TOP 10 WORST HIT SONGS OF 2025
So here's a blog I didn't think I'd write.
I haven't done a Worst Songs list since 2020 (during my attempted pivot to video), and I thought maybe this would just be an addendum to the Best Songs blog, like a bottom five or something, and I'd call it a day.
Then, out of nowhere, I started writing.
Next thing I knew, I had 1,500 words and a full Top Ten. I've barely written anything all year (by design), so I wasn't sure how I was gonna even do list season (though I knew I'd try). But if this is any indication, I just gotta wait around and something will uncork, because that's what happened. 90 minutes and some research, and here we are.
This list is mostly charting songs, but there's at least one album cut here and not all of these hit the Hot 100. This is just the things that spurred my ire, that turned my tentacles, that rustled my jimmies in a non-playful manor. We're headed for a headache, because here's the list:
10. Gracie Abrams "That's So True"
Not a terrible song by any means, but the chorus is annoying. I don't care who her parents are, I don't begrudge her her success, it's just for some reason "Thinkin' sheeeeee's so cooowoooooooooooool" drives me up a wall. Especially when I heard it three times a shift. (I think it's the vocal inflection, but something I can't define about that line bugs me too.)
9. Benson Boone "Mystical Magical"
Was tempted to give this one a pass, but:
"Moon beam, ice cream
Taking off your blue jeans
Dancing at the movies
Ooh the way you do me!
Mysticaaaal! Hefty Baaag!"
(If you don't know what I'm talking about, be thankful. And don't look up "Drive-By" by Train.)
8. Kayo Dot "Mental Shed"
Hey, wanna get stabbed in the ears by shrill synthesizers and goofy monster vocals with effects on them for eleven minutes? Yeah, me neither.
7. Forrest Frank "Your Way's Better"
(The original capture of this image was, I shit you not, 666 pixels tall.)
Not only does it suck, not only is it whack, it's a firm indicator of the Christian-Industrial Complex beginning to take over the Hot 100. Maybe we should just stop chart watching, 'eh?
Not only does it suck, not only is it whack, it's a firm indicator of the Christian-Industrial Complex beginning to take over the Hot 100. Maybe we should just stop chart watching, 'eh?
6. Jessie Murph "1965"
I know it's tongue-in-cheek. Not the problem. Have you actually listened to what her voice sounds like on this hook? Rusty door hinges have better vocal timbre.
5. Morgan Wallen & Tate McRae "What I Want"
Was gonna put "Love Somebody" in this slot (but lower on the list) because I figured a Morgan Wallen song should be on here, but then I actually heard what Tate McRae sounds like when she sings, and oh God it's bad. The double-whammy of those two things rank it in the bottom five.
4. Bhad Bhabie "Ms. Whitman"
The "Cash Me Outside" girl did a diss track aimed at Travis Barker's daughter over the beat of Kanye West's "Carnival".
I know, I'm shocked it isn't lower too! But that's because:
3. Taylor Swift "Father Figure"
Was gonna put this at #1, but I've since learned that this song is supposed to be about the show Succession and also part of it's from the perspective of the exec who sold her masters to Scooter Braun back in 2017, so I've softened on it slightly.
Still doesn't mean I don't get the ick from hearing what a billionaire's power fantasy sounds like. (Especially someone who's provably a better writer than this.) Why does a billionaire need a power fantasy? What can't you fucking buy? Or have done for you? And to think this is what the fantasy is? Yeah, no. Keep it.
2. The Lumineers "Same Old Song"
I miss 102.1. WLUM (We Love You Milwaukee) signed off for the final time this fall as it was swallowed up by the Christian-Industrial Complex. But Holy shit, when they were playing this fucking song four times a day, I might've wished they were gone. (Smack me with a monkey's paw, I guess.)
"Same Old Song" is the most sad sack, whiny thing I've ever heard. And at a time when giving up isn't a fucking option. The message and the sound (I've always hated The Lumineers, so uphill battle to begin with) were annoying to an atomic degree.
1. Jessie Murph "Blue Strips"
Why would anyone make this the hook of a song? Why would anyone write this? Why would anyone anything ANYTHING in this song?!? What the fucking FUCK?!?
I simultaneously have no words and far too many words for this barbed-wire wrapped in steel wool dunked in industrial grease cutter levels of abrasive pile of confusion.
It's also, in spite of being avant-garde in its arrhythmic delivery, catchy as fuck. It's been in my head for over a week and I cannot articulate the hate I have in my heart for that.
This song should be locked away in a vault because it's weapons grade noxious, and stickier than napalm. And it deserves worst song of the year status.
But it's not the biggest war crime out there:
0. Kanye West "Cousins"
***BIGGEST CONTENT WARNING I CAN POSSIBLY GIVE.***
***SERIOUSLY, IT'S ABOUT TO GET DARK.***
***I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH THAT IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW HOW FUCKED UP A SONG (or the context surrounding it) CAN GET, YOU ARE UNDERESTIMATING IT.***
***CW: Molestation, Naziism, incest, murder, A.I.***
YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
***SERIOUSLY, IT'S ABOUT TO GET DARK.***
***I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH THAT IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW HOW FUCKED UP A SONG (or the context surrounding it) CAN GET, YOU ARE UNDERESTIMATING IT.***
***CW: Molestation, Naziism, incest, murder, A.I.***
YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
Kanye West did a song about how he and his cousin found gay porn when they were kids. They didn't know what they were seeing, probably didn't even know what sex was yet (allegedly, his cousin was 6), so they started re-enacting what they saw.
This apparently messed Kanye up badly as he came to realize later on in life what they had done. West even blamed himself in a post on X for his cousin being in jail on a double-life sentence for murdering a pregnant woman because he said they "wouldn't look at dirty magazines together anymore".
This is a deeply disturbing topic to write a song about. In the right hands, could some small modicum of justice have been done to the subject matter? It's a difficult balancing act. Earlier this year YG released a song about being raped when he was 14 by a woman twice his age, and he handled the subject matter pretty well all things considered, so, maybe? Of course, this being Kanye...
The fact that I had to invent a ranking lower than the bottom of The Worst Song of the Year to accommodate it, you know that's not what happened.
So, first of all: KANYE DIDN'T WRITE THE LYRICS!!! He had Dave Blunts (the lolcow of trap and edgelord to the extreme) write them for him. Then the second half of the song is literally JUST A DAVE BLUNTS SONG WITH THE LYRICS SLIGHTLY CHANGED AND KANYE'S VOICE LAYERED OVER BLUNT'S ORIGINAL RECORDING WITH A.I.
HE COULDN'T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO WRITE OR PERFORM THIS DEEPLY PERSONAL SONG ABOUT SUCH A TRAUM
Oh, stop it.
Even if Kanye (I refuse to call him Ye, because it divorces this new shit persona from his "good" work in the past. No. This is the same man. We cannot be made to forget. It is important we don't.). Even if it was a cathartic experience to get this off of his chest, he still released it commercially. He sold out this dark part of himself, admitted to molesting a family member for a number of years (he said he did it until he was 14), all for the bounty of hitting #21 on the New Zealand Rap Chart.
Not the New Zealand Chart. The New Zealand Rap Chart. (According to Wikipedia, it didn't chart anywhere else.)
I also have to wonder: Kanye West has writing and production credits on this song, but there are also two other credited producers and one other credited beat maker. Did Kanye write any of the music? He already didn't even perform part (or maybe all?) of the song, so did he even make the beat or produce this thing? Did he do any of it at all?
In the video "The 10 Worst Rap Songs Of 2025" by CDTVProductions (which is the only place I've heard clips of this abomination), Dave Blunts has a reference track of the first verse, which he could've easily just slapped Kanye.I. onto and called it a day. You can't trust any of this process.
Except the quality. Which is the worst sounding thing West has ever done.
Oh, and the cover art is a swan having penetrative sex with a woman.
It was Adolph Hitler's favorite painting.
Y'know, bt-dubs.
I normally wouldn't have said anything; Kanye's been washed for over a decade now, and he's been irredeemable since 2018. But I never thought that it could get this much lower than it already had. Hitler and him deserve each other in hell.
This is a deeply disturbing topic to write a song about. In the right hands, could some small modicum of justice have been done to the subject matter? It's a difficult balancing act. Earlier this year YG released a song about being raped when he was 14 by a woman twice his age, and he handled the subject matter pretty well all things considered, so, maybe? Of course, this being Kanye...
The fact that I had to invent a ranking lower than the bottom of The Worst Song of the Year to accommodate it, you know that's not what happened.
So, first of all: KANYE DIDN'T WRITE THE LYRICS!!! He had Dave Blunts (the lolcow of trap and edgelord to the extreme) write them for him. Then the second half of the song is literally JUST A DAVE BLUNTS SONG WITH THE LYRICS SLIGHTLY CHANGED AND KANYE'S VOICE LAYERED OVER BLUNT'S ORIGINAL RECORDING WITH A.I.
HE COULDN'T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO WRITE OR PERFORM THIS DEEPLY PERSONAL SONG ABOUT SUCH A TRAUM
Oh, stop it.
Even if Kanye (I refuse to call him Ye, because it divorces this new shit persona from his "good" work in the past. No. This is the same man. We cannot be made to forget. It is important we don't.). Even if it was a cathartic experience to get this off of his chest, he still released it commercially. He sold out this dark part of himself, admitted to molesting a family member for a number of years (he said he did it until he was 14), all for the bounty of hitting #21 on the New Zealand Rap Chart.
Not the New Zealand Chart. The New Zealand Rap Chart. (According to Wikipedia, it didn't chart anywhere else.)
I also have to wonder: Kanye West has writing and production credits on this song, but there are also two other credited producers and one other credited beat maker. Did Kanye write any of the music? He already didn't even perform part (or maybe all?) of the song, so did he even make the beat or produce this thing? Did he do any of it at all?
In the video "The 10 Worst Rap Songs Of 2025" by CDTVProductions (which is the only place I've heard clips of this abomination), Dave Blunts has a reference track of the first verse, which he could've easily just slapped Kanye.I. onto and called it a day. You can't trust any of this process.
Except the quality. Which is the worst sounding thing West has ever done.
Oh, and the cover art is a swan having penetrative sex with a woman.
It was Adolph Hitler's favorite painting.
Y'know, bt-dubs.
I normally wouldn't have said anything; Kanye's been washed for over a decade now, and he's been irredeemable since 2018. But I never thought that it could get this much lower than it already had. Hitler and him deserve each other in hell.
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