the top ten worst hit songs of 2015

There are a lot of critics - myself included - who will say that 2015 was a better year for the Hot 100 than previous years. While there were a fair amount of bad songs, they don't quite dip into the seething rage that sparks when you have songs implicitly endorsing date rape like in 2013, or watching two of my favourite genres spiral into inane, offensive nonsense like in 2014. And sure, some of that did continue into 2015, it was largely overshadowed by the good songs being better and the bad songs not quite having the same staying power or cultural presence, with a few unfortunate exceptions that we will be discussing.

So let's re-establish the rules: the songs need to have debuted on the Billboard Year End Hot 100 this year, and just being obscenely boring doesn't cut it. So if you were expecting Rachel Platten's 'Fight Song' or 'Somebody' by Natalie La Rose on this list, it's not going to happen. And one other thing: just because I might have had a passionate reaction to the song on Billboard BREAKDOWN is no guarantee that the song might land on this list. As much as 'Coco' by O.T. Genasis is ridiculously incompetent, it's too stupidly earnest to be hateable so much as it is hilarious. This list is for songs that make my stomach churn, the tracks I avoid with all costs, the compositions where you wonder who in the Nine Hells greenlit for public consumption.

Of course, for some tracks you can see what they were going for, so let's start with our Dishonourable Mentions!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 12, 2015 (VIDEO)

Well, that took longer than I wanted it to... eh, I'm still getting used to the new format (that's why I made that stupid Cole Swindell mistake... gah, two weeks in a row, get your game together, dude).

Next up, need to tackle some old business before dealing with Coldplay, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 12, 2015

It's the calm after the storm, the time of year where everything seems to fall back into place after frantic reshuffling to make it appear that the onslaught never really happened and all is right with the world.

Why, yes, I'm talking about Adele taking back chunks of the chart from Justin Bieber, why do you ask? Okay, snark aside, while everyone predicted there'd be chunks of Adele's new album breaking onto the Hot 100, it's not as pervasive as you'd expect, and along with plenty of returning entries and chart shuffling, it's more indicative that Bieber and to a lesser extent One Direction didn't have the same staying power.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 29, 2015 (VIDEO)

So the reason this is late is because my computer decided that it no longer wanted to render the correct file format - for no adequately explained reason. I suspect it's an issue as my computer constantly tries to update to Windows 10 despite the fact that said update will not promote properly on my particular machine, but fortunately I have ways around this.

Next up... I dunno, probably B.o.B. or Mick Jenkins, just to get them out of my system and try desperately to get back on schedule. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 29, 2015

Right, so let's explain why this didn't drop on its regular Tuesday timeslot. Well, believe it or not, I suspect it wasn't Billboard's fault the charts were delayed, mostly because the sales data that they got from Nielsen surrounding a certain song was wildly inaccurate, originally placing its debut in the top ten instead of midway down the chart where it belongs. This frantic revision - which other chart analysts had already estimated properly earlier this week - caused Billboard to delay a day to make sure the numbers are in properly on what was otherwise a pretty regular week.

video review: 'kill the lights' by luke bryan

Well, this was a mess. God, I didn't expect much here, but this was bad.

Next up, Billboard BREAKDOWN, so stay tuned!

album review: 'kill the lights' by luke bryan

At some point we need to ask the question how it came to this point. At some point music historians are going to look back at bro-country and its legacy and ask how on God's green earth we let this happen. And inevitably the focus will swivel to Luke Bryan, who has arguably profited the most from this trend by being the A-list talent to rode bro-country to the very top, partially through his series of spring break mixtapes and partially through hauling in so many of the songwriters who would become staples of the genre behind the scenes.

But about midway through the fourth single dropping from his 2013 album Crash My Party, I came to the realization that the music in a Luke Bryan concert is functionally irrelevant. The fans probably couldn't care less that the album production was increasingly synthetic or that Bryan himself was writing fewer and fewer songs with every release, or that his subject matter was a grabbag of country cliches rattled off with obnoxious efficiency. Because it wasn't about the individual songs or the increasingly haphazard albums: it was about the image and live show experience, Luke Bryan on stage and shaking his ass to get the girls screaming. In other words, this isn't new: what Luke Bryan did in 2013, Billy Ray Cyrus did in 1992, and history repeats itself.

And thus on some level reviewing this record is pointless. To those who have turned on bro-country, Luke Bryan is everything wrong with modern country, while to his fans he's everything right, and the latter's presence means this album is guaranteed to sell. But as somebody who has always held the belief bro-country can be done right - and someone fascinated by the slow-moving trainwreck that I predict many will consider Luke Bryan's career in a decade or so - I figured I might as well cover Kill The Lights. After all, he did discontinue his Spring Break series of mixtapes - considering he's turning forty next year, it's not a bad decision - and considering he wrote six of his new album's songs in comparison with the one he wrote on Crash My Party, I had reason to believe this might be marginally better. Was I right?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 8, 2015 (VIDEO)

Yeah, a little late, but it uploaded late and I was tired last night. It happens.

Next up, Bea Miller, and then probably LMNO & Mr. Brady, followed by Ashley Monroe and B Dolan. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 8, 2015

Well so much for the summer lull. Even as the album release schedule has slowed a bit, it was a reasonably busy week on the charts, thanks to even more change-ups in country, a slice of album tracks from Future, and one of the biggest leaps to the Top 10 I've seen in a while.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 6, 2015

Man, this was a harder episode to get online than I thought it'd be. Doesn't help the majority of the songs were hot garbage, but you get those weeks.

Next up, A$AP Rocky - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 6, 2015

And just like that, Taylor Swift is back on top.

There's honestly more to this week - a shocking amount more, really, looking at the charts you'd think it was outright chaos - but really, so much of this story revolves around Taylor Swift and 'Bad Blood'. Yeah, Kendrick Lamar plays a pretty major part too, but his verse is peripheral, a part of the machine that gave a new #1 single, a precisely timed marketing push that sent the song surging up radio, sales, streaming, and YouTube to take the top spot. And keep in mind that Taylor's not on Spotify either - the growth of 'Bad Blood' is nothing short of a minor phenomenon, and it really does eclipse most of what happened beneath it - which is kind of a good thing, because of that kind of sucked.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 16, 2015 (VIDEO)

Overall, it was a better week than expected. Shame most of hip-hop is in the shitter in the mainstream right now, but you can hope for the future.

Next up, probably Chris Stapleton and finally - finally - Sufjan Stevens. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 16, 2015

So remember when I was lamenting last week that the expected chaos after the collapse after a long-running #1 didn't happen? Turns out I should have just waited one week, because we might have one of the busiest weeks on the Hot 100 I've seen in a long time. Massive gains, sizeable losses and dropouts, a slew of new and returning tracks, and even new entries to the Hot 100 that show that even if the #1 slot might be safe, everything beneath it sure as hell isn't. And in some cases, that instability might end up being a good thing.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 28, 2015 (VIDEO)

Oh wow, this took way too long to get online - again - but I'm overall happy for it, if only because it gave us 'Bills' by LunchMoney Lewis. Got to love it.

Next up... probably Modest Mouse or AWOLNATION, we'll see. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 28, 2015

You know, it's rare that I get to be surprised much when it comes to these charts. I mean, sure you get your weird stuff that'll show up every week, but seventeen weeks into Billboard BREAKDOWN, it takes a lot to really pique more interest. This week, however... well, I'm not really going to say I was surprised by everything that happened, but more than a few times I was perturbed enough to wonder if things were slightly out of the ordinary. Granted, going into next week given what I've heard about streaming data, I've got a good idea what's coming, but it's always kind of nice to be thrown off-guard a little.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 13, 2014 (VIDEO)

That went a lot easier than I expected - good to see.

Okay, next up I want to talk about Walk The Moon, which I should have time for thanks to Lil Wayne's repeated delays for his newest album. Until then, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 13, 2014

For this episode of Billboard BREAKDOWN, we have a much more chaotic week on the pop charts than last time. Roughly the same number of debuts and re-entries, but the real chaos was courtesy of a chart reshuffling, one that's fairly typical around this time of the year in order to usher out the old and bring in the new. This led to all sorts of strangeness, including our highest debut song from a movie that came out a few weeks ago from Academy Award winner and overall pretty awesome human being Jennifer Lawrence.

But before we get to that conversation, let's start with our top ten, where there was actually a bit of change. Not really in the top five - 'Blank Space' by Taylor Swift easily holds onto number one with even more radio airplay dominance, 'All About That Bass' by Meghan Trainor is barely holding on only thanks to radio airplay at #2, but even that's decreasing fast against the rise of 'Take Me To Church' by Hozier at #3, which is crushing streaming and slowly gaining traction on the radio. Coming it at number #4 is 'Shake It Off' by Taylor Swift, which is dropping across the board but isn't dropping as quickly as 'Animals' by Maroon 5, where they swap positions this week. 

It's in the next five where we get some real movement. Coming in at #6 is our highest arrival to the top 10, Selena Gomez's 'The Heart Wants What It Wants', arriving partially off the back of her first Greatest Hits album For You, which has gotten her huge streaming and respectable sales, and probably is Selena Gomez's best single since 2011 - I might not be a fan of the choppy piece at the end of the chorus and the lyrics that are a little clumsy with the fairytale references - but the more restrained production and Selena's performance reminds me of why I used to be a fan of hers until Stars Dance flushed all of that down the toilet. Next up is Sam Smith staying solid at 7 with 'I'm Not The Only One' thanks to gains across the board, and then we have our second new arrival at #8 with 'Uptown Funk!' from Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars, which simultaneously has been getting better and worse every time I listen to it. I love the bass, the slick guitar groove and punchy drums and yet the synth tones just feel off and that crescendo that leads into the sax just doesn't work as well as it should. The lyrics are swollen with arrogance, and yet Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson make them surprisingly convincing. I think I might have to deliberate on this one a little more, but thankfully I know exactly how I feel about the next two tracks. 'Habits (Stay High)' by Tove Lo tumbles to #9, having peaked at airplay despite respectable streams, and 'Love Me Harder' by Ariana Grande ft. The Weeknd slightly dips to #10 only because sales were slightly underweight, being held up by massive streaming and stronger airplay gains. Oh, and both songs are awesome, in case you need more reminders.

Now onto our big changes, and let's start with the major drop-outs: 'All Of Me' by John Legend, 'Bailando' by Enrique Iglesias, 'Boom Clap' by Charli XCX - although I expect to see it return with her album dropping in less than two weeks - 'Happy' by Pharrell, 'Sunshine And Whiskey' by Frankie Ballard, and 'Dirt' by Florida Georgia Line. Unsurprising, considering all of these songs had their twenty weeks or more last year and are getting shuffled out. And yet our losers this week are more songs that haven't caught on as strongly and are getting slowly rotated out at the end of 2014 regardless. Gwen Stefani's 'Baby Don't Lie' shows the No Doubt frontwoman's second comeback losing all steam to 97, Kendrick Lamar's odd attempt at a self-esteem anthem 'i' dropping to 80, the absolutely gutless 'Stolen Dance' by Milky Chance dropping to 51 and not leaving the chart fast enough, and the Chris Brown/Usher collaboration that gave Rick Ross his only real hit this year dropping to 48. But it wasn't just songs that wore out their welcome - Nicki Minaj and Skylar Grey's underwhelming debut from last week 'Bed Of Lies' drops to 81 although I suspect the second Nicki releases a video for it around her album's release it'll regain traction, 'Ghost' by Ella Henderson unfortunately loses steam to 67, Pentatonix's hot debut last week 'Mary Did You Know' drops to 60, and Carrie Underwood's finding Jesus and her inner Christina Aguliera on 'Something In The Water' dips to 52. Most perplexing to me was One Direction's 'Steal My Girl' dropping down to 45, propped up mostly by streaming. Eh, maybe the listeners finally clued in how much those opening piano chords are reminiscent of 'Faithfully' by Journey.

Now for our gainers, we've got a whole collection of songs I talked about last week gaining some major traction, whether we wanted them or not. I mean, I'm happy that 'I Don't Mind' by Usher and especially 'Night Changes' by One Direction went up to 54 and 31 respectively, but that's really the only changes I'm happy about. Elsewhere, 'Booty' by Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea goes to 75, 'I Bet My Life' by Imagine Dragons goes to 56, and because mainstream hip-hop has no real direction and has chosen to rely on the decision making skills of the Internet, 'Coco' by O.T. Genasis somehow rises to 38 entirely thanks to streaming. Okay, Internet, this was fun, we all had a good laugh, but I don't want a badly made trap song about cocaine to become the next big 'thing', alright? But thankfully we've got a couple better songs to round things out, some solid gains from 'Yellow Flicker Beat' from Lorde and Pitbull getting a boost thanks to his recent album for 'Fireball', which is one of the better songs from that release and features him channeling his inner Run-DMC.

We'll get back to Pitbull in a bit, but now it's time for our recurring entries!

I think I get why this song wasn't the Meghan Trainor song that caught fire - because it's kind of insufferable. Sure, the retro doo-wop vibe isn't bad and I like the key change, but maybe it's Trainor's self-satisfied delivery, the way she wants to get her own way, and the increasingly desperate way that she expects said future husband to accommodate her craziness and just buy her a ring already and even with that said future husband can count on not seeing his family more than hers. Normally the way these songs go is supplement the demands with what she brings to the table, and yet this song is too concerned with preserving its innocent nature to actually include the appropriate rhyme for 'I'll be sleeping on the left side of the bed / Open doors for me and you might get some... kisses'. Yeah, this is a wish-fulfillment fantasy, and as such I can't get mad at it, but I don't have to like it either.

Wow, this song should be a lot better than it is. To me Ne-Yo has always been stuck a half-step behind Usher, and it's a little amazing that a week after 'I Don't Mind' debuts on the charts, Ne-Yo is here with his own forgettable Juicy J verse. It's a shame that it's a fair bit worse, mostly thanks to the instrumentation, with the horn-sounding synthesizer obnoxiously blaring to start against the pitched-up vocal that sounds like a baby. Thankfully, the song does get a little smoother, and Ne-Yo is still a slick performer, but with a little less going on in the lyrics which aren't as smooth or detailed, it's just not as good, at least for me.

Oh, it's nice to see The Killers back with another hit from Battle Born... wait, this isn't The Killers? Okay, I'm just being snarky, but come on, from the U2-esque guitar flutter to the more chugging riffs, the lead singer belting at the top of his lungs with a voice that's somewhere between Brandon Flowers and Josh Ramsay, I'm a little inclined to brand Walk The Moon Killers-lite and move on. And even lyrically, it does fall into that mold - say what you will about all the real problems Battle Born had, at least The Killers cranked the lyrical subject matter into the broad strokes that worked with the bombast, whereas Walk The Moon isn't quite that ambitious. And yet, given this is the pop charts and there's no sign of another Killers album in the near future, and I did like that chiptune keyboard line on the bridge... eh, it works pretty damn well for what it is, it gets a pass.

Man, this song is underwhelming. I wasn't a fan of the last time Sia collaborated with Eminem on the deluxe edition of The Marshall Mathers LP 2, and her new collaboration for SHADY XV isn't much better. The verses are quite literally about how Eminem having writer's block and not being able to break out of his mold with production pulled straight from Recovery. It doesn't develop any real energy until he starts spitting on the second verse, but even that feels recycled. Granted, Eminem's not at his best is still above average, but I don't get why he's throwing money behind this when the title track or 'Vegas' were so much better.

Believe it or not, this was one of the few songs from Beyonce's self-titled album I liked, especially with the intro from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that actually did a lot for amping up the feminist themes that tried to underscore that album. This remix with Nicki Minaj aims to do a lot less - and unsurprisingly, it's a lot less listenable - and unsurprisingly, it charted a lot higher. At this point looking for any feminist subtext is pretty much pointless because Nicki Minaj makes it very clear with her verse that this song is about dissing other women who aren't as rich or bad as them. And you know what, fine, the song is more shallow brag rap that they tries to infuse with some populism and some raw power, especially with Nicki going off on her verse, I can give that a pass - if it wasn't for the production. Between the pitch-shifting, how everything is swallowed copious reverb especially the horns for no good reason, the chorus never gaining the dramatic swell, a complete lack of consistent momentum, the abuse of autotune, and the shrill grating synth over Nicki's final bars that just drops out and makes the song feel unfinished. I know I can't expect much from a remix, but I'd take the original any day over this.

And now that I've pissed off a considerable chunk of my audience, let's move onto our newest arrivals, starting with...

94. 'Time Of Our Lives' by Pitbull & Ne-Yo - I already talked a bit about this song when I reviewed Globalization last week, which is the reason this song is charting, but overall it's one of the more likable songs on this album. I still don't understand why Ne-Yo always sounds so inert on Pitbull's songs, but it fits a little better than on 'Give Me Everything' because the song is about ignoring real problems in your life in order to find a moment of solace in the party. And to Pitbull's credit, while his verses are as sleazy and ridiculous as ever, I liked how they stripped things back for the bridge where he actually showed a little weariness and sympathy for his audience and it's a surprisingly human moment. Combined with one of his more restrained beats, I'd argue the song works.

93. 'Sledgehammer' by Fifth Harmony - we're now at our second single from that long-delayed debut album from Fifth Harmony after 'Boss' failed to impress with one of the cheapest sounding horn sounds, an abuse of percussion and ridiculous assertions of dominance with some of the dumbest lyrics I've heard in a while. Thankfully, 'Sledgehammer' is a little better if only because it's bland over being ridiculous. Most of this is a factor of bottom-shelf Syco Records production that abuses percussion over everything else and that terrible pitch-shifted voice on the drum break in the chorus, but the girls doing a decent enough job selling the track and the lyrics aren't bad. But if 'Ghost' by Ella Henderson can't catch fire here, I don't see 'Sledgehammer' doing much better, and stealing a title from an iconic Peter Gabriel song doesn't help your case.

89. 'I See You' by Luke Bryan - of all the songs that showed up on this list, this is the one that surprises me the most. I mean, seriously, we're this desperate for Luke Bryan singles that we need to pull a deep cut from a year and a half ago? And it's not exactly a pleasant listen either - the guitar tone is sour, the pseudo-rap cadence Luke Bryan does not sound good with his lower voice, the backing vocals are pitched too high - but then again, this is a song that's intended to sound bitter and angry, an inability to get over being dumped and friends who are trying to help and it's not working. Believe me, we've all been there, but at the same time, the sourness isn't quite hitting the right note for me - it's more pissy than torn up or legitimately pissed, and it's written in a way that comes off as a little too young for Luke Bryan's older voice. Overall, not a bad song, but it could have been better.

84. 'I Walk The Line' by Craig Wayne Boyd - our Voice cover of the week is of one of Johnny Cash's more well-known hits, and I actually like this cover a fair bit, mostly because it's played in a slightly different way. Johnny Cash kept a rollicking tone that had a certain curt efficiency to it - Craig Wayne Boyd lowers the tempo, adds strings, and has a much more expressive delivery and presentation, and his rougher, incredibly powerful vocals and greater sincerity does a lot for his presentation. Traditionalists will probably think covering Cash is a travesty, but I like Boyd's interpretation - it works.

71. 'I Lived' by OneRepublic - I knew it was too good to last. I had hoped with 'Counting Stars' and 'Love Runs Out' that OneRepublic were taking their brand in a darker, rougher direction, and while you get some of that in the production texture of 'I Lived', this is very much in the vein of older, inoffensive OneRepublic singles that aren't bad, but are nothing special, especially in the lyrical department, which is standard 'you only live once' pablum that isn't all that interesting. Instrumentally, I like the punchier drums, but that's off-set by some backing vocals that don't quite work as well as they should, especially over the bridge. In other words, the song is fine, but nothing special.

65. 'Santa Tell Me' by Ariana Grande - I really shouldn't be surprised that Ariana Grande is releasing a Christmas song. Like her idol Mariah Carey's landmark Christmas song, it's pretty lightweight and basic in terms of production and composition, although the strings are pretty solid, but Ariana's lyrics are, well, more complicated. The story is Ariana reaching out to Santa - if he's really there - to have him confirm whether her new boyfriend is going to stick around into the new year so she knows it's okay to have sex with him. So let me reiterate, she's disrupting Santa's valuable time delivering presents all around the world to ask for sexual advice. And the tone of the song is all over the place too - the lyrics are written fairly straight, and yet Ariana's delivery is so girlish and when the full gospel choir comes in to sing the chorus about giving it all away... look, I don't think this song works, but on some level I want this to be huge like 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' because it is absolutely hysterical. Ho ho ho indeed...

18. '7/11' by Beyonce - no, not like that, I didn't mean 'ho ho ho' like...

Oh by the Nine Hells, am I the only one who remembers what music Beyonce used to make? I didn't love Beyonce's first decade or so of material, with Destiny's Child or solo, but in the past year her brand of songwriting has gotten dumber, sloppier, and nowhere near as dignified as it used to be. When a Rihanna/Shakira collaboration that played like a telenovela melodrama had more dignity and class than this, you've got problems. And it's not that I've got issues with Beyonce showing off more of her ignorant side for a dumb dance song for a deluxe reissue song that was clearly written in less time than it took for me to put together this episode - but Beyonce can make better music than this, because she's not that good at playing her ratchet side. She's got raw intensity on this track, but that's about it, because the beat is generic, reverb-swallowed trap with pitch-shifted vocals laid over the 808s, sloppy pitch correction, and only fragments of a good melody line that mostly come up on the end, and lyrics that alternate between overdone bragging and completely forgettable dance shouts. With this and 'Flawless', I don't get why Beyonce feels she needs to make this kind of music - nothing wrong with a good party song, but this doesn't even have the ambition of 'Flawless'. It's dumb, forgettable, and will likely be destined for the soundtrack of plenty of Worldstar videos. Next...

12. 'The Hanging Tree' by James Newton Howard ft. Jennifer Lawrence - okay, I'll be honest, the weekend when Mockingjay Part 1 was released, I went to go see Dear White People instead, which all of you should go out and see, by the way, because it's awesome and all the more relevant today. 'The Hanging Tree', cowritten by Suzanne Collins and the Lumineers, shows up in the movie as a dark little poem that obviously telegraphs parts of the plot, and musically is reminiscent of 'Hoist The Colors' in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. It's apparently a song that Jennifer Lawrence absolutely hated performing in any capacity and you can tell in her delivery, with her tempo increasing with each half-murmured line as she seems like she just wants to get it over with. But apparently audiences loved it and now it's charting across the world.

And while I don't see it becoming the next 'Let It Go' or lasting all that long on the charts, 'The Hanging Tree' is a decent enough song - at least when it stays a simple, dark, downbeat folk song. I liked when the chorus came in behind Lawrence, but the heavier classical instrumentation eventually swallows both with the more traditional symphonic choirs and horns made it hold a little less impact than it should. You could argue it's unintentionally reminiscent of the film's themes, swallowing the solitary voice of the figurehead into the heavier, blunter message of the cause that doesn't have the words, but I get the feeling that transition wasn't symbolically intentional for the music - and as such, it doesn't quite hit me the same way some similar instrumentation did. For a counterexample, do you all remember the unique flute melody or the mournful violin piece Howard Shore wrote for the hobbits and Rohan in Lord of the Rings? Those pieces worked so well because they didn't feel the need to drive the melodic motif into the ground by amping up the symphonic element, and some of the most powerful moments of the film are from those melodies being played simply, which carried so much more impact, at least for me.

But I'll rant about film scores another day. Overall, another mixed bag on this week of turmoil, and a little weaker than last week. For the worst, it's a toss-up between '7/11' and 'Flawless', one a remix that took a dump on the original and the other one that pretty much irredeemable from the start. For best... you know, it might be Killers-lite, but I'll take it, 'Shut Up And Dance' by Walk The Moon, with the runner up being either 'The Hanging Tree' or 'Time Of Our Lives', depending on my mood. Let's hope things improve next week.

the top ten worst hit songs of 2013 - video

First list finished! Next up, the top ten best hit songs of 2013 - stay tuned!

the top ten worst hit songs of 2013

It's that time again.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's that time of year where I take a look at the biggest hit songs of the year and pick out the top ten best and worst to the complete indifference of artists, producers, and fans alike! Sounds like fun, eh? Okay, let's get started, and I think the prime place to begin is at the absolute bottom: the top ten worst hit songs of the year.

First, some ground rules. For one, a song will only ever make the list if it debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End chart this year. Of course there are holdovers I dislike from last year, but they had their chance to pop up on my 2012 list (which is available here). And I'm only choosing songs from this list - of course there were worse tracks that I covered in my album reviews, but I want to make the point that not only are these songs terrible, they're also impossible to escape throughout the year.

And here's another thing to keep in mind: for a song to reach my list, it has to actively annoy or irritate me, and simply being boring is often not enough to propel a song into my line of fire. The year-end charts are less aggressively bad than they are boring, and this year had that problem more than previous years, mostly because the indie boom lost momentum and mainstream radio had no idea what to replace it with. That means large tracts of this year were dominated by easy listening slow jams, interchangeable EDM, increasingly listless hip-hop, and a disco revival that came out of nowhere. 

But that's not saying there weren't songs that pissed me off, so let's begin by tackling some Dishonourable Mentions, shall we?

special comment: the state of country music

In the year 2000, two of the greatest country acts of the decade teamed up to perform a song formerly written by bluegrass artists Larry Cordle and Larry Shell. The song was never released as a single, but received significant airplay anyway due to its controversial nature in the country music industry. It was a song about how traditional and neotraditional country music - and the performers who made it - were being shoved to the sidelines in favour of mainstream pop crossover success. The song spoke of how artists like Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, and George Jones would never have had success in this industry climate - they, and the culture and history that they represented, would have been ignored. The legends, the icons of the genre, would have been likely been forgotten.

The song was titled 'Murder On Music Row' and it was made a hit by Alan Jackson and George Strait - and the situation of which they were singing...

Well, it's happening again.

On September 12, The Nashville Scene published a breakdown of the lyrics on the top 20 songs of the country music charts, indicating the common lyrical threads and the genre's shift towards party songs centered on beer, trucks, and girls. The case the article made was not to highlight the individual successes or failures of the songs on said list, but to point out the astounding similarities between the songs in terms of subject matter, theme, and even lyrical content. Furthermore, given that the extreme majority of acts on the list were performed by solo male country acts, the argument could be made that the average listener would not be able to tell these men apart. There is only one songs fronted by a woman on this list - Carrie Underwood, and I would have a hard time calling the American Idol winner a country singer over being a pop star. On the list of songs, the noticeable outliers come from Tim McGraw - a stalwart of the genre who has been around for decades - and a song penned by Bob Dylan sung by Darius Rucker, the former frontman of Hootie & The Blowfish! Neither song was in the top ten.

On September 19, Billboard magazine released an article showing how a growing number of country acts are showing concern regarding the sameness of their peers' content. Zac Brown of the Zac Brown Band said, 'there is not a lot of the country format I enjoy listening to. If I hear one more tailgate in the moonlight, Daisy Dukes song, I wanna throw up. There's songs out right now on the radio that make me... ashamed to even be in the same format as some of those artists.' Think about this for a moment: the frontman of a critically acclaimed country act from rural Georgia, from a town of just over 5000 people, made the statement that he is ashamed to be in the same format as these artists. He goes on to call Luke Bryan's 'That's My Kinda Night' 'the worst song he's ever heard.' He goes on to target the country music industry, saying it puts 'songs and people on a pedestal that have no integrity to them whatsoever', and to the writers of these songs, 'you can look on song credits and see some of the same songwriters on every one. There has been, like, ten number one songs in the last two to three years that were written by the same people, and the exact same words, just arranged different ways.'

Zac Brown is right. So is Gary Allan, who, in an interview with Larry King, said 'I feel like we have lost our genre.' So is Kacey Musgraves, who said in an interview with British GQ when asked about what trends in music need to die, she replied, 'Anyone singing about trucks, in any form, in any song, anywhere. Literally, just stop - nobody cares! It's not fun to listen to.' Unfortunately, Miss Musgraves is likely wrong on this front, at least in comparison with the programming that Nashville has been pushing for country radio over the past few years, because it has become abundantly clear that a growing audience wants it. Incidentally, Kacey Musgraves released an album this year titled Same Trailer, Different Park, a controversial yet critical acclaimed debut album where she spoke openly about topics such as deteriorating rural culture, religion, and even same-sex marriage. It is one of the best albums of this year and will beat out Daft Punk, Kanye West, Vampire Weekend, Deerhunter, and a slew of other critically acclaimed acts on my Top 10 list.

Outside of major professional publications, Robert Christgau, and AllMusic, it was ignored. In most top ten lists by mainstream critics, I suspect it will be forgotten. And while it has sold better that you might expect, reaching #2 on the Billboard 200 it was far from a smash hit, with the lead single only reaching #14. Oh, and the album it was up against that week, the major competition the label was setting Miss Musgraves against? Justin Timberlake's comeback album The 20/20 Experience, which proceeded to sell approximately 968,000 copies that week alone. That week, Kacey Musgraves sold about 42,000. For a more fitting comparison, the previous week Luke Bryan sold 150,000 copies with a compilation album, a glorified spring break mixtape. 

Now I'm not here to make a value judgement on whether I think the trend towards the mainstream is a bad thing - as much as mainstream modern country in all of its varieties isn't really my thing, I can acknowledge good music when I hear it and there is some there. But what is a much more worrying trend is the sidelining of promising new acts like Kacey Musgraves, a female singer-songwriter with incredible chops, fresh ideas, and an excellent sense of solid country music, in favour of meat-headed, practically interchangeable male country stars who have pop crossover success by catering to the lowest common denominator. From a business point of view, Nashville is making a killing on these country acts, but it does not reflect a sustainable business model when you put your most promising and intelligent new singer-songwriter in a decade up against Justin TImberlake. But at the same time, the country music industry is a business, and if they want to milk and oversaturate the market with mainstream male country acts to roll in the dough until the world gets sick of them, that's their choice. But there's a much bigger issue at stake here, and that is reflected in the comments made by Kacey Musgraves, Gary Allan, and Zac Brown: the loss of culture in country music. A loss of flavour and texture and the feeling that the songs are informed by authentic real emotions and songwriters who know their history and the place country music has played within the United States for nearly a century. At this point, Nashville seems to have forsaken this, presumably under the belief that nobody in their audience wants it.

But more and more evidence is coming to light to me that that is not the case. Recently I reviewed the newest album released by country singer Justin Moore, titled Off The Beaten Path. Now that album was terrible and I stand by everything I said about it, but it was something in the comments to that video that both concerned me and got me thinking, because people jumped to the defense of Justin Moore and not just because they thought his music was good, but they thought his music was relatable. They could connect with it, they saw in the offensive pandering nonsense that was that album moments with which they could connect - it was something. And they gravitated to those songs about small town USA and God and rural culture and all of that not solely because they were something they could relate to, but because mainstream country music has nearly completely abandoned that demographic. Or worse still, they attempt to appease that demographic with shallow, vapid pandering that sounds and looks utterly soulless, and yet the audience will take anything they can get. And frankly, I can empathize with their concerns - their defense of Justin Moore, who at least appears to believe the crap he's selling, is pretty much identical to my defense of Kacey Musgraves, at least on basic principles - we're both looking for culture in country music.

So what happened? How did we get here? What led Nashville to throw their history and culture under the ties of a Chevy truck lining up for a tailgate? Well, there's a lot of factors in that. One I can definitely pinpoint is within the country music industry itself - they've always gunned for the mainstream audience, with country pop rising in the late-70s and 80s and the explosion of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain in the 90s. But in those climates, there were still traditional and neotraditional country stalwarts like Alan Jackson and George Strait who fought to preserve that history, and there was an audience that bought it. But when Nashville found out they could appease that demographic by pandering to southern pride and small town nationalist spirit and patriotism, those that fought for culture and history were forced to the sidelines. 

And how can Nashville get away with that? Well, that's a twofold problem, and here's where things get ugly, because one of the groups that deserves blame are modern music critics, particularly those who are my age or a little older. The majority of critics outside of major publications like AllMusic and Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, who must cover country by obligation, have ignored and marginalized country music for a long time now, preferring to cover the newest underground hip-hop mixtape or independent album that nobody outside of a very, very small community of music nerds will ever care about. I could go on about how this attitude betrays the spirit of populism which the best critics have always embraced, but that misses the meat of the message: by ignoring country music, the critical press shut down the artistic conversation with country music. They made the implicit statement that there is no artistry or craft or intelligence or meaningful commentary in country music. And I would be remiss not to mention the political angle, where certain people, ignorant of country music as a genre, dismissed it as music for small town, right-leaning white trash rednecks who were incapable of appreciating 'better' music. This sort of thinking and dismissal is cowardly, shameful, and utterly despicable, and it shows most critics as narrow-minded as the demographic they dismissed.

But the country music industry heard it and realized they didn't need critical acclaim to sell records, unlike other genres like metal and indie rock and occasionally hip-hop. They didn't need us. So instead they started catering to the lowest common denominator more aggressively than they ever have before, putting money and professional songwriters behind anyone with a hint of talent, and they reaped the rewards, particularly considering the culture of anti-intellectualism and victimization that was being adopted by the stagnating and unfairly ignored rural population of the United States. And while I will not claim that country music was directly responsible for shoving large tracts of the United States towards the right politically, you can't deny that with the success of acts like Jason Aldean and Justin Moore and libelous songs like 'Have You Forgotten' by Darryl Worley that it didn't happen. And with the role country music played in the aftermath of 9/11, things got even worse - as much as I never liked The Dixie Chicks, they didn't deserve to have their careers ruined because they were right about the War on Terror before everyone else realized it. Like it or not, country music did contribute to the increased polarization of America, and the critics not doing their jobs by ignoring covering country music only made things worse, because the cultural conversation stopped. 

So thus I wasn't surprised that I get comments on my country music reviews saying that I shouldn't even be covering country music, because I'm a Canadian city boy and thus must be some sort of privileged white-collar Commie homosexual - even though I've been listening to country music for about twenty years. Even though I know more about country music than I do about most hip-hop and metal and electronica. Even though I'm the only critic on Youtube who has even bothers to cover country music and review it fairly, to give it a goddamn chance. And sure, YouTube is an echo chamber and any critical opinion gets pounced upon, but there was something different about this, because it reflects the fact that there is something seriously wrong with the shape country music is taking, that acts like Justin Moore are making money simply because they can pander to rural pride and the starving audiences will take anything they can get. And as Zac Brown said in his interview, 'country fans and country listeners deserve to have something better than that, a song that really has something to say. Good music makes you feel something.'

So what's the solution to this? Honestly, I have no idea - if I could solve the increased polarity of America, I probably wouldn't be reviewing albums on the internet. What I will say is this: the increased popularity of country acts in the mainstream won't last. At this point, the market is nearly saturated, and when trends shift and the mainstream public gets sick of country, it's going to ruin a lot of careers. Right now, however, I'm significantly more concerned about two groups: the artists whose careers are suffering now because the industry is sidelining them and whom might never get another chance for the spotlight; and those concerned about American culture and history, particularly those who love country music and who don't want to see the genre implode in the same way other oversaturated musical genres collapsed, like disco and prog rock and punk and hair metal and grunge. But country is unique because so much of it is linked directly and is informed by American culture and American history. If you forget where your culture comes from, and the people who represent it instead of those who are looking to profit off of it in order to make a quick buck, you lose something you can never get back.

Alan Jackson and George Strait understood this when they recorded 'Murder On Music Row' back in 2000 - and really, the only reasons pop country imploded at the end of the 90s are the near-simultaneous failures of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain, and 9/11, where Nashville correctly realized that the USA needed a connection with its culture and its roots more than ever, or else the blow to the nation's spirit would never heal. But this time, things are different, and I don't see a good ending for traditional country music. Or, to put it another way, Alan Jackson released a new album this week: how many of you have heard it?

That's what I thought. I don't want to see another murder on music row. And why do I care? Well, the same reason Alan Jackson and George Strait and Zac Brown and Gary Allan and Kacey Musgraves care: I love country music, and there's room on the charts for both culture and partying. To quote Zac Brown again, 'I'm opinionated because I care so much about the music and the songs'. 

He's not alone.