I was so burned out with anime in 2020. Not because there aren’t any great anime out there, but there’s so few and far between and that I felt like I needed to do something to make me occupied for this year. And thus...
There’s so many things to say about this particular year that is 2020, but I think I can summarized it in one sentences *ahem* “It’s shit”. This year has been cruel to everyone around the world. No year has come close to match the awfulness of 2020 apart from 2016 but at least the zika virus can be controlled. Yeah the zika outbreak was just 4 years ago and just like that, music from 2016 to 2020 contrasted differently. While 2016 music really reflected what the mood of the time was, a lowkey and sometimes very dour which doesn’t make a good year. 2020 on the other hand felt more miniscule but big sounding. This might have to do with how people are listening to music and what music is being listened to. Seems like with how a song made popular in 2019 with a mix of grassroots and corporate singles, you could assume that with the pandemic happening people are going to dictate what is popular or not. But, that’s not the case now. Instead what we got here is songs that people listened to, a bunch of radio fillers despite not a lot of people are going out, sales bundles controversy, and artists who tried everything to get to #1. We’ll get to some of those artists later in the list but overall. While 2020 has been a good even great year for pop music, a lot of the stuff that were popular just doesn’t seem to matter especially when people are more likely to think about everything else but pop music. But hey we still need to get on with it and just go through this list. Now some ground rules
A song must debuted on the Billboard Year-end Hot 100 for 2020
This is solely based on my opinion of the ranking. So if you want to send me hate mail just don't
For dishonorable mentions there are some songs that missing the list entirely so stay tune for that
With that out of the way let’s begin the list shall we?
TOP 10 WORST HIT SONGS OF 2020
10. Let’s get my hot takes all the way here, I hate Mood Swings.
10. Mood Swings - Pop Smoke ft. Lil Tjay
Okay I don’t really hate this song all that much. This year has been such a great year for pop songs that these next four entries on this list are mediocre songs with one or two choices that drive me off the wall. And let me just say that it wasn’t Pop Smoke that made me not like the song. This song is competently produced with the keys and booming bass as the standard of trap rnb. Pop Smoke gave a decent performance in this love jam although he did say that he wanted to nutted on her breast...okay very specific. but still this seems fine on paper...until this guy showed up.
I like Lil Tjay on Pop Out and I do think that his voice is unique, but in love jams like this, it comes across as teeny and grating. Especially when talking about his adlib which came up in the intro and one of the reasons I skipped this song. Again even though his verse is fine, that autotune is grating on my nerve and let me stress I don’t hate autotune. So yeah decent production hindered with bad autotune from the guest. Pop Smoke has better RnB songs than this especially What You Know About Love and I hope that became his signature hits. Rest In Peace Pop Smoke.
9. There’s gonna be two elephants in the room on every critics' worst list this year and I just want to say that they are not going to be featured on my worst list. No I’m not talking about a skittles package going to a nuclear tank aka 6ix9ine, I’m talking about both Hot Girl Bummer and Falling. Both songs to me have their different merits despite its flaws. Hot Girl Bummer is very bitter and toxic and that is what Blackbear intended. Meanwhile Falling is working in the same way Post Malone whiny song does which I kinda like. Both songs will probably make a lot of worst lists, but one thing in common about both songs is they are interesting. Something I can’t say about this song.
9. Lose You To Love Me - Selena Gomez
I am absolutely baffled that this nothing of a song propelled Selena Gomez for her first and let’s face it only number one hit. Taking away all of the Justin Bieber subtext aside which...oh god we will get him in depth soon, This song is so sloppily written. This basically sounded like Julia Michaels song and yes it was written by her which is not best suited for her style. All the Selena songs I enjoyed are the one that are liquid, loose, and let her elevate her deadpan expression. But this weak piano ballad is not a perfect fit for her as this song can sound awkward and tiring at least to me.
Of course what makes this song fell out of favor for me is the lyrics because there’s too many unnecessary details that hindered the song, which really is the schtick of Julia Michaels ever since Issues. This song is just a simple if a bit angsty break up song, but the lyrics really made it seem that this break up is very melodramatic. Sometimes there are some lyrics that I couldn’t quite understand and kinda baffled me. like this one [Sang off-key in my chorus] and also this [In two months, you replaced us] which to me is still confusing. In the end what this song really is just a Selena Gomez trying to convey emotions about her with Justin Bieber saga which granted I’m happy that it did go to number one, but the sloppy writing and boring productions just left me empty and cold. Lose You To Love Me by Selena Gomez, the song that made you just want to listen to It Ain’t Me.
8. 2020 might be a weaker year for hits this year in terms of just relevance, but 2020 has one winner in particular and that is country music. After the trend of bro-country self imploded in 2014, country music is in the state of lull where no one is interested with the genre as a whole. In the span of three years between 2015 to 2017, there are only 10 songs on those year-end lists and seems like they forgot women all together because there’s only 6 female country artists on the year-end this decade and even then Taylor got sick of Nashville and went pop.
But, in 2019 with the popularity of Old Town Road and male country artists are trying their best to back into the insipid yet endearing sound called boyfriend country, country got the success that is on par with the mid 70s and early 2000s. Part of the country comeback is between women in country being back and even notched crossover hits and the rise of what is called boyfriend country, basically your average Westlife song mixed with steel guitar. Now we will talk about those on the best list, but what happened to the biggest act on bro country fairs this year? Well Luke Bryan seems to follow Kenny Chesney footsteps and make beach party music, Sam Hunt...we will get to him later, FGL have some identity crisis, and seems like Brantley Gilbert turned to hard rock. Now how about Jason Aldean? well he did jumped to the boyfriend country...but doing it poorly.
8. Got What I Got - Jason Aldean
For starters, I swear Jason Aldean needs to change producer or something because all of the hits from Dirt Road Anthem have been mixed badly. This song for example has some decent guitar melody and good atmosphere at first, but the percussion is either sound cheap or just overpowered the mix. It sounded like if you come to the club and want to have a drink, but the smoke machine has gone out of control and you just being suffocated by it...along with having sex. I’m not buying that Jason Aldean is some sort of player in this song too. He is definitely trying to capitalize on the boyfriend country craze. But, not only he sounded so bored with this girl he was trying to hook up with, but his attitude is what I hate in a country love song. Sleazy and trying way too hard. Look I get why Jason Aldean wants to make this song, but can he at least put some effort into it? instead of this half-baked country hook up jam that neither jam nor sounded sexual. This is just bro country minus beer and the truck plain and simple and I hope that this dead corpse can be put down real soon.
7. Say So is a good song...the remix is not. and that will be on the list
7. Say So (Remix) - Doja Cat ft. Nicki Minaj
I haven’t listened to the Nicki verse on Say So Remix the whole way through. Because why would I? I am so tired of Nicki as a whole. I know that she said that she used to be bi but now I’m hetero which with this interview it became more infuriating and opening a whole can of worm about queer representation in music as a whole (we will talk about that on my best list). 2020 is not a good year for everyone but especially for chart watchers as Nicki trying to astroturf her way to the #1 with her abhorrent stan army. You thought that BTS fans are toxic or weebs are the bane of existence? Just take a look at what Barbz (her fanbases) are saying on any twitter account about music and pop culture. It always concentrated around being bigoted, homophobic, and even with malicious intent as when one of my favorite content creator Sean-Fay Wolfe of Diamond Axe Studio got harrassed even when he posted a plea to stop all of this. I’m not discounting what Nicki has done in the past decade for her influence, but at some point you gotta draw the line...and that line is working with sexual offenders. Oh I’m not talking about Skittle boy here, I’m talking about Dr. Luke.
Yeah the guy you thought that we left behind for good back in 2018 is back and he has done a lot of stuff under the name...this. He produced all of Doja Cat sophomore album and also some songs from posthumous Juice WRLD album which is even more gross than I would’ve imagined. And his production is one of the few things I don’t like beyond the remix with these cheap 80’s pastiche that has been done better this year by much better and established artists. 2010 is a long time ago that moe anime is still popular. I think we as a society need to do something with him and soon I don’t want to go back to 2010 ugh.
6. Yeah Yummy is not good innit?
6. Yummy - Justin Bieber
I mean it speaks for itself how bad, boring, and insufferable this song is and people has panned this song to pieces, so rather than talking about this song, I’ll just talk about songs that I love from this year that didn’t make Billboard Year-end, starting with
Easy Breezy : what a creative pop-rap song and it is perfect for anime about creativity and passion about making anime
JU$T : Fantastic banger by Run The Jewels about systemic racism especially in capitalistic world and Zach de la Rocha is a perfect addition, also best Pharrell beat that he has made
JUMP : the highlight from the disappointing Dababy album where he had so much chemistry with Youngboy and great production too
exile : the best song on Folklore where Taylor writing is the sharpest it has ever been and her chemistry with Justin Vernon is just immaculate
Forget Me Too : MGK redeemed himself this year with this song and his whole new album, also the best Halsey performance of the year
Enlacing : the best banger of the year with that layers of samples
Okay I think that’s enough, moving on!
5. If the World Was Ending - JP Saxe ft. Julia Michaels
As a songwriter I think that Julia Michaels is probably one of the most tedious and yet hacky songwriter in the business right now. Her way of writing details can came across as tacky or very much TMI that we don’t really need to know. But here I think that what Julia is aiming for is how she still missed this guy after the break up and how all of that was realized...by a small earthquake (well you live in California what did you expect?). And also the fact that it's been a year since the breakup meaning that this all thing is either very insincere or worse trying to reconcile toxic relationship. This song also suffered from both JP Saxe and Julia singing about the same topic meaning that we don’t get the full picture on what’s going on. It’s a cocktease if I ever saw one and made this a piano ballad and suddenly I remembered i hate u i love u from 2016. While this song is a bit better than that trainwreck, it’s still very bad in a boring yet insufferable way. This song has angst that doesn’t matched the production at all which is just a spare piano and swell of bombast. In order for this song to work you must go all out in production and this is not all of it. Heck even Evanescence knew how to create angsty melodrama sounds like a torture, but this is just petulance through and through and the fact that it is one of the most popular pandemic themed songs and not Level of Concern says a lot.
I know that Justin Bieber is not a boomer but this song was definitely made from a boomer trying to sound hip to the crowds. Yeah this song has been torn a new one by a lot of critics because there’s always one song that is so awful that anyone could agree that it is awful. But, let’s say that this song is not awful and all of the elements of the song are working together, you still think “who is this for”? And that is the big issue here. Justin Bieber has built up the persona of a pop star ever since his debut, and his pivot towards RnB is probably one of his baffling career moves. Not that he can’t do it, he has done some great RnB songs before. The only difference is how he presented these songs. Most of the great RnB songs I mentioned had some pop elements to it that sounded good and it's fitting for him. Stripped away all that and you got this, a half formed song with all the sensuality of a bread sandwich. The way that he conveyed his love to her fiancee is very calculated at best and straight up comical at worst. All the lyrics have been dissected thoroughly by every music critic so I won't be talking too much about them. What I do wanna talk is how lost Quavo is. Like 2020 has been a quiet year for Migos but this is just embarrassing for him. He's very much out of place and again look lost against this "lo-fi" pastiche that the bass is too loud for its own damn good. I don't have any conclusions here because this song drained my soul on how baffling this is and sometimes we need to be baffled.
3. I’m not angry at this song but more bewildered disappointment that with how country has become more and more relevant, this guy is still around. And what’s so frustrating about this is how so much of press and radio establishment not only enabling him to do what he does, but rewarding him with album of the year and another hit on the radio. All I want to say is that fuck Sam Hunt.
3. Hard To Forget - Sam Hunt
Southside represent the worst in country for the past decade. The mugging jackassery of a lot of men in country especially in bro country, their attempt at co-opting hip-hop and RnB that are offensive at worst, disregarding women either as collection or as a tool to swoon them by guilt-tripping, and now add trap influence as well because Sam Hunt looked at the success of Lil Nas X and think it’s a good idea, when in reality this song is produced like ass. He took the country classic There Stands The Glass for added depth but not only he didn’t do that, but he butchered the song into the same chopped up shit that plagued the 2016-17 tropical house about badly mixed too. The low end is terrible and the percussion here felt cheap.
And then there’s the lyrics where I actually get what Sam Hunt is trying to do here. He is trying to forget this girl he broke up with and you know what it could worked especially if the song tackles the issues of stuff like stalking or just general pissy-ness of the break up itself. But there’s two major problems with this. One, he sounded so paranoid over how she dresses and that kinda puts him as those dudebros archetype, and two the framing of this song made it out as if she’s the one at fault instead of his penis. This song felt so icky and very much not self aware on how he sounded like a douche. And as a girl who has dated guys before but has broken up, I would be afraid if my ex does the same thing to me as Sam did to this poor girl. This song represented the worst part of country of the last decade and let’s hope we can get rid of this trend sooner rather than later
2. This song would not be on this list in hindsight. People who are trying to cover this year end ten to twenty years from now will look at this song as a boring slice of pop music and maybe some people can see it as endearing and maybe even charming. And that’s the beauty of pop music really. There could be a critical reevaluation surrounding any songs and any artists and that can happen. Pop music is very subjective and one person’s trash is another person’s treasure after all. But, I’m talking about this song as it happened in 2020 aka one of the worst years in my lifetime. Due to the pandemic millions and millions people lose their jobs and don't have enough food to feed. So what happens when out of touch music industry that is greedy and very much the bane of fair use, trying to make the world a better place? Well you get the godawful cover of Imagine, but also you got this.
Again this song would probably be dated once the vaccine is widely available and on the surface this song is not that bad. But, what this song represent is how these millionaires don't care about you at all. This song is a charity singles and I think as a rule we can agree on is that most if all charity singles just suck? I mean if it's for a good cause, sure go ahead. But, these type of songs are usually a celebratory circle jerk to a lot of artists that earned millions from us, the listeners. But this is different because as I said before, this year is a perfect opportunity for a lot of artists to hack their songs into #1. First you got Nicki Minaj leeching off Doja Cat and now with this song being placed as a sales bundle trying to undercut 6ix9ine song to get to #1.
But that's the thing about this song that is so icky especially with how the song is framed. This song is about how Justin and Ariana trying to relax and take a day off work because of what's happening right now. Now this is very endearing especially with a stay at home order and stuff like that, sometimes you want a coping mechanism and this song delivered...for the middle and upper class. For lower class though this song is very insulting because now they can't relax or just take a day off because they don't have a job and basically trying their best to just put food on the plate and also to not get evicted from their house. This song has these odd classism that it made me very angry because of how smug these singers are that they assumed that people can take their time to relaxed when in fact most of these people might not have a place to live soon. This song is just the worst kind of millionaire generosity and I'm disappointed that Ariana Grande is in this song, but then again there's the whole thank u, next album which is probably the worst Ariana Grande album and yes I have listened to her discography. Let's just move on to the dishonorable mentions before I am getting more disappointed.
DISHONORABLE MENTIONS
Party Girl - StaySolidRocky
- This was going to be my #4 but I decided to leave it off because honestly I don't want to punch down someone who is frankly only have this one hit
Said Sum - Moneybagg Yo
- God this song is such a let down because this song is bad but in a uninteresting way. I'd rather have Bang by AJR made the year end list than this
Toosie Slide - Drake
- The melody is good. Everything else is shit
Rags2Riches - Rod Wave ft, ATR Son Son
- Ultimately too short for me to hate to be honest
Walk Em Down - NLE Choppa ft. Roddy Ricch
- Why do we keep this rapper around? NLE that is not Roddy Ricch.
That is for the dishonorable mention, now let's get to number one.
1. Okay before I'm talking about this song, let me take you back to late 70's to early 80's. This was the time where a hip-hop records are booming either in the mainstream or the underground. And because of the moderate success it got, a lot of people thought that they can rap. And here comes the novelty hip-hop records like Rappin' Rodney and it was genuinely bad especially with the origin of hip-hop. If you want to get into the detail of the situation go watch Hip Hop Evolution on Netflix. Why do I bring this up? well this song in particular is probably the closest thing we got to a novelty reggaeton song and unlike Rappin' Rodney, this was moderately popular. And thus here it is the worst song of 2020.
1. Ritmo - Black Eyed Peas ft. J Balvin
This song represented everything wrong about pop music. Firstly this is just a bad sounding reggaeton song. The samples of Rhythm of the Night is butchered to death leaving with the husk of a fun song. The mixing is terrible and that chorus with those familiar chords, so similar in fact that they had to add Alunageorge and DJ Snake for You Know You Like It samples. Secondly this song lyrics is just very hacky. BEP write their song like this "English first then translate it to Spanish" and this run for the whole album, so yeah have fun with that. Thirdly this song is tied to Translation, one of the worst album I've ever heard and you shouldn't be put up with what I had to go through. Lastly this song is a cultural vandalism of epic propotions. What I have come to terms with in 2020 is how vibrant and creative the reggaeton scene was. Act like Bad Bunny, Rosalia, Karol G, and Sech have a lot of great knack for melody and hooks. They have creative ways to diversified the sound of reggaeton and sometimes it paid off with Dakiti being a worldwide smash hit. This song and the entire album felt like a vanity project for Will.I.Am at how they can gentrified this genre further until they turned into pure mush where at best it sounded tedious but at worst you got stuff like Mamacita that thankfully missed the year-end where the laziness crept in and just sounded so offensive. And the fact that this is actually working is the worst part about this song. And with that I can safely say that Ritmo is the worst hit song of 2020
Anyways this is the worst hit songs of 2020 and I'll see you next time where we talked about the best stuff and also hopefully the anime review are back because my god 2021 must be a better year for anime I swear to god.
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