It's time to begin the look back on the year in the charts with the top 10 worst hit songs of 2017. 2017 in terms of the charts was a huge improve on the boil that was top 40 music in 2016, there was plenty of good music and to be quite honest the good outweighed the bad in some ways on the ARIA chart however turnover was awfully slow which didn't see a lot of new music enter week in week out however there was still plenty of crap that hit the chart.
Now my rules are pretty simple.
1. A song must have appeared on the ARIA singles chart for more than three weeks so songs like "Swang" by Rae Sremmurd won't appear here.
2. Being overplayed on the radio is not a reason enough to put a song on this list.
3. No abuse. This is my list, my opinion. Yes, it hurts to read somebody trashing a song you love but there's no need to get abusive in disagreement with me! Abuse in the comments will be deleted.
Let's get on with this shall we and there's nowhere better than to begin a list of the worst hits of the year than with handing out a few dishonourable mentions, the first going to a song that has plenty of issues
Dishonourable Mention 1: "Issues" by Julia Michaels
2017 was the year songwriter Julia Michaels stepped in front the microphone however a part of me is wishing she'd stayed in the background because there is absolutely nothing to this song. NOTHING. It's supposed to be a positive upbeat anthem about a couple working through their problems and being together despite of the issues facing them but really this song feels like fake drama for the masses. The production doesn't hint at the issues between the pair and the lyrics are oddball eg: describing the partner as "perfect, poorly wired circuit" in the second verse, there's not even anything about HOW they are overcoming these issues between them.
Yeah I got issues and a lot of them are with this poorly written mess of a song but at least it didn't attempt to be sexy unlike...
Dishonourable Mention 2: "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" by Zayn and Taylor Swift
If people complained hard about the falsetto that Swae-Lee used in Rae Sremmurd's awful US hit "Swang" than I'm fairly certain that Zayn Malik's falsetto in "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" is just about the most unsexy thing on the soundtrack for what ironically is pretty much a porn film and what's even worse is that production is not even remotely sexy or even attractive. The only reason this song is not any higher on the least because Taylor Swift was the saving grace with her vocals carrying some passion.
This next song though got passionately grating in record time.
Dishonourable Mention 3: "Bad Liar" by Selena Gomez
Given 2017 wasn't exactly a good year for Selena Gomez personally so I do kind of feel bad for putting a song of hers on this list and "Bad Liar" isn't the worst song ("Fetish" is even worse). "Bad Liar" is here because the pre chorus and chorus just grew grating. The "I'm trying" repeated over and over again just makes me want to scream and could Selena at least inject a bit of passion if she's really trying and trying like she says she is not to think about this guy. Ugh. The only saving grace is the bass line samples Talking Heads "Psycho Killer".
Speaking of awful lyrics...
Dishonourable Mention 4: "Pretty Girl" by Maggie Lindemann
There's issues with this song that are pretty well obvious and it's more so obvious in the lyrics especially in the lines "If I drink or I smoke, I keep up with the guys", seriously? trying to down drinks like the guys is tantamount to attempting to destroy your liver and smoking only gives yourself emphysema meanwhile the whole song is supposed to be a female empowerment statement sung in this girlish voice that isn't empowering at least to me as a woman.
In 2017, I don't think I have heard such a lame love song such as this from DJ Khaled and co...
Dishonourable mention 5: "I'm The One" by DJ Khaled, Justin Bieber, Chance the Rapper, Quavo and Lil Wayne
What do you get when you have an overstuffed guest list including the biggest spoilt brat in pop music and lyrics that see the performers not only lack passion but a total lack of lyrical imagination? You get this mess that only barely managed to miss the top 10, seriously a chorus that manages to go "Oh-eh-oh-oh-oh, oh-eh-oh I'm the one" which makes me think of Old MacDonald had a farm even Bieber sounds bored singing his version, there's no passion or conviction in his singing at all.
Quavo compares him and his girl to be a modern day Bonnie and Clyde in his verse through a haze of auto tune while Lil Wayne says more like Whitney and Bobby...an abusive relationship and then proceeds to call himself a legend.
Ugh. DJ Khaled did SO MUCH BETTER with Rihanna and Bryson Tiller. Let's consign "I'm The One" to the museum of forgotten songs.
Now onto the list proper and Bieber makes yet another appearance...
10. "2U" by David Guetta and Justin Bieber
Yet again another song that Justin Bieber sounds bored while the song seems to interpolate a 2000s Daniel Bedingfield song. Bieber sounds absolutely bored but to be fair it's not like the production is any good from David Guetta here with piano, synths and oddball percussion. It's dull, lifeless song with a breakdown to forget. Hopefully in 2018, we'll get less songs like this.
Reggaeton made it's way onto the charts in 2017 and boy some reggaeton songs at least sounded better than this...
9. "Mi Gente" by J Balvin and Willy William
2017 saw a latin Spanish/Spanglish boom courtesy of "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee plus a remix featuring Justin Bieber topping the charts for what seemed like months this year thus sparking attempts to do similar with much worse songs and "Mi Gente" was the song that managed to drive me nuts this year from production where the horns sounded like bleating goats suffering from constipation, luckily we didn't see this song reach number one even with the Beyonce remix.
So a question for Halsey, if you are so alternative, why do you keep releasing terrible pop songs?
8. "Now Or Never" by Halsey
Halsey, all things considered has had a pretty decent year, she's gotten songs off "hopeless fountain kingdom" to chart, "Bad at Love" sits in the Billboard Hot 100 top ten and her duet with boyfriend G-Eazy looks like it will be a massive hit but none of that stops "Now or Never" from sucking, Halsey attempts to be sexy but the music doesn't match with it and the song comes off sounding like a tacky 50 Shades of Grey soundtrack offcut (seriously, most of the soundtracks for the two movies so far have been incredibly unsexy) and Halsey comes off sounding like a braying goat in the chorus as she asks the guy to sleep with her already...just incredibly unattractive.
7. "Perfect" by Ed Sheeran
Ugh. I know the rules state that boring songs can't make the list but I am sick and tired of Ed Sheeran releasing songs like this as singles, it's gotten to a point of being overdone now, Sheeran is a more interesting artist than what he shows in this song that in parts sounds very similar to "Amazing Grace". The fact that there has been so many done to death remixes of song involving Beyonce and Andrea Boccelli says enough that Sheeran has no faith in it.
At least "Perfect" is better lyrically than the mess Train managed to come up with.
6. "Play That Song" by Train
There's no way around it, this song is pure gross, Pat Monahan wants the DJ play his girlfriend's favourite song because it makes her "go all night long"...here's a tip, Pat, if she wants the song to be played all night long, don't be lazy and put the damn song on yourself!. Not to mention the off key "Ooooh" at the end of the chorus with arrogant instrumentation. Yuck. This song is enough to make me want to sing "Turn that rubbish off"
While the lyrics of "Play that Song" are pretty damn awful, they don't sink into that sink of icky like this next song.
5. "Your Song" by Rita Ora
This song increasingly drove me up the wall this year and it's not just because of the auto tune that seems smothered over the song like cheap mayonnaise but the lyrics which leave me wanting to throw up from the opening verse where she wakes up with a fear but the taste of him is on the tip of her tongue and he is by his side with smoke filling their lungs. Seriously?
Ora then proceeds to sing in the chorus that she doesn't want to sing sad songs...just love songs. That would be okay if most love songs were actually happy love songs but a lot of love songs are sad hence the lyric really doesn't make sense at all but even than it only makes the song mediocre at best.
What tips this song over into being absolutely awful is this lyric in the second verse And then we make love, right there on your best friend's couch" which is gross, you wouldn't have sex with your partner in his best friend's bed so why do it on his best friend's couch? Just disgusting.
While this song was icky and gross, at least Rita had a better year than one pop girl whose purposeful woke pop got increasingly myopic and shrill in 2017
4. "Chained to the Rhythm" by Katy Perry feat. Skip Marley
2017 was the year that Katy Perry threw herself into the idea of "purposeful/woke" pop music which resulted in Perry losing what made her an good pop act to become this boring shadow of what she used to be and while "Chained to the Rhythm" isn't the worst song that was releaserd a single or even off the album, it's a song that misses it's message so badly, it's nearly funny.
"Chained to the Rhythm" bemoans how we're all stuck inside this massive bubble yet I can't help but wonder about this coming from somebody who previously made some of the best mindless pop music eg: "I Kissed a Girl" and "Hot 'n' Cold" yet we're being made to sit through a washed out disco song while she complains bitterly about how the bubble we're in is chained to some rhythm that gave her some of the BIGGEST hits of her career.
As for the political aspect, there's a way of doing political songs right and boy oh boy, this song misses the mark entirely. I get Perry is a big support of Hillary Clinton but she went about it the wrong way with this song. If she had written a song about how we're chained to toxic attitudes and not willing to change then it could have saved this song but as it is, no thanks.
However say what you will about the attempt at politics by Katy Perry, "Chained to the Rhythm" is marginally more listenable than this effort from Imagine Dragons.
3. "Thunder" by Imagine Dragons
This song is borderline close to unbearable as it gets. Basically a synth driven song while an automated female voice repeats the word "Thunder" over and over again, you'd swear it was on loop she says it so much before Dan Reynolds goes through his struggle to get to where he is today as lead singer of Imagine Dragons.
As for the instrumentation, there's nothing remotely thunderous or even fearsome about it. Just "music" that would fit an ad for some crappy Mazda RX-7 and all through it that automated female voice saying "Thunder" before the band shout "Thunder! Thunder! Lightning and the thunder!". Ugh. I think I'll stick to Imagine Dragons best song "Whatever It Takes" and hope that becomes a hit in 2018.
Hey Taylor Swift, look what your awful song made me do!
2. "Look What You Made Me Do" by Taylor Swift
So this was the lead off single from 'reputation' by Taylor Swift (an album that is her worst scoring album on Metacritic by the way) and Really the only thing that stops it from being number one is that bridge where there was a sliver of some decent quality there with dramatic instrumentation but that quality evaporated into a chorus that sees Taylor Swift interpolate "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred and one of the WORST songs of 2016 "Me Too" by Meghan Trainor in a song all too intent on stamping Taylor trying to whip up public sympathy when she doesn't explain at all what her haters made her do.
"Look What You Made Me Do" showed that in 2017, Taylor Swifr lost a lot of her dignity in a ridiculously childish and petulant song that made her look even worse than her haters!
So in a year where people finally began standing up and saying sexual harrassment in the entertainment industry was a very real thing and needed to be stamped out (needs to be stamped out EVERYWHERE), we get this atrocity and it's so ridiculously deserving of number 1 on this list.
1. "Body Like a Backroad" by Sam Hunt
The fundamental idea of this song just makes me want to throw up: Sam Hunt knows his partner's body so well that he knows the girl's body like a back road, you know one of those roads that's riddled with cracks, potholes, not been repaired in months because the council can't be bothered and more than likely doesn't get many people driving over it but you drive it anyway to avoid the RBT units after a night out...ugh.
Oh and Sam Hunt can turn his girl's jeans out, he doesn't need any help apparently.
Pair the lyrics with a slurry of bad 2017 hip hop trends, a weak guitar, gang vocals and Sam Hunt's smug vocals, you have one of the worst "country" songs to somehow become the biggest country song this year in Australia and the USA. Yet, we can't even get "Marry Me" by Thomas Rhett to chart here!
Hey Australia, if you want to get country music onto the ARIA Singles Chart, there's better examples than this awful leering mess of a song eg: "5 More Minutes" by Scotty McCreery or even any song from Kelsea Ballerini's last album. Just saying.
"Body Like a Back Road by Sam Hunt" the worst hit song of 2017
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