Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2024

2024 will go down in history as one of the best year of all time...for pop music. Okay that's probably an exaggeration, but it is true that this year has been extraordinarily great for popular music. A lot of things that was bad about 2023; the abundance of lazy samplings, ragebait songs that supposed to make you mad, the absence of hip-hop, and the aura of unpleasantness that peppered the year 2023 all of them are somewhat gone. The fact that this year started out with a rap beef and it ended with a continuation of the biggest rap beef since the 90s. The comeback of pop music in a big way that's very snatched and girlynation while also having a great queer undercurrent, hip-hop having a great year and all that, and even country have its own redemption with some marginalized community hitting their strides. But, it's not all pretty and early 2024 before HISS came out things were continuing from 2023 by being rough and just nothing going on. Latin music especially having a very off year even in the regional Mexican scenes. K-Pop having the sort of year that if you look at it a bit deeper really shocked you. And dance/EDM...is just turned to dust following such a great year for the genre. All I'm trying to say that I am not surprised that one of the biggest dance hits of the year were folktronica crossover.

I actually trying to make like the sort of guide on how to make bad music for my worst list last year but I decided to make the post private because well the format really screwing up the format, but also this year I feel like the worst music coming out this year were all over the place. A lot of them were leftovers from 2023 but also some of these songs are baffling as to how and why it became a hit. One theme that I can get from these mess is comical. Most of these songs were very comical in how bad they are and even though some of them were grating on my nerves and even damaging towards society as a whole, the fact that these became a hit really is baffling. Now seems like one thing that didn't change is Billboard keep sticking with their year end tracking ending mid October. But, I think I'm just gonna go with Billboard Hot 100 Year-End list plus the Global Excl US Year-end as well. I'm also adding songs that have 100+ million streams that came out this year (thank you Allison for compiling these songs in a playlist linked here).  Now without further ado here are 

 

TOP 10 WORST HIT SONGS OF 2024

 

10. I feel like for most people especially in my circle that this will be their worst hit songs of 2024. I don't blame them to be honest because this song being at #1 is probably the first indication that we were in for a very awful 2024. And I also understand that these sort of "art" can be very damaging for people especially if it's getting normalized in the society. Ultimately this song has since become forgotten after it was being used as a TikTok meme and people realized that yes Carnival and Vultures as a whole were ass.

 

10. Carnival by Ye & Ty Dolla Sign ft. Rich The Kid & Playboi Carti

It's funny how a lot of Kanye stans that still holding onto their savior that is Kanye West now known as Ye that when critics on YouTube are basically not reviewing the album, they're basically threw a hissy fit and basically acting like those people who doesn't like Carnival or Vultures were woke leftists getting triggered by Kanye. Even though boycotting Kanye's new material after his heel turn towards fascism and antisemitism in 2022 is a valid act to do because let's be real, I think me putting this song at #10 at all is still cheapened the fact that this song was born out of pure hatred for women, marginalized people, and your intelligent. The fact that people are now calling this song and the album mid overall showed that hate will always make bad art and yep Carnival is a bad song.

What this song reminded me of the most is that XXXTentacion remix of True Love by Kanye West in how slimy the circumstances of how the song was made. Carnival was made because Kanye wanted to make a song after he went to one Serie A match (A top flight of Italian football) and he invited a supporter group known as ultras to the recording booth. Here's a major problem though, the ultras he invited was the Inter Milan ultras known to be very right wing and have alliance with far right Lazio supporters. Beyond that baby first soccer chants, this song just straight up bloated especially with the synth that sounds dying. Rich the Kid just nonexistent in this song so does Ty Dolla Sign. Kanye just a husk of himself trying to be edgy and Playboi Carti has the best verse but also way too long. In the end though after what happened since this hit #1, this song became very much irrelevant as people woken up to the fact that this song and Vultures are hot garbage. And for the better of the world we should not even award these fascist the spotlight of being the worst because it's very much legitimized the standing of fascism especially this time. Let's just learned from this moment and move on to better ground.

 

9. One of the biggest thing that happened in popular music this year is the rap beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake.  It's one of the best thing that happened to popular music this decade and Kendrick deconstructed about what makes Drake to be awful human being and also as an artist. Now we will get to what Kendrick has said in the best list, but what I wanna to highlight about Kendrick's diss about Drake is the fact that Drake are using black culture or music tied to black people like a colonizer, taking advantage of any new thing in hip-hop and even in Latin American music and using it for clout. When Kendrick called out Drake for this I was like...YES THANK YOU!

 

9. IDGAF by Drake ft. Yeat

 

Rage music is definitely one of the subgenres of hip-hop...Yeah I'm sorry I tried to get into the genre and while some of the songs were great, a lot of times I just think that the genre didn't suited my taste when it comes to rap productions. I do love some Yeat songs that came out this year, some Playboi Carti stuff is good, but I have never been impressed by Ken Carson. So when I heard that Drake wanna work with Yeat, I knew that it would spell disaster. 

Drake has been known to take a new artist or a new sound and driven them into mush glob that the radio eats up. He's been doing this ever since Hotline Bling where he took a lot of tropical house sounds and make it very unremarkable. Since then he has hopped on SoundCloud rap by stealing flows from XXXTENTACION, bounce music that made a resurgence in 2017-18, Memphis rap with the success of phonk, and now Rage with Yeat. And yeah it's just as phoned in as you can get with a Drake song. I'm so glad that Kendrick came in this year and just rip him apart like your average Mortal Kombat fatalities because I really can't endured any more of his nonsense taking subgenres out of his ass to make him "interesting". I don't know how Drake could come back from this but from all I know, I would not give a fuck about what he's doing anymore.

8. What makes 2023 so dull and so uninteresting for the pop chart is how they're continuing the blatant lazy sampling trend of 2022. I'm glad that 2024 seems to be the year that we left that trend behind. Which made songs that still doing that very jarring to hear on the hit parade...like this one.

8. Everybody by Nicki Minaj ft. Lil Uzi Vert

You know I have never been bothered by the sampling trend for the last two years. I'm Good (Blue) is probably my guilty pleasure of 2022, I only thought that most of the songs that using this trend is just middle of the road and were there for either making TikTok hits or just radio fodder. But this year with a lot of great music coming out and become hits with new original ideas or reinventing ideas, this song is inexcusable. Jersey club has been another trend that I'm looking forward to seeing but this is definitely one of the worst songs from the genre's peak. Yeah there's an emotionality from the song that this one sampled because Move Your Feet by Junior Senior is probably one of my favorite songs from my childhood. And the fact that the song was chopped up and mixed it badly on this standard Jersey Club beat has been on my nerves. Now I really get why people are hating this trend because when your favorite songs being shit on like this it does rub you the wrong way. Speaking of which Nicki Minaj sounds checked out in this one and this might be one of the signs that she will have a bad 2024. The same kind of dejected disinterest that bleeded into the worst song of 2024 Bigfoot. Oh and also Lil Uzi is here...get well soon from whatever drugs you're on because geez Eternal Atake 2.

7. 2024 was a great year for women making music in general. In pop music we have Sabrina, Chappell, Charli, and more making banger after banger that we will talk about soon. In hip-hop there's no shortage of great female MC that created a name for themselves or proving that you're untouchable like Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, and GloRilla. Even in rock there are some acts that dropped bangers or even just rising in popularity (a lot of them are queer too). Really the only genre that women don't really dominate this year was country with the continuation of Morgan Wallen and Jelly Roll reign of terror (we'll come back to them soon). Like the fact that the newest act that came out of the country scene that is a woman is this?

7. High Road by Koe Wetzel ft. Jessie Murph

You can't convinced me that Jessie Murph isn't the worst newcomer of the year. Even Gracie Abrams have more chops and writing dexterity than Jessie will ever be. I don't believe in the concept of industry plant because like every artists who want to be famous have to sign the contract for big music label and you have to have like marketing and PR person to help you market your song etc. It's a long process that artists have to go through if they want to sell in the industry at large and also to be marginally successful. Some artists don't wanna do that and that's fine but that's really the norm here. I think being industry plant is more of an aesthetic and how that artists became popular to begin with. Let's bring back to Gracie a little bit because yeah she's a nepo baby and also have the backing of Taylor Swift bringing her to her tour and writing with her. Does that mean she's an industry plant? Maybe. But at the very least I understand her appeal right away. I don't get the appeal of Jessie Murph.

Jessie Murph always bring this air of inauthenticity with every songs she was in and there's gonna be one more here spoiler alert. She took 2017 Halsey who have this air of melodramatic winging mixing with the same flavorless crossover trap country of Sam Hunt, both artists that made 2017 listening such a headache. And sometimes that inauthentic stench bringing out the worst of the artists she's collaborated with. Koe Wetzel is actually a decent up and coming country singer but here, even though this is his song, Jessie Murph overpowered her by bringing the same energy as your average reality show crashout. It's kinda shocking how unpleasant this song really is even though it's titled High Road like isn't this supposed to be a song about parting ways? Oh by the way the productions here didn't helped. If I want songs like this I'd rather it being from the veterans because this is amateur hour.

6. While we are on the topic of amateur hour...

6. Lies Lies Lies by Morgan Wallen

Look I don't put anyone on here purely based on their political beliefs and how damaging they are or something that they did in the past that might affected how the lyrics are being perceived today. If that's the case then I would easily put Carnival at #1 because it just perpetuate the idea that if you are doubling down on your rhetoric even if that rhetoric is backwards and even antisemitic, you are still gonna be rewarded with capital and a big one at that. It really is the early warning call that our society is sliding backwards into fascism and the masses are comfortable with that as long as they can put food on the table. I only put songs on the list and in this order because of my own opinion and as damaging as Carnival was, at the end of the year people realized that Vultures as a whole sucks so bad. My main argument here is that yes politics does count about my calculation for determining how this song is placed in my ranking (Stay tuned for my best list for prime examples of that). 

Now why did I type you all that for a standalone singles from Morgan Wallen here you ask? Well I just wanna talk about stuff that isn't this song because holy shit this is the most boring bad song of the year. You know that there's always one song in every year that was big on the radio that you think it's just boring and white noise material. But, the more you listen to the song, the more you realized that you actually really hate this song because the concept of death by boredom. And this song is a prime example of death by boredom. The only unique thing about the song is Morgan sang the song in Bruno Mars cadence in the beginning of the first verse. Beside that, a song talking down on women especially your ex and telling her for no reason that she's a liar, a country productions that's very stiff and mechanical that you swear that this song wasn't just mixture of presets, and a general sense of douchebag attitude. This is just what you get from Morgan Wallen these days and I'm just sick for him doing this again and again. At least Love Somebody have the novelty of interpolating EDM hits from late 2010s, This is just pathetic.

 

5. Like I said in the beginning 2024 was a quiet year for EDM music. The only big thing that came out of that genre is probably Brat and I would argue it's a mix of genres cornucopia that really is just its own thing. Other than that, things are very slow if you aren't in the know of course. I'm only seeing what's going on with the chart and when I saw someone made a dance remix of a cover song made by a nu-metal band...yeah it deserved its spot alone because of that.

5. The Sound of Silence (Remix) by Disturbed (remixed by Cyril)

I mean just listened to this song one time and you can already see how this is a bad idea. First off I do have a confession to make. I actually kinda love the Disturbed cover. The Sound of Silence is a classic for its surreal imagery and haunting harmonies that cut through the acoustic guitar on the original and just a great song that captured the mania that happened after JFK assassination. The Disturbed cover meanwhile took it in more gothic and primal way while also giving a more general broad stroke of anger and fury. Sure it's very goofy especially coming out of David Draiman a noted conservatives, but there's something to it that tickle my senses especially that last chorus with the guitar hmm so good.

Now take all of that shit out the window by probably one of the worst up and coming DJ in the pop chart and make it into a mush. Let's compared this song actually with another song that became a bigger hit because of a remix, Goosebumps remix HVME. Yeah both of these songs were lifted vocally and badly at that. But the Goosebumps remix at least trying to get the atmosphere of the song and put lithuanian bass with Travis Scott vocal. This meanwhile is just a low rent remix that sounded so basic especially the percussion. The clash of tone is the reason why it's on the list and with the fact that people want more slop that quality.

4. While 2024 has been great for pop girlies out there, it has been a brutal year for pop boys here. The old established acts are either floundering or on hiatus while the new star seems to can't take a foot hold in the popular music world. Even the most successful ones are still not the sort of artists we expect like Justin Bieber or Justin Timberlake. Well there's also the third reason why male pop singers are having hard time today, they just sucks a lot.

4. Beautiful Things by Benson Boone 

It's interesting how Benson Boone got the biggest song in the world for Beautiful Things but not a single Grammy nods for the song itself. The reason why is because this song is probably the most blatant critic bait that I've heard in a while. The sudden tempo changes, weird key progression and chords, the fact that there's a rock guitar back, and also some vocals performance that can be "impressive". It's easy to see that this could get at least pop song category. So why this didn't happened? Well maybe because the productions here is terrible. The first part okay it's competently produced though that vocal melody is reminiscent of Colder Weather by Zac Brown Band so big hurdle to jump there. But that switch up is just badly mixed. His vocal is actively peaking while drowning out an already forgettable pop rock sound. Honestly I feel like I was being screamed on as a prank during my sleep.

It's bad enough that the productions here is terrible but to clinched this spot on the list, you have to be very insufferable and the lyrics are certainly is. I'm so sick of these zoomers talking about love with the framing of god and how everything that he has god made them. Borderline Christian music if that said Christian music is made by someone who's horny enough to might get to the second base. It's not really romantic really more like privilege and y'know he's white, that can get some weird implications that I don't wanna get into or else Hasanabi will call me woke of the day. Look you can make songs comparing your love and frustration to something more divine, but to make that work you have to got some underlying narrative or heck even if it's straightforward you can add some angst to it. This is just as plain white bread as you can get and yeah it's making listening to this song quite a chore. While we are on the topic of chore.

3. This is probably the worst song of the year based on the vibe. I know that there are worse songs, like two more. But, this song is just the one that made you feel icky and gross after you listened to it. Sure I have probably 50% context of why this song was made, but that really doesn't changed the fact that The Weeknd made one of the worst songs of the year and that's really disappointed to see.

3. One of the Girls by The Weeknd ft. Lily-Rose Depp & JEANNIE

I haven't seen The Idol yet. From what I heard this series is basically baby first exploitation shows and there are better and more thorough shows and films that tackled the entertainment industry and how exploitative that is. But what I can say is that I really don't get the hype for these type of shows like Euphoria and The Idols that have the same director. These drama shows are now trying for shock and making those as like commentary about the society™®©. Everything has to be either muted in color or just very dingy because of realness. This is why I still don't watch any modern western TV shows because of that barrier for me. And nothing has quite giving me that feeling of ick that represent this genre than One of the Girls.

This song made for The Idol was sung by the actress of the main character with The Weeknd as the abusive manager I think and JENNIE as the friend of the main character. I don't know why Lily-Rose Depp is casted as this music star here since her vocals are so wobbly and it doesn't have the intensity of the song itself. And since The Weeknd and JENNIE are on autopilot, all you can focus on is the productions and the lyrics which are all time clunker for The Weeknd. Musically this sounds intense in the worst way. Why did he go with that synth that only emphasize the danger of the song in the worst ways. And also why this song is very desaturated and drenched in reverb. The lyrics is basically what you got if The Hills was mixed with Earned It but then your average Chris Brown song got into the mix. Maybe it works better with the context of the show but even then I don't want to hear anymore of this. So I guess if there's any contentious song on the list, this is it. Can I just say that I'm uncomfortable with this song and move on? 

2. Even with the resurgence of pop and rap in the mainstream popular music, there's still no denying that country is still the dominant genre here. Even in Global Excl US Chart which specifically forbid USA from their equation, some country songs broke through. Though interestingly the country songs that broke through are country songs not made by Nashville industry machine instead either made by established artists trying out this sound or just non-Nashville artists. Because of this and the success of Morgan Wallen, a lot of artists trying to capitalize on this country boom. Some really doing it well but other times you'll get songs with Jelly Roll in them.

2. Wild Ones by Jessie Murph ft. Jelly Roll

Oh hello again Jessie Murph good to see you're bringing who's fast becoming the most overrated country singer of the decade. Seems like Son of A Sinner was a fluke because since then I have never been impressed by Jelly Roll. Both Need A Favor and Save Me are lousy and I Am Not Okay just missed this list. And the endless lists of collaboration he did particularly Ronnie Radke and MGK really just hurt his chances of me liking the guy. I mean to be fair at least he won't be collaborating with Adam Calhoun again (at least I hope not). But this is probably his worst performance by far. 

Now let's pull back a bit because I do have another bone to pick with Jessie Murph because what the hell is this amateur hour? I still can't believe that this made into the first draft to be honest because her pitchy performance and lyrics about how she got a thing for a wild one got grating real fast. Topped that with the most clunky country trap productions on par with the worst country trap songs by Morgan Wallen and you already got a spot on my worst list. But then Jelly Roll pulling through with probably the worst rap performance of the year...oh yeah he rapped in this one and it's just as badly stilted as it sounds. Now I get why he's not really rapping as much anymore even if he has been on other rapper's songs because again amateur hours. The reason why this didn't topped my worst list is because I genuinely think that this is too amateur for me to put it on the worst list. Plus the comical nature of the songs just making this pure mess at least entertaining. This other song tho...

But before we get to that some dishonorable mentions that just barely missed the year end.

DHM 1. Miles On It by Marshmello ft. Kane Brown

This isn't on the list purely because the destructive legacy of One Thing Right so this is just chasing trends.

DHM 2. Gata Only by FloyyMenor ft. Cris MJ

This becoming the most popular latin song of the year has the same aura as All My Life by Lil Durk became one of the most popular rap songs in 2024. Make of that all you will.

DHM 3. Slow It Down by Benson Boone 

This is just Beautiful Things just 50% better writing and 20% worse singing.

DHM 4. Madonna by Natanael Cano ft. Oscar Maydon

Can we just stop naming your songs with artists name in it. It just showed that you're making songs with SEO analyst with them.

DHM 5. I Don't Wanna Wait by David Guetta & OneRepublic

At this point David Guetta is just making contents not music and I'm not gonna dignified this with a placement on the worst list.

DHM 6. Who by Jimin 

Probably the worst vocal production of the year. The beat's still good though.

DHM 7. I Am Not Okay by Jelly Roll 

Yeah I'm not either Jelly.

1. 2024 was a very turbulent year but especially in the world of politics. One of the global events that happened this month was the martial law that the South Korean now former president? Yoon Suk Yeol. This shortlived martial law showed to the world that even countries as "advance" as South Korea can suddenly backsliding in their democracy. The reason why I brought up South Korean politics at all is because of Yoon Suk Yeol himself. One of his big platforms or policies is to punish feminism from South Korea. Even with their lowest birth rate in the world, South Korea is having a gender war and by that I mean the biggest disparities between men and women in terms of everything. From men mocked and cried about anything that could resembling "attack on men" to women creating a movement that's basically swear off men because that's how dire misogyny is. I'm bringing all of this up because I do think that we have a problem in misogyny even more so than any other year. And we should've seen that big red flag by what the rock station are desperately playing to stay relevant.

1. Truck Bed by HARDY

Ohhh this has been a long time coming. HARDY'S album The Mockingbird & The Crow is one of the worst double album of all time. A badly written and ill conceived concept album about how country music is dead and rock music is where he should be or something like that. Wait In The Truck almost missed my worst list last year, a white knight fantasy that doesn't include the girl's perspective beside that she's helpless with no agency. And with this one there's seems to be no women's voice behind this and instead we hear this guy whine and joked about him being an asshole to his girlfriend. Now before we get to why this song is the worst let's talk about the productions here which is all kinds of shit. The guitar is watery, the percussion doesn't really compute with the rest of the song, and that fucking whistle is enough to put it on the list all together. Like seriously this sounded like what you get if you mixed OneRepublic, Black Keys, and Jason Aldean combined. Did you know that the producer of Nickelback produced this song? Joey Moi is probably the reason why bro country existed in the first place. I'm actually quite stunned by how much he dropped the ball on the heavier portion of the song because it sounded so canned and not remotely rock as hard. 

Oh speaking of that, look I'll admit that when it comes to popular music, you'll be running into misogynistic contents. This is not me trying to be woke of the day that's a straight up facts. Every genres have dabbled in this even the ones that you thought were innocent like pop music (remember Treat You Better?). And as a hip hop fans as well I listened to a lot of misogynistic songs in my past and liked them I'll admit that. But there's need some context and framing that has to work with the songs. I like 90s rap even though a lot of it are misogynistic because the beat is good and everyone seems to be having fun with it. While I hate Love Me by Lil Wayne with a passion because it's gross, over the top, and everyone doesn't seems to have fun. I think similar things are happening here but worse because HARDY really wanna sells you the former and yet it tipped towards the latter. The premise of the song is that HARDY is such an asshole that he always woke up on the truck bed every morning because he's a drunkard. Okay cool so far I mean you could spin that to something that could be interesting, maybe an anti drinking song. Nope, the reason why he's a drunkard is because he hates his girlfriend and decided that to throw this party after she locked the house. You can see that in the music video as well what we saw as the night party getting more and more chaotic and the girl is physically terrified. But the bridge is really what solidified the song on this top spot where he said he put his gun and he wanna shoot the "bird". In this case he's jokingly want to hunt down this girl with a gun. Now maybe it's just my queer self but that's very much not a funny joke. It's one of those jokes that you said with the boys™ on a night out. That really gave the game away, the worst hit song of 2024 is everything that I hate about 2024. Rampant misogyny, make chauvinism, and insecurities masked itself as machismo. 

All I can say right now is thank God we got the best list coming probably January so see you soon there.