Top 10 worst songs of 2017

2017 is nearly over, and it's been... Ok for music? The charts have generally been alright, with most of the worst material being bland rather than unlistenable trash, and the best stuff being legitimately great thanks to Kendrick Lamar and Lorde among others. However, underground music hasn't had an especially outstanding year, with most of the best releases of the year not even being the best releases by it's creator(s) (St. Vincent and LCD Soundsystem, for example.). But still, plenty of good stuff was released in 2017, and of course a huge amount of awful, horrible music. Here are in my opinion, the 10 worst songs of the year, from bad (number 10) to worst (number 1).

10. Train - Play That Song


Is this the most out-of-touch song of the year? Quite possibly. I've had a vendetta against Train since 'Hey Soul Sister' back in 2009, where the high pitched tinny ukelele, high pitched ear piercing vocals, and the high pitched drums and 'bass' led to one of the most headache-inducing songs of the 2000s. 'Play That Song' isn't quite as bad (if only because it hasn't been in as high rotation on the radio), but Patrick Monohan's vocals this time range from ear-piercing to a weird drunken drawl, and his lyrics are uncomfortably aimed at a teenage audience while using a lexis that's been out of date for two decades. No wonder it's been way less successful than their previous singles.

9. Kodak Black - Tunnel Vision

On the other end of the musical spectrum is this trap-flavoured monstrosity from Kodak Black. The beat isn't great to start off with, with it's awkward, jumpy synths that seem to flux in-and-out of rhythm with the beat, but the real problem is Kodak himself. The chorus is unbearable, and seems to make up more than half of the song, with the extended "nnnnnnn" sounds on the end of each bar making Kodak sound incredibly bored the whole time. When he does start spitting his lyrics range from generic to flat out awful. The music video is also laughably edgy and poorly executed.

8. Iggy Azalea - Mo Bounce


Iggy Azalea was an easy target for music critics almost as soon as she arrived on the scene with her fake accent and generally lazy production, but I never truly despised a song by her until this year. Apparently after her last single 'Team' failed spectacularly last year, Azalea has completely given up hope of getting popular off of talent and instead  just created this queasy, bass-heavy throwback to the worst music from the early 2010s, along with a borderline pornographic music video. It's hard to imagine anyone ever sitting through more than 20 seconds of this.

7. The Chainsmokers - Break Up Every Night


  I feel like I could put any song released this year by the Chainsmokers in this spot and it would be deserved, but 'Break up Every Night' takes the crap-cake due to it's central lyrics of "She wants to break up every night, then tries to f**k me back to life". Ewww.

6. Linkin Park - Battle Symphony

It's a tragedy that Chester Bennington took his own life earlier this year, and so it's a shame that nearly all of 'One More Light' was filled with bland drivel that is the definition of what it means to sell out in 2017. 'Battle Symphony' is especially bad, since it manages to rip-off one of the worst songs of 2015, Rachel Platten's 'Fight Song'. The chorus seems to have been copied word-for-word and then translated into edgy language to appeal to... seemingly very few people. The production strips any potential for bombast or energy, and it's generally a very sad note to go out on for a writer who made some classics while he was alive.

5. Taylor Swift - Look What You Made Me Do



This is maybe the biggest mistake I've ever seen an artist this big make in the limelight in my 7 years of closely following pop music, and for several weeks after this was released it was being ridiculed by seemingly everybody, and deservedly so. At this point you've heard this, either with utter dismay or with glee, depending on your opinion of Taylor Swift, so I'll Swiftly move on.

4. Hopsin - Happy Ending


There is an official video for this travesty, but I highly recommend not seeking it out - it was so awful it was actually removed from Youtube (At least the high quality version). This song is straight-up racist and it seems to innocently gleeful about it that it's impossible not to listen to the entirety of this with your head in your hands. Hopsin is notorious for his overly serious, self-righteous tunes, but this is infinitely worse. The autotuned fake asian accented chorus (Sample lyric: "I can give you sucky sucky") and the unlistenable second verse - essentially Hopsin reciting his own erotic fanfiction - bind together to make this a laughably awful song.

3. Jake Paul & Co. - It's Everyday Bro


This was the year of eye-roll worthy Youtube diss tracks, and while it was easy to avoid nearly all of them, this song actually crossed over to the billboard hot 100. This is a totally amateur production by a bunch of irritating, arrogant bunch of overgrown children. A number of lyrics have already gone down in the Meme dictionary ("England is my City", "Selling like a God Church" and "Let me Educate ya; I ain't talkin' book", for example), and I think that's a testament to how groan-worthy this song is.

2. AJR - No Grass Today


Twenty-One Pilots have become unfairly maligned by many for their pop sensibilities and admittedly irritating fan-base, but surely even the most hardened TOP hater will give them some credit after hearing this disaster by AJR. Imagine Tyler Jospeh's stilted vocal delivery with lyrics about not smoking weed - although framed in an off-putting and overly defensive way that makes the song seem like it shouldn't exist. Now imagine the worst bridge you've ever heard EVER and you have 'No Grass Today'.

1. Fall-Out Boy - Young and Menace


I knew this was going to be the worst song of the year the moment I heard it. It's so hair-tearingly awful that not even AJR could usurp them. But hey, the first minute isn't even that bad, so how could this be the worst of the year? Well if you drift along the first minute of build-up you will get to the worst drop I have ever heard. Yes, not even the drops of '#SELFIE' or of Will.I.Am's EDM years can compare to this 40-SECOND(!!) horror show of pitch shifted screams and dubstep-leftover production that has produced the most painful, least enjoyable piece of music I have heard this year.