Hey y’all. Better late than never, right?
So I’m not going to mince words when I say this, but I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to continue to blog anymore after the year I had. I mean 2022 was…one of the best years of my life. I have a son now and he is the best thing that ever happened to me. My life is finally finding a sense of normalcy again now that the pandemic is “over”…its absolutely not, but it is at least much more manageable now. And my work of being a parent and a full time working man has absolutely consumed my life to basically little to no free time. To the point that I wondered if it was even worth trying to continue this damn thing and just move on with my life. But then it hit me. I need time to myself again. And writing is absolutely an outlet to alleviate a lot of my stress. So to the five of you that are probably still regularly tuning in to see my thoughts on music and movies, I thank you. And if I’m comedically underestimating what is left of my viewing audience, I apologize.
And I’m going to cut myself off there when it comes to my personal life because my personal life is way more interesting than what Billboard considers the “hit songs” of 2022:
Christmas music being considered one of the 100 biggest songs of the year was cute at first, but now its exasperating. Who in their right mind would say “A Holly Jolly Christmas” is the best hit song of 2022? And Kate Bush having one of the biggest hit songs of this year has basically opened Pandora’s box as to what other older songs can become hits again in the future. Hell, I took at the weekly charts before writing this for the first time in a while and I recognize at least TEN songs on the charts right now that did not come out in the past year. Nobody cares about modern music anymore and why should they? It is literal politicking at this point and there is so much other shit going on in the world right now, that music is basically an afterthought now. Almost to the point that I wanted to cancel the worst list all together. I mean trying to craft a worst movies list last year basically ended the year end list season for me for a year and a half to the point that I canceled my 2021 movies list altogether.
But then it hit me. It doesn’t feel right to not do a worst list for music. Because while it is harder to craft thoughts for a hour and a half or so movie, writing about two to three minute songs is so much easier. Even in this dire landscape of hit music, someone needs to take these songs down a notch or two. Including someone with barely any followers like me. So you know what? The worst list is back on baby. Even if it is months late! And you know what, I’ll even stick to my usual tradition of the year end list above. There are far more songs to talk about out there, but if a shit ton of 2021 music and Christmas songs is what Billboard considers the 100 biggest songs of 2022, then so be it. That is what I’ll talk about. And maybe someday, Billboard will get their shit together and track the charts until December like a normal publication. *laugh track*
So without further ado, we are counting down!
THE TOP TEN WORST HIT SONGS OF 2022
Because this is my list, I’m going to make a slight programming change. Let’s make this THE TOP ELEVEN WORST HIT SONGS OF 2022 because my number ten spot is basically a tie.
10. “Fancy Like” AND “AA” - Walker Hayes
I can assure you all that nobody cared about “Fancy Like” in the year 2022 and nobody sure as hell cared about the failed follow up “AA” either.
I mean Walker Hayes sure as hell tried to make you care about both of these songs last year. With cheap remixes, stupid TikTok dances, becoming a NFT bro (seriously that happened) and pop culture references galore. That’s how they both farted their way to making this year end list higher than they had any right to be. But in reality, who the hell cared about this doofus last year?
I mean he sure as hell tried to extend his fifteen minutes of fame to the best that he can. But I think country music finally caught on to his shtick and ended the Walker Hayes experience before it became any more unnecessary. He sure as hell tried to make more idiotic songs. I stumbled upon one on YouTube just the other day called “Y’all Life” and I couldn’t tell the difference between that garbage from the rest of his post “Fancy Like” hits.
So consider “Fancy Like” making the actual top ten list as an apology for the previous year. I was fascinated by how awful it was back in the day, but that fascination is now just an annoyance now. It is as bad as the millions who had it on their worst of the year list said it was. And “AA” makes the worst list for sounding like absolute ass. So if I had to break my tie, “AA” would be the actual number ten worst hit song of the year. But “Fancy Like” deserves a spot for just flat out sucking at existing as a song. I can’t eat at Applebees anymore. Thanks Walker Hayes. I blame you. Next.
For the record, I shared an abbreviated version of all my year end lists with a few friends a couple months ago. Well let me just go on the record and say, if you saw my picks, delete them from your memory banks. Because time has certainly done some of these songs absolutely no favors. For example, exhibit ABCDEF
9. “Abcdefu” - Gayle
And for those of you who I did share that original list with, well consider this the replacement for that “Fingers Crossed” song. Which is also really bad and another Olivia Rodrigo knockoff….no seriously, it has almost the exact same song structure as “traitor”. I’m already in the process of forgetting that song in record time.
This one, however, just keeps getting worse and worse the more I hear it. And this is coming from someone who laughed this song off at first thinking it is getting over hated. Well let me once again apologize for being behind the trend. This song is so fucking insufferable that I want it take its own advice and go fuck off.
But you know what I hate more than its insufferable bratty behavior? It’s how it became popular. And for those of you who haven’t seen other video countdowns or articles explaining this song’s backstory, allow me to sum it up for you with two to three sentences. Gayle did not write this song on the fly through TikTok. Record label hacks did. Gayle is an industry plant.
Which that sounds about right. No Gen X or zoomer in their right mind would think telling someone to fuck off through the alphabet song is a clever retort. It is stupid. Using nursery rhymes in general as insults are stupid and I still cannot believe that was a trend this year.
And I know my track record with these predictions are mostly cold at best, but I’m willing to call it right here, right now. This girl is never going to get a second hit. And before I hear “But Bobby, Gayle is performing on The Eras Tour”, I don’t care. Good for Gayle to go touring with Taylor Swift. That doesn’t guarantee her a second hit. Especially when your back catalog consists of five to ten different versions of the same damn song.
Come at me Barbz!
8. “Super Freaky Girl” - Nicki Minaj
In my defense, this is higher than I initially thought it would be. Because when I first heard this, I thought it was the most cynical and hypocritical song of the year. And in many ways, it still is.
For those of you who don’t know, Nicki Minaj raised hell over Latto’s “Big Energy” being considered as one of the best rap songs of the year. And in many ways, she is right. But then what does she go on to do? Replicating Latto’s success down to an exact science just to get the easiest number one hit of anyone’s career. Making a pop rap song with a sample of “Superfreak”? It’s been done already.
MC Hammer owns the biggest pop rap sample of all time. Nicki knows exactly what she is doing. But at this stage in her career, she’s just racking up the hits. Some of them might still be good, but she has her legacy set in stone. Even if the past few years has lead to some stains on said legacy with all the cattiness amidst a growing scene of female rappers, questionable friendships with pedophiles, and her stances on the pandemic has led to a lot of people looking at her in a different light.
So why is this not lower? Look, I absolutely LOATHE this lazy sampling trend we’ve been experiencing for the past year or two. But I got to give Nicki credit here. Outside of the chorus, she’s at least still got some sharp lyrics. I still respect her as a lyricist, even at her most cynical. Otherwise, this deserves all the hate that “Anaconda” got so many years ago.
Did I say this was eleven worst hit songs? Make it Top Twelve Worst Hit Songs of 2022.
7. “I Like You (A Happier Song)” - Post Malone (featuring Doja Cat). AND “One Right Now” - Post Malone & The Weeknd
I wanted to pick just one, but I’m sorry for the second cop out on this list. Both of these sucked equally as hard that this is also a tie. But man, what a plummet in stock Post Malone had in 2022, am I right?
Actually here’s the thing. I kind of respected “Twelve Karat Toothache”, despite having one of the all-time worst album titles. It was a massive risk making this type of album about addiction and depression after having one of the most commercially successful albums of the last five years. Posty said he wanted to avoid the easy radio hits and just make a deeply honest album about such serious topics and his own life experiences. And you know what? I can appreciate doing as such since this album was kind of good.
But avoiding the easy radio hits? Bro. Your two biggest hits off that album were huge radio hits and were interchangeable from anything else on the Top 40 stations. And they were easily the two worst songs off that album too for having nothing to do with the rest of the album.
If I had to pick, I guess “I Like You” was the least bad of the two songs. But my god, this was absolutely a song formed in a pop music lab with such simplistic lyrics, such dull uninteresting production choices, same up down up down tempo that was taken from the pop hacks guide to songwriting. And that Doja Cat feature that sounds like she was not even in the same studio as Posty while making this. It is audio white noise.
But I’ll take that slightly over the toxic masculinity that is “One Right Now”. Which maybe I should have separated the two songs and ranked this one lower, if not for that synth production. My god the moment I hear that, that beat gets stuck in my head the rest of the day. But holy shit, fuck both of these guys. I’ve said my piece about Posty this year, but seriously, I’m over The Weeknd. And I’ll address The Weeknd of the current year at some point and his terrible decisions this year, but last year, no wonder his album flopped. 2022 was the sign of overexposure of Abel taking full effect and nowhere was that more apparent than him talking about the dresser that he fucked your girl on. Asshole.
In the end, Posty’s 2022 was so rough that another album is being rushed out this year to capitalize on the commercial flopping of his last album? Will it be more successful? To be determined.
The biggest hit song of 2022 everybody!
6. “Heat Waves” - Glass Animals
A two year old song that came out about the same time as the pandemic started and finally left the charts at around the holiday season 2022. Yep, I can’t think of a better song to be declared not only the biggest song of the year, but the longest charting hit of all time. Woo!
Honestly, I really didn’t want to place this on the list at first. Because I’m all out of hatred for this song. I genuinely do not care whatsoever about this song anymore. This probably shouldn’t even be on here at all because saying this is one of the worst songs of the year means I have any sort of reaction toward it whatsoever.
So why is “Heat Waves” on the worst list? Because it encapsulates how barren of a wasteland popular music is right now. And I truly hate how hit music is right now. People are complaining about how out of touch the radio is and yes they are right. Well let me pause for a minute and point out how stagnant streaming is. I mean yeah the radio had a hard time rotating this out because it sounds like all genres and sucks at all of them.
But the streaming charts I am slowly starting to realize have a hard time rotating the big hits out. That’s why the top ten is stagnant for months on end. That’s why old music is becoming more popular than new. That’s why Christmas music is taking over the year end lists. I’m blaming the charts not being fun to talk about anymore all on “Heat Waves”.
Sorry if that’s freaking you out…
And you know what, fuck the page break.
Literally just copy and paste what I said for “Heat Waves” towards this next one as well.
5. “Bad Habits” - Ed Sheeran
But wait, you might ask. Haven’t you said before the song itself is not that bad, but the music video is one of the worst you’ve ever seen? Yes. I have said that before. Good job. But guess what? When the year is so barren of actual hits and I am stuck listening to the same songs over and over again, the more you realize how empty and vapid a song really is. And while I hate a few other Ed Sheeran songs more than this one, it might be the most interchangeable song Ed Sheeran has ever written.
Like this is if Maroon 5 wrote a song for The Weeknd. It is so painfully basic and so painfully obvious who Ed is trying to emulate with this song. You’re not writing “After Hours” Ed. You’re writing interchangeable crap like this.
And that’s all I’m going to say about this entry. Sorry for shorting you all on content, but if we are going to keep getting leftovers ruling into the following year, then I’m going to keep running out of things to say about them. Next.
…I don’t want to talk about the controversy. I just want to talk about the bad music man because this is B-A-D…
4. “Broadway Girls” - Lil Durk (featuring Morgan Wallen)
I guess there is no avoiding it any more since Morgan Wallen is basically the biggest artist on the planet right now, so instead of addressing it multiple times next year, let’s talk about it, I changed my mind.
My thoughts on Morgan Wallen surviving cancellation are complicated. I highly recommend watching Todd in the Shadows review from this year addressing it in full analysis because I do agree with a lot of his points. What he said was insensitive, not intolerant. I’ve heard MANY white people say that word in a far worse context than how Morgan Wallen used it. But I also believe that word was in Morgan Wallen’s vocabulary long before two years ago. Is it hard to separate Morgan Wallen’s cancellation bout with the extreme political landscape of the last few years? Kind of, but at the same time, country music is a very conservative heavy genre, so it is more than just Morgan’s fan base. Did he put in the work to change? I guess you could say that he did the very safe route, but its not up for me to decide if he changed. Because spoiler, I’m a straight white male. He didn’t offend me, so who am I to say he’s forgiven?
Look, to put it bluntly, how Morgan is as a person, that’s not my lane to decide. What is my lane to decide is how he is as an artist. And to be honest, after not getting his appeal initially, I do see why people liked him back in 2019-2021. But now? Man…2022 onward, I am just not a fan of the music he’s made Post-Dangerous. I also heavily agree with Todd that this is a man who is very much afraid of losing everything all over again and going the extremely safe route all the time.
I mean look no further than this clunky piece of shit. People joked about Morgan Wallen saying “see I do have black friends” and you know what, they’re right. Because doing this just screams clickbait, even if I do genuinely believe that these two probably do have some mutual respect for each other as artists. But Morgan and Lil Durk go together like sandpaper and cement. They just don’t work well off each other. Lil Durk basically disappears on his own song and Morgan Wallen just sounds like utter dogshit all over this track. Whoever mixed his vocals needs to be fired.
And yet here we are now with both of these artists only being bigger in 2023, Wallen especially. Hopefully we don’t get that collab album Lil Durk publically begged for because the less “Broadway Girls”, the better off.
I don’t care what Billboard says. This was not a hit.
3. “She Likes It” - Russell Dickerson (featuring Jake Scott)
This didn’t even crack the upper ⅔ of the charts and that’s what is considered a hit nowadays? I’m not even going to dignify this entry with a full analysis. This sucks as a country song. This sucks as an attempt to crossover as a pop song. This just flat out fucking sucks and Russell Dickerson is one of the worst country artists working. This guy just has zero charisma and is a jeans model disguising as a good ole boy. Next.
One of the lower key big moments of the year for me was my job change. I can finally say that I’m out of the retail world and thank goodness for that. For as much as I loved my last job, it was time to get out of it and have a normal 9-5 job for the first time in my life. But you know what I’m NOT going to miss about the world of retail?!?!
To those of you who are new to my blog, I LOATHE retail store playlists. It is this bland boring white bread music playlist that is on constant loop and repeated ad nauseum anywhere from three to twelve hours. I have created my own subgenre dedicated to my intense hatred for it called “retailcore”.
I’m not saying all “retailcore” music is bad. There is a fair mixture of good to even great music that is often added to these playlists. But my least favorite variant of “retailcore” are the songs that the more you hear them, the more empty vapid pits of nothingness start to shine through. And I can’t think of a bigger representation of how empty I felt listening to a song the more I heard it this year than…Justin Bieber…I mean we all knew this was where this was going, why go any further?
2. “Ghost” - Justin Bieber
I said it last year and I’ll say it again. If Justin Bieber is going to just make soccer mom music the rest of his career, then he deserves all the hatred he received in the early 2010s at this point in time. Because I can’t think of a song in his catalog that is more hollow and vapid than this. A song meant about a loved one dying shouldn’t sound this uninteresting.
The first time, it was a collective shrug, but after what feels like 5000 listens, it is 100% Justin Bieber’s fault this song doesn’t work. If you gave it to someone with a little more vocal inflection, then I’m certain this would have been at least a 5 out of 10, if not higher. But Justin Bieber is one of the worst pop stars of our generation as not just a performer, but especially as a singer, that all the dimensions this song could have had just fallen like a limp fart.
But once again, its those fucking retail playlists. If Justin Bieber is going to keep targeting that demographic I mentioned earlier, then I need to brace myself with ear plugs the next time I go to the grocery store, Target, Kohls, etc. since I’m going to be hearing this man make the whitest of bread pop music until I’m at least 50 since Scooter Braun will refuse to let his prime cash cow go to pasture when he is long past his expiration date.
1. “Big Energy” - Latto
To the surprise of no one. I said this was a 0 out of 10 in every conceivable way the last time I ever talked about music on my blog and it is still that over a year and a half later. Everything about this song just straight up pisses me off. From that overused Tom Tom Club sample that Mariah should entirely own the rights to at this point as no one is ever going to not associate this with Mariah ever again. From Dr. Luke being Dr. Luke. And with Latto having zero personality and not even bringing anything new to the table as an artist surely doesn’t help.
I also REALLY hate this lazy sampling trend in general. If it isn’t apparent enough with two of my least favorite hits of this year, this trend can end any day now. Especially when both of them have already been done, countlessly. There are millions upon millions of songs out there that have not been sampled yet. Why keep going back to the well when there is a definitive song that owns that sample? Are we really that complacent? That lazy as a society? Or are we just completely out of ideas when it comes to making songs? I mean the song run time has gotten shorter and shorter for hits these days. And TikTok has basically broken the structure of songs as we know it. I guess I just have to accept the fact that this is the way things are now.
But at the very least, is it so bad for me to think we can do much better than this?
And there you have it. My top ten…eleven….twelve worst hit songs of 2022. Thank you for reading this seven to eight months later than it should have been. I’ll try to get the best list up soon. As always, please let me know any thoughts you may have or if there is anything I can do better like get this up on time for once you lazy fu- and if you want to know my opinions on other songs since I skipped the dishonorable mentions this year. Why did I do that? Because that would require me to have more thoughts on such an uneventful year as this. But I’ll gladly give my two cents if asked.
Thank you all once again. Stay tuned for more and as always, take care!
