The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1995

 

The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1995

Hey everyone, it’s Fire here, back with the top 10 WORST hit songs of 1995!!

So with my 90s worst lists, much of the stuff that made those lists consisted mainly of boring AC ballads, making those lists feel a bit samey. 1995...tends to follow a similar trend, but the absolute worst shit this year just left me dumbfounded.

Like, this is an era pre-streaming and pre-Napster—meaning that my main reaction was “wow, people ACTUALLY went out of their way to buy these singles with the intention of listening to them of their own volition?” Of course, the AC ballads were safe enough for the radio to eat up, but what I’m referring to here are the novelty songs.

That said, 1995 was a really good year for music as a whole, even if I’d personally give the edge to 1998 and 96. New Jack Swing and gangsta rap were starting to shade R&B, taking the genre into exciting sounds. But the genre I think really ran the table in 1995 was rock, where singer-songwriters started taking sonic influences from the genre to pave the way for adult alternative, alongside the rise of jangle pop and continued dominance of grunge. Unlike my previous 90s worst lists, where I had to search deep within the cloud of boring to find something unique to say I hated about the songs, the worst of 1995 is just batshit crazy.

The songs eligible for this list must have met at least one of these rules:

• They debuted on the 1995 Hot 100 YE

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

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

• The same rules apply for the Hot 100 airplay YE

If you want the full list of songs I listened to for this list, you can check out this Spotify playlist here.

Now to get started with our dishonorable mentions!!

DM #1: Boyz II Men - On Bended Knee (YE: #5, PEAK: #1)

Something I learned during this 90s dive is that while Boyz II Men could occasionally strike real greatness like “Motownphilly” in 1991 or even “One Sweet Day” with Mariah Carey in 1996, most of the time they had a ceiling of competence and a real struggle to be interesting. And “On Bended Knee” isn’t even bad so much as it is painfully mediocre. Boyz II Men don’t sound invested at all, with lackluster harmonizing and negative engagement. This doesn’t sound like someone praying to God on bended knee for their ex to come back, it sounds like a church choir that doesn’t really feel a strong connection to what they’re singing. But it’s that spoken-word interlude at around the 3:10 mark that utterly kills the mood for me. I’ve said it plenty of times on these lists already, but spoken-word passages in the middle of the song don’t enhance anything—they feel pretentious! Snooze.

DM #2: Blackstreet - Before I Let You Go (YE: #46, PEAK: #7)

Can I just say “snooze” again and move on? Okay, I’ll give this song credit where it’s due—the harmonies aren’t bad. But the problem is that this song only goes somewhere interesting when it’s in a bad way. The “before I let you go” adlibs in particular are really awful—it sounds more like a robot talking to a human it’s taken hostage. Like, “Hu-man...before I let you...go...can you do what your kind calls love to me? 🤖” I don’t know if that’s autotune gone wrong or what, but it was that adlib that pushed this over the edge onto the list.

DM #3: Jodeci - Freek’n You (YE: #57, PEAK: #14)

I'll give Jodeci some credit: they're insanely expressive even through that vocal distortion, and they're working their asses off to sell this sex jam. But it’s that word...the narrator wants to “freek” this girl. I know they’re censoring the word “fuck” here, but somehow using the word “freek” makes it more unsettling, especially the intro, where DeVante Swing might as well be moaning into the mic. What must I say, what must I do, to show how much I think about how using “freaking” in any form in a song is not a good idea?

DM #4: Nicki French - Total Eclipse Of The Heart (YE: #19, PEAK: #2)

This is an example of the odd novelties I was talking about in the intro. I’m not gonna front—when I first listened to this song, I thought it would be a contender for my best list. But the more I thought about it, the more cynical and soulless this song started to feel. And it’s not like a eurodance cover of “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” was a bad concept—that song is arguably one of the most dynamic songs of the 80s, so a eurodance cover could work with colorful production to match the dynamics of the original. But sadly what we got is the most stock, formulaic eurodance production and a vocalist who can’t even begin to compare to the power of Bonnie Tyler. Nicki French reminds me too much of Bebe Rexha—someone who can technically hit the notes, but without the personality to give those notes any real power. Bonnie Tyler is rolling in her grave right now.

DM #5: Dave Matthews Band - What Would You Say (YE: #67 ON HOT 100 AIRPLAY)

Yeah, this song made the list for really straightforward reasons—Dave Matthews sounds like a concussed Scott Stapp of Creed. He doesn’t remotely have the looseness to make such an energetic song work with his delivery. It’s impossible to make out any lyrics because his delivery is so unintelligible that half the time I’m convinced I’m hearing a rooster’s morning call somehow set to music. As for what I would say to this song? Well, I’d say this is borderline bro-country set to a roots rock instrumental palette. I think that sums it up.

DM #6: Vanessa Williams - The Sweetest Days (YE: #75, PEAK: #18)

Vanessa Williams is one of the very few singers from this era who could make good AC ballads. But if the production really lets her down, she can’t save it. It happened with “Love Is” with Brian McKnight in 1993, and it happened again in 1995 with “The Sweetest Days”. The production is painfully dull, with the schmaltzy pianos and the pillowy organ. Vanessa Williams sounds so bored here—if she doesn’t sound interested in this song, why should I be? I honestly don’t blame her either. If I were singing this song, I’d be falling asleep too. Again, Vanessa Williams is absolutely capable of quality—hell, I liked that song she did for Pocahontas—but this is a total snoozefest. 

DM #7: Michael Jackson - Childhood (YE: #56, PEAK: #5)

I think it’s safe to say that by 1995, MJ was really losing his stride. The king of pop was facing horrific allegations and thus defaulted to making safe white glop that didn’t flatter any of his signature charisma or conviction as a performer. I wouldn’t even bring up the allegations if it didn’t feel like this song was a direct response to them—how else do you interpret lines like “People say I'm not okay 'cause I love such elementary things”? It would be gross if it didn’t sound so pathetic. MJ’s attempts at earnest pleading amount to a very thin falsetto and him choking on his own tears in a way that sounds completely staged. This is not a plea for forgiveness, more of a whimper. Yeah, MJ did not have a good decade in the 90s, and on that note...

DM #8: Michael Jackson - You Are Not Alone (YE: #21, PEAK: #1)

...Really? This was the first song to debut at #1 on the Hot 100? This boring nothing of a song where MJ once again doesn’t showcase any of his charismatic attitude? The only notable thing about this song is that R. fucking Kelly of all people cowrote this!! I’ll spare you the R. Kelly rant for now—you’ll see it in my decade-end lists—but what R. Kelly gave MJ is this empty, boring cloud of nothing devoid of any emotion. R. Kelly didn’t even have any hits in 1995, but somehow he manages to find a way onto my worst list anyway. Stay away from the king of pop, king of peeing on children.

Now for the list proper!...

10...So I’ve said a number of times on my blog before that I had a soft spot for songs about the loss of a loved one. I can admit that much of that was due to me being a teenager and my music exposure being kinda narrow. But as I listened to more songs about loss, I started to understand what makes my favorite songs in this territory work—the grief needs to feel real and the production needs to be interesting. “Ghost” by Justin Bieber is one of my all-time favorite songs for that reason. But what happens when you do exactly the opposite of that?...

10. N II U - I Miss You (YE: #96, PEAK: #22)

This song is more effective at sending you into a medically-induced coma than any sedation meds ever possibly could. Lyrically, the title says it all—the narrator misses his girlfriend-okay never mind. I’m not lying, as I was writing that previous sentence, I looked at the lyrics closer and found that this song appears to be about the narrator missing his mom, who presumably has passed away. I know that “mama” can be used interchangeably with “baby” in the context of romantic relationships (hence why I believed it was about a breakup initially), but since she calls the narrator “son”, I'm more inclined to believe it's about his mom passing away. The problem is that the grief doesn’t feel real—it feels performative. Every moment the guys in N II U oversing feels calculated to try making this song interesting—and when they aren’t oversinging, the song feels...lethargic. It’s too slow and they really don’t have any presence, making every elongated syllable feel like it’s actively trying to numb you to sleep. I don’t miss this.

9...Y’all...we need to stop letting prepubescents sing R&B songs...

9. Immature - Constantly (YE: #80, PEAK: #16)

What did the music industry see in Immature that they decided to give them a second hit? Well, whatever it was, after this group made my 1994 worst list for “Never Lie”, they’re making it again for 1995 with a song even worse than that one!! And I really have the same issue with this that I had with “Never Lie”—these kids were teenagers when recording this and they sound like it. For a song about how this girl is constantly on the narrator’s mind, these kids sound like they just discovered what girls are an hour ago! What’s worse, because of how young they were, they just don’t have any personality to make this dreadfully boring production work. I said it in my 1994 worst list, and I’ll say it again—Immature is an appropriate descriptor.

8...So as I said in the intro, rock had a great year in 1995. Grunge, post-grunge, roots rock, and jangle pop started to color the singer-songwriter cuts to make for real gems. Glam rock was also basically gone by this point. So what did glam rock bands do to adapt? By selling out, of course...

8. Bon Jovi - This Ain’t A Love Song (YE: #70, PEAK: #14)

When people think of glam rock bands selling out in the 90s, Aerosmith is probably the first that comes to mind (deservedly). But Bon Jovi also sold out by making this safe, stodgy rock cut. There's no groove here because the band was too scared to fully ditch their glam rock sound, but also too busy chasing a radio hit to commit to it. The guitar solos are pitiful and the whole song just drags. Jon Bon Jovi’s delivery never lets up for even one second—it’s always at that 100% snarl, making the song feel like it takes an eternity. It doesn't make the cheesy twist of “oh, I thought this was a love song, but since we aren’t together anymore it isn’t actually a love song” feel charming. It's played so straight that it doesn't even register that there's a twist! This ain’t a love song, and this ain’t a glowing review either. Bon Jovi have certainly made worse, but this is still bad.

7...Well, on that note...

7. Bon Jovi - Always (YE: #17, PEAK: #4)

Hey, I never said you’d have to wait before seeing how much worse Bon Jovi could get. This was only a DM on my 1994 worst list, but it only got worse with every listen for me. Jon Bon Jovi’s snarly glam metal vocals over his soft rock instrumentation feel like the musical equivalent of putting a pillow on a spike bed. I can’t stand his straining—it’s like I can hear his vocal cords scratching in the song. If the only bar for selling out that you can clear is that you’re better than Aerosmith’s sellout material, that’s a really lackluster accomplishment.

6...Usually, AC radio staples will ensure that the artist will never go away. But every so often, there’ll be a gigantic AC radio hit that the artist isn’t able to follow up at all, usually because their followup material is bland as shit. The biggest example I can think of off the top of my head is Daniel Powter, who had his massive hit “Bad Day” in 2006, but all his followup singles were too bland for him to have any staying power beyond the one song. I bring this up to say...how the HELL was this guy NOT one of those artists?...

6. Stevie B - Dream About You (YE: #92, PEAK: #29)

Stevie B had a #1 hit in 1991 with “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)”. Given that he didn’t have any other hits after that until 1995, I can only imagine how stunned people were that the guy who made the fucking postman song got another hit 4 years later out of nowhere. I’m almost inclined to call this worse than “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” because at least that song TRIED to be interesting by being subtitled “The Postman Song”, if nothing else!! With “Dream About You”, you get exactly what you signed up for—a generic slice of easy listening that doesn’t cultivate even a semblance of an atmosphere. The production feels more like a template of a pop song with no interesting quirks to it whatsoever and Stevie B has a complete and utter lack of personality. How was THIS the A-side of the single over the legit good “Funky Melody”? I hope Stevie B still thinks of this song, because he’s the only person who could ever dream about it, and even that’s a stretch.

5...So going back to Bon Jovi, they arguably were the most recognizable faces of glam rock going into the 90s, but another band was the actual last gasp of it on the charts. Too bad they were so much worse!!...

5. FireHouse - I Live My Life For You (YE: #91, PEAK: #26)

Okay, let me be positive on this for a sec—the acoustic rock instrumentation doesn’t sound bad. But FireHouse just can’t avoid their glam metal instincts, because frontman C.J. Snare's vocals are way too snarly, and the whole thing drags at the tempo of a tedious glam rock track. Those vocals don’t sell that ride-or-die commitment well at all. This was apparently the last glam metal song to hit the top 40—what a terrible sendoff. I’m still figuring out a direction in life, but I’m certainly not gonna live it for this.

4...With all the boredom on this list, you’d probably hope that these songs would at least do something to be interesting. Well, here’s a boring song that has something interesting about it—I hope you’re happy!...

4. Blessid Union Of Souls - I Believe (YE: #27, PEAK: #8)

Musically, this song sounds duller than dishwater in a swamp. It’s just this piano line that never builds to anything and string touches that feel purpose-built to numb you unconscious. Those strings sound like this is about to be an epic prog rock suite, but it never goes anywhere. Frontman Eliot Sloan sounds like the lovechild of R. Kelly and Owl City and he doesn’t elevate this with any presence. All that sets up maybe the whitest sonic palette in history. It basically puts you to sleep and lulls you into assuming this guy is white. And right when you’re nestled in that assumption, the song makes a jarring n word drop that shocked me so bad that I legitimately had to look up what race this guy was just to make sure this wasn’t an overtly racist pile of dogshit. And even knowing that this guy is black, the n word just doesn’t fit this production at all—it’s so whiplash-inducing. But more than anything, for a song about how love will unite people from all different backgrounds, it doesn’t deliver that message with any purpose. The song is so boring that the message doesn’t even register! I’m not denying that this had good intentions, but it ultimately failed to convey those intentions in an emotionally compelling way. It’s only interesting enough for you to notice the terrible parts. I believe in a lot of things, but this song isn’t one of them.

3...Believe it or not, it’s actually pretty difficult for me to get actively angry at the music I put on my worst lists. It doesn’t even necessarily correlate with how high I place the song. There are, of course, some songs I’ve placed on my worst lists that have pissed me off—“From A Distance” by Bette Midler, “7 rings” by Ariana Grande, and “Sucker” by the Jonas Brothers are notable examples. But the reason my highest-ranked songs aren't always the ones that make me angriest is that art elicits a very broad spectrum of emotions. Bad art doesn’t always make you angry—it can just as well make you disappointed, disgusted, even scared. But trust me, when a song pisses me off, boy does it earn it...

3. After 7 - ‘Til You Do Me Right (YE: #88, PEAK: #31)

Yeah, we’re going there. “‘Til You Do Me Right” is one of the douchiest songs I’ve ever heard. With such a hazy and relaxed R&B production and melancholic melody, you’d assume this song is about mournful grief following a breakup. But then you take a deeper listen to the lyrics and you realize this is fucking gross. In fact, let’s look at a couple of them together and really unpack how douchey they are:

“You took the love from me

And used it selfishly

You did not give back your love to me at all”

Saying the love you give your girlfriend is owed back to you sounds like something an abusive boyfriend would say.

“I gave the sun to you

You said it was too bright

I gave you diamond rings

You said they didn't shine

I gave my world to you

You said it's not enough

What in the world could I have done to make you be so rough”

So she doesn’t like your gifts—again really serves abusive boyfriend. But more to the point, just because you do something nice for your girlfriend doesn’t mean that she has to appreciate it. If I were to try to surprise my girlfriend with cinnamon rolls and she said she’s allergic to cinnamon, she doesn't owe me gratitude for them. And if you think I’m reaching here, well, how the fuck else am I supposed to interpret the lyrics? There’s not ONE mention of what the girl did to justify the narrator of the song cutting her off—it’s all just “I did this”, “I did that”. It’s gross framing of the narrator as the victim by just making vague accusations that don’t have any substantial evidence to back them up. And that’s all while the production doesn’t even have any edge to it to make it feel venomous. It’s the same grossness that made “Truth About You” by Mitchell Tenpenny from 2022 trash as well. In other words, this is Eamon’s “Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back)” without even the unintentional comedy.

2...So Bryan Adams’s “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)” seems to be the popular choice to call the absolute worst hit of 1991 from the lists I’ve seen YouTube critics make for that year. And trust me—I get it; that song is absolutely terrible. But that song wasn’t the worst for me—“Everything I Do (I Do It For You)” was only #10 on my 1991 worst list, partly because that year was absolute dogshit for the Hot 100. Now Bryan Adams has made several of my 90s worst lists already, so I think it should be clear that I don’t like him. But the big question I had when seeing that song top worst lists was “yeah, the song is bloated and Bryan Adams is an insecure baby—but is that song really the worst thing?” And the answer I have after listening to this YE list is...no. Save your ammunition for when you really need it...

2. Bryan Adams - Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman? (YE: #16, PEAK: #1)

Bryan Adams is excruciating when he oversings, and while he doesn’t do that here, it somehow makes me angrier. The production is this limp flamenco shit that evokes the feeling of Adams being at a private beach strumming a ukulele—as in a privileged, lazy asshole. And that makes Adams sound checked out and smug. And that takes us to the lyrics, where Adams is positioning himself as an expert in how to love a woman. What authority do you have, Bryan Adams, to detail how you are “supposed to” love a woman? As far as I’m concerned, you’re most well-known nowadays for being a baby and threatening to sue AllMusic unless they removed all info about you because critics were being harsh on you and these comments you made when COVID first broke out:

And then you look at the actual lyrics—you really love a woman if you breathe her, taste her, feel her in your blood. Okay, let’s put aside how cannibalistic those lyrics sound—you have to really know her—what else do you have to do? You need to tell her how your connection is gonna last forever, tell her that she’s really wanted. I guess that’s not bad. But let’s connect these back to those controversies I mentioned—by Adams saying this, he’s implicitly saying “I do everything that someone who loves a woman should do”. In that case, are you supposed to call your woman a “virus-making, bat-eating greedy bastard”? And think about what the AllMusic controversy implies about Adams—he can’t take criticism well, implying that if his girlfriend wants to have a difficult conversation, he’s not open to it. And that’s what makes this song utter TRASH. It’s positioning a censoring idiot loudmouth as a martyr that you should aspire to be like. And anyone who strives to be like Bryan Adams should ask what that says about them. Bryan Adams may ask if you’ve ever really loved a woman, but the real question he should be asking is if any woman ever really loved him. So what’s worse?

Well, before that, let’s look at an ineligible DM!!

IDM: Rednex - Old Pop In An Oak (YE: N/A, PEAK: N/A)

You know, I don’t mind “Cotton Eye Joe”. It’s kinda obnoxious, but as a novelty song, I thought it was fine—taking an 1800s folk standard and turning it into a eurodance track is cool for the sake of novelty, if nothing else. But their followup, “Old Pop In An Oak”, is a note-for-note clone of “Cotton Eye Joe”. And yet despite being the exact same song, it’s also a billion times worse. At least “Cotton Eye Joe” was a folk standard already, so the eurodance adaptation made sense. But “Old Pop In An Oak” is just something Rednex came up with themselves because it sounds vaguely redneck-ish. The novelty is just gone. Even David Guetta has more creativity in his lazy sampling!! It’s cynical and soulless all the way down, and it would’ve topped this list hands down if it had become a proper hit.

But as for what actually topped the list...

1...When I first heard this song, I knew it was gonna top this list. But I wasn’t angered, disgusted, or really any negative emotion towards it. My main reaction was just awe. As I was listening to the YE list for 1995, I was DMing a Pulse member I still stay in contact with about it and we were talking about this song. By the time I finished, that awe just ascended into full-on mesmerization...

1. 20 Fingers f/Gillette - Short Dick Man (YE: #76, PEAK: #14)

Let’s just start with the obvious—“Short Dick Man” is just atrocious on a sonic level. I get the punchline: when pop culture at large was sexualizing and degrading women, a song degrading men definitely deserved to exist. The problem is that it’s just an awfully executed song. It’s just the same few phrases chopped and spliced on loop in the same annoying voice—it’s to the 90s what “#SELFIE” by The Chainsmokers was for the 2010s. And I’m just left in awe at how this song became a hit. This was an era pre-streaming, where if you wanted to listen to music not through the radio, you had to actually buy the single. When I was talking with that Pulse member, he said that this song was a hit mainly on sales. It had weak radio, unsurprisingly, since it’s a bad YouTube Poop of a song. So let it sink in—people actually spent money on this song with the intention of listening to it of their own volition. I’d get it if this were in the streaming era, where you can listen to any music you want on demand for free. But again, people spent their hard-earned money on this. It fascinates me how this annoying novelty song actually got bought in mass quantities for it to become one of the biggest hits of 1995. And yeah, purely on the atrocious sound, “Short Dick Man” by 20 Fingers and Gillette—the worst hit song of 1995.

And the worst list is finished!! Next article should be the final list before the 90s decade-end lists—the best list for 1995!! Until then, if you have any predictions for that list or your own lists of the worst hit songs of 1995, feel free to comment them down below!! I’m eager to read them!! And until next time, remember to keep it Fire!!