2007. One of my high
school years. A year that I'm pleasantly nostalgic for in comparison to this timeline where we are locked in our houses and so many are declaring 2020 the worst year ever only four months in.
You can look at the top of this list
and think 2007 was a quality year for music.
It was not. This was a bad
year. A really really bad year. Before doing this list, I was feeling
nostalgic for when the bad music of yesteryear was just lame and stupid. I absolutely regret even feeling that. I’m going out on a limb and saying this is
Top 5…fuck it, Top 3 worst years I’ve ever covered in terms of these year-end
lists. Hell, maybe when it’s all said
and done, this will be the absolute worst topping the incredibly low standards
of 2014. Both had plenty of good enough
picks for my best list. Both had an
incredibly high amount of crap. What a
honest to god terrible year.
This year was so bad I had a tough time choosing which ten songs
were the absolute worst of the worst. So
just because this was such a terrible year, I’m bringing back the dishonorable
mentions.
DISHONORABLE MENTIONS:
“Kiss Kiss” – Chris Brown (featuring T-Pain)
On another site, this made my Worst of 2008 list, yet won’t
be making an appearance on here. How
much lower can the bar go?
“That’s That” – Snoop Dogg (featuring R. Kelly)
Honestly this made the list just for the introduction. That lady saying “Your royal penis is clean
your highness” and R. Kelly saying “Thank you” makes me want to vomit. What an absolutely irredeemable toxic fifteen
seconds of music.
“Rockstar” – Nickelback
I once called this song the worst Nickelback song of all
time. I really need to revisit some of
my past comments because six years later, some of my thoughts have not aged
nearly as well as I feel about them now.
This is still a garbage song, no doubt about that. This is the least credible song about being a
rockstar I’ve ever heard. At least Post
Malone’s “rockstar” makes sense in that rappers are the modern day rockstars of
the music industry. This is a fucking
joke.
“Don’t Matter” – Akon
But if you want to talk about artists that I got absolutely
sick of from this year, I really don’t miss Akon being around. While he had plenty of bad songs from this
year, this was by far his most punchable.
Why does this girl want to be around such a manipulative untrustworthy
asshole? He sounds like such an
unpleasant person.
“We Fly High” – Jim Jones
Ringtone rap is by far one of the stupidest trends of my
lifetime. And this is quite often the
poster boy for how awful ringtone rap is.
And I’m ashamed to admit that this was once my Myspace song. Yeah I’m that old. Honestly, I’m more embarrassed by this song’s
many failures more than I hate it. It’s
dated and lame more than it is outright bad.
“Like a Boy” – Ciara
I can’t think of a better example of someone badly wanting
to be a Beyonce rip-off than this right here.
And I don’t even hate Ciara. But
this is all sorts of gender politics that completely misses the point by a
country mile. Girls can be just as
manipulative and emotionally distant as guys.
“It Ends Tonight” – The All-American Rejects
I know you guys are probably shocked to see this on here,
but actually go back and listen to this again.
Because I sure did. Their other
two big hits may have aged greatly, but this aged terribly. Now I can’t stand it. Good lord this is the whiniest song. This is by far these guys at their most
Simple Plan-iest. Right down whining
about how they are being strangled by subtleties, how its’ their fault when
your blind, and how a falling star least I fall alone…what the fuck does that
even mean?
“Lips of An Angel” – Hinder
…I really hate myself for liking this chorus as much as I do. I’ve wondered for the longest time if this
song is a guilty pleasure because it avoided my worst list in 2006 against my
will. Because Jesus Christ, even I admit
this song is a toxic dumpster fire. It’s
fucking appalling. It’s incredibly
atrocious. This song is supremely
detestable. But dammit, once I hear it,
it can’t escape my fucking head. That’s
the only reason I can’t place this on the list proper, I’m sorry. Any other year, it would be a sure fire lock.
And I can go on about much more, but we are stalling as is. Let's smack this year across the floor. We're counting down!
THE TOP TEN WORST HIT SONGS OF 2007
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Time really is doing Soulja Boy all sorts of favors. If you asked me a few years ago, I would have
said this is one of the worst songs of the 2000s period and none of you would
have disagreed with me. Hell I ranked it
on my Worst of 2008 list and now I deeply regret it. Maybe it’s due to the influx of meme songs
we’ve been getting for the past five years?
I don’t know, but I can’t bring the hate on for it like I once did. Soulja Boy was really ahead of the curve. Hell even in 2007, he had his imitators.
10. “A Bay Bay” – Hurricane Chris
This came around about the same time Soulja Boy did. I think Chris came out a week or two earlier,
but he is far more of an ancient artifact in this point and time that I’ll just
flat out say Soulja Boy did it better.
What a fitting name for a guy who ended up having a Category 5 natural
disaster of a career.
Jesus this guy has anti-charisma if that’s possible. Hell, the little five year old kid on the
chorus is more pleasant to listen to than this guy. I swear every lyric he lists off on this song
has probably been used on any other crunk rap song from this time period. Not a single thing about this song is
remotely memorable…outside of him and the kid chirping “AYE BAY BAY”. Which for the record, ladies please feel free
to completely ignore any guy who thinks hollering that will get them any sort
of attention. I know I would.
And before any of you bring up the words “ringtone rap”, I’m
going to stop you right there. As
someone who had a cellphone and saw many others with cellphones at around this
time, I can assure you that nobody I knew had this song as their ringtone. I heard plenty of other songs from that same
variety like Mims, Unk, D4L, Dem Franchise Boyz, Jim Jones. Not once did I hear Hurricane Chris. But hey, I could be completely wrong and
someone might have wasted a whole dollar to have this as their ringtone. And to those of you who wasted your money to
have some dumb kid chirping the words “AY BAY BAE” for a whole thirty seconds,
I apologize.
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Fuck you John Mayer.
Fuck your punchable face. Fuck
your punchable voice. And fuck your
self-entitled song. Add this to the
dishonorable mentions too. I hate this
guy that much. But at the end of the
day, I’d rather listen to his self-entitled song about something than this
self-righteous piece of nothing.
9. “How to Save a Life” – The Fray
I’m about to come off like a huge dick in a bit since I
remember seeing an interview with The Fray back when this song was huge; where
they talk about how this song was dedicated to a troubled teenager the lead
singer was mentoring. And I honestly do
believe that was the intention for the song at first. But then studio hacks got their hands all
over this and hammered any life out of it and turned it into nothing.
My deep seeded hatred for this song is comparable to my deep
seated hatred for “Demons” by Imagine Dragons.
For a song about a troubled teenager, it should not fit in so well with
ad jingles. And just like “Demons”…or
any recent Imagine Dragons song ftr, this song was practically inescapable as
an ad jingle back in the day. I heard it
as ad jingles for television shows, movies, hell it could be placed in those
SPCA commercials and I wouldn’t notice the difference.
And just like Imagine Dragons, this was the point where The
Fray literally sold their souls to commercialism. Every song I heard from them proceeding this
felt like it was attached to some sort of functioning product. Whether it be new television series, new
cars, technology…you name it, The Fray would write some sort of song that turns
into a commercial jingle. This band used
to stand for something, but now, they are hollow shells of themselves. And this was the song that started it
all. Where did they go wrong
indeed. Next.
This next one is actually a band that I’ve seen live. I wouldn’t say I’m a fan of theirs, but at
the very least they are one of the more interesting bands I’ve seen chart
during my life time. But unfortunately,
they have only one hit to their name and I will always fucking hate it.
8. “Here (In Your Arms)” – Hellogoodbye
Hellogoodbye is a very weird band. They’ve gone through so many members that
Chumbawamba would actually be a good comparison point in terms of band
stability. Only lead singer Forrest
Kline has stuck around. They are one of
the few bands from around this time that I would say all their songs didn’t
sound the same. However, their only hit
was by far the most commercially accessible instead of sounding like other indy
pop before it.
Let’s get to the main reason this song is on the list first
and I think it’s pretty obvious within the first minute what that problem
is. I feel really bad for that poor
vocoder. The gratuitous amounts of
autotune abuse on this song is a crime.
T-Pain will always be looked back on as the guy who used autotune as his
gimmick, but at least T-Pain used it to enhance his sound. This is the song that epitomizes my hatred
for the heavy reliance of it in this time period. Seriously, it feels like 80% of this year
list heavily relied on autotune. That
stat could be wrong, but god it felt like most of this list was that. With this being the biggest culprit of why
autotune can’t masquerade a shit song.
Seriously, I can bag on this song beating autotune to a
pulse all post long. Because I rather
talk about that than the song itself.
The lyrics are so basic I’m pretty sure they were copy and pasted from
other songs. This song is so absent of
anything good that it deserves to be so much lower on this list on any other
year. But that’s 2007 in a nutshell for
ya. Hellogoodbye is a fitting name for
their time in the spotlight. Next.
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I don’t think it would surprise any of you if I declared
Meghan Trainor one of the worst acts of this decade. She really is that bad. And I think the immense critical smashing of
everything she even remotely touches has ended her career. What she did to “doo-wop” is just awful,
plain and simple.
Well it’s time to flip the gender roles. Because let’s look back at the original
teenage pop singer who completely ruined “doo-wop” the previous decade.
7. “Beautiful Girls” – Sean Kingston
Revisiting this decade as many times as I have has struck a
nerve with me. Why the hell did we put
up with Sean Kingston for as long as we did?
Every song he touched in his three years of relevance is just as bad as
practically everything Meghan Trainor touched in her three. I mean listen to this brat wail about how he
damns all the beautiful girls of the world for all his romantic problems. And his one-sided views as to how their
relationships fell apart. What are you
saying we for? It sounds like a YOU
problem kid.
Oh and let’s not forget that one of the worst producers of
this time period was attached to this track.
J.R. Rotem. In case any of you
forgot about this hack, he samples recognizable songs and only adds drum
machines towards it. The laziest of the
lazy. This time, he ruins the iconic
“Stand By Me”. There’s a difference
between taking something old and creating something new out of it, which is
what sampling is supposed to do. This is
blatantly ripping off something recognizable and just adding the absolute bare
minimum to make it new.
But none of his laughably bad lines or awful sampling struck
a nerve with me as much as the chorus did where Sean Kingston claims that
beautiful girls will have guys suicidal when they say its over.
WHAT FUCKING MORON GOES INTO RELATIONSHIPS
WITH THAT SORT OF MINDSET?!?! Its 2020 guys. Can we please leave this sort of
problematic guilt tripping behavior even further in the past than it truly
belongs?
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6. “I Wanna Love You” – Akon (featuring Snoop Dogg)
…that’s not the real title…
6. “I Wanna Fuck You” – Akon (featuring Snoop Dogg)
If “Don’t Matter” was Akon at his most punchable, this is him at his most detestable. Seriously, what kind of moron has the audacity to request someone’s permission to fuck? The nerve of this idiot and what is his reasoning? Because this girl already knows. How? How does she know? Just from the look he’s giving her? Akon sounds like the chipmunk version of himself. Literally. That’s what this helium induced mouth breather sounds like. He’s always been awful and this is a new low. Even for him.
At least Snoop Dogg’s guest verse is solid as always. Even in the shittiest of songs, Snoop is still cool as hell. But Snoop’s cosign means jack shit. He is not a sign of quality. Especially in a song titled I Wanna Fuck You. Fun fact though. Originally, this was going to be a guest verse from Plies. But Plies got sent to prison before recording due to gun violence. Needless to say, this song could have been much worse off with Plies involved instead of Snoop Dogg.
But really now, do I need to give this song any more attention than it deserves? It's gross. It's terrible. And it was a number one hit. 2007, setting the bar so low that its getting fucked.
2007. A banner year
for Justin Timberlake. Fresh off
multiple number one hits, his best-selling solo album, winning a ton of awards,
and pretty much embodying what a male pop superstar should be defined as for
the next fifteen years.
Justin Timberlake was basically untouchable at this
point. I mean who else would get away
with an entire verse dissing Prince and not come out of this unscathed and as
popular as ever. He could collaborate
with Madonna and get her a number one hit with C-level material. He can redeem 50 Cent’s personal
trainwreckord “Curtis” with a pop friendly crossover single….
5. “Ayo Technology” – 50 Cent (featuring Justin Timberlake
and Timbaland)
Okay he can’t do that.
Nobody could. Because 50 Cent
basically stopped trying after going quadruple platinum off his last two
albums. I can’t really figure out a
better way to word it than that. 50 Cent
wasn’t a great artist by any stretch of the imagination, but his songs weren’t
all bad. He at least put forth more
effort than this.
After two massive albums and even a movie based off his
life, 50 Cent’s fifteen minutes of fame were up in 2007 after “Curtis” got
absolutely destroyed by going head to head first day with Kanye West’s
“Graduation”. It was quite clear who the
general public wanted to listen to. And
I don’t blame them. I bought both albums
from Best Buy that day. It was quite
clear who actually tried and who was just coasting.
And this was the big single off “Curtis” and my god it has
not aged well the slightest bit. All the
songs problems fall back on 50 Cent not giving a shit. Yeah shocking. The guy who made “Candy Shop” and “Just a
Little Bit” sounds bored. But at least
on those songs he performs like he believes what he’s saying. “Ayo Technology” sounds like a bunch of
marketing hacks telling 50 Cent what to do.
“Justin Timberlake is the biggest name out there. And you can’t have JT without the biggest producer
alive Timbaland. Curtis, all you have to
do is just phone in your parts and everyone else will get this into the top
ten.”
Yeah, let’s talk about everyone else. This is arguably the worst beat Timbaland has
ever produced. He might have made worse
songs than this, but at least he still sounded good on them. What in the nine hells is this beat? It sounds like he put forth as much effort as
50 did. It sounds like a broken arcade
game mixed with an annoying synthesizer.
Meanwhile, you have Justin Timberlake sounding as smooth as a cracked
iPhone screen. He may have brought sexy
back, but hearing him say that he’s tired of using technology to get this girl
on top of him is a heinous pickup line.
This song was dated the moment it came out and hearing it
now where basically all we have to contact people in the outside world IS
technology, just makes it sound all the more lame. Next.
At the time this came out, I thought it was the worst song of the year. Needless to say, my thoughts aren’t what they used to be.
4. “Before He Cheats” – Carrie Underwood
To better understand where I’m coming from, let me tell you a little about me. I come from a country music listening household. Plus the fact that this was one of the biggest country crossover singles during the 2000s, this was easily the most overplayed song of the year for me. Granted, overplay doesn’t always mean a song was bad. But the more I heard it, the more its problems were just too hard to ignore.
For starters, its tone. A song about cheating and how you react to it should be angry. But the attitude. This song sounds so unjustly self-satisfied. This song earns nothing. It is performed so smugly that its impossible to feel like its earned anything. Let's compare it to the number one song of the year which is also about a cheating ex:
It's easy to say that Beyonce has this topic down to a science. But "Irreplaceable" is one of her best songs for a reason. When Beyonce says she can have another you in a minute, you believe it. And the way she tells this story is absolutely definitive. Every single instance of Beyonce pointing out how his cheating fucked everything up, it sounds believable. And everything Beyonce earns in telling this guy off is completely justified.
Meanwhile, "Before He Cheats" could have possibly worked if it wasn't one for one word that is often repeated throughout this song:
Probably
This whole song would sound so different if Carrie Underwood wasn't assuming the worst out of her boyfriend. For all we know, he might have been buying her an engagement ring. You know what they say about assuming things. It makes an ass out of you and...
I dug my key into the side
Of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive
Carved my name into his leather seats
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights
I slashed a hole in all four tires
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats
Of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive
Carved my name into his leather seats
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights
I slashed a hole in all four tires
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats
….just because this song barely made the cut from the list
proper, doesn’t mean Hinder is getting away scot free. Nope.
Because their follow-up single has absolutely nothing redeemable about
it.
3. “Better Than Me” – Hinder
“Lips of an Angel”.
For its many and I do mean MANY faults; it has one hell of a
chorus. If you can turn you brain off
and not remember how god awful the rest of the song is, you have one of the
biggest earworms of a chorus from this time period. When I hear that chorus, it doesn’t leave my
head for the rest of the day.
Which is more than for what I can say about “Better Than
Me”. There is not a single redeemable
moment in this song. Nothing about it is
distinct or original. This is another
one of those songs about how this girl deserves better than the lead
singer. It’s played out. Although I do think its funny that this song
immediately comes after “Lips of an Angel”.
In that case, yeah unnamed love interest. You sure as hell can do better than Austin
Winkler. The poor man’s Chad Kroeger.
2. “Wind It Up” – Gwen Stefani
As a matter of fact, we should stop letting popstars do
anything related with The Sound of Music.
Because it constantly ends up being awful.
And let's not forget this atrocity:
Anyway, back to this monstrosity. I said earlier about how Timbaland was the biggest producer
out there in 2007. Well a super close
second is The Neptunes. And just like
the former, this is easily the worst song The Neptunes has ever produced. I’ll give “Ayo Technology” this; as awful as
it was, at least that is a song. This is
just noise. Loud. Obnoxious.
Noise. Kind of like another Gwen
Stefani song:
For as many problems as “Hollaback Girl” had, at least it
was so bad that it was good. There will
never be another “Hollaback Girl”. It
was one of a kind in all sorts of amazingly bad, yet insanely catchy ways. You can tell that Gwen was trying to
replicate that song badly here and it doesn’t work the slightest bit. Most importantly, at least Gwen didn’t try
forcing the songs title as badly as she does here.
My ears! Gwen has proven time and time again that she can sing. What the hell was she thinking? Just because Fergie and Avril were both sing rapping badly doesn't mean she has to do it worse than they were.
Wind it up. More like turn it off.
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Alright I’ve been writing these lists for quite some time
now on other sites. Seven years to be
exact. And with that comes a lot of
comments I’ve said over the years that I often revisit. And we can’t talk about 2007 without
mentioning one of the biggest punching bags of this time period.
God I really can’t hear this band anymore without thinking
of me declaring them one of the worst things ever. So with all this space and time I’ve put
between bashing Nickelback and simply not caring about them, let me ask myself
this question again. Is Nickelback one
of the worst acts of all time? And I respond
with this definitive answer…..no. No
they are not. But damn they sure tried
to be.
1. “If Everyone Cared” – Nickelback
I’ve said it once already in this post and I’ll say it
again. I seriously regret saying
“Rockstar” is the worst Nickelback song of all time. This is like 100 times worse than that. I might as well go on the record again seeing
how well that’s done me in the past.
I’ll be damned if this isn’t the worst song Nickelback has ever
done. Worse than “Photograph”…at least
the memes mocking it give some redeemable value. Worse than “Someday”…for sounding exactly the
same as their first hit, at least it sounds finished. Worse than “Burn It to the Ground”…at least
that chorus slaps. This is the worst
thing Nickelback has ever done because it’s a meaningless mess.
What does it stand for?
Absolutely nothing. It’s a
pretentious pile of crap that conveys nothing.
I mean look at these lyrics:
If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
I honest to god feel like even Nickelback doesn’t buy the
shit they are selling. They sound so far
out of their wheelhouse with this song.
I’ve said so many bad things about their music, but at least they are in
their comfort zone and know what they are doing…
Then we’d see the day when nobody died.
…NOBODY? NOBODY WILL DIE? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? WHAT SORT OF BACKWARDS LOGIC APPLIES TOWARDS THIS SORT OF IMPOSSIBLY STUPID MINDSET!?!?
And look. It's easy to make fun of Chad Kroeger's voice. It's already been done before in this post. But the last thing his butt of a voice should be belting is anything with some sort of serious tone. Chad Kroeger crying about how we need to come together to save the lives of everyone on Earth is the last thing anyone should be hearing. Sorry Kroeger the Ogre. Nobody is swallowing their pride fast enough.
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Thank you all for tuning in to read yet another worst list. The best list is in the works as well as a review of "Onward". So stay tuned for both of those. And thank you all for following this blog. I'm averaging 10-15 views every entry, which is a lot more than I thought they would be for a blog that was abandoned for nearly five years. Your support means the world to me. Tune back in about a week or so and there will be more content. Thanks again!
