15 Worst Songs of the 2010s

 The 2010s had some amazing music of all genres come out and it was hard to keep up with all. Unfortunately, there were plenty of awful songs on the radio/pop charts to try to avoid while looking for the good stuff. There are plenty of artists you might expect these duds from, but the more surprising part was the number of good artists who released some pretty terrible songs. So today I will make fun of and list the songs that I was unfortunate enough to hear the last decade and still am haunted by. Thankfully it's easy to avoid a lot of these as they've been forgotten with time, but going back to make this list wasn't too easy. So here are the 15 worst songs I heard in the 2010s... and yeah there are plenty of bad ones I didn't listen to that won't be on here. 

15. "All of Me" by John Legend

John Legend makes love sound so boring in this song it's honestly pretty impressive.  The song is all just piano and vocals and it sounds so empty and lifeless as he sings pretty generic lyrics to his wife. My favorite part of the song is when he says to her "how many times do I have to tell you- you're beautiful" like he's actually tired of telling her how beautiful she is at this point. It doesn't help that the song is four and a half minutes long, but it feels like an eternity with how little it changes throughout that runtime. Just a boring love song from an artist who is capable of so much better. Also, why is his wife pretty much naked in the entire video? Just adds to the bizarreness of this whole thing. 

14. "Come and Get It" by Selena Gomez

Selena goes through her "I'm not with Disney anymore so I have to show everyone I'm an adult now" phase. The premise of this song seems to be Selena being vaguely sexual, without actually mentioning sex in the song at all. A thing she liked to do a lot in her music in the 2010s. I never found it very convincing coming from her, it always felt like she was trying too hard to do something she wasn't very good at. With "Come and Get It" it all comes across as a person who's just being told what to do by a studio to find a new image after her Disney career. The chorus is extremely annoying with the way Selena sings it on top of the loud music that just feels so out of place. I think Selena Gomez is talented, but I would like to see her play more to her strengths and this type of song just never worked for her. 

13. "Closed on Sunday" by Kanye West

Looking back at this time, it really felt like the beginning of the end for Kanye. Kanye's Christian album was a complete failure in almost every possible way. No song on the album makes that clearer than "Closed on Sunday", which was the big single off the album. Here Kanye puts together some questionable lyrics on a pretty lifeless track. I'll never understand the point of this song and I'm always annoyed by the dumb product placement of Chick-fil-A. Knowing the kind of person Kanye has become makes this worse honestly. Also ending the song by just screaming "CHICK-FIL-A!!" is just so out of place it actually might be the best part of the song. 

12. "Thunder/Believer" by Imagine Dragons

Yeah, I'm cheating a bit here by putting two songs in one spot, but they both came out around the same time to promote their album Evolve. This album came out in 2017 and it was completely inescapable. The two songs "Thunder" and "Believer" were used in commercials, movies, and TV shows on top of being promoted on streaming platforms heavily. The album was a complete failure critically, but with the number of plays it got I guess it must have been financially successful. If I had to choose one though, it would be Thunder for the worse song. It's far less interesting than "Believer" in every possible way and the music is actually incredibly annoying. It's still probably the worst chorus Imagine Dragons have ever written. Over the years Imagine Dragons haven't improved much from this sound, only doubling down on it and continuing to disappoint me after that pretty good first album.  

11. "I Love It" by Kanye West & Lil Pump

The funniest thing about this song is that it was released about a year before his Christian album came out. Kanye teams up with Lil Pump for no real reason I can think of... at least no good reason anyway. Here, Kanye is at his lamest singing his over-the-top lyrics with no charisma whatsoever. Joining him is the only person who could possibly do worst in Lil Pump. Both guys bring out the worst in each other as they half-heartedly sing about "hoes" and how much they like sex with said "hoes". Kanye at his cheesiest has never really been funny and oftentimes makes songs that just make me sigh in disappointment at the end of them. Lil Pump is expected to be trash, but Kanye still had some goodwill at this point in his career. Outside of his personal life stupidity, his music has also taken a dive in quality for the worst. His music has become unlistenable for the most part, and this song was a big signal that things were only getting worse and not going to get better anytime soon. I will admit the stupid suits they wear in the video are pretty amusing though. 

10. "Swish Swish" by Katy Perry

2017 was a really bad year for Katy Perry. It had been 4 years since her last full album and she was promoting her big comeback HARD. The new album would be called "Witness" and she even did some strange 24-hour streams of her life to promote the new album, which was just bizarre looking back. The first big single "Chained to the Rhythm" was met with a mixed reception and the follow-up "Bon Appetit" was met with a pretty negative reception. Then the final big single from the new album dropped and it was the worst one yet. "Swish Swish" is the perfect song to listen to if you want to understand why this album failed so bad. It's a very messy song from the production to Katy Perry herself. Even a guest Nicki Minaj verse couldn't save this song. This album ended up hurting her career in a big way, as her next album would go on to not have a single big hit in it. Katy Perry's career will be fine, she has enough big hits to keep her going for life, but this song and the album it came from really did do a lot of damage to a pretty powerful pop star's status in the music world. 

Also, there were always rumors that this song was aimed at Taylor Swift as a comeback for Taylor's "Bad Blood". Not sure if either song was actually aimed to insult the other artist, but it's funny that both songs are pretty much Taylor and Katy's worsts. 

9. "High Hopes" by Panic! at the Disco

Speaking of songs that hurt big artists' careers, here's "High Hopes" by Panic! at the Disco. To be fair, this song actually was a huge hit when it came out. I always had a problem with the song and the album it came from though. It felt like Brandon Urie was focusing too much on trying to get this big bombastic sound for all his songs, with tons of big production and many instruments. The music from this era of Panic just felt like it was too loud and obnoxious in its presentation and needed to be toned down a bit to really have an impact. Brandon feels like he's screaming in a lot of the songs because he's constantly having to try to outsing all the instruments that are very loud. Just listening to the chorus in "High Hopes" gives me a headache with how much is going on. It sucks because I enjoyed his previous album "Death of a Bachelor" which had some elements of that, but just toned down and done well. It ended up being the beginning of the end, as his next album would also be his last (for now). 

8. "7 Rings" by Ariana Grande

It's interesting to see a song here from the same album that had one of my favorite pop songs of the 2010's "thank u, next" on it. They can't all be bangers I guess. The thing I dislike about this song is how fake it feels. "7 Rings" just never felt convincing coming from Ariana Grande. It's a mix of the weird Sound of Music sample along with the lyrics that make this song unlistenable to me. The song almost feels out of place on what's otherwise a pretty solid album. "7 Rings" is easily the worst Ariana song I've heard. Everything from the boring beat/music to Ariana trying to do the whole brag rap thing just doesn't fit together at all. One of the more iconic singers of the last 7-8 years, but just can't quite pull this particular style off here. 

7. "7 Years" by Lukas Graham

What is it with songs that have the number 7 in the title? I know a lot of people probably forgot that this one hit wonder even existed... I'm very jealous of those people. This is one of those songs where the music is actually okay, but the song is completely ruined by the lyrics and the vocal performance. The lead singer named Lukas Graham (go figure) comes across as a super conceited asshole in this song with the way he sings and he talks about his life like he's destined to be the most amazing person to walk this earth is just awful. With amazing lines like "I only see my goals, I don't believe in failure" "My woman brought children for me" and "I made a man so happy when I wrote a letter once". Thankfully they did not have another hit after this one, but they didn't even deserve the one hit. It's so funny how he starts the song by saying he doesn't want a life of fame because he's not a glory seeker, then completely contradicts that for the rest of the song with his giant ego. 

6. "The Hills" by The Weeknd

"The Hills" was my introduction to The Weeknd, and it did not leave a good first impression. It's like everything that makes him a great artist is completely absent from this big single. The lifeless verses paired with the loud bassy music blaring in the chorus is just pain. There is also the weird siren that sounds like women shrieking in fear in the chorus that's a strange touch. It's so weird that this came from the same album that has "Can't Feel My Face" because this is almost the exact opposite of that song in quality. Also on the same album was "Earned it" which came really close to making this list too. Thankfully, the Weeknd has come a long way from this and now makes some of the best pop music out there. 

5. "Someone You Loved" by Lewis Capaldi

While John Legend was making the most boring love song of the decade, Lewis Capaldi was working on making the most boring breakup song of the decade. The only thing worse than making a boring piano song is making a boring piano song with terrible vocals. At least John Legend actually has great vocal talent, unlike our guy Lewis Capaldi here. Lewis's idea of passionate vocals is screaming past your vocal range and straining your voice. This song just doesn't really have anything original in it to make it stand out lyrically or musically. All that you got left to make something good after that is just charisma from the lead singer and that's not present at all here. I do enjoy Capaldi's self-deprecation style of humor, but unfortunately, it's not really present in this song. 

4. "Marvin Gaye" by Charlie Puth & Meghan Trainor

"Let's Marvin Gaye and get it on" is the lamest line ever written in the history of music. This entire song is just wrong in every possible way and has no redeeming qualities. I guess at least it's coming from a "good" place, unlike the next few songs on the list. But using the name of the iconic artist "Marvin Gaye" as slang for "let's have sex" is just so stupid and misguided in this song. It's worse coming from the least two convincing artists of the decade in Puth and Trainor. This song makes me think neither of them has actually had sex before. Oh and Meghan Trainor in another doo-wop song, what a surprise. The only believable thing about this song is that Trainor and Puth could actually be in a relationship because they both have a passion for making awful music.

3. "Rack City" by Tyga

How do you make one of the worst songs of the decade? Well, you get Tyga and DJ Mustard together to make a song that's how. This is probably the laziest beat ever created by DJ Mustard, a guy whose beats aren't that great even when he's actually trying. Put up the lazy brag raps of Tyga on top of that with his "I could fall asleep at any moment" energy and you're left with a waste of time song. The entire song is just Tyga spitting out lazy raps with zero energy over the overused "hey hey hey" chants that DJ Mustard loves overusing. At one point Tyga says the line "I got your grandma on my d*ck", which is the only part that's kinda funny... if he was even trying to be funny? If you want to know how little people seem to care about this guy, just look up his top songs on Spotify. Almost all of them are songs he's featured on and not his own songs from albums he released himself. 

2. "Earth" by Lil Dicky 

I've always found Lil Dicky to be pretty unfunny for the most part, and most of his music is pretty forgettable. It was easy to ignore his dumb schtick until he decided to make a big charity single that featured countless celebrities and pop star singers in it. So here we have "Earth", a comedy song where the guest celebs all play different animals and make really dumb jokes that are too obvious to be funny. Follow that by the uncharismatic raps of Lil Dicky who tries hard to be clever, but mostly sounds confused as to what he's supposed to be doing. Most of the jokes are either too obvious to be funny or too stupid to even make sense. Things like "I'm a squirrel looking for my next nut", "I'm a skunk and I shoot you out my butthole" and the worst line of them all "we forgive you Germany". So yeah... I can appreciate the attempt to give a good message about saving the Earth, but this was not the way to do it. 

1. "Treat You Better" by Shawn Mendes

Shawn Mendes literally makes an anthem for the stereotypical "nice guy" and it becomes a big hit. Not only does this song suck, but it also shows how a badly written song can still somehow become a hit just because it's "catchy" and sounds "romantic". The lyrics are pretty vague, so it's hard to tell where Mendes is really coming from here. Is the girl he's singing to in an abusive relationship or is Mendes just implying that she looks unhappy and he would be the better option for her? It just comes across as Mendes saying "hey girl, that guy is bad for you, let me make you happy because you need a man for that". It also doesn't help that we have no idea if this girl even has feelings for Shawn at all like he's the hero she needs not wants. The idea of making a song trying to convince someone to leave a rotting relationship or even an abusive one could be a good emotional topic. This song however just tries to make Shawn look like some hero who's coming to save the damsel in distress. It doesn't help that the music is incredibly flat and out of place for this topic. Shawn also just comes across as really annoying in the way he sings this song, especially when he screams "BETTER THAN HE CAN" at the end of the chorus. It's just a disaster of a song from an artist who consistently falls flat on his face when trying to make music with some meaning.