The music of 2024 was a double-edged sword. This year gave us wonderful artists like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and Gracie Abrams, who had previously fallen under the radar of the general public but are now finally becoming huge stars. It also gave us great new music from artists I love, like Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande. And obviously, it gave us a whole world tour from Taylor Swift (happy birthday) and a new double album from her, with 31 tracks. However, there were inevitably still plenty of songs that played on the radio in 2024 at some point or another that just... aren't that good. And these are the top 10 worst of the worst.
The criteria for the list is the same as last year: any song is eligible, as long as it was released in and/or charted in 2024. So, for example, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived by Taylor Swift could be on here since it was released 2024, even though it didn't chart on Hits 1. But I'm not gonna include some random song from 2021, like, say, All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor's Version) (From the Vault) (Sad Girl Autumn Version) (Recorded At Long Pond Studios). Sorry to all my ATWTMVTVFTVSGAVRALPS stans.
Also, as always, even if you're tired of seeing it at the top of people's rankings because it's just implied at this point... T H I S I S M Y O P I N I O N. So, I hope I don't wake up tomorrow with more hate comments than the number of people in the world complaining about how I "hate rap" or "hate fun" or am "not a respected member of society" or whatever. Okay, now the top 10.
#10: Kesha - Joyride
If there's two genres of lyricism you all know I hate, it's overly sexual lyrics, and lyrics that repeat themselves over and over and over and over and over and over and over. This song is both. "I'm just looking for a JOY! RIDE! JOYRIDE! I'm just looking for a GOOD! TIME! TONIGHT!" Whatever that vocal effect is when she's singing those high notes is really grating for some reason. I guess the production sounds okay, for maybe five seconds. But this song gets annoying very quickly.
#9: Mark Ambor - Belong Together
This song is just very poorly written. I'm trying to imagine Mark writing this in the studio. "You... and... me... belong together. Like... hmmm, what rhymes with together? Ooh! I know! Like cold iced tea and warm weather!" Yeah, no. Also, ehrm, it should be "you and I belong together", not "you and me". He must have had Lady Gaga as his English teacher in school...
#8: Tommy Richman - Million Dollar Baby
He just has to make it really clear that he's rich. I don't like to hate on songs just because the singer doesn't sound very good, but like... this guy can't sing. He doesn't even sound like he's trying to sing. He sounds like he's squealing. And the production is not helping that. It sounds like he bought the cheapest piano keyboard he could find and played random chords over a preset beat called "Funk City 03".
#7: Ariana Grande & Mariah Carey - Yes, And?
*sigh* Unfortunately, a list of the worst songs of the year is almost always going to have at least one song that happens to be written by one of my favorite artists. Ariana has two appearances on my "best songs of the year" list, but this song... this was just not a good comeback for an artist as amazing as Ari. The original Yes, And wouldn't have made this list. It's still bad, but the remix with Mariah Carey that sounds like she's an AI screaming alien noises from another room is way worse. See my Eternal Sunshine album review for a review of the original song.
#6: Camila Cabello & Playboi Carti - I Luv It
Camila Cabello's albums Camila and Romance are two of my favorite albums of all time. C, XOXO, however, is not. Camila Cabello did something with this album that I had always been worried she'd do: drastically changing her sound and aesthetic just to fit with the trends. This is by far the worst song on that album. If you want to see why I think that, once again I'm gonna direct you to when I originally reviewed C, XOXO.
#5: Charli XCX - Von Dutch
I think you all knew Charli would show up at some point on here. She's not terrible by any means. She definitely has talent, and she's released some great music. But the lead single for Brat REALLY should've been Talk Talk and not this. I've already talked about this and the next two songs in my album review for Brat, so you can look at that if you want longer, more in-depth reviews of them.
#4: Charli XCX - 365
Once again, see the album review above if you want a full review. This song is essentially just a worse version of 360.
#3: Charli XCX - B2B
See the album review again for a longer review. This song is one of the most repetitive and annoying songs I've heard this year.
#2: Charli XCX & Billie Eilish - Guess
This song was only on the deluxe edition of Brat so it was not included in my album review, so I'll review it right now. This song's whole concept is just "You wanna guess the color of my underwear?" and doing a bunch of things with underwear. Really weird, really stupid concept for a song. I do not need to hear about your underwear every day on the radio. This is far worse than any of the songs on the standard edition of Brat, so at least I'm glad it's not on the regular album.
#1: Megan Thee Stallion & Yuki Chiba - Mamushi
Okay, time for a rant. Every Megan Thee Stallion song sounds the same. It's got some generic boring beat that never evolves, and the lyrics are just the same words over and over and over. I know some people like that kind of stuff, but if we're judging music as a pure art, Megan Thee Stallion's insanely repetitive music just doesn't work. "I get money I'm a stahhhhh stahhhhh stahhhhh stahhhhh stahhhhh stahhhhh stahhhhh". Why do people like these kinds of songs? I will never understand how Megan is so popular. And it's not like Yuki Chiba is much better. He's trying to rap, but he sounds monotonous and off-beat. The lyrics in his verse aren't great either - the sudden "nice to meet you" and "I'm so happy" thrown in the middle of the Japanese lyrics (which I have translated before, and are not that good) just sound so random and awkwardly placed. Unlike some of the other bloggers, the language the lyrics are in wouldn't really affect my opinion on the song itself, but I just would've preferred if those last few lines were entirely cut out. But even then, it wouldn't be a much better song, because literally nothing about this works. As you may remember, my least favorite song of 2023 was Labrinth & Billie Eilish's Never Felt So Alone. But Mamushi is MILES worse than that song. Never Felt So Alone at least has some redeeming qualities - the production changes in a few sections, and the pre-chorus melody is alright I suppose. I would go so far as to say Never Felt So Alone grew on me a decent bit. For Mamushi, I tried to think deeply and find a single redeemable quality about it, and all I could come up with is that... I mean, I guess Megan doesn't sound terrible, and she's mostly rapping on the beat? But her flow still falls flat, so that's far from a saving quality of the song. So, Megan Thee Stallion does not deserve 1% of the recognition she gets as a musician. Mamushi isn't even my least favorite Megan song. I still think Wap, Body, and maybe even Savage are worse than this. But this is quite close. I tried to think of any "good" songs she had, and I thought of three, but all three of them are just songs where she's featured with another artist so they hardly count as proper Megan songs: Not My Fault with Renee Rapp, Beautiful Mistakes with Maroon 5, and the 34+35 remix with Ariana Grande and Doja Cat. And even on those, Megan's verses are my least favorite parts of all of those songs. Her verse in Beautiful Mistakes is probably the closest thing she has to a good part on a song, maybe because she actually sings a bit, and some of the lyrics are kinda clever, but even then it's still pretty meh. But Megan has a lot of songs, so three semi-decent features she has on other songs isn't gonna affect my opinion: Megan just doesn't deserve to be a popular singer, and Mamushi is a glaring example of her lack of interesting and enjoyable music.
Whew... okay. That was something. I'm glad to be back.
"But Hallett, what about the album reviews you promised us before you disappeared for one trillion years?"
Starting in 2025, you'll get one album review every week, along with maybe some other random post.
That's all for now! Byeeeeeeeeee!
