10 Worst Hit Songs of 2024
"I'm about to buy her some dentures."
Folks, 2024 is over, and it’s all hillwise from here. It’s been an eventful year for me, but also a very interesting one for music. Popular music felt relevant in a way it hasn’t in at least a decade. Kings and queens were dethroned while a real grab bag of previously-unknown artists filled out the charts.
As is customary, I’m starting my year-end lists with a purge of negativity for some of the year’s worst hit songs. This was the first year I can recall where there was stiffer competition for the worst list than the best list. Hard to say why, but I think it’s just a symptom of pop music being culturally significant again. The hits stuck out, but the misses really stuck out.
Honorable mentions
“Miles on It” by Marshmello & Kane Brown: Not enough of a stink is being made about how Marshmello has been quietly releasing the same song every year for about 8 years straight.
“Lovin on Me” by Jack Harlow: Instantly dated by Drake v. Kendrick. A corny, tepid song about having boring sex.
“Stargazing” by Myles Smith: Subtly, under all our noses, stomp-clap music made a full-throated comeback this year.
“Jolene” by Beyoncé: A lot of good songs came out of Beyoncé’s messy foray into country. This “Jolene” cover is not one of them. It was already a dud, but the recent allegations against Jay-Z make it all the more… uncomfortable.
“Whiskey Whiskey” by Moneybagg Yo & Morgan Wallen: The trap-country thing doesn’t work, guys. How many times do we have to try it?
“Devil Is a Lie” by Tommy Richman: “Million Dollar Baby” made us ask, “Is Tommy Richman the next big thing?” And “Devil Is a Lie” made us answer, “Nah.”
“Tough” by Quavo & Lana Del Rey: Oh, it’s tough alright.
10. LOSE CONTROL - Teddy Swims
This tepid pastiche of every blues-y throwback from the past 20 years is the biggest song of 2024. Yes, you read that right. The biggest. Like, it spent 45 weeks in the top ten. I assumed it was another out-of-nowhere TikTok song, like those of Benson Boone and Noah Kahan, but no, it had a long and steady trajectory to the top of the charts. I guess this year really proved that the American public wants the Imagine Dragons guy to get face tats.
9. KEHLANI - Jordan Adetunji
Speaking of trends that should’ve died a decade ago, here’s a mushy R&B song whose only claim to fame is name-dropping a famous woman in the title. I always thought this trend was super creepy, and I don’t think Jordan Adetunji is breaking any new ground here. This girl is “bad like Kehlani”, unlike the girl Yxng Bane sang about, who was “bad like Rihanna”, or The Wanted, who said she “walks like Rihanna.” Okay, a lot of the time it’s Rihanna.
8. 7 MINUTE DRILL - J. Cole
If Drake made one wise move this year, it was keeping his worst disses off streaming. Instead, his two charting tracks from his already-legendary beef with Kendrick Lamar, “Push Ups” and “Family Matters,” reflect the two moments where it seemed for a fleeting moment like there might be a real competition here. So the representative for “the other side” on this list has to be old J. Cole, who was so instantly embarrassed by his halfhearted Kendrick diss that he deleted it. “Did Cole foul,” indeed.
7. SELFISH - Justin Timberlake
Justin Timberlake put out an album this year. No, seriously. It’s telling that in the year of Katy Perry’s Titanic-level disaster, no one could muster up the strength to even pretend to care about the new Timberlake. You’d think that would be a good spot for JT—the public eye certainly hasn’t been kind to him in recent years. But that would require the music to be good.
6. COWGIRLS - Morgan Wallen feat. ERNEST
Yes, there’s gonna be some country on this list. In spite of the return of pop and hip hop to cultural relevance, it still dominated the charts—and trust me, plenty of country tracks were considered for the best list, too. But this latest trap-country disgrace by Morgan Wallen is completely devoid of even the pretense that it’s about anything real. It’s made for one reason and one reason only: for country girls to belt it out while feeling themselves at the club. And by god, it could at least do that right.
5. BEAUTIFUL THINGS - Benson Boone
Inspired to create music by Jon Bellion and catapulted to the top by TikTok edits, Imagine Dragons and late-period American Idol, Mormon pop star Benson Boone is a perfect storm of modern music culture’s worst influences. They all come together on “Beautiful Things,” a hollow, grating song that gained fame off of a two-second snippet that isn’t even any good on its own.
4. LONELY ROAD - mgk & Jelly Roll
I liked Machine Gun Kelly’s pop punk era. Hell, I even liked the album that the people who liked the first album didn’t like. But it was always clear that it was a hollow costume for him, just like his ever-changing rap persona before it. Now, he’s gone country(?) with the help of fellow white-rapper-gone-country Jelly Roll. And also John Denver. Terrible sample-covers are a scourge in the pop-rap world MGK emerged from, but their development into country needs to be quarantined.
3. BIG FOOT - Nicki Minaj
Before a big boxing match, there’s always the undercard. But when Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion came to blows at the start of this year, you might’ve thought they’d be the main event. Megan came in swinging with her “these hoes mad at Megan’s Law” barb, but when Barb came back with “Big Foot,” the vibe immediately shifted to… “Is she okay?” And come to think of it, we never really got an answer.
2. FACTS - Tom McDonald feat. Ben Shapiro
Do I even need to say it? I’ll just say this: I’ve been around long enough to remember when Tom MacDonald’s shitty, edgelord Tech N9ne ripoffs weren’t so combative. It’s hard to take a “triggered, libs?” artist like this seriously when you know he doesn’t really believe half the shit he’s saying and his so-called “fans”—even his rap-hating collaborator—get no joy out of his music except the smug satisfaction of having your worldview trumpeted back to you.
Much could be said about 2024, but it’s the year where Ben Shapiro, however briefly, had a top 20 hit. What could be more embarrassing than that?
Well.
1. CARNIVAL - Ye & Ty Dolla Sign feat. Playboi Carti & Rich the Kid
Even more so than Trump’s second victory, this song’s success was the toughest pill to swallow this year. Disgraced former billionaire and self-proclaimed Nazi Kanye “Ye” West had a #1 hit with “CARNIVAL,” a torturous, shabbily-produced, clumsily-written mess with economy-class features from Playboi Carti and Rich the Kid (as for the latter, Ye may as well have gotten a verse from Mims). The groan-worthy chorus of Italian soccer hooligans paper over the lamest hook of Ye’s career. For his own part, Ye spends his verse comparing himself to Jesus and Bill Cosby while ironically bemoaning his kids being put in a “fake school”.
When Vultures 1 came out, Ye’s stans were still clinging to the belief that their favorite artist was still a mad genius. There had to be some underlying brilliance to counteract the bullshit—for over a decade, every new low was accompanied by an artistic high. By the time Vultures 2 dropped in August, all the pretenses were gone. Ye is not that guy anymore. It’s time to move on.
Stay tuned for the best list.