10 Worst Songs of the 2000s

After making my best songs list for the last four decades I decided to go back and find out what the truly worst songs of the last few decades are. A few months ago I posted my 2010s worst songs list if you haven't seen that one yet. This time things felt a bit more... nostalgic. A lot of these songs were heard on the radio hundreds of times or seen on MTV and VH1 when they still had those music video shows. The 2000s are kind of split into two halves it feels like. The first half had a lot of rock music that was carried over from the late 90s and a lot of crunk carried over as well. Then the latter half of the 2000s felt like it found its own identity with new artists innovating and finding new sounds to make popular. To me, going through the first half of the decade's music felt a lot more painful than the second half. If you're a fan of post-grunge rock then you might hate this list cause... yeah. My only rule here is that it had to be a hit song or at least a song that a lot of people knew back then or today.

Before the actual list, I usually put some songs that just barely missed out on making it. This time I thought it would be more fun to put songs that are pretty hated, but I still like or don't mind. Here are a few of those:

Hinder - "Lips of an Angel"

I always hear people make fun of this song or hate this song for only being only liked by older women and moms. I guess that might be Hinder's fanbase, but I still find this song pretty fun in a cheesy way. The chorus is catchy enough and the music isn't too bad. It's got a fun post-grunge style going for it, really the only bad thing is the pretty lame lyrics, but to me, it's easy to ignore as it's a pretty fun song to just jam to and sing along with.

Nickelback - "How You Remind Me"

Yeah, it's Nickelback, a band that gets enough hate just for existing at this point. This song is too catchy to really hate though. Fun to sing along to and it's got a lot of memorable moments that are burned into my brain. Even after 20 years, it's still good to go back to, not that I do it very often, but it's clearly better than a lot of people want to admit it is. Though this is a good time to bring up the totally random fact that this album came out on September 11, 2001. 

Jason Mraz - "I'm Yours"

I never knew how much hate this song got until I started researching and going through old songs from the 2000s. It's weird because I always thought this was a pretty well-liked song. It's got pretty good music and it's very catchy and just fun. I guess maybe the lyrics can be a bit nonsensical at times and Jason's scatting in the bridge feels a bit too random. Still, that's not enough for me to not like this song. 

Miley Cyrus - "Party In the U.S.A." 

Nah this song is pretty much flawless. Although I do wonder what JAY-Z she was listening to in that cab that made her want to dance. 

Creed - "My Sacrifice"

Nah just kidding, this song sux. 

Alright here's the actual list: THE TOP 10 WORST SONGS OF THE 2000s!

10. Staind - "It's Been A While"

Take the edgy "I'm mad at the world" lyrics of Limp Bizkit and mix them with some of the most boring and generic Post-Grunge music you could make and you get the band Staind. One of the whiniest bands of the 2000s that pretty much never had anything interesting to say. Frontman and songwriter Aaron Lewis never found a way to make his songs any interesting even after trying to change genres into country. Now he's one of those idiots complaining about how America was better in the "good ole days" when we had statues of traitors all over the country. It's probably safe to say that Staind was a big part of the reason this genre fell off before the end of the decade. Dark and depressing with nothing interesting to say is all you get here. 

9. Jason Derulo - "Watcha Say"

I've talked about my hatred for this song a few times on this blog. Safe to say the years have not changed my opinion of it, nor of the artist who made it. It's sad that this isn't even his worst song, but it's still up there in songs I really dislike. From the bizarre choice of sampling one of the saddest songs ever made in "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap and turning it into a pop song to Jason's own messy vocals it's all just very bad. At least Jason has gone on to make a few decent hits in his later years, but this song was the first of many terrible hit songs from Derulo.

8. D4L - "Laffy Taffy"

With one of the laziest music loops in all of the 2000s comes Laffy Taffy by D4L. Crunk was incredibly popular throughout the 2000s and it produced a lot of fun songs by some artists who would become huge mega-stars like Nelly, Lil Jon, and Lil Wayne. That being said, there were plenty of lazy copycats and artists trying to find a hit by making a lazy song in that genre. D4L was one of the artists lucky enough to bag a hit before completely disappearing into the void. It feels like a song that's missing the energy that made the genre so much fun and enjoyable. It kinda has the idea down, with the somewhat catchy chorus, but it lacks any charisma beyond that to really make it any fun. It just feels like it's a crunk song being played in slow-motion, which is the exact opposite of what I look for in this genre. Where's the fun? Where's the energy? 

Jadakiss - "Why"

Admittedly, I don't know much about Jada outside of a few of his more popular songs and features. One song I've always known about and really disliked though is the song "Why". The song is supposed to be asking some tough questions or questions that normal people would be "afraid" to ask. Instead of actually asking real and tough questions about life and the music industry, he ends up going into a lot of weird places that make him come across as not a good person and a bit of an idiot. He does bring up a good point at the start when he asks why the music industry mistreats and takes advantage of its artists. After that, he starts going all over the place by asking dumb and offensive questions that no one cares about. It gets really bad when he calls an alleged rape victim a whore and then throws in some Bush did 9/11 conspiracy theories in there just to really make himself look stupid. Any decent observations he has are just completely overshadowed by those horrible questions amongst some other facepalm-worthy things he throws in there. 

Nickelback - "Rockstar"

I always felt that Nickelback gets way more hate than deserved in the music world. Yeah, their music isn't the best thing out there, but they got some pretty good songs and even some of their hits are really catchy and fun to jam out to now and then. Some songs aren't worth defending though and that's where the song "Rockstar" comes in. The song is a commentary/parody of the old rockstar lifestyle where the big stars would be all about parties, drugs, and living in giant mansions with lots of useless stuff. It felt a bit outdated by the time it came out and the era of the "rockstar" was a lot less relevant by 2005. The commentary they're going for just doesn't really hit, like it doesn't really sound as tongue-in-cheek as I think they wanted it to sound. I guess they wanted to be above all that stuff, but it comes across a bit like they just think they're better than all those guys cause they don't do drugs and live in mansions with tons of cars. The song just doesn't do it for me at all. 

Eamon - "F*ck It (I Don't Want You Back)"

I remembered the song, but there was no way I was remembering this guy's name. Eamon had a career that lasted a month or two before this song got old and he never had anything close to another hit. Honestly, he should've never even had this one hit, cause this song is just crap. Unfortunately, it's just a case of a guy who just doesn't quite have the talent to pull this off. It seems like there's a good reason behind this super bitter and hateful song, that being he caught his lover cheating on him. All that bitterness and pain turned into a mediocre track that couldn't deliver on the pain that he was trying to put on the track thanks to weak production and vocals from Eamon himself. It kind of feels like it relies too heavily on the gimmick that the chorus is basically just dropping F-bombs over and over to become a popular song. Also, the radio version's chorus is kinda hilarious since half the words are censored. Well, he got his 15 minutes of fame, so that's nice. An artist named Frankee later made a song called "F**k you right back" in response to Eamon. She said she was the ex the original song was about, but Eamon said it wasn't her. Still, her song ended up being pretty popular on its own, so that's pretty funny I guess?

Puddle of Mudd - "She Hates Me"

While Eamon had a song that had a decent idea with poor execution, this song here is a terrible idea with awful execution. The juvenile and immature lyrics paired with the boring post-grunge music and Wes Scantlin's painful vocals make for some nightmare material here. Another song that relies on the gimmick of the chorus being full of curse words and being "edgy". I guess if you're under the age of 12 maybe this is edgy? Then you add on the LALALAs and you got yourself a mess of a song with no redeeming qualities. The only reason this song isn't higher on the list is that I expect trash from this band... the next few artists are ones that were fully capable of making better songs and have plenty of good stuff in their catalog.  

Black Eyed Peas - "Imma Be"

The Black Eyed Peas had a solid run in the 2000s where they put out hit after hit. Right before the end of the decade, they put out what became the worst and most annoying song they ever created. "Imma Be" is one of those songs that instantly makes me angry as soon as the song starts. The song basically just repeats the phrase "Imma Be" over and over again until it doesn't even make any more sense. The phrase is repeated over 100 times in this 4-minute song. Despite how insanely annoying this song is, it still somehow became a hit song in 2009. Proof that you don't need to really try that hard to become successful in the music industry once you're a big enough name. It's annoying that even the parts that aren't just repeating "Imma Be" aren't very good either. Some pretty terrible lyrics on top of the annoying repetition really make this one of the worst songs of all time. Nothing makes me sadder than hearing Will.i.am say "Imma be a bank, I'll be loaning out semen". This is an attempt at saying he sleeps with a lot of women, but it sounds more like he's just very into donating sperm. 

Will.i.am would go on to make more terrible songs in the next two decades. Fergie would "sing" the national anthem and the other two guys did stuff too. 

Madonna - "American Life"

Madonna was one of the few artists who had maintained her huge level of popularity and fame through three decades (80s-00s). She's also one of the few artists who had number-one hits in three separate decades as well, with "Music" hitting number-one in the year 2000. Her big follow-up to that huge hit was "American Life" in 2003. Madonna was going in a totally new direction with this single, one that was supposed to be more ambitious and topical. What we actually got was a mess of a song with some of the most confusing production and lyrics that didn't connect with anyone or anything. It's tonally all over the place with whatever message Madonna was trying to say with this song and it even features a terrible rap verse from Madonna. A song and album so bad it's a miracle Madonna was able to recover from it at all. Thankfully she was able to bounce back with her big single "Hung Up", which was a return to form after the mess that was "American Life". 

1. Eminem - "Just Lose It" (With bonus song "Ass Like That")

In the late 90s and early 00s, Eminem was untouchable. It's hard to argue that any rapper had as big of a rise as Eminem did from 1999 to 2002. By the year 2002, he was a mega-star and one of the most famous artists in the world. Starring in his own movie that was well received and dropping one of the most iconic songs of the 2000s, "Lose Yourself", it seemed like Eminem could do no wrong. That was until the year 2004. Encore was the big follow-up to his iconic album "The Eminem Show" and needless to say the world was incredibly excited to hear more. That is until the first single dropped...

"Just Lose It" was an interesting direction for Em to take after his huge serious role in 8-Mile and the also serious "Just Lose It". Here, Eminem returned to his more outrageous and funny side as he wrote a comedy song about... Michael Jackson... with jokes about pedophilia, fart jokes, and lame dad jokes all over the track. The song not only felt like a step backward but multiple steps backward after the great work he had done up to this point. The worst part was that the rest of the album pretty much followed in the same direction with its terrible sense of humor and somehow worse production and beats. 

I also felt the need to include a mention of the song "Ass Like That" here because it's one of the dumbest things ever. Everything about this song is so incredibly lame. Talking about how he gets boners from looking at the Olsen twins (who were barely 18 when this song came out) and Hilary Duff (who actually wasn't even 18 yet). Then he makes jokes about peeing and touching himself in a theatre and it's so incredibly unfunny and lame I honestly can't believe this was the same guy who made songs like "Stan" and "Till I Collapse". It was a new low for Eminem, one that he thankfully never really reached again as an artist, but it's still painful to go back and listen to some of this era of his music.