Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2005

…2005…

…Yeah, there’s a reason this is regarded as one of the worst years in pop music history. In fact, there are a number of reasons this is regarded as one of the worst years in pop music history, and almost none of them are groundless. Whatever negative elements may have been lurking under the surface in music in the 2000s up until this point came right to the surface this year, with multiple songs regarded as some of the worst in their genre either being released this year or becoming hits this year. When I talked about how bad the music was from 2001, I’m guessing most of the worst songs I ended up covering on that list were things people probably didn’t remember or think too much about since they disappeared from the charts. People remember the crap from this year though, and yes, we’re going to be going through quite a bit of it now.

To be perfectly honest, I was actually really hoping to get to this year at some point. After having heard from others how terrible the music from this year was, I had a feeling that it would give me plenty of material to work with. I realize others have covered this year before me, so I’ll likely need to make sure I don’t just mime what has already been said about certain songs that people will undoubtedly recognize. Still, while most of the worst hits from this year were things people would likely already be familiar with, and already recognize why they suck, there were still a few surprises here and there that I’m kind of shocked haven’t reached the same level of infamy.

But enough chattering for now; I’m sure you’re all waiting for me to tear into these stinkers and expose them for the mindless crap they are. And my friends, don’t fret; I shall, starting with our dishonorable mentions:

Candy Shop (50 Cent ft. Olivia) [8; 1; 20 weeks]

Wow, we really have stumbled into the candy shop, haven’t we? And by ‘candy,’ I am, of course, referring to the various elements in this song that make it not work. A rapper who thinks it’s the hot new thing to sound bored while he’s rapping? Check. Production that’s completely devoid of fun despite the fact that it’s supposed to be a party track? Check. Using candy as a metaphor for sex? Check. The main reason this didn’t place on the list is because it’s just too generic. It’s definitely bad, but not bad to the point that it’s worth talking about at length. It’s just a nothing of a song that doesn’t justify its own existence. Next!

There It Go! (The Whistle Song) (Juelz Santana) [--; 10; 9 weeks]

Ugh. And I was annoyed by that Flo Rida song that tried and failed to make whistling seem sexy. Here’s a song that tries to use whistling as the backbone of its melody, and failing at it miserably. And it’s not like this Juelz Santana guy does anything to make up for that particularly fatal shortcoming. Ultimately though, it’s just not memorable enough to be even worth hating, let alone putting on the list.

B.Y.O.B. (System of a Down) [--; 27; 2 weeks]

Yes! Yes, that’s right, I just listed System of a Down’s only hit song to date as a dishonorable mention on the worst list! Why? Because it sounds like audio fecal matter, that’s why! I don’t have anything against metal, but holy crap does this just sound terrible. The guitar work’s monotonous and uninteresting, the lyrics sound like they wouldn’t have made it past an editing desk, and probably most importantly of all, Daron Malakian can’t sing, at least not on this song he can’t. God, am I glad that symphonic metal came along and washed garbage like this down the urinal.

Wake Up (Hilary Duff) [--; 29; 2 weeks]

Fun fact: this was Hilary Duff’s highest charting hit single at the time. And as of writing this review, it’s also her second highest charting single to date. And wow, does this song sound like it needed a few more rewrites. The vocals sound like Hilary didn’t warm up her vocals at all, as they’re terribly off key, especially during the chorus. Maybe if the lyrics had been better, that might have saved the song from mediocrity, but they flip between being redundant and unimaginative. The music’s passable enough, and I could imagine people dancing to this, if they were drunk enough to disregard everything else, but ultimately, I feel like this song is just a complete train wreck. Then again, I guess it was too much to expect anything deep or meaningful to come from Miss ‘If the Light Is Off Then It Isn’t On.’

Badd (The Ying Yang Twins ft. Mike Jones & Mr. Collipark) [--; 29; 7 weeks]

Yeah, expect to be seeing a lot of bad hip hop on this list. 2005 was not kind to hip hop and rap music. There’s a whole lot of stupid that needs to be waded through before you find anything of quality. Take this, for example. Pretty much the entire reason this song was considered for the list was because of one really stupid Looney Tunes quote that the artists apparently thought was such a zinger they decided to repeat it. Though, considering they take up most of their lyrics with lines objectifying women and talking about this one that apparently smokes weed and does ecstasy, and glorifying her for it, I guess I shouldn’t have really expected any kind of high-brow think pieces from the likes of these guys.

Goin’ Crazy (Natalie) [70; 13; 12 weeks]

I don’t really have much to say about this one. The singer sounds a special kind of bored, almost like she doesn’t care, the music legitimately is boring and the lyrics do nothing to convey that the singer put any effort into them. Was this seriously a thing back in the day? Was it really a big thing for artists to sound bored on their songs? I really hope we don’t see more artists doing this in the future.

Laffy Taffy (D4L) [--; 2; 10 weeks]

Well, I guess I’ll need to give these guys some credit; they took the ‘sex is candy’ metaphor and actually did stuff with it. That doesn’t make the song good by any stretch, but it at least shows that they put some semblance of effort into writing it. If only the same could be said of their performances, where their flow is so bad that half the time they sound like they’re whining. It reminds me of a little kid whining to his mom to buy candy for him in a candy store. So in that regard, I guess this song captures the idea of a candy shop better than the song actually called ‘Candy Shop’ did at least. Well, there goes any chance of me wanting to have candy anytime soon.

Errtime (Nelly ft. Jung Tru & King Jacob) [--; 24; 3 weeks]

Ah yes, rap songs that seem to think it’s cool to talk down to their audience. That’s not old or cliché as hell at this point. I really wish rappers would remember that the journey to becoming famous is a lot more interesting than the fame itself and, you know, that modern rap music wasn’t populated by guys that have no talent or charisma. Whatever. Next!

More Than Words (Frankie J) [--; 25; 6 weeks]

…Someone did a cover of ‘More Than Words’ this year.

…Someone did a cover of ‘More Than Words’ this year!

…The only reason this song didn’t make the list proper is because, if I had included it, the entire entry would just be me repeating that line over and over again, with each repetition growing steadily more infuriated. Not to mention there really isn’t much more that I can say about the song that I didn’t already say back on my ‘worst of ‘91’ list. The only difference this song has is that it cuts out the second iteration of the chorus, which doesn’t really change the song at all; it’s still pretty much the same song, just with a more 2000s-y pop sound. Yeah, that totally justifies remaking what was already an awful song, doesn’t it?

And with that, we’re going down, down in an earlier round, and sugar, we’re going down swinging. We’re counting down…

…THE TOP 10 WORST HIT SONGS OF 2005!

            #10.

            I admit, I’ve never really gotten the hate everyone seems to have for Nickelback. Yeah, they’re not exactly the prettiest sounding band. Yeah, Chad Kroeger’s vocals can definitely grate on my ears at times. Yeah, their music tended to all be very samey-sounding, but I don’t feel like these things alone were really enough to justify me fully hating them. I guess part of it comes from the fact that, when I was growing up as a kid, my younger sister would always listen to them, and play it so that everyone in the house could hear it, so I grew accustomed to hearing it. That might have caused me to develop something of a tolerance for their music back in the day that I still have to some degree even now.

            But then a friend of mine played me the song ‘Something In Your Mouth’ off of their Dark Horse album, and I got it. Boy, did I get it.

#10. Photograph (Nickelback) [43; 2; 14 weeks]

            See, there are many things I can live with. I can live with a band that is incredibly one note and makes music that all sounds exactly the same. I can live with an artist having really grating vocals that sound like he’s rubbing his voice against a sheet of sandpaper. I can even live with an artist copying the formulas of other artists just for the sake of getting people to buy their album only for them to shelf it and never pull it out to listen to all the way through ever again. That doesn’t necessarily mean I like any of those things I just listed, but I can deal with them because I’ve become cynical and don’t really care that much about those things.

            However, I do still need to draw the line somewhere. And there is one big way in which ‘Photograph’ by Nickelback fails at what it’s trying to accomplish, and really this is the same problem prevalent in pretty much every Nickelback song: Nickelback try to tell a story, but they don’t put forth the effort to make the audience care about the story they’re trying to tell. Let’s ignore for the moment that, if I’m listening to this song on the radio, Chad Kroeger’s descriptions of the photographs he’s trying to present can’t convey anything to me. If Nickelback don’t care about the story they’re presenting, then why should I, the listener they’re trying to tell the story to, care about it?

            “Now hang on a moment,” some of you…like, I don’t know, maybe the handful of Nickelback fans out there are probably arguing right now, “What makes you say that Nickelback don’t care about their own story? They’re putting forth enough effort that they’re trying to be descriptive of what they’re trying to show you, aren’t they? They’re trying to create imagery of what they’re trying to show to you through their choice of lyrics. That should mean they care, shouldn’t it?” Here’s the thing though: their lyrical choices for this song aren’t very good. Not a single lyric in this song sounds like something someone would say in casual conversation. Even the first four lines sound like something being said by someone trying and failing at imitating real life rather than something someone would actually say in real life:

Look at this photograph

Every time I do it makes me laugh

How’d our eyes get so red?

And what the hell is on Joey’s head?

Again, ignore the fact that, since this is a song being played on the radio without any visual cues whatsoever, we can’t see the photograph Chad is trying to show us. First of all who says ‘Look at this photograph’ when trying to show someone a picture? And who wonders why their eyes are red in a photograph? Pretty much everyone knows that happens when a camera flashes as it’s taking a picture. And even if we could see the photograph, how would we know what the hell is on Joey’s head? I’m assuming you were present, considering you said ‘our’ in the previous line, so wouldn’t you know that better than us, Chad? 

            It’s songs like this that are the reason people don’t, and have never taken Nickelback seriously as a band except to talk about how they reflect everything wrong with rock music today. Admittedly, I’m still not sure if I entirely believe that to be true, but I believe it a little more after having heard this. The sad part is that, regardless of what other people have said about this, it’s still not the worst song they’ve released. The band that writes up songs depicting the narrator as a creeping, obsessive stalker and tries to pass them off as romantic love songs is capable of much worse, I assure you. Here’s a photograph I think that, as a society, we collectively need to tear to pieces, douse in lighter fluid and burn in the backyard so we never have to look back on it ever again.

#9.

I talked about a number of crappy cover songs when I discussed the worst hit songs of 1969. I stand by my decision to place those songs on that list. However, I will state that at no point did I ever feel like any of the shitty covers being performed were necessarily bad because of the artists performing them, not entirely anyway. On the one hand, ‘You Showed Me’ and ‘Worst That Could Happen’ were just covers of songs that were already fairly bad to begin with. No one could have salvaged those songs. On the other hand, things like Aretha Franklin’s version of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and Wilson Pickett’s version of ‘Hey Jude’ were bad more because the artists were trying to cover songs that were outside of their wheelhouses. The artists themselves weren’t bad by any means; they were just not the right choices for those songs.

However, this cover song I pin entirely on the artist in question. While I would be willing to hear defenses for the artists I listed back then as not being as bad as those covers would imply, this next artist is most certainly bad for all the reasons made clear in this cover.

#9. These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ (Jessica Simpson) [--; 14; 5 weeks]

On September 28, 1999, Jessica Simpson released her debut single, ‘I Wanna Love You Forever,’ which ended up being a top 10 hit single. And honestly, I can kind of understand why it was as big as it was. The song played to her strengths well, and she didn’t seem like she was trying too hard. Furthermore, it stood out compared to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera’s music because rather than singing about wanting sex, it was a song about love, something a bit more long lasting and real. All things considered, it was a reasonable enough song. However, none of her other singles off of that album were as successful, so her handlers decided to drop all pretense of her being an interesting artist in her own right and just have her copy the formulas of the other blond pop princesses. By the time of the release of her first single off of her second album, ‘Irresistible,’ whatever positive qualities she possessed were quickly tossed by the wayside in favor of her trying to copy the styles of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. And once that was done, there really wasn’t anything new or unique anymore that Jessica Simpson had to offer to the table, so I have no idea how she managed to have several more chart successes after that, though none of them nearly as big as ‘I Wanna Love You Forever’ was.

To be fair, I will say that all this does give this song one thing going for it: it is stylistically different from anything Jessica Simpson had released up until that point. However, that isn’t nearly enough to save it. The song tries way too hard to present a country-themed atmosphere, Jessica’s vocals are breathier than ever, and she completely changed the lyrics to make it a lot more explicit than the original suggested. Simpson’s version even includes an embarrassing spoken word bridge near the end of the song that makes me cringe every time I hear it, and is performed twice. It’s something I wouldn’t even expect country music fans to enjoy. Oh, and I should also mention that Jessica Simpson cannot hold a candle to Nancy Sinatra, the artist that originally performed this song. Where the original was empowering and confident, this version is trying way too hard to be sexy but mostly just leaves me feeling depressed. It’s like the distaff counterpart to bro country, and I mean that in all the worst ways.

I guess it only makes sense that this would be around the time that Jessica Simpson’s music career would fail to see much further success after this point. She managed one more hit after this, but after that whatever momentum she might have had up to that point came to a screeching halt. Kind of wish it would’ve happened before she had the chance to inflict this upon the world, but whatever. Sadly though, she has yet to give up on music, and announced that she was working on her eighth studio album back in March of 2015. Let’s hope she sees about as much chart success with that as she’s seen recently. No, Jessica Simpson, I won’t give you a handclap. Nor will I give you a ‘Suey!’ or a ‘Yee-haw!’ However, I would be more than happy to give you a nice, gigantic thumbs down and a rousing chorus of ‘Boo’s.

#8.

Up until around 2004, Green Day didn’t manage to actually place any songs on the Billboard Hot 100. Oh, they still had plenty of success, don’t get me wrong, but while they had a lot of songs chart on the US Alternative charts, they just couldn’t seem to get any crossover successes throughout the ‘90s, or even the early 2000s. However, with 2004 and 2005, they finally managed, not one, not two, but three top 20 hit singles on the Hot 100 with their American Idiot album, making it the most successful album of their careers, seven studio albums into their tenure. Now, I was big into the singles off of that album at the time, as were some of my older sister’s friends, who ended up being the closest I had to my own friends around this time. We listened to the singles off of this album fairly frequently, not just on the radio, but because one of my friends had their American Idiot album and would listen to it constantly, along with Seether and a compilation of various DDR songs. My older sister’s friends had some eclectic tastes back then.

Anyway, back to the subject of Green Day, I can definitely remember being pretty fond of the songs I heard off of American Idiot: the title track, ‘Holiday,’ ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends.’ I guess I could consider myself a fan of Green Day at the time, or at least of the music of theirs I was getting exposed to. But that’s the thing about nostalgia: you look back on the things you remembered fondly years later and realize only after the fact that the things you used to like don’t hold up nearly as well as you remember.

#8. Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Green Day) [7; 2; 29 weeks]

Let me reiterate: I used to like this band! Hell, I used to like this song! Unfortunately, that just says some really depressing things about what my musical tastes were like back when I was at the end of middle school and the beginning of high school. In addition to Simon and Garfunkel, They Might Be Giants and Coldplay, I was also jamming to probably one of the most unjustifiably emo songs I can recall in recent memory. I actually wanted to learn how to play this song on the guitar at one point. Granted, I didn’t end up sticking with the guitar long enough to actually learn to play the thing, so I guess I can at least take comfort in the fact that I didn’t end up becoming that guy at parties that tries to impress people with my awful guitar playing. You know the kind of guy I’m talking about.

Now, I’ll be fair here: just because a song is ‘emo,’ that by itself doesn’t automatically make it bad. Often times, however, it does tend to be a recurring theme in songs that are bad, particularly those from the 2000s. Nickelback and Simple Plan, for example, are perfect showcases of how emo music is done wrong. And unfortunately, I can’t think of a better comparison for this song; it takes the worst elements of both Nickelback and Simple Plan and combines them, giving us an ugly, sludgy song that has all the emotional tension of a teenager whining about how much his life sucks because he can’t have his way. Seriously, listening to the lyrics to this sound like they’re coming from someone trying desperately to sound edgy and hip even though he’s the lamest kid in his class. I guess they’re trying to resemble someone going through depression, but even if they are, the emotions being conveyed here don’t come across as depressed or struggling with functioning in every day life; they just sound whiny.

I recognize that there are people out there that aren’t really big fans of Green Day, and going through their discography, I can kind of understand why: they make themselves really easy to dislike. Their subject matters tend to be pandering to some of the most obnoxious qualities of the teenage crowd, their music tends to be either sludgy or lazy, with ‘Basket Case’ being referred to by at least two different groups as being one of the quintessential ‘Four Chords of Pop’ songs, and Billie Joe Armstrong’s vocals are always nasal to the point that he sounds like he has a stuffy nose and has to breathe through his mouth. In some instances, his vocals make it sound like he’s singing complete gibberish! That said, I don’t think all of their material is bad necessarily; they are capable of making at least interesting songs. In fact, ‘Holiday,’ the song they released as a single right after this one, is a much more compelling song that actually feels like it has something meaningful to say and, you know, the song doesn’t sound like ass. This, on the other hand, just feels juvenile and whiny, and I just can’t get behind it. This is one boulevard I would personally choose to avoid travelling down again.

#7.

I think it’s kind of funny that, despite how many of these lists I’ve released, I’ve yet to talk about one of the most despised genres known in the modern era: the ‘white guy with acoustic guitar’ song genre. For those not in the know, this is basically exactly what it sounds like: a song played by a white guy where the instrumentation is basically just an acoustic guitar and little else. Some examples of artists that really fall back on this genre are the likes of John Mayer and, since around 2008, Jason Mraz. Part of the reason most people seem to hate the genre is that it tends to lend itself to some of the broiest people in music, the guys that just come across as college frat bro douche bags. Others hate it just because it’s seen as the most rudimentary style of music; if someone has a song but doesn’t have any ideas for how to play it, this is the genre they’d fall back on. I actually have another reason for disliking the genre: the worst in the genre tend to try and pass themselves off as infuriatingly pretentious without justification for it. This is just part of the reason why I hate the song ‘More Than Words’ by Extreme to the degree I hate it.

So I guess it should come as no surprise to anyone that one of the songs from this genre made it on this list.

#7. True (Ryan Cabrera) [90; 18; 11 weeks]

It was kind of a toss up between this song and ‘Daughters’ by John Mayer for this spot. Ultimately though, while ‘Daughters’ was a sleazy song, I felt like this one was a lot more insufferable, and that can be traced to one thing: I cannot stand Ryan Cabrera’s voice on this song. That willowy falsetto voice on the chorus just pisses me off to no end. Say what you will about ‘Daughters;’ at least John Mayer kept his voice within his normal singing range. The brief snippets of falsetto singing on this song, however, push it well beyond believability for me; there’s about as much truth in this song as there is cheese in Cheese Wiz.

There really isn’t much else to say about the song, really. The music’s terribly uninspired, the lyrics are a smorgasbord of insincere love song clichés, and Ryan Cabrera himself has no personality. Seriously, you could have replaced him with any other teen idol John Mayer knockoff and nothing about this song would change. This is beyond bland; plain Quaker oatmeal has more flavor than this song. Rice cakes have more flavor than this song. I guess it should also come as a surprise to no one that Ryan Cabrera didn’t see any further chart success after this year. Considering this was his second and to date final hit song, I don’t see how anyone would have come flocking back to this tool after that. Go back to your college dorm room Cabrera, and take your reedy falsetto voice with you!

#6.

2005 was not a good year for the Black Eyed Peas. Actually, I take that back; 2005 was a very good year for the Black Eyed Peas. After the success of their third studio album, ‘Elephunk’ back in 2003, 2005 saw them release their even more successful fourth studio album, ‘Monkey Business,’ which went 4x platinum, and spawned four hit singles, three of which charted in 2005. It’s a bit of a shame that all three singles in question were just not all that good. It may have been a good year for the Black Eyed Peas, but it certainly wasn’t a good year for Black Eyed Peas fans, who had to endure all three of these songs throughout the year.

‘Don’t Phunk With My Heart’ probably fairs the strongest between the three songs, with decent production and a catchy hook, but even then Fergie pretty much steals the spotlight from the other Peas, save possibly for will.i.am, who gets two verses, over Taboo’s one verse and apl.de.ap not even getting a verse at all. The album’s second single, ‘Don’t Lie,’ was quite a bit weaker, with the song somehow having an even less compelling subject matter and far stupider lyrics. However, despite this, it still had decent production, apl.de.ap and Taboo actually got to do more on the song and the chorus is still catchy as hell. And that brings us to the third single off of that album, and by far the worst:

#6. My Humps (The Black Eyed Peas) [32; 3; 18 weeks]

I don’t think I’m going to shock anyone by saying this song is the musical equivalent of water boarding. There are absolutely no redeeming qualities to this song, none at all. There are a number of reasons for this, and I’ll be getting to them soon, but I just thought I’d start by saying that, the first few times I heard snippets of this song, I didn’t actually mind it all that much. I didn’t even care all that much about it. It just didn’t sound interesting enough to be worth getting angry at. But then I came back to it years later and came to the realization that I completely, utterly hated it.

Let’s start by talking about the music, if you’re in a lenient enough mood to refer to it as such. Considering that it’s now been over a decade since the song’s release and will.i.am has since made even worse songs since this one somehow, I can’t really label this as his worst production. However, I would say it’s still pretty bad, especially given the fact that, at this point, the music he made was, for the most part, pretty good. For God’s sake, the last two singles the Black Eyed Peas released were pretty much redeemed entirely because of their production. This, however, this is just awful. It doesn’t carry a melody, it clashes with the vocals and even if you could dance to it, why would you want to?

And then there’s Fergie. She has a decent singing voice, and is capable of producing beautiful vocals, but her performance here is just awful. She sounds like an obnoxious brat trying to out-annoy Cartmen from ‘South Park’. In fact, I can’t understand why they decided to have her dominate the song vocally and lyrically if this was the performance she was going to hand in. Then again, with production like what she was given, I guess it's not like actually trying to sing would’ve been enough to save it. Honestly, I think that may be the worst part of the song: the fact that all of the elements are set up in a way that none of them could have been redeemed. Though, at the very least they could have tried; this, just like the last two singles they released prior to this, feels like they were just trying to cash in on the rising popularity of Fergie. I guess that’s why only half the group even gets to perform on this song.

The lyrics aren’t even worth mention, but because I’d like to believe I’m a fair person, I’ll address them. Basically, they’re about Fergie bragging about guys being attracted to her body, buying her things and doing nice things for her because she’s hot. Considering my tastes, I can’t really say for sure if I agree with her opinion about her looks, but while I could believe that people are stupid enough to go out and do those kinds of things just because they think someone is hot, why should we care? Okay, guys think Fergie is hot. What am I supposed to do with that? I guess I can get what studio executives were able to get out of it, but as a casual listener, who has never met Fergie before in my life, who likely never will meet Fergie ever, what do I gain from this information? The song itself isn’t even hot to listen to; it’s just another example of a song mistaking being sexual for being sexy. And even if Fergie’s sections were hot to listen to, will.i.am’s most certainly aren’t.

Not too long after this song’s release, the Peas would end up going on their first hiatus. I can’t speculate why, but I’d like to imagine it was because of the amount of backlash this song received, with people mocking it and John Bush of AllMusic describing it as “one of the most embarrassing rap performances of the new millennium.” If only they drew the line there in terms of embarrassment, because as bad as ‘My Humps’ was, the quality of the Black Eyed Peas’s work only went downhill from there. I guess Fergie was right about one thing: her “lovely lady lumps” really do make me want to scream.

#5.

As it happens, the Black Eyed Peas weren’t the only act that started out good but just went to shit by 2005. If you want a good example of an artist pissing away whatever possible quality and talent she had in her music, look no further than Gwen Stefani. I honestly can’t say that I can think of a single song from Gwen Stefani’s solo career that was even remotely good. There were plenty of tolerable songs that spawned from it, sure, but I can’t think of a single song that I actually liked, and the sheer volume of bad stuff just doesn’t make the venture seem even remotely worth it.

For most people, one of two songs represents the absolute worst of Gwen Stefani’s musical output, those songs being ‘Hollaback Girl’ and ‘Wind It Up’. Honestly though, I can’t say I hate these songs all that much. Don’t get me wrong, both songs suck. However, I just can’t find it in me to really get angry or frustrated with them. The main reason for this is because, at the end of the day, the worst offense that Gwen accomplishes with these songs is embarrassing herself. There are worse things that an artist can do through their music. I mean, it’s not like she’s taking an already established, possibly beloved song from someone’s childhood and defecating it in a grand display of narcissism and self-satisfaction for all the world to see, OH WAIT!

#5. Rich Girl (Gwen Stefani ft. Eve) [31; 7; 19 weeks]

Fun fact: when I was growing up, my mom showed me a film adapted from a musical called ‘Fiddler On the Roof.’ The film kind of went over my head at the time. I mean, of course it did; I was maybe four or five when I first saw it. I do remember being taken to see a musical production of it at some point, and that my family had the soundtrack to the musical that we’d listen to quite a lot. However, while I don’t really look back on this musical with that much fondness, I do remember that I took a liking to some of the songs from it, including this little number called ‘If I Were a Rich Man.’ It was a fun enough tune that I could get behind and worked very well because it was written from the perspective of a poor man wishing he actually had money. And that’s something I feel like a lot of people could get behind nowadays.

And then, in 2004, Gwen Stefani launched the first few singles of her solo career, with this being the second one. It did fairly well, managing to peak in the top 10, and proving that Stefani could actually be successful outside of her work with No Doubt. The only problem is that the song is complete shit. And the reason for this can pretty much all be attributed to her decision to use that sample. Gwen’s justification for using the sample is that the song talks about the dreams she had of fortune and fame from the perspective of ‘when she was just an Orange County girl’. Honestly though, I feel like that excuse holds about as much water as Gwen Stefani actually being blonde. Here’s another fun fact: she’s actually a brunette.

The lyrics to this song sway between mindless hedonism and just plain stupidity, and that’s apparent right in the chorus. “If I was a rich girl?” Gwen, you’re already a rich girl. Even prior to this song’s release you were seeing a lot of success with No Doubt, and even just in the context of this song you don’t paint yourself as being sympathetic in the slightest bit. Tell me, when you were an Orange County girl, did you fantasize about having a team of dancer girls at your beck and call to ‘save you’? I mean, considering you said that was the premise of the song, I’m assuming you did because half the song makes reference to them. And even if you’re willing to be generous and ignore the lyrics, watching the video is more than proof enough that Gwen Stefani did not need to worry about becoming a rich girl. Seriously, the entire video just feels like sitting through some pop starlet’s vanity project, and not even an interesting one.

Let me just make one thing crystal clear: I don’t hate this song because it samples ‘If I Were a Rich Man’. No, I hate it because it took a song that people could sympathize with and that sounded like it was genuinely coming from the perspective of a man that had nothing and wanted more and turned it into some rich diva’s showcase of how much money she has. This desecrates something I wasn’t even that big of a fan of to begin with. And even regarding what it’s trying to accomplish, it still fails because it’s trying to make the audience sympathize with Gwen’s desires for all the riches in the world, but it does so in a way that the audience can’t sympathize with. Say what you will about ‘Hollaback Girl;’ at least that song actually accomplished its goal, that being to present a gigantic middle finger to Gwen’s haters and critics. That doesn’t make ‘Hollaback Girl’ a good song, not by a long margin, but it at least makes it better than this display of debauchery! Whatever. I at least hope that Eve made a decent buck off of this, because she’s pretty much given nothing to do on this song, and that Gwen’s solo career sparks precisely no further success, because if this is any indication, she definitely needs to stick with No Doubt if we want anything good to come from her.

#4.

For quite a few people, this next song was the worst hit song of 2005. For me, it only places at #4 on this list.

#4. Some Cut (Trillville ft. Cutty) [49; 14; 17 weeks]

I know this list likely does not make a good case for this statement, but I try to avoid falling back on the obvious choices when putting these lists together. I don’t like having to put songs that people already know are bad on lists like these. That’s not to say I’ll go out of my way to choose something unexpected just for the sake of choosing something unexpected, but for the most part I try to go with what I genuinely think sucks, and often times it’s something I’m not expecting, and not something I feel like a lot of people expect. However, this year there were just a whole bunch of songs that I didn’t like that pretty much no one liked, so finding things that would actually surprise me with how bad or good they were was really difficult.

I actually hadn’t heard of this song prior to looking up other people’s lists for the worst hit songs of this year, and having now heard the song myself, I can definitely see why people consider it terrible, though I’m not sure if I agree with calling it the worst song of the year. However, I do feel like this song is a perfect showcase for everything that was wrong with hip-hop at the time. It was mindless, it lacked subtlety and it just fell back on clichés and uncomfortable word choices. I mean, the chorus has them talking about ‘getting up in them guts’ and ‘cutting it up’. There are strange sexual innuendos, and then there’s this. Are they trying to talk about having sex with the girl in question, or dissecting her corpse once they’re done with her? When they aren’t talking about potentially violent actions they seem to want to make against this girl (digging in her walls/beating down her walls/gut busting/smacking thighs/drill ‘with that ass in the air’/killing her pussy), they seem more interested in trying to brag about showing her how to ‘really bust a nut,’ and in the various sexual acts they would like the girl in question to perform on them, some of which I’m not sure are even possible. I’m not exactly experienced in the whole blowjob thing, but how does one ‘suck dick from behind’? Also, there’s the bizarre ‘Legion of Doom’ line, which I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. Is that really the name these guys want associated with themselves?

Of course, there’s one thing a lot of people point out about this song that seems to really get them annoyed with it: the squeaking bedsprings. That sound effect kicks in all throughout the song, particularly during the chorus and at the start and beginning of the song. Though, even in the segments without the bedsprings, it’s not like the music’s interesting or noteworthy enough to really make up for it. It’s just kind of dull and flacid. I get that it’s meant to be crunk; it’s supposed to sound down and dirty. Even with that though, I don’t get what the music to this song does to make it stand out from the various other down and dirty sex jams that the genre tends to spawn.

In short, yes, this song sucks its own busted, juggled balls. It’s disgusting, it’s unpleasant, it’s boring and, ultimately, it’s superfluous. But as for it being the worst hit song of the year, no. I can’t say that it’s the worst thing to spawn from this year. It’s definitely one of them though.

#3.

So, one thing I noticed about hip-hop this year was that it shared the same problem present in the hip-hop music from 2001: that being that most of it was vapid, mindless sex and party jams. I probably could’ve stood to put more of them on this list, but really they’re pretty forgettable all things considered, and with a few exceptions they don’t really do anything to distinguish themselves from one another. So what does a song need to do to make itself stand out? Well, what else do marketing hacks do to make their product stand out from others of its kind? Find a gimmick.

#3. Wait (The Whisper Song) (The Ying Yang Twins) [63; 15; 14 weeks]

Say what you will about ‘Some Cut;’ at least it was, for the most part, forgettable enough that it didn’t really warrant much of a reaction outside of just general disgust and disinterest. ‘The Whisper Song,’ however, is different, because it is clearly trying to go for a sexy atmosphere, what with the rappers’ attempts at providing smooth, sensual vocals to the song, and also, the minimal instrumentation and soft tone of the whole thing. And guess what? None of it fucking works! I mean, maybe you’d find something like this sexy, if you never heard any R&B or hip-hop music from anywhere prior to the 2000s. But for those of us that were actually exposed to these genres before this year, this is not appealing. If anything, the song’s attempts at presenting this softer tone and the whispered vocals just make the whole thing sound creepy. The rappers’ attempts at sounding sexy just come across as threatening, like they’re saying these lines to some ten-year-old girl they’re keeping locked in their basement, and the seasick beat doesn’t help matters.

The lyrics aren’t really much to talk about either, though I notice that the chorus prominently features the phrase ‘beat the pussy up’ repeatedly. Way to compare sex with violence, you dirt bags! And even ignoring the tone, the rest of the lyrics don’t do anything to make this sound appealing; they just sound clumsy and uncomfortable. This is yet another problem with hip-hop and R&B music nowadays: the belief that just because something is sexual that automatically makes it sexy, and it doesn’t, at all. If anything the sexual statements just sound kind of ridiculous, like the way D-Roc needs to ask for the girl to give him head, or the baseball/sex comparisons made at the end of the final verse. And, of course, there’s also the other line they repeat throughout the song: ‘Wait ‘til you see my dick.’ Yep, just dropping all pretenses, aren’t we? “Foreplay? Romance? Screw all that; let’s just get right to the love-making!”

I get that there’s an audience for crunk music, so there will likely be people that disagree with my distaste towards the genre. However, I’m not sure how the people that are actually into crunk would enjoy this. Isn’t the appeal of the genre supposed to be how down and dirty the whole thing is? I mean, lyrically maybe I could understand what crunk fans would see in it, but musically? I thought that crunk was supposed to be loud, crazy and in-your-face. This is just too soft and controlled to really match that. What is this good for? Nothing. Next!

#2.

Back in 2002, Justin Timberlake launched his solo career, with the strength of the single ‘Cry Me a River’ pretty much securing his success outside of N’Sync. For many people, this song served as the perfect showcase that Justin Timberlake was capable of becoming a star in his own right, and it even helped bolster producer Timbaland’s career. This would be the first of many collaboration singles to continue between the two, some for better, some…not so much.

Honestly though, I can’t stand ‘Cry Me a River’. I know, I’m probably going to be alone in this regard, but hear me out at least. There are two things I cannot stand about this song; the first is Justin’s attitude. Something I noticed is that he tends to have the same attitude on pretty much every song of his solo career: “I’m so awesome.” Let’s just run through some of his songs to prove this. ‘SexyBack’s message can be boiled down to, “I’m bringing sexy back…because I’m so awesome!” ‘Suit & Tie’s message can be boiled down to, “My girl is so sexy…and I’m so awesome!” And in the case of ‘Cry Me a River,’ the message is, “I’m breaking up with you…because I’m so awesome!” That kind of self-indulgence can work on some songs, but on ‘Cry Me a River,’ it’s just insufferable for me. I just want to sock Justin Timberlake across the jaw whenever I hear this song.

The second, and more relevant, thing that bothers me about this song is that it allowed Timbaland to introduce the pop music world to one particular man that pretty much everyone universally dislikes: Scott fucking Storch. He’s technically only a writer on the song, but if you listen to the music, you can definitely see where a lot of his work seemed to get its inspiration. He was responsible for doing production work on some pretty terrible singles throughout the mid-2000s. So I guess it should surprise no one that a sample of his vile handiwork wound up on this list.

#2. Run It! (Chris Brown ft. Juelz Santana) [42; 1 14 weeks]

In all fairness, Scott Storch isn’t entirely to blame for this song being as terrible as it is, though considering how horrible everyone involved with this song is, there’s plenty of blame to go around. This stands out from the other songs Scott Storch produced from this year though, in that it is probably the least interesting. At the very least things like ‘Lean Back’ and ‘Candy Shop’ could make the case that they had that exotic sounding riff to support them. That’s completely absent on this song though, and without it the song’s little more than just mindless, generic, uninspired club music. It’s been described as a less crunk-y version of the Usher song ‘Yeah!’ and I guess I can see the similarities. So yeah, this is basically like Usher’s ‘Yeah!’ if it was lobotomized and had its balls cut off.

But let’s take a step away from the production and focus our attention on the real ‘star’ of the show: one God awful, waste of human existence that people call Chris Brown. Believe it or not, I actually hadn’t heard about the incident between him and Rihanna until about a year after the fact. I didn’t really pay attention to either artist prior to that point, but from what I’ve heard and read about him, Chris Brown really is as terrible as people have been saying he is. It’s not even just that he’s a complete scumbag; Michael Jackson was accused of terrible things also, yet people still love him because he made good music. It’s that, in addition to also being a mediocre artist at best, his awfulness tends to bleed over into his music, so you can’t even enjoy it on its own merits. Granted, this song came out years before all that, right when Chris Brown was a pretty new name. But honestly, I can’t see how this song would’ve held up even back then. Chris Brown was sixteen years old when this came out, and boy does it sound like it. The guy sounds completely insecure of himself on this track. Even his singing is too breathy to make out, to the point that some words aren’t even annunciated correctly. What made studio hacks think this guy’s whimpering, dog whine of a voice was something people would want to listen to?

And lastly, there’s the rapper on the track, Juelz Santana. The guy’s not even worth mention; he’s got so little charisma you could’ve replaced him with a cardboard box and nothing about this song would’ve changed. The two contributions the guy makes to this song are awkward, lame references to other songs, including ‘Wait (The Whisper Song),’ which I covered above, and pathetic, lifeless lines that sound like they were written the day of recording. Seriously, one of the lines in his intro goes, “One of them brand new big boy toys/I do big boy things/I make big boy noise”. That’s the kind of line even a fifth grader would groan at. I was willing to give ‘There It Go! (The Whistle Song)’ some leniency because it wasn’t really memorable enough to be worth hating, but his performance here is somehow even worse than that.

I honestly don’t understand what there is about this song that people actually liked. And yet, despite being Chris Brown’s debut hit single, it went all the way to #1 on Billboard. Yeah, this year gave us big mainstream success for the likes of the Gorillaz, the Killers, John Legend, and yet it’s Chris Brown that makes it to the top of the pop charts? And now you know one of the many reasons why I’ve become so cynical about the world today. If there’s any consolation to come from this, it’s that Chris Brown seems to be providing no end to the amount of humiliation he inflicts on himself to the amusement of his haters. Thank you for that Chris Brown. Now kindly vacate the planet and take all of Team Breezy with you.

#1.

I’d like to believe I’m not one to freak out over controversy. I mean, I realize that I’m not exactly old enough to have sat through every controversial incident to crop up in the pop music world, but I’ve been exposed to Lady Gaga’s shtick, I’ve been exposed to the aftermath of Miley Cyrus’s fairly eventful 2013, I saw Madonna’s ‘Justify My Love,’ I heard about the whole thing with Madonna and Britney Spears making out at the Grammys years ago. I guess what I’m saying is, if you want something to shock me, it has to do more than just be sexual. Hell, as a society I’d like to believe we’ve mostly moved past the point where someone doing something sexual is going to cause an uproar. We’ve been desensitized to that kind of stuff at this point; it’s about as shocking as a casual conversation at the water fountain at the office might be.

So yeah, controversy isn’t something I tend to focus on when talking about music. I’m not even entirely sure if there was any controversy surrounding this song when it came out. However, I feel like, if there hadn’t been any, there should have been because hoo boy, do we have a doozy of a song on our hands, folks. Well, no point delaying any longer; let’s do this.

#1. Your Body (Pretty Ricky) [74; 12; 14 weeks]

I honestly can’t say I can understand what was going through the minds of Pretty Ricky when the group decided to make this song. Honestly, the song itself isn’t even necessarily that bad by itself. Yeah, the lyrics are just more mindless songs about sex, with the chorus continuing the trend of comparing having sex to ‘beating it up,’ but compared to some of the songs we’ve covered up to this point, most of the lyrics to this song are pretty tame all things considered. Musically it’s not even all that bad either; mostly it’s just bland R&B with nothing interesting to be said about it. So, why am I putting it on this list, let alone right at the number one spot? What makes this song so terrible?

Well, while the actual bad lyrics are fairly few, what they lack in quantity they make up for in the magnitude of their awfulness and stupidity. In fact, most of the bad lyrics can be traced to the first verse, performed by rapper Baby Blue. The second line of the song is the first one that jumps out at me, with the line reading, ‘They take me and rape me and make me their victim.’ I have so many questions about that line. For starters, rape generally means that you were forced into having sex against your will. So, does that mean that Baby Blue is being forced into having sex with the girls he’s talking about? If so, why does he seem to be trying to glorify it by bringing it up in a song? And if he was willingly having sex with these girls, then isn’t describing something that isn’t rape as rape just making light of people that actually are victims of rape? Yeah, I’m sure you’re certain to win the ladies over with that one, pal.

Then there’s the ‘Get a taste of this salami/Knock, knock, knock, knock you down like a tsunami’ line. I’m not sure why he thinks it’s sexy to compare his dick to fermented, air-dried meat, but even if you’re willing to give that part of the line a pass, I can’t say I’d be willing to give a pass to the part immediately afterwards. Perhaps I should put this in perspective for those not in the know. On December 26, 2004, a devastating earthquake hit the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. It was the third largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph, reaching a magnitude of 9.1-9.3. This triggered a series of devastating tsunamis along the coasts of most of the landmasses in the Indian Ocean. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history, with approximately 230,000 people killed in fourteen different countries. 230,000 people. And this Baby Blue guy thinks it’s okay to make a casual lyric about knocking the girl he’s singing about down ‘like a tsunami,’ despite the fact that this occurred just shy of half a year before this song was released? Fuck you, Baby Blue! Fuck you with your own fermented, air-dried dick!

I get the feeling most people are going to say I’m not really justified in putting a song this high on the list just for that one line. But I’ve called songs out for stupid lyrical choices before, and have proven time and again that a single line in a song is enough to ruin it for me, and holy crap was that just staggeringly thoughtless. There is no way I’m just going to turn a blind eye to the fact that this guy made light of a terrible catastrophe that resulted in hundreds of thousands of people getting killed. Screw this song and screw Pretty Ricky, yes the entire group. These boys were old enough to know what they were doing when this song was put together. They should have known better than to let this idiot get away with making a lyric like that. This goes beyond just being thoughtless and stupid; this is just insulting. And it is for this reason that it is my pick for the worst hit song of 2005.