without you doing anything!! Trust me, as a recovering AVM survivor, if I could simply pray my constant emotional pain and physical mobility issues away and it’d work, I’d have done it LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG AGO! The one concession I’m making here is that it’s only #4 and NOT #1 on this list. Even then, I’m being generous.

3...So I said this back with “I Wanna Sex You Up”: “This wasn’t even Color Me Badd’s worst hit this year—stay tuned.”, yup, we’re finally here!!...

3. Color Me Badd - I Adore Mi Amor (YE: #18, PEAK: #1)

Being brutally honest, I put this song at #3 on this list purely because I genuinely hate the way the guys in Color Me Badd sing. It sounds like an insulting parody of the Spanish language. Like when I hear them sing the titular lyric, I hear “eyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyee adorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee amoooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr” with the most aggressively American inflections on the i’s and the r’s. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but even Drake puts more of an effort into his Spanish singing/rapping—at least he keeps the accent, however phony it may be!! In other words, it sounds like a bunch of edgy teenage whiteboys in middle school Spanish class. Trash. Odio esta canción.

2...I wouldn’t blame anyone who thought this would be #1 on this list. You’ll find out what I thought was worse in a bit, but yeah—easy targets are here for a reason...

2. Vanilla Ice - Play That Funky Music (YE: #57, PEAK: #4)

As terrible as “Ice Ice Baby” still is, if you ignore the weak flow, dumb lyrics, and plagiarism, the production isn’t unlistenable. But “Play That Funky Music” sounds...broken. You have an admittedly solid bassline but then you get the random jarring punched-in sample of a distorted voice saying “play that funky music, white boy” that kills the groove. And when the production is shit, there’s nothing to distract you from the weak flow and somehow worse lyrics. Where he says he likes his rhymes atrocious before unironically rhyming it with “supercalafragilisticexpialidocious”. But you all know the real stinker of a lyric:

“Now you're amazed by the VIP posse

Steppin' so hard like a German Nazi”

Putting aside how “VIP” in this lyric stands for “Vanilla Ice posse” so he’s saying we’re amazed by the Vanilla Ice posse posse...? Did you REALLY just compare yourself to a Nazi!? I think the Genius annotation on that lyric says it all:

In a world where Ye’s Vultures 1 sadly exists, this is definitely far from the worst piece of music that compares the artist to Nazis, but this is still trash. It’s definitely very fitting that Vanilla Ice has performed at several of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago events, let’s just say that. None of this is remotely funky. So what’s worse?

1...When choosing the worst hit song of a year as awful as 1991, a year full of dull AC ballads, it, of course, all comes back to CCM. So everyone, for a final time, SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DRAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATIIIIIC...

1. Michael W. Smith - Place In This World (YE: #77, PEAK: #6)

Purely on an aesthetic level, this is the most cliche AC ballad I’ve heard in a while. It ticks all the boxes: schmaltzy keyboard tone, overbearing production where it’s near impossible to make out individual instruments, weak guitar solos, and that dumbass unearned key change. And Michael W. Smith’s vocals...god, they are just the worst. I hate the way he’s straining so much, it’s practically like I can hear him in the studio singing while smugly thinking to himself “yeah, I’m nailing this...I’m making art”. I already addressed a criticism I had with every other song on this list and applied it to this song. The lyrics admittedly aren’t awful, pretty much the same thing the Styx song was doing. I was honestly much angrier at songs lower on this list—I really was considering putting Bette Midler at #1 or even Vanilla Ice, so how did this wind up as the worst hit of the year...? Well, at the very least, I have a begrudging respect for Vanilla Ice trying to shock me and I can acknowledge that Bette Midler can in fact sing. But “Place In This World” is a song that wants to be taken seriously sung by a guy with no talent that only became a hit because it followed all the focus group testing’s results to a T. And I don’t have any respect for a song that tries to be generic without reinventing the wheel and not even getting the fundamentals right. This tries to be generic AC radio fodder and still falls below that low bar. And as the sands of time have proved, Michael W. Smith’s place in this world is the forgotten dumpster of 1991. “Place In This World” by Michael W. Smith: the worst hit song of 1991.

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 1991, 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!