10 Worst Hit Songs of 2023
"Eat this ass like a plum!"
Did you miss me? I’ve been taking a few weeks off from the podcast to deal with moving, but also to make sure I get this end-of-the-year stuff out of the way. As usual, I’m gonna be rolling out these lists, as well as the Pulpy Awards on the podcast, throughout the month of January. And as always, we’re getting the negative energy out of the way first.
To say this was a bad year for popular music is to imply it was a year at all. There were hardly any major releases in the first half of the year. For most of 2023, the charts were full of obscure and regional oddities while the radio cycled through Taylor Swift’s catalog.
With everyone doing their own thing, what floated to the top wasn’t always gold. Even though a lot of the usual suspects are here, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard some of these songs, and frankly, it’s probably for the best.
Honorable mention: RICH MEN NORTH OF RICHMOND - Oliver Anthony Music
To be honest, I came down to 11 songs on this list and went back and forth a lot over which to knock off. I ultimately decided to hand it to “Rich Men North of Richmond,” a phenomenon that reached all the way to the GOP debate stage before petering out quicker than Vivek Ramaswamy.
While Anthony (Music)’s vocal performance is pretty stirring, what really keeps this song off the worst list is the heel turn he made after it blew up. Whether or not there was foul play, this song absolutely feels like it was made to be talked about at a GOP debate, and Anthony’s insistence that his preaching about what “taxes ought not to pay for” was actually part of the #Resistance after the fact is the perfect hustle.
10. MADE YOU LOOK - Meghan Trainor
I really wasn’t sure if this would make it on. How can you help but have a little respect for making the exact same song a smash nearly ten years after her debut? “Made You Look” is one of her more inoffensive songs, but also one of her more confused. “Even with my hoodie on, I made you look?” Alright, sure. “Even with nothing on, I made you look?” No shit!
Really, “I made you look” is a confusing sentiment to begin with. When people say “made you look,” the idea is that there was really nothing there. Like if you released a huge new single and it was actually the same as the old ones. I guess she did make us look.
9. K-POP - Travis Scott, Bad Bunny, and The Weeknd
The Travis Scott album may be 50% comprised of microwaved Kanye leftovers, but by the time it came out in July, the year had otherwise been such a dud that it felt like the second coming. That still doesn’t excuse lead single “K-POP,” which is the exact kind of song that irks me the most over time: antimatter songs that leave so little behind I can’t even remember them long enough to form an opinion.
I listened to this song 5 minutes ago. I have no idea what to say about it. I don’t like how SEO-y the title is, I think the features are both really disappointing… but who knows?! All I really remember is that the first thing Travis says is “swish.” That’s fun, right?
8. BONGOS - Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion
This probably isn’t even a bad song in the abstract, but it’s definitely the year’s most disappointing single. Cardi and Meg captured lightning in a bottle with “WAP.” But in 2023, a year marred by dud albums, a year where Mitski ran circles around the biggest new rappers, the prospect of them getting back together was electrifying.
What we got instead was “Bongos,” a confused, annoying, and unmemorable track that went as quickly as it came. It reminds me the most of “Massive Attack,” the single that almost halted Nicki Minaj’s pop star career before it began. Both songs try to find a weird Caribbean-dance pocket that they can never quite hit, and take way too long to figure out what they are.
7. SEARCH & RESCUE - Drake
After taking some genuinely interesting directions in 2022 with Honestly, Nevermind and Her Loss, Drake came back this year with For All the Dogs, a record in the classic tradition of bad Drake albums. There’s hardly anything to say about him at this point, but “Search & Rescue” is a perfect example of a new kind of bad song that Drake’s pioneered in the past decade. These songs answer the question, “What if Lana Del Rey was a terrible singer and a male misogynist with nothing to say?”
The character Drake brings to these tracks isn’t even the self-aware miserable simp heard on “Marvin’s Room” or “Hotline Bling.” This is a diss track, and one that he’s chosen to perform in the most deliberately grating, sleepy, shapeless way possible.
6. EYES CLOSED - Ed Sheeran
I’m not even an Ed Sheeran hater, and I’m often kind of bewildered by how strongly people loathe him. But every time I heard “Eyes Closed” this year, I understood. An artist in Sheeran’s position could be taking big, weird swings, but he’s instead chosen to shrink himself Maroon 5-style, taking the most dull and irritating parts of his previous tracks and trimming off the excess (good songwriting, catchy melodies, interesting production). Remember “Don’t”?
5. UNDER THE INFLUENCE - Chris Brown
Chris Brown now lives like the music industry version of a white-collar criminal, exiled from the mainstream but allowed to quietly continue having hit singles every year. I’m usually reticent to talk about these because they’re so easy to avoid, but then I listen to them, and without fail, they’re bad enough to make the list.
This one combines the sleepy platitude of “Search & Rescue” with the distinct, creeping feeling that Chris Brown has not listened to a new song since 2013.
4. STAND BY ME - Lil Durk feat. Morgan Wallen
Has any collab ever had as measurable a negative impact on the music industry as a whole as Lil Durk and Morgan Wallen? It’s not only the continued bad influence they’ve had on each other’s music, but the grating mid-tempo country-trap sound they’ve met in the middle with, which has infected rap, pop, country, and even rock radio.
They’ve never started to make more sense, and “Stand By Me” reflects a particularly poor era for both of them. I’ve never really been a fan of either, but this sentimental sludge makes it clear that whatever was interesting about them in the first place, it’s long gone now.
3. LAST NIGHT - Morgan Wallen
Sorry to double down on you, Morgan. There are definitely greater evils in country today than Morgan Wallen—in fact, he’s a lot more distinctive than some of his contemporaries. But his big smash, “Last Night,” is anything but. Like a lot of the songs on this list, it shoots straight for the middle, aiming to fill time between commercials on your local station. Are we not over this?
I still don’t feel great about Wallen being able to blow up so much after his controversy, but “Last Night”’s success certainly doesn’t come from the right wing rage campaigns that launched, say, “Rich Men North of Richmond.” “Last Night” was the biggest song of the year because it was there. It’s genetically engineered to fly under the radar, to make a little under 3 minutes pass without really feeling like you’ve listened to a song.
2. TRY THAT IN A SMALL TOWN - Jason Aldean
People aren’t really talking about it, but it’s not like country blew up the charts completely out of nowhere this year. The country comeback’s been a long time coming, and every year I’ve been doing these lists, I’ve had more country songs to consider. I’ll usually throw a few on the “worst” shortlist and then delete them because I feel like I’m picking on something I know nothing about.
All this is to say, I’m not sure how I feel about this year’s worst list being so country-forward. I will say two things:
There will be country on the best list, too.
I’m completely confident that every song I’ve talked about deserves a spot on here.
Nowhere is that more true than with “Try That in a Small Town,” which combines the clumsy political insertions of “Rich Men North of Richmond” with the unbearable self-serious sliminess of Jason Aldean. Oh, and it’s also about killing BLM protesters!
But speaking of slime…
1. SLIME YOU OUT - Drake feat. SZA
Something weird has happened to Drake in the last couple years. It seemed like an album-specific bit when he leaned all the way into his disgusting side on Certified Lover Boy. When he said, “said that you a lesbian, girl, me too,” it was just “a combination of toxic masculinity and acceptance of truth which is inevitably heartbreaking,” remember?
Two years later, Drake is stuck in Leisure Suit Larry mode like Austin Butler after Elvis. When he starts the track by telling “you girls” that you need someone to tell you “which utensil to use for which food,” I’m just left asking, “When does it stop being a bit?”
It’s not just the slimy personality that makes “Slime You Out” gross. It’s a song that feels and sounds disgusting, right down to its title. “Slimin’ you for them kid choices you made”? People love to whisper about Drake allegations that never seem to materialize, but I get why they want to believe it so bad. This is simply the kind of music a sex criminal makes. This is that post-2002 R. Kelly sound.