Songs That Didn’t Get Their Due Hate
When it comes to pop music, or really pop culture in general, what is actually worthy of our hatred? Arguably none of it. Pop culture doesn’t exist at us, and we’re free to ignore it if that’s our inclination. However, most of the time when we talk about “pop culture,” we’re talking about art, and the purpose of art is to provoke a response. Some artists want to get you in touch with your sadness. Some pop songs simply exist to get you to dance. Some of it works. Some of it doesn’t. But since we’re in the realm of emotional response, the full breadth of our feelings are on the table, and some songs are going to bring out the worst in us.
I personally don’t think irrationally negative feelings about pop culture can be avoided. Of course, we can learn to cope with those feelings in a healthy and rational way, and we can take a similar approach in our discourse. But to deny that initial blast of brain functionality that causes you to loathe a song or a movie or a whatever shouldn’t be ignored either. So I ask again: When it comes to pop music, what is worthy of our hatred? What pushes you beyond casual indifference and into the realm of ranting at your friends and thanking a higher power that you can plug your device directly into your car and never have to listen to the radio again?
Ultimately, that’s a question you’re going to have to answer for yourself. Maybe you’re a lyrics person. Maybe you don’t care about lyrics at all, and you focus on melody and composition. Maybe you’re like me, and you care about both. However, everyone is different, and I write this not to tell you what you should care about. I write this so I can lay out some of my feelings and priorities, and maybe we can find some common ground.
And while we’re at it, let’s also not pretend that there isn’t a certain amount of self- indulgence happening here. As I’ve said before, I love pointless pop culture debates and top ten lists and all that dumb shit, and I’ve consumed more of this kind of content than I’ll ever care to admit. Look up enough “worst songs of the decade so far” or lists of that nature and the same songs and artists come up over and over again. Everyone has The Black Eyed Peas. Everyone has Pitbull. Everyone has Nickelback. Everyone has LMFAO.
It’s come to the point where I think the conversation around these artists feels played out. As worthy of our disdain as some of these songs may be, plenty of songs equally worthy of our loathing have slipped through the cracks. Or in a few cases, there are some generally well-liked songs for which I have personal beefs. Either way, I don’t want to talk about the usual suspects. You don’t need to read yet another article about why “The Time (Dirty Bit)” sucks.
Is that enough justification for this admittedly dumb and clickbait-y article premise? No. But let’s do it anyway!
Criteria/House Keeping
I started prepping for this article by writing a giant list of pop songs I didn’t like. Then I narrowed it down to eight using my personal bullshit and the age old question, “Do I have enough to say about it?” However, before said bullshit was factored in, I narrowed some the list down using the following criteria. To some, there might be some glaring omissions, and this might be why:
1. The cutoff year is 2006. Mostly because this is the earliest year the Billboard website has comprehensive lists. (Or at least as far as I can tell. The Billboard website is, shall we say, not the most intuitive site ever designed when it comes to archiving.)
2. It had to be relatively popular. Meaning that any potential song had to chart relatively well or pass the “I remember that song on the radio” test.
3. No novelties, memes, or songs meant to be enjoyed ironically. In other words, no Rebecca Black.
4. One song per artist.
5. No songs that have been covered better or more thoroughly by others. In other words, it had to pass my insecurity test.
Also, this list is in the order I thought of them, and it’s not ranked. Now let’s talk about some bad pop songs!
“Rude” by Magic!
I think that if a song or an album attempts to tell a story, you’re allowed to judge it on narrative grounds.
Obviously the way a song communicates information is different from a movie or a TV show, and thus we shouldn’t judge story songs by whether or not they effectively use three acts or any other common structure practices. However, story songs or narrative albums seek to tell tales, and if you don’t like the story the song tells, then it can absolutely be a factor in your enjoyment.
Moreover, we can also consider how the composition and the story inform one another. Tommy, on a musical level, is incredible. But on a narrative level, it struck me as the kind of aimless and surface level story you write in high school, and thus I’m not as giddy about Tommy as many a classic rock fan. (Sorry.) However, all the elements come together for me in songs like Immortal Technique’s famously bleak (including graphic depictions of sexual violence) “Dance with the Devil” or Johnny Cash/Shel Silverstein’s funny-but-also-kind-of-touching-in-a-weird-way “A Boy Named Sue” or the haunting loneliness of the lyrics and the strings on “Elenor Rigby.”
Nothing works on “Rude.”
In the first verse, our narrator describes waking up, putting on a nice suit, visiting his girlfriend’s father, and asking him if he can marry his daughter. The father rudely says no. The chorus then acts as a sort of temper tantrum. “Why you gotta be so rude?/Don’t you know I’m human too?/Why you gotta be so rude?/I’m gonna marry her anyway” and so on and so forth. He’s going to marry her, and there’s absolutely nothing her father can do about it.
He then spends the rest of the song continuing to beg for his permission, and no marriage happens.
Let’s set aside the archaic values for just a second. Ask your partner’s father permission to marry his child once, and he says no in a needlessly dickish manner, you have the right to some sympathy. But if you ask him over and over and over again, that’s a different story. Specifically, that’s a story about an obsessive asshole’s perpetual pestering of a man whose side I’m now on because I no longer believe that our narrator is asking because he loves his daughter, but because he’s incredibly insecure. Because this is a game he must win, and this man’s daughter is basically chips on the table or cash in a back alley craps game.
Maybe the lyrics are self-aware. That the song isn’t actually about the desire to “marry that girl” but the endless comedic pursuit of her father’s approval. I don’t buy it. Or at the very least, if the intent is comedy, then it fails. And in either case, self-awareness or lack thereof is not my problem. My problem is where I think the narrator wants our sympathies to lie.
Magic! could’ve easily ended the story with the marriage he’s been promising for the whole song. But they don’t. Instead, the song ends with more begging. Which is fine, but because of this nuisance that I don’t think the opening verse is the first time the narrator has asked the father to marry his daughter. I think we’re in No Exit territory. I think this man will forever seek her father’s approval. I think he always has been seeking her father’s approval since the beginning of time. And I think the father will always refuse him. There will never be a wedding, and she’ll probably drive off into the sunset with some guy who meets the bare minimum of not being a complete dipshit.
Maybe this scenario could be funny if it were framed to be so. But it’s not. Instead, we’re left with this wobbly cloying cold-footed dickhead whose sole purpose seems to be pestering his girlfriend’s dad.
We’re also left to wonder what the narrator did to earn her father’s ire. In the cutesy version of the story the narrator wants us to believe, the father probably would’ve hated him no matter what. But I don’t think that’s the case. Nobody acts like this without a driving force, and the only logical conclusion is that the father walked in on him fucking a hamster.
I may be reading too much into the story, and maybe the lyrics don’t make this song worthy of hatred. But truth be told, all of it would’ve been tolerable if it weren’t for the song’s sensibility. The way the story is wrapped in a grocery store safe reggae jam. How the lyrics are meant to make us go “Awwww” like they’re written in a Hallmark card with a cat on the front meant to be given to your aunt who knits the ugly sweaters. How all of it seems designed to be as safe and non-confrontational as possible. It’s the song version of your dog placing its head on your lap when you’re eating dinner. It knows what it’s doing, damnit.
And it’s not that every song needs to be punk rock. But it’s got to engage, and this song, with its syrupy story, doesn’t aspire to anything other than background noise at the dentist’s office.
The narrator desires our empathy, and he thinks pillowy sentimentality is the way to get it. And it probably worked for some, and that makes me deeply sad. Also, the whole “getting your father’s permission to marry his daughter” institution should’ve died long ago and should remain dead forever.
“Diva” by Beyoncé
I consider myself a Beyoncé fan, but I’ll fully admit that I didn’t hop on the train until fairly late into her career. My tastes were too shitty to enjoy Destiny’s Child during their ‘90s peak, I was too much of a snob to enjoy any of her early solo work, I actively didn’t like any of the Sasha Fierce singles, and by the time 4 rolled around, I was actively ignoring pop music. (4 is great, by the way.)
Then her self-titled surprise release album dropped.
At first, I did everything I could to avoid it. “Drunk in Love” spread through my liberal arts college like a plague in skinny jeans, and it got to the point where I don’t think I could’ve enjoyed it even if I wanted to. Then I listened to it about a year later and I thought it was, for the most part, fantastic. The production’s interesting, she shows a more personal and political side in her lyrics, and it has a sense of ambition most pop artists don’t strive to fulfill. The same can also be said about Lemonade, and I seem to have enjoyed EVERYTHING IS LOVE a bit more than the critical consensus.
However, my newfound fandom has raised some questions for me. I may not have always “liked” Beyoncé’s music, but I always found her exceedingly talented, and I always thought she was capable of creating incredible art. I think she’s just about reached that potential. (Though hopefully she’ll go even further.) So is it fair to judge her older music based on the standards I have for her now? Was it ever fair to judge her music based on hypothetical potential versus what I’m actually listening to in the moment? Now that Beyoncé makes incredibly personal music with a more defined political identity, can this lessen the effect of some of her earlier, more anthemic work?
Put it another way: I think it’s safe to say that “Diva” is meant to empower, and whether or not it’s successful is up to you. However, I don’t know if “Diva” is sincere. I don’t and never have doubted Beyoncé’s feminism, and even if I thought I had the right to question that side of her, which I don’t, then I wouldn’t. What I mean is that I can’t tell if I think the song’s priorities are the commercial elements or the message.
The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and the balance of art and commerce will never go away. But I think the song falls short either way.
Let’s say that the song is sincere. That the goal of “Diva” is to be a feminist anthem first and a commercial single second. What does Beyoncé actually say in this song? The first verse goes:
“Stop the track, let me state facts
I told you, “Give me a minute and I'll be right back”
Fifty million 'round the world and they say that I couldn't get it
I done got so sick and filthy with Benjis I can't spend it
How you gon' be talking shit? You act like I just got up in it
Been the number one diva in this game for a minute
I know you read the paper, the one that they call the Queen
Every radio 'round the world know me cause that's where I be”
Beyoncé is a black woman in America. The fact that she can achieve this level of wealth and fame is extraordinary, and it’s deeply depressing that her experience can’t be more common. It’s also entirely understandable how someone can hear these lyrics and think “Maybe I can do that too.” However, for me, she isn’t talking about struggles or her come-up. All she’s really saying is “I’m rich, I’m famous, and fuck the critics.”
Some will hear something inspiring. I hear a brag rap from an incredibly wealthy person telling me how incredibly wealthy she is. Bear in mind that Beyoncé has been a celebrity for an incredibly long time at this point in her career, and she has the backing of several massive corporations behind her. I’m happy for her, but there’s a point where flaunting your money and fame becomes just flaunting your money and fame, and your intentions lie dead in a sea of cash.
There’s a reason some brag raps work: They tell a story. I started (sigh) from the bottom, now I’m here. I came from nothing, I worked hard, now I’m wealthy and successful. It works, provided you frame the story right and deliver it well. However, without that arc, you’re a rich person piping into millions of people’s speakers and headphones proclaiming how rich you are. Am I supposed to like you? Are you supposed to be relatable? For my money, no.
I’m sure plenty have doubted her and told her “she couldn’t get it.” And I’m sure there are bigger, more systemic and personal problems she’s had to overcome. But that’s not the narrative of this song. The narrative of “Diva” is “Fuck you.” And not a fun boastful “fuck you” or the drunk in the club style “fuck you” or the kind of “fuck you” that gets directed at Spotify and solidifies my appreciation of Beyoncé forever. An actual “fuck you.” As in, “You, listener. Fuck you.”
Our next verse:
“When he pull up, want to pop my hood up
Bet he better have a six-pack in the cooler
Getting money, divas getting money
If you ain't getting money, then you ain't got nothing for me
Tell me something (Tell me something)
Where your boss at (Where your boss at)
Where my ladies up in here that like to talk back (That like to talk back)
I wanna see her (I wanna see her)
I'd like to meet you (I'd like to meet her)
What you say (Not to me)
She ain't no diva (She ain't no diva)”
The line that gets me is “If you ain't getting money, then you ain't got nothing for me.” I can’t tell if she’s talking to a man or she’s talking to other women. (In fact, I have that problem with most of the verse.) But the message either way is clear: You, be it the listener or some random man, have no value unless you have wealth or you generate wealth. Money will always be a thing, and I’m not here to tell you how to feel about that. But I do think a person can have value and not be rich. You have value because you’re you, and any interaction you and I may have has plenty to offer simply because you have a perspective and a worldview that I don’t.
And look, I’m fully aware that this message doesn’t play in the club or at your house party as well as “Get that money!!!!” But this is a song that’s meant to empower, and Beyoncé is saying, accidentally or not, that you’re nothing if you don’t have money. You can take the same words, put them in the mouth of Gordon Gekko, and all the sudden you have a movie villain.
Later, we get a bridge:
“Since fifteen in my stilettos, been strutting in this game
"What's your age?" was the question they ask when I hit the stage
I'm a diva, best believe her, you see how she gettin paid
She ain't calling him to greet her, don't need him, her bed's made
This is a stick-up, stick-up (I need them bags of that money)
We're gonna stick-up, stick-up (You see them ask, "Where that money?")
All my ladies get it up, I see you, I do the same
Take it to another level, no passengers on my plane”
Here we see a clear call to financial independence in “She ain't calling him to greet her, don't need him, her bed's made.” Whereas she didn’t make it clear in the other verses that wealth shouldn’t come from a system designed by and for the benefit of men, here we have a clear statement of “Achieve financial independence so nobody can control you.” Other than that, however, it’s more money for money’s sake. True, she’s taking some of that money by force, but at this point in the song, I find the sentiment empty.
Now what if the song is not being sincere? What if “Diva” was a result of Beyoncé and a few drones at the label (or whomever) thinking this can create a hashtag? If that were the case, then that casts the song in a significantly more cynical light. It’s essentially weaponizing people’s real life convictions and identities against them in the name of radio play and an internet push.
As I said, art and money aren’t mutually exclusive, and in reality, this kind of song is relatively common. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s a predatory nature to the existence of these types of empowerment jams, and if you’re inclined to think hard enough about them, it may leave a bitter taste in your mouth.
Or at least it does for me. I’m a “glass is half empty” person. You may not have a problem with some of the possible implications of this song’s existence. I do.
So I forever go back and forth on the sincerity of “Diva,” and the debate in of itself provokes an extreme dislike of the song. Couple that with the unbelievably annoying beat and song structure and by the time the song’s over, I have a stress headache.
“Give It To Me” by Timbaland feat. Justin Timberlake & Nelly Furtado
Let us first sing the praises of Timbaland.
Go look up Timbaland’s credited production discography on Wikipedia. Scroll down and read carefully. What you’ll see is a career full of incredible music. His vastly underappreciated work with Aaliyah on One in a Million, his work on Supa Dupa Fly which can’t be praised enough, we got “Dirt Off Your Shoulder,” we got all the singles from FutureSex/LoveSounds (which is far as I’m concerned is Justin Timberlake’s best era of music), and countless other incredible songs and album work, including a few songs on that Beyoncé album I liked so much.
The word “polished” comes to mind when I think of Timbaland’s work. You hear many a rap song where the beat sounds cheap and shitty, and rarely can Timbaland be accused of such a crime. Moreover, I love his willingness to try something weird and make it work. Remember the baby cooing in “Are You That Somebody?” Strange? Yes. But I kind of love it, and there are many examples of these kinds choices throughout his work. (I like all the beatboxing noises in “My Love.”)
“Give It To Me” is not on this list because of the music. In fact, if you’re not paying attention, it’s a pretty enjoyable track. The drums sound fantastic, I like the spacey eastern sound of the melody, and I like the way the beat fades into the chorus rather than it suddenly dropping on you. The only potential knock on “Give It To Me” is that it’s arguably a little too derivative of, well… himself. It had been a hell of a year for Timbaland, what with the massive success of FutureSex/LoveSounds and the various singles off Nelly Furtado’s solo album Loose. (The big singles: “Promiscuous,” “Maneater,” and “Say It Right.”) At that point, I remember being tired of him and wanting a new sound, and the success of this song didn’t help. But outside of that bubble, on a music level, “Give It To Me” is a quality track.
“Give It To Me” is not on here because of the music. “Give It To Me” is on here because it’s an astoundingly petty and mean-spirited diss track.
I talked to a lot of people about this article, and almost none of them knew that “Give It To Me” is, in fact, a diss track. It’s not hard to understand why. Again, the production’s nice, they don’t name names, and the lyrics themselves are pliable enough that you wouldn’t know they’re talking about anyone specifically. But indeed, Nelly Furtado’s verse is about Fergie and came about due to a misunderstanding about some of Fergie’s lyrics, Timbaland’s verse is about producer Scott Storch, coming from a disagreement over production credit of Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me A River,” and Justin’s verse is supposedly about Janet Jackson after she blamed him for the famous “nipplegate” Super Bowl controversy on Oprah.
We’ve talked about diss tracks before, and we’ve talked about how I’m not a fan for the most part. However, it’s one thing to have diss tracks in hip-hop, where a competitive precedent exists. It’s another to have the most famous pop stars on the planet (at the time) going after their peers for the pettiest reasons imaginable. Not to mention that the disses themselves are frail and in some cases, in poor taste.
Nelly’s verse is unspecific enough to just be boring and malleable. She’s very famous, she’s “real,” she’s proud to be a mother, she looks good, and fuck Fergie because of the rumor that Fergie was referring to Nelly when she said in “Fergalicious” that she’s “not promiscuous.” (A reference to Furtado’s single, “Promiscuous.”) There’s nothing really to say here. It’s just another brag rap sung in pop song form. Timbaland’s jabs are comically weak, and the revelation of Scott Storch’s drug problems casts his verse in a darker light. (And even if you didn’t know about the addiction “I’m a real producer and you’re just a piano man” is corny as shit.) As for Justin’s verse, I never found confirmation of the Janet Jackson rumor, but I believe it given the nature of the other two verses, and Justin sounds like a smug child who’s jealous that he’ll never make anything as good as Control or Rhythm Nation.
Remember, these were some of the biggest artists on the planet at the time. And right at the height of their power and popularity, they all came together to declare themselves the mean girls with this song. Only the thing is that nobody likes the means girls. They are, after all, mean. And we hope for their downfall.
When this song came out, I knew I was down with the Timbaland trend. And I don’t think any of these artists hit the highs of this era ever again. Figures.
“Hotline Bling” by Drake
Back in a previous article, I said, that “Hotline Bling” is “essentially the song version of trapping a woman in the corner of the bar and yelling “WHY DON’T YOU LIKE NICE GUYS?!?!” You may have gathered by the song’s placement in this article that I stand by that comment. Nevertheless, I don’t think anything I said in that article truly conveys the contempt I have for this song.
Musically, it’s fine. The Timmy Thomas sample works, and all the elements come together to make a perfectly listenable track. It didn’t sound like anything else that was popular at the time (though it did sound like something, which we’ll get to later), and though unique sounds should always be encouraged in pop music, a slight fork in the mainstream can only go so far. Which is to say I got bored of the beat well before the song’s cultural peak.
As far as Drake’s rapping and singing, it’s also fine. Part of the appeal of Drake is that he’s a good singer, but he isn’t so good that you feel like you can’t sing along with him. Yes, it’s fun to sing out loud, “Ever since I left the city you—“ and part of the reason why is simply because you can. Similarly, as far as the technical aspects of rapping (rhyme patterns, cadence, etc.), again, Drake’s good but he isn’t so good as to not be accessible. There’s a reason why so many Drake lines wind up in Instagram posts: Drake’s flow is simple enough that individual lines can be easily separated.
None of this should be read as a takedown, by the way. Technical singing ability is always great, but in the end, it’s about effectiveness. Drake’s voice is effective for what he’s trying to accomplish. And the other reason Drake lines show up in social media so much is because he writes about relatable subject matter. After all, it would be hard to find a circumstance where you can caption your selfie, “Poisonous paragraphs smash your phonograph in half/It be the Inspectah Deck on the warpath.”
As we’ve discussed before, I don’t think Drake is “bad.” I’m saying all this to explain why I don’t find Drake particularly special. He may do it for you as an artist, and that’s great. He doesn’t do it for me.
So I was positioned to dislike this song from the jump-off. Then I sat down with the lyrics and realized how much I hated it.
“Hotline Bling” is a massively popular song, and we all know what it’s about. But let’s go over it again, because I still don’t understand why we were so accepting of it. The song is about an unnamed ex of Drake. Since the two have broken up, the ex has gone on with her life. She’s going out partying, she’s making new friends, she’s traveling, she’s doing whatever she wants. And Drake doesn’t like it. He thinks she’s doing too much. That she should stay at home and “be a good girl.”
Drake, as it should be obvious to anyone who’s had contact with any other human beings, has no right to dictate her life. He never did even when they were dating, and no amount of astoundingly misdirected paternity or insecure male bullshit can dictate otherwise. This is, simply put, a song about, “We’re not dating anymore and you’re going out without me, therefore you’re on the wrong path and you’re a whore.” And that may sound extreme. But we all know what “Got a reputation for yourself” and “Started wearing less and going out more” means. Or when he explicitly says, “Doing things I taught you, getting nasty for someone else.”
Is she going down the wrong path? I don’t see anything that suggests so. It sounds to me like all she’s doing is having fun. Because she can. And all I see in Drake’s lyrics is a possessive man’s tumblr post where he’s basically saying that he’d rather her spend her days a lonely spinster in a padded room with nothing but a picture of him and maybe a dildo.
What makes it infinitely worse is that, again, part of Drake’s appeal is how relatable he can be. If this kind of behavior is acceptable, if its common for men to reach out to their exes and say, “I don’t like how you’re living your life now that I’m not really a part of it”, then that’s fucking dark, and I’m not sure why he can get away with it. Yes he has a rabidly passionate fanbase. But if I said all the things Drake says in “Hotline Bling” to you, then you would hate my fucking guts. And you’d be right to do so. And then I’d hang myself. Because I wouldn’t be able to live with the knowledge that I’m that kind of person.
All that said, I don’t want to end on too negative a note. So let us briefly discuss “Cha Cha” by D.R.A.M., the song many accused “Hotline Bling” of ripping off.
Is “Hotline Bling” actually a copy of “Cha Cha.” Not really. While they have a lot in common, there’s enough differences in both sound and intent to set them apart. However, I understand why the claim was made. Moreover, “Cha Cha” deserves to be popular, arguably more so than “Hotline Bling".” It’s a fun song with a lively beat and gloriously dumb self-aware lyrics. It puts a big stupid smile on my face and I love it. Partially because there’s nothing insidious about it.
“Shake It” by Metro Station
I knew going into this article that I wanted to address two aspects of the mid-2000s pop world. The first is the impact of the emo movement, and while there’s plenty to say about emo itself, the part that interests me most is the effect it had on pop music. Or even more specifically, on singing in pop music.
At a certain point, a lot of pop acts started leaning all the way into the vowels in an attempt to sound as angsty as humanly possible. In hindsight, it’s not hard to see why. Record labels saw the growing popularity of a movement, and record labels did what record labels historically do: Force it into everything until what was special about it is gone. Thus, this relatively well-known song (brace yourselves)…
…became this high charting hit. (A high charting hit that came pretty damn close to making this list, by the way.)
If emo was your thing back in the day, I’m not here to judge you. When emo was at its peak, I was too dug into my hip-hop snob phase and I never gave it an actual chance. However, I’ll acknowledge that if I was just a little bit younger, I probably would’ve been all the way in. After all, I was unfortunately a nu-metal kid in lower and middle school. (I didn’t know better. Forgive me.)
Nowadays I’ve made my peace with emo music. I’m not a fan, but I don’t begrudge its existence, and I might try some of it someday out of curiosity. But I’ll never love that faux “teenage” style of singing. (A style not every emo band used, I should add.)
It’s one thing if we contained this style of singing to the emo movement. But it’s something entirely different when we’re forced to hear this style of singing everywhere because an A&R threw some raw meat into the dungeon where the label keeps its rock acts and rewarded the last singer standing with the chance at freedom if they make their vocals sound pointlessly angsty and sing over synth beats. Nothing makes a problem worse than ubiquity.
The other element is a bit harder to describe. I don’t know if this phenomenon was observable if you weren’t entrenched in the day-to-day goings on of teenage life in the mid-2000s. Or maybe I’m talking out my ass. With the rise of the emo movement also came the rise of a certain breed of pop rock band. Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco and Cobra Starship (who almost made this list as well) and bands of that ilk. With these bands came long insincere track names, self-deprecating lyrics, and the newly vogue popularity of “irony.”
It festered for years. Then I went to college, and everybody talked and acted just like these bands.
No, I don’t think pop rock bred hipsters. But if you spend your adolescence practically drowning in sarcasm and glibness, and then you get older and your thing is sarcasm and glibness, I can’t help but think there’s at least some sort of connection. I’m not saying there’s a direct linkage, but when it comes to what defines a whole generation’s perceived sensibility, we should consider everything that was around.
Take these two elements, crash them into each other, sprinkle an almost comedically commercial sound on top, and you get “Shake It.”
That fucking singing. Those fucking vowels. Those fucking lyrics. And true, it’s not as sarcastic as many of the bands of that era. But I’d argue that this song would not exist without that toxicity in the air. After all, you don’t get, “Your lips tremble, but your eyes are in a straight stare/We’re on the bed, but your clothes are laying right there/And I was thinking of places that I could hide” in a popular song unless a band like Fall Out Boy can chart. (I don’t have as much of a problem with Fall Out Boy as the previous sentence may suggest, but still.)
Production wise, “Shake It” is a massive nothing of a track. The background synths are boring. The guitars sound so overly produced that I can’t tell if they’re real or not. That three note synth thing between all the lines in the verses sounds like something left in because everybody thought it was adorable that the producer’s eight year old stepson played it. In the end, all of this comes together in a song that sounds like something a particularly evil corporation puts in the background of one of its commercials when it wants to sound just a little bit edgy.
But what gets to me the most is the obvious pandering. “Hey teenage demographic,” this song says, “We know you like this emo style of singing, and we like radio play. So how about this song?”
It’s one thing to capitalize off a moment or a movement. That’s always been around, and always will be. But you don’t have to rub our faces in it.
“Wait For You” by Elliott Yamin
When it comes to pop music, did American Idol make things better or worse? It’s hard to say. I did like how Idol got us looking at our own communities when it comes to music. Or at the very least, it created a sense that your co-worker who has a nice voice could go on the show and become a star, even if that sense was never true.
However, I feel like Idol also shifted focus away from the elements I feel matter the most when it comes to music. We’ve talked about effectiveness versus technical skill before, but it’s a point worth making again.
Let us for a brief moment consider Howlin’ Wolf.
Is Howlin’ Wolf’s voice the prettiest? Is he the most technically skilled singer you’ve ever heard? Probably not. In fact, he basically sounds like a dusty bottle of bourbon in a shack sprouted legs and wandered into a recording studio. But that’s why it works. Howlin’ Wolf is a blues singer, and that’s the kind voice I want to hear sing my blues. His voice delivers an emotional rawness that a more trained singer can’t necessarily bring to the table. It’s real and it’s gritty.
I think American Idol tricked us into thinking that talent is the only factor in why we like pop stars. Talent is, of course, incredibly important. But what if you have all the skill in the world and you have nothing to say? What if you have no personality or no sense of presence?
Enter Elliott Yamin.
Elliott Yamin is perfectly capable of the act of singing. He can carry a note, his voice isn’t unpleasant to listen to, and maybe someone who isn’t me may find something they like in his singing. But average songs, let alone great songs, have at least some inkling of personality. They show an ounce of identity, even if the singer just changed a word or two.
“Wait For You” is bereft of character. In fact, it’s bereft of anything defining at all. It’s so lacking in everything that I ran into a weird kind of paradox in including it on this list in the first place. I had to pick songs that I could think of something to say about, but this song’s complete lack of anything noteworthy is what makes it worthy of being included in the first place. The reason it’s on here is because there’s nothing to say about it in a way I find aggressive and almost hostile, and here I am trying to think of things to say about it.
Since I already used the “write about related subject matter for a long time to avoid talking about the actual song” cheat for “Shake It,” let’s go through the checklist, I guess.
Production wise, we got a boring ass piano melody, melodramatic orchestration, and a more hip-hopish drum pattern. It’s the kind of backing many a shitty R&B song in the late ‘90s had, only Yamin doesn’t have the ridiculously over-the-top singing to make it listenable.
How about lyrics? Well, yes, I suppose there are lyrics. I have this romantic notion that one day we will decide that the word “lyrics” will only apply to songs that appear to be written by human beings and not sentient middle school journals. But alas, that day’s never coming.
So what’s he singing about? He’s heartbroken and crying and doing all the things humans do when they want to signify that they’re sad. He doesn’t believe she actually wanted to break up and that there are other forces at play. What those forces are, I don’t know. But they’re apparently there, so now he will do the titular waiting until she realizes she wants to come back to him. Meanwhile, she’s probably with someone who’s making her a delicious meal and will then give her the best orgasm she’s ever had.
There’s nothing specific. There’s nothing that makes this particular relationship different from any other. It’s just empty notions of what heartbroken people sound like. This is the song equivalent of a trashy romance novel you pick up at CVS.
Early in the song, there’s a bridge. The bridge goes, “So why does your pride make you run and hide/Are you that afraid of me?/But I know it’s a lie, what you keep inside/This is not how you want it to be.” Let’s for a brief second ignore the shitty spurned male stuff. Let’s also ignore the jokes some of you are probably making in your head when you read “Are you that afraid of me?” in the context of a breakup song. I’m sure she is afraid. But not of him. I bet what she’s really afraid of is the notion of being the kind of person who would be in a relationship with someone like this. I, at least, would find that particular existential nightmare terrifying.
And that fucking music video………
“We Dem Boyz” by Wiz Khalifa
There’s plenty I could write about when it comes to “We Dem Boyz.”
I could write about Wiz Khalifa himself. I could write about how he’s never done anything for me personally because I find him tedious and not particularly great at the actual rapping part of rapping. Specifically, I could point out how often he fails at actually rhyming words, and while that may not be a unique problem, it’s a problem that comes up with him rather frequently. Or maybe I could write about how he’s never been or ever could be as good a weed rapper as Snoop or Cypress Hill. (I could also write a quick aside about why I don’t think we need “weed rappers” anymore.)
I could write about the lyrics to this particular song. I could try to calculate exactly how much of this song is spent saying “Hol’ up” in various units of time or a flat out percentage. I could also write about the difference between being repetitive (as song structure often forces songs to be) and being annoyingly or noticeably repetitive, and how “We Dem Boyz” definitely falls into the latter group. I could point out how much I hate “Man, on the low all these hoes be acting so material/Hol’ up man, did you see her interior,” and how I don’t think he’s being self-aware or ironic, and how stopping the beat and putting in that cheering crowd to applaud that line is just fucking stupid.
Or I could write about the production. I could describe to you how breathtakingly boring I find this beat. I could write about how I’ve always hated beats where all you do is sample pompous sounding orchestral music, or create a shitty sounding orchestra in your production software of choice, and throw on some generic trap percussion. I could write about how I think this song is partially responsible for many a trap beat that sounds just like it, and recount to you an exercise where I listened to this song and O.T. Genasis’s “CoCo” back to back, and how the beats blended together in my head to the point where I couldn’t think of one without immediately forgetting what the other sounded like. I could also talk about other aspects of the production I can’t stand, such as the autotune and the catastrophe it causes at around the 2:50 mark.
But I’m not going to write about any of those things because it wouldn’t matter. There’s one reason and one reason only people like this song: Yes, when you’re at a party or you’re in the club or you just injected some bull testosterone, it’s fun to yell, “Hol’ up, we dem boyz!
And that’s why this song deserves to be in this article.
This type of song will always exist. The kind of song that’s literally just a chorus, and the only thing that matters is whether or not it’s fun to chant in the car. Sometimes that song works. “Love Rollercoaster” is an incredible song, and it’s essentially just a hook. But at least “Love Rollercoaster” has other positives beyond just the fact that singing, “Rollercoaster… of love” can be enjoyable.
“We Dem Boyz” has “Hol’ up… we dem boyz.” That’s it. And yet, this song will probably live forever thanks to alcohol, shit college parties, and the sloppy drunk asshole in the club jumping on the dance floor who just spilt his drink on your shoes.
The fact that we make so much music to please these people is so fucking depressing.
“Let It Rock” by Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne
Ah, the mid-2000s. The era of the throwaway Lil Wayne verse.
Full disclosure: Though I don’t actively dislike Lil Wayne, I can’t say I’m a massive fan either. When I was younger, I liked the singles enough to buy Tha Carter II. I didn’t feel particularly strongly about it, and the critical uplift of that album that’s been happening lately is interesting to watch. Mostly because I don’t get it.
But then I fell into my snob era, and I didn’t give Tha Carter III a chance until this year. It’s alright. I think I was a little too late to the party to give it the respect it has amongst most of the hip-hop community, but I get it. Other than that, I never cared for anything from him I’ve heard post Carter III or post prison stint. In fact, some of it I outright hate.
However, even before my snob phase, I was ready to write off Lil Wayne. It didn’t really have anything to do with his talent, but with the fact that Lil Wayne had a guest verse on seemingly every song on the planet. He was featured in eight songs 2006, twelve in 2007, twenty one in 2008 and 2009, and he has other years where he’s featured on thirty or more songs. It should be noted that not all of these songs chartered or had significant radio play. But enough of them did to make it feel like he was everywhere, always. Some of these songs aren’t bad (“Soldier”), but most of them are entirely forgettable (“Duffle Bag Boy”), and a lot of them are outright shit (“I Can Transform Ya”).
So if you’re a song that features Lil Wayne and you want to stand out for the wrong reasons, you have to be particularly bad or boring. You need something special.
“Let It Rock” has Kevin Rudolf.
I don’t know enough about Kevin Rudolf to say whether or not he’s completely untalented. From what I understand, he does a lot of behind-the-scenes work, as a surprisingly high number of one hit wonders and flash-in-the-pan artists do, and he might be great at it. He also seems to have a lot of irons in the fire in other arts, and maybe he’s better at those.
Even if he is an incredibly nice and talented person in other arenas, I hate his singing voice. I hate it deeply. I hate it desperately. He has the kind of faux grimy voice people think rockstars have because it worked for Mick Jagger and Billy Corgan. But in Rudolf’s case, it’s the kind of vocals we were more tolerant of in the mid-2000s thanks to Wayne and his raspy voice being all over the radio. But Kevin’s voice is a great deal more nasally. And by “a great deal,” I mean that his voice sounds like his nose is being squeezed by the kind of vise used to kill gangsters in mob movies.
Making his singing worse, however, is the way Rudolf projects his voice. I’m not educated enough in singing to be able to describe his projection in technical terms, but it sounds like every line of this song was sung while he was having a hard time taking a massive shit. You can probably sound just like him if you don’t eat any vegetables and only consume massive quantities of red meat for a week. Or you happen to be giving birth.
But what gets to me about this song isn’t Rudolf’s voice, though it’s a substantial aspect of it. What gets to me about this song is the evocation of rock music and the concept of what a rock star looks and sounds like.
“Let It Rock” wants you to think it’s a rock song. After all, it has a guitar on it and the chorus contains the word “rock.” How can it not be? We can debate about genre and genre conventions forever, and how loyal an artist must remain to either. However, I don’t think taking the same synth trick from DJ Khaled’s “We Takin’ Over” (another song featuring Wayne) and saying, “Okay, now throw a guitar on it” makes it rock.
“Let It Rock” is a pop song. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with pop songs. I love pop songs. But it tries so desperately hard to make you think otherwise that it becomes off-putting. Like the song is actively lying to you, even as Rudolf sings, “No I can’t and I won’t live a live.” You want to sit the song down, give it the “just be yourself” speech, and then go buy it some ice cream.
But the identity crises looks worse in the lyrics. The verses deal in “living a lie” and sons rejecting their families to chase money, only to wind up unhappy and you, unnamed nebulous target, being a dishonest sellout. But not Kevin Rudolf. As he sings in the chorus:
“Because when I arrive, I’ll bring the fire
Make you come alive, I can take you higher
What this is, forgot? I must now remind you
Let it rock, let it rock, let it rock”
I went to go see the new version of A Star Is Born. There’s plenty to say about it, both bad and good, but I think my least favorite aspect are the songs. They all sound like the kinds of songs that songwriter characters are supposed to write in movies. They address grandiose themes and sound heartfelt on the surface as they bloviate about love and their place in the world and how nobody’s going to stop them because they have dreams. But they’re unspecific and generic. You can listen to them if you buy the soundtrack and you’d never know that these are songs from a movie that were supposedly written by a specific character.
The same logic can be applied to “Let It Rock,” only instead of movie songs, it’s filled with the kind of lyrics many think “rock stars” are supposed to write. Years of ingesting pop culture have taught me that all rock stars hate consumerism and they strive for authenticity and only sing about the holiness of “rock,” so now I will do the same.
However, there’s a difference between genuine rock stars and the mythology of rock music. Great songwriters write what they know or they explore ideas through their own perspective. The rock stars of old didn’t have a blueprint to follow, so they had to create their own way, and that’s what makes them special. Mick Jones and Joe Strummer didn’t write “London Calling” because it was expected of them. They wrote it because they had something to say.
The rock mythology is the image sold to you of what a rock star is. The leather jacket and the drug abuse and yelling at your mom because she won’t let you skateboard in the house. This is the image the uninspired spend their careers chasing, and what they attempt to sell you even if its not really who they are.
“Let It Rock” is a shrine to the latter.
And Wayne’s verses are garbage.
The Shortlist
These are all the songs from the shortlist I made that I almost included, and a brief explanation of why they didn’t:
“Wiggle” by Jason Derulo
It’s been covered better by others.
“Marvin Gaye” by Charlie Puth feat. Megan Trainor
It’s been covered better by others.
“Tonight Tonight” by Hot Chelle Rae
It’s been covered better by others and I don’t think I have anything to say about it that I didn’t essentially say about “Shake It.”
“Believer” by Imagine Dragons
Imagine Dragons seems to be the de jour band everyone hates, and I wanted to talk about other stuff.
“Hey, Soul Sister” by Train
It’s been covered better by others, and I find this song kind of hilarious.
“BedRock” by Young Money feat. Lloyd
There were already two Young Money entries on here.
Any David Guetta song
Couldn’t narrow in on just one David Guetta song. Plus, I’ve already talked about him before.
“Look At Me Now” by Chris Brown feat. Lil Wayne & Busta Rhymes
I really wanted Chris Brown on this list, and I feel like this is the “fuck you, I got away with it” song. However, I didn’t want to wade into real issues that deserve more than an article about bad pop songs.
“Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke feat. T.I. & Pharrell
Is it possible to shit on this song enough? Probably not. But I feel society has already made up its mind on this song and I have nothing to contribute.
“SOS” by Rihanna
Debating which Rihanna single is the worst was surprisingly hard. But in the end, I didn’t feel strongly enough about any of her singles to write about them. But I think this is the worst one. Lazy ass sample flip.
“Take You There” by Sean Kingston
I don’t actually dislike this song. I just think it’s funny that he clearly wants to go to the slums and is trying to passive aggressively undersell paradise.
“The Great Escape” by Boys Like Girls
Because “Shake It” is worse. Fuckin’ hate that band name though.
“Fireflies” by Owl City
Because leaning into the vowels wise, “Shake It” is worse. But this song came close to making it.
“…Ready for It?” by Taylor Swift
Already talked about Taylor Swift enough in a previous article.
“Stupid Hoe” by Nicki Minaj
This one actually shows up in plenty of “worst songs of the decade so far” lists. Good.
“Good Girls Go Bad” by Cobra Starship feat. Leighton Meester
I throw this song in with the “Shake It” lot, and as far as that pool is concerned, this one isn’t as unpleasant to listen to as others. Still total dog shit though.
“Chain Hang Low” by Jibbs
The mid-2000s era of hip-hop is an era I want to cover in more detail later. But if I were to talk about it here, this is the song I’d talk about.
“This Is Why I’m Hot” by MIMS
Upon listening to it again, I realized I liked the quick samples of all the other regional hip-hop. I don’t know. Turns out I nothing this song.
“Gives You Hell” by All-American Rejects
I wanted to talk about how much I hate the usage of crowd chants in music. But I didn’t have enough to say about everything else and I don’t think I hate this song enough anyway.
“Sucker for Pain” by Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, & Imagine Dragons w/ Logic, Ty Dolla $ign, feat. X Ambassadors
I realized I didn’t have anything to say about this one other than that I find it deeply unpleasant to listen to. But it came very close to making it.
“All of Me” by John Legend
John Legend’s too talented for the four chords, and I hold him to a higher standard than most. But I don’t dislike this song enough to include it.
“Battlefield” by Jordin Sparks
I had a real grudge against Jordin Sparks in high school because of how painfully boring I found her at the time. But listening to her singles now didn’t generate the same amount of ire.
“Pocketful of Sunshine” by Natasha Beddingfield
This song also came very close to making it. The only reason it didn’t is because I think it has better intentions than “Let It Rock” and I wanted to keep the number of songs I chose under ten. That’s literally it.
“Crush” by David Archuleta
Because “Wait For You” is worse.
“Down” by Jay Sean feat. Lil Wayne
This song technically made it, actually. I told myself that if I wanted to swap out any of the eight songs I picked for whatever reason, than this one would replace it due to how overwhelming I find its blandness. But I ended up sticking to the ones I picked.
“We Fly High (Ballin!)” by Jim Jones
On a sonic level, I find this song so disgusting to actually sit down and listen to that it became funny. I’ll probably regret not putting it on the list.
“Rack City” by Tyga
Fuck this song and Fuck Tyga. There. I said all there needs to be said about either.
