Top 12 Worst Hit Songs of 2010

Top 12 Worst Hit Songs of 2010

On twitter I said that 2009 was one of the worst years I've ever gone through when it comes to the Hot 100. It was so bad that a Top 10 and even a Top 15 worst list wasn't enough. I had to do a Top 20. So surely anything would've been a improvement after that, right?

I don't know if 2009 is the worst year of the Hot 100, but regardless, 2010 is definitely an improvement. This year was much more bearable to get through. That doesn't mean 2010 was good though. This year was filled with club songs, pop rap, and electro-pop. And a lot of it has not held up well. I wouldn't say 2010 was a bad year for the Hot 100, more so just underwhelming. There wasn't much variety on the charts this year, even by the standards of pop music. Still, some songs, the good and bad, stood out from the rest, and with this list, we're gonna focus on the bad. These are the worst songs the U.S. decided to make major hits in 2010.

#12: Cali Swag District- Teach Me How to Dougie

Starting this list with an easy target: Teach Me How to Dougie by one hit wonders the Cali Swag District. This song feels like it only exists to promote a dance. The actual song is more of an afterthought. The production only really consists of one percussion line that never changes or switches up. It's only 3 seconds long and repeats over and over again until the song ends. It's equal parts barren and repetitive. Also, I can't help but find it funny when these guys try to rap. They're so bad at it.

They be like smoove (what?)
Can you teach me how to dougie?
You know why?
'Cause all the bitches love me (aye)

Come on, what kind of bars are these? The song barely even teaches you how to dougie. For what it's worth, I would consider this at least more tolerable than shit like Crank That or Watch Me, but that's probably only because it didn't annoy me as much. Nothing the Cali Swag District did after this achieved any success beyond low peaks on the U.S. R&B chart, and then they vanished off the face of the Earth. I do feel sorry for the group though, since two of their members, Montae Talbert and Cahron Childs, died not long after this was released. I guess it's hard sometimes to conceptualize these artists as real people, but events like this always remind me they are. Let's hope I don't go too far in any of the next entries.

#11: Far East Movement ft. The Cataracs, Dev- Like a G6

Here's another group that's faded into irrelevancy. The Far East Movement had two big hits in the early 2010s: Like a G6 and Rocketeer. I'll admit I've softened on Rocketeer. I don't think it's that bad, even if the production is pretty dated. But Like a G6 is still as awful as it was the first time I heard it. The production is way too cluttered. The synth line is too loud, too prominent, and drowns almost everything else out. This beat just does not work for any kind of hip hop, let alone pop rap. On that note, none of these guys can rap. The beat is already so awkward and the synth line is so heavy that I don't think anyone could've sounded good rapping over this. But the Far East Movement still manage to surpass expectations with their pathetic bars. The writing in general is a mess of party song clichés. Though, for what it's worth, it's funny to hear these guys try to pass themselves off as gangsters:

Girl I keep it gangsta, poppin' bottles at the crib

Was that line supposed to be a joke? Regardless, everything sounds like it's just a little too fast, and that combined with the cluttered mix, the heavy synth line and the fact that everyone's voice has way too many filters on it makes the song headache inducing. It's about as nauseating as the morning after a party. The Far East Movement only had one more "hit" (if you can call that) after this and Rocketeer. Their song Live My Life with Justin Bieber (which is even worse than Like a G6) didn't make the Top 20 and didn't get enough points to make the 2012 Year-End. Nothing they've put out since 2012 has charted anywhere in any country, something I can't help but feel sorry for. It must especially suck for them more than most artists this has happened to. I can't imagine forever being known as the Like a G6 guys.

#10: Usher ft. will.i.am- OMG

And now onto a song by an artist who isn't a one or two hit wonder. The fact that OMG takes Usher, a man with one of the most distinctive and powerful voices in all of R&B, and makes him sound almost identical to will.i.am during the worst stage of his career is a crime worthy of putting this on the list by itself. Neither Usher or will.i.am even sound like they're having any fun here. And I know they're capable of being better than this because I've heard them sing better. The half-assed singing and the stripping of Usher's personality both speak to this song's main problem. It's miserable to listen to. Most club songs usually have some kind of energy, but OMG just sounds completely dead. The lazily applied autotune, the constant low white noise sounding synths in the background, the stiff bassline, and especially the hilariously low energy crowd cheering make this a chore to sit through. There is nothing fun or danceable about this. It is a coma-inducing bore all throughout. It comes off like a parody of a will.i.am song. It doesn't even really have a chorus, they just play the crowd cheering noise over the incredibly barren production for like 10 seconds and that's it. The lyrics suck about as much as the music.

Honey got a booty like pow, pow, pow
Honey got some boobies like wow, oh, wow

No grown adult should ever say "boobies". Also, and I know this is a minor point, but Usher and will.i.am both say "oh my gosh". Why? This isn't church, you can just say "oh my god". It's another annoyance on top of one of the worst songs Usher has ever been on.

#9: Sugarland- Stuck Like Glue

With every other song here, I can at least understand how it became a hit. Not so with Stuck Like Glue by Sugarland. This song had no business being played on the radio. It should've never left the Bubbling Under Charts, let alone rack up enough points to make the Year-End. This is a country song, supposedly. It only barely sounds like one. The instrumentation and melody are both so bland it sounds like it was never meant to be played outside a commercial. Then again, this song probably couldn't be played in a commercial because of how gross it sounds. For starters, the vocals are very nasal and annoying. Also the producers made the bizarre choice to have a bassline which sounds like someone spitting in your ear play throughout the entire song. I have no idea why they did this. Was it to make the song sound more unique? Well, to give the producers credit, I've never heard a song that had anything like this in it. I've also never heard a song that played the sound of a firetruck siren throughout the whole thing. There's a reason why most producers don't do stuff like this. You're not going to create an avant-garde masterpiece by throwing in the sound of someone spitting into a microphone. Especially when your song otherwise sounds like a very generic commercial jingle. Oh and lastly, the song tries to have a rap breakdown in the bridge and it's one of the most embarrassing moments in the history of the Hot 100. This is a gross sounding song with a ton of baffling production choices, and the fact it ever became a hit will forever leave me stumped.

#8: Kesha- Take It Off

Is it a hot take to say Kesha's early work doesn't hold up well? Her first album, Animal, was pretty bad in retrospect (Dinosaur is a good contender for worst song ever recorded). She definitely got better in the following years but that doesn't make those early songs any easier to go back to. The gimmick of making songs that are intentionally loud and obnoxious gets old really fast. At best, you get mediocre songs like Tik Tok and Your Love is My Drug. At worst, you get... well, not Take It Off but it's close enough. Let's start with the elephant in the room, basing an entire song off a nursery rhyme is usually a bad idea. And I know Arabian Riff isn't technically a nursery rhyme but when Take It Off was released in 2010, this melody was heavily associated with children's music. Also, this song starts with Kesha singing the Arabian Riff melody with her voice pitched up to sound like a chipmunk, so yeah, the producer, Dr. Luke (I could dedicate a section here to how awful of a person he is, but I'm not feeling up to it), knew what he was doing here. And this melody serves as the foundation for both the chorus and the pre-chorus. It's too much, the song is too dependent on this sample. It sounds terrible in the context of an electro-pop club song. Like, the phrase "take it off" is used to mean "take off your clothes". 

Lose your mind, lose it now
Lose your clothes in the crowd

I don't know want to listen to a song about people taking off their clothes that uses a melody mostly associated with children's music. That's the main problem here, and it makes the song annoying as all hell. There are other problems too. The production is full of ugly synths and the song never knows when to lay off the vocal effects. Plus, Kesha oversings the whole thing. I understand that most of Kesha's early songs were meant to be parodies of club music, but in this case I struggle to see any semblance of satire. As far as I can tell, it's an earnest depiction of a bunch of drunk people going to this club, taking off their clothes and having a loud, obnoxious, gross party. If there is any angle of satire here, it's that party people are, in fact, loud, obnoxious, gross idiots. That reading would make the sample make more sense. But if that's the case, then Kesha is insulting her audience. What kind of club song directly insults people for dancing to it? "Look at you guys, you're so annoying and immature, you're like a bunch of grade schoolers doing a playground taunt". What a mess of a song, and it's not even the worst hit Kesha was on this year. At least she moved past this.

#7: Sean Kingston ft. Justin Bieber- Eenie Meenie

You know you're in for a masterpiece when the single cover uses Microsoft PowerPoint font. Eenie Meenie has the same main problem as Take It Off. That is, it's usually a bad idea to base a song off a nursery rhyme (why am I saying usually, has this ever been a good idea). The phrase "Eenie Meenie" is used to describe the girl in the song as indecisive.

You can't make up your mind, mind, mind, mind, mind
Please don't waste my time, time, time, time, time
I'm not tryna rewind, 'wind, 'wind, 'wind, 'wind
I wish our hearts could come together as one
'Cause shawty is a eenie-meenie-miney-mo lover

Now, I could spend a bunch of time talking about how the point of "Eeny meeny miny moe" is that eventually someone gets picked. So the idea of a girl who can't make up her mind being an "eeny meeny miny moe" lover doesn't make much sense. But really, who gives a shit? The wider point is that you should not use the phrase "eenie-meenie-miney-mo lover" in a song, ever. The words "eenie-meenie-miney-mo" should never escape your lips in a song, ever. This is such a stupid and juvenile concept for a song that the writers who came up with this should've been laughed out of the room. Surely there are better ways to get across the idea that a girl is indecisive then saying "well, that's kind of like this nursery rhyme, let's base the song off that". The worst part of this song comes near the end when Justin Bieber and Sean Kingston are both chanting the entire nursery rhyme in unison.

Eenie-meenie-miney-mo
Catch a bad chick by her toe
If she holla, if, if
If she holla, let her go

Bad chick? You're gonna show off how you're catching a bad chick by chanting eenie-meenie-miney-mo? There are other embarrassing lines too, like this one from Justin Bieber.

Let me show you what you're missin', paradise

I mean... come on this is a cheap shot. 2010 teen idol Justin Bieber portraying himself as some kind of chad? God, I better stop now before I go full early 2010s psychotic Bieber hater. Anyway, beyond the terrible writing, the production is generic, overblown dance-pop with these super obnoxious, flat synthesizers at the front of the mix. It sounds cheap and is probably the worst aged song out of all the ones on the list. And believe me, that is no small accomplishment.

#6: Train- Hey, Soul Sister

Train was never a good band. I only like one song from them, Drops of Jupiter. Most of their discography is mediocre and disposable. That is, most of their early discography. Their discography starting from 2009 has been almost entirely garbage. Even I'm kinda shocked at how bad they got. They at least seemed like a genuine, competent band at the start. How do you go from that to this? It'd be easy to just say Hey Soul Sister is annoying as shit and end the entry here. But of course, I can't leave it at that. Hey Soul Sister is a white guy with acoustic guitar song except the guitar is substituted for a ukulele. The basic strumming of the same couple of ukulele chords is this awful combination of loud and high pitched that makes the song unlistenable from the first few seconds. It gets even worse when you add Pat Monahan's loud, yelping vocals. He overenunciates every single syllable and sounds like he's straining to keep himself on-melody. It's probably the worst vocal performance of any song on this list on a purely sonic level. Unfortunately, that's not where the awfulness ends here, because it wasn't enough for this song to only sound bad. Get ready for some of the worst lyrics in pop music history.

Your lipstick stains
On the front lobe of my left-side brains

That's probably the worst blowjob metaphor I've ever heard in my life.

Hey, soul sister
Ain't that Mr. Mister on the radio, stereo?

That's not the only forced 80s reference either.

I believe in you, like a virgin, you're Madonna

There's more but I think you get the idea.

My heart is bound to beat right out my untrimmed chest

Ew

The smell of you in every single dream I dream

Ewwwwwww

I'm so glad you have a one-track mind like me

What a back-handed compliment. I think most people would view this as an insult. I certainly would. And finally, the worst line of the entire song:

Watching you's the only drug I need
So gangster, I'm so thug

Could they not think of any other word that rhymed with drug? The line speaks for itself, really. Come to think of it, why is this song even called Hey Soul Sister? Nothing about this even resembles soul. Someone should've revoked Train's right to use that word before they began writing this.

#5: The Black Eyed Peas- Imma Be

Get it? The song is called Imma Be. It's kind of like they're saying "I'm a bee", so the single cover has a... this song is so fucking embarrassing. By this point The Black Eyed Peas were a laughing stock. They never recovered from My Humps. The E.N.D. (as in the Energy Never Dies, what a clever acronym) was a garbage album. And Imma Be is up there as one of the worst songs The Black Eyed Peas have ever put out. The production might as well just be a collection of cheap stock sound effects. The first thing you hear in this song is a series of synthesizers that sound like a broken pencil sharpener. This song is so stiff and empty, it gives you no room to breathe. Lyrically, most of it is just will.i.am repeating the phrase "Imma Be" ad nauseum. I mean, there are verses here, but they're...

I'ma be on the next level
I'ma be rockin' over that bass treble
I'ma be chillin' with my motherfuckin' crew
I'ma be makin' all them deals you wanna do (Ha)
I'ma be up in them A-list flicks

It's like this song was designed to rot your brain. Also, this is another one of those Black Eyed Peas songs with a beat switch-up halfway through. They did this a lot during this time and Imma Be is probably the worst example of it. It's way too sudden and the transition isn't natural enough. Admittedly the beat in the second half is passable, even if it could use more work. It might have made for a decent song if the lyrics weren't still 90% just The Black Eyed Peas saying Imma Be over and over again. There's not enough time for the beat to build up anyway. Just when it might be starting to pick up some momentum, the song abruptly ends. So really nothing about Imma Be works. It's not hard to see why The Black Eyed Peas faded into irrelevance pretty soon after this.

#4: Trey Songz ft. Fabolous- Say Aah

I'd describe Trey Songz's discography the same way I described American music in 2010. Not necessarily bad, but underwhelming. His specialty is electronic R&B, and I can not think of a single song of his I actually like (well aside from Slow Motion). Conversely, there aren't many songs from him I actively dislike either. However, there are exceptions to everything, and Say Aah is the worst thing I've ever heard from him. I can't stand listening to even 5 seconds of this shit. For starters, Trey Songz's vocals here are bad. His voice is just slightly slurred and off-key, which makes the entire song have this uncomfortable edge to it. Plus, they add an echo effect to his voice that is way too strong and way too sloppily applied. It only furthers the discomfort. In fact, everything in this song sounds like it has an overdone echo effect put on it, including the beat. The production doesn't sound like it has much in it, it's like the echo effects are used as a crutch to fill in all the emptiness. It's too much. The production itself is horrible as well. It mainly consists of this one incredibly irritating noise that sounds like machine getting cranked, which plays constantly. It clashes hard with the vocals. Trey Songz tries to rap in the verses and it's about as bad as you'd expect. His flow is uneven and the bars never seem to end in the right place. Fabolous's guest verse has the exact same problems. This song is such an insufferable clusterfuck you might not even notice it's about receiving a blowjob until after multiple listens, despite how the lyrics are very upfront about this. Rule of thumb for 2010s pop music, anytime a song references a blowjob, it's probably going to be awful.

#3: New Boyz ft. Ray J- Tie Me Down

The New Boyz are one of the worst mainstream acts of the 2010s, and I don't think many people are gonna be rushing to defend them when I say that. Every song I've heard from them has been awful. If You're a Jerk made the 2009 Year-End, it definitely would've been on the worst list. But as bad as that song is, Tie Me Down might be even worse. I said earlier that Eenie Meenie was the worst aged song on this list, but Tie Me Down gives it a run for its money. It somehow manages to be both very soft sounding and very hard to listen to. The production is filled with these cheap, washed out synths and Ray J's chorus is very breathy, which does not mesh with how many studio effects are put on his voice. Everything in this song sounds like it's being delivered in a super harsh whisper. There's nothing solid to anchor it down. Every single musical idea present here was dead on arrival. This is the one of the closest times I've ever come to saying a song is objectively bad. And don't even get me started on those breathing noises they add halfway through the chorus. On top of sounding bad, the writing is horrible. The New Boyz have always had an obnoxious personality. They were around 16 or 17 when they first formed in 2008. By the time they released Tie Me Down, they were both nearly 18. They come off as much younger than they actually are though. The aforementioned You're a Jerk has them trying way too hard to be these cool assholes. They certainly succeed at portraying themselves as assholes, but not as cool. They sound very immature. It's like a 12 year old's idea of what being an asshole is. Tie Me Down, I guess, is their attempt at being more mature. In this case, the entire song is about how they are going to have sex with any woman they want and they do not care what their girlfriend has to say about it.

Ayyy, know we been together for a minute
But uh, its kinda been forever since we been in
The kinda situation not involvin other women
And it's pretty obvious that your kinda trippin

Like "Who the hell is this bitch?
Lookin a hot mess, what you fell for this chick?
You know we got problems and you failed to fix it"
I'm like "You need to go somewhere else with this shit"

This is what the phrase "Tie Me Down" means in the song. When the chorus says this:

She ain't gon' tie me down, while you on the road

It means "my girlfriend will not hold me back from having sex with any woman I want". The easy criticism here is that the narrators are assholes. They're such obvious assholes and they don't try to hide it. But I think that criticism would be a little lazy. I mean, there are plenty of songs out there about the narrator being an asshole. Sometimes the fact they're an asshole is the point. And I know that's what the New Boyz were going for here. The problem is that there is no reason in this song to like the narrators at all. Beyond the fact that the New Boyz, again, have an obnoxious personality, nothing about these lyrics is funny or charming. What is there to get attached to here? Plus, the sentiment of "my girlfriend is holding me back from cheating on her" is very hard to get past. That's one of the worst ways you could frame a song about cheating on someone. The New Boyz basically fell off the face of the Earth after 2011, and disbanded in 2013. Much like with the Far East Movement, I can't help but feel especially sorry for them, as their legacy will always be songs like this. 

#2: Kesha, 3OH!3- Blah Blah Blah / My First Kiss

 There were two Kesha and 3OH!3 collab hits this year, and they're both at #2 because I can't decide which of them is worse. Let's start with Blah Blah Blah. Like I said in the Take It Off entry, making songs that are intentionally loud and obnoxious is a gimmick that gets old fast. It's worse here as Blah Blah Blah is less of a song where the music is trying to be obnoxious and more one where the obnoxiousness is trying to be music. Everything is a mess. Kesha barely sounds on key, her voice has way too much auto-tune, and the production is just a collage of electronic noises, none of which go together. 3OH!3's guest verse is probably the worst part of the song. They don't even sound like they're trying. Their performance is completely half-assed. Lyrically this comes off way more like a 3OH!3 song than a Kesha song. I think the idea is, well, there are plenty of songs by male artists that dehumanize women so, why not have a song by a female artist dehumanizing men? Unfortunately this song did not account for how insufferable 3OH!3's attitude is. Everything they do is in the most loud, in your face way imaginable. They're like parodies of frat bros. What I'm getting at with this is that Blah Blah Blah isn't a true gender reversal. It's a gender reversal of a 3OH!3 song. Like, when I hear the words Kesha is singing here, I don't hear Kesha. This isn't her personality. I hear the 3OH!3 guys. Even the phrase "Blah Blah Blah" is such a juvenile way to get across the idea of "shut up and fuck me". Finally, before I move on, I want to bring up one line I can not get over.

Zip your lip like a padlock (Yeah)

...Do you zip padlocks? I don't have much to say about My First Kiss as a lot of my criticisms against Blah Blah Blah apply to this song too. Like I said, 3OH!3 have an insufferable attitude that taints everything they do, and it's on full display here. They sing every line in an obnoxious frat bro inflection that they never let up on. Kesha is barely even in this song. She's only there to repeat 3OH!3's lines in the post-chorus. The verses here are especially insufferable because you're hearing these very forceful vocals from 3OH!3 over nothing but a couple of dissonant stomps and claps, with a very flat sound of an electric guitar blaring every few seconds. Even in the chorus the synths and guitar just blend together into white noise. Oh, and those kissing noises in the post-chorus make my skin crawl. Look, I understand the point of both these songs is to be intentionally annoying. I said as much at the start of this entry. But I don't believe they accomplished anything by intentionally sounding bad. The idea of "let's make something that sounds as obnoxious as possible" is not enough to carry a full pop song that's over 3 minutes long. And neither of these songs have even the barest amount of musical structure to support them. If you want to make something avant-garde, you're best off ditching the pop music format entirely.

Dishonorable Mentions

• Enrique Iglesias ft. Pitbull- I Like It
• Young Money ft. Lloyd- BedRock
• Mike Posner- Cooler Than Me
• David Guetta ft. Akon- Sexy Bitch
• Ludacris- How Low
• Timbaland ft. Justin Timberlake- Carry Out
• Justin Bieber ft. Ludacris- Baby
• Jay-Z ft. Mr. Hudson- Young Forever
• Trey Songz ft. Nicki Minaj- Bottoms Up
• Nicki Minaj- Your Love
• The Black Eyed Peas- Rock That Body

And the worst hit song of 2010 is...

#1: Chris Brown ft. Tyga, Kevin McCall- Deuces

Whenever Chris Brown is brought up in a list like this, you'll usually hear a long rant about how awful of a person he is, how awful it is that he's still massively successful despite not even trying to improve himself, how awful it is that people continue to associate with him, and how his awfulness as a person tends to bleed into his music. It's so overdone that saying it's overdone is itself overdone. I have no interest in repeating the "Chris Brown rant" (as it's been termed). Much like I said with Dr. Luke, I'm just not feeling up to it. Admittedly though it's hard to do that with a song like Deuces. It's impossible to take this song outside the context of when it was released. Obviously it's a bad idea to release a bitter break up song where you're an asshole to your ex the year after you assaulted a woman so badly she was sent to the hospital. Anyone could tell you that. And usually you'd expect a song like that to be listened to by 5 people and not chart anywhere, especially after how the Rihanna incident got Chris Brown pulled off radio stations. But no, this was a hit. This was a huge hit. Deuces peaked in the Top 20 and made it onto the 2010 Year-End. And while I'm tempted to pretend not to understand why this happened, I don't feel like playing dumb. Chris Brown is famous and people wanted to hear his big new single. That's really all there is to it. That doesn't mean I'm not still upset this did become a hit. It brought back Chris Brown and solidified that he'd always have a successful career no matter what he did. God, I've gone on this long without even talking about the song. Well, even on its own Deuces is a terrible piece of music. The beat is coma inducing, only consisting of the same few dull keys repeated over and over. There's too much reverb, and every singer sounds bored out of their mind. There are multiple instances where the song pads out the runtime by having Chris Brown quietly sing "woah" over the empty beat. The chorus barely feels like a chorus.

I'm on some new shit
I'm chuckin' my deuces up to her (Deuces)
I'm moving on to somethin' better, better, better
No more tryna make it work (Deuces)
You made me wanna say bye-bye (Say bye-bye)
Say bye-bye (Say bye-bye)
Say bye-bye to her (Say bye-bye, deuces)
You made me wanna say bye-bye (Say bye-bye)
Say bye-bye (Say bye-bye)
Say bye-bye to her (Say bye-bye)

The constant repetition of "say bye-bye" really gets on my nerves. This is such a worthless song, it's not even catchy. It has so little appeal and is so boring I can't imagine it ever being played on the radio. The sound is a good match for the lyrics though. I already described this as a bitter break up song about being an asshole to your ex, but I can be a lot more specific than that. The narrators in this song are so bitter, so vindictive, and so disrespectful that it becomes impossible to sympathize with them. They don't even seem happy when they sing this stuff, they sound miserable. Deuces is a miserable song about miserable assholes being miserable assholes. Just look at these lines.

All that bullshit's for the birds
You ain't nothin' but a vulture-ure-ure-ure

And from Tyga.

Uh, used to be Valentines, together all the time
Thought it was true love, but you know women lie

They're such obvious douches without one ounce of charisma. But the worst verse in the whole song comes from Kevin McCall. I lied earlier when I said all the singers here sound bored. Chris Brown and Tyga sound bored, McCall sounds pissed.

Look, my shawty always on some bullshit like Chicago
So I flip that middle finger and the index finger follow
Deuces, we ain't got no future in tomorrow
I'm a dick, so it shouldn't be that hard to swallow

But that's not the worst part.

I finally noticed it, it finally hit me
Like Tina did Ike in the limo, it finally hit me

This is the perfect note to end this blog on. This is a song by a domestic abuser with a line referencing Tina Turner's abusive relationship with Ike that frames Ike as the victim. Nothing sums up Deuces better than that. Without a doubt the worst hit song of 2010.

And those were the worst hit songs of 2010. I don't know what my next blog will be about, but I hope to see you then anyway. Bye!