Jack Remington
Banned
With 2015 already over for some of you and less than 12 hours away on the U.S. west coast, I thought it would be great to take a retrospective look at the year in music. We already have a Best Albums of the Year thread which is going swimmingly. For this thread I want to take it in the opposite direction. What were the worst songs of 2015 in your opinion?
I'm not doing anything fancy like compiling a tally, so the format isn't particularly important, but something like:
01 | Song Title | Artist | Album Name
would probably be best.
That said, here goes. My nominations for worst songs of 2015 are as follows:
01 | Run Away With Me | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
Carly gets this list started off with a bang. From the beginning we're treated to a terrible synth intro, followed by what sounds like low-rent Spice Girls vocals updated for 2008. The synth melody running through the chorus almost evokes an actually good song like Haim's The Wire. Almost. The beat is "driving" the way an octogenarian grandmother navigating a CVS parking lot in her Pontiac is technically "driving". But not quite. The "bridge" is more embarrassing than something a 2 year old would build out of Legos. The vocal buildup at the end almost evokes something from an actually good artist like Florence & the Machine. But not quite.
02 | Emotion | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
Continuing on, my second-least favorite song of 2015 starts off like a bad Vanessa Carlton cover with the piano replaced by a beat someone put together in the base version of Fruity Loops. This song features some of the most insipid lyrics I've seen outside of a Hot Topic:
Not a flower on the wall
I am growing ten feet, ten feet tall
In your head and I won't stop
Until you forget me, get me not
Outstanding.
03 | I Really Like You | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
Earlier this year I decided to try out the Carly Rae Jepsen station on Spotify and saw that this was the most-played song besides her big hit from a few years ago. I was not expecting to get a poor man's Taylor Swift b-side. I swear people in survival situations have crafted better "hooks" out of those twistie-ties on a bag of hamburger buns.
04 | Gimmie Love | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
When I first heard this song I actually had high hopes. It kind of reminded me of one of those EDM tracks by someone like Calvin Harris that features a female vocalist no one has ever heard of. I tend to like those songs. Then the song proper started. After hearing "Gimmie love gimmie love gimmie love gimmie love gimmie touch..." a few times I was ready to die. Fuck this song.
05 | All That | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
I actually kind of like that 80s keyboard and single note of slap bass in the intro. Then the vocals start.
06 | Boy Problems | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
Is she using auto-tune in this? Either way it's terrible. These lyrics about romantic failures make Taylor Swift seem like a master of subtlety. Terrible, grating melody that's more like fish repellent than a hook.
07 | Making the Most of the Night | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
This song is to good production as that fuck-ugly skyscraper in Pyongyang is to good architecture. Maybe the beat would have sounded better on some good headphones, but I couldn't be assed to plug in my Sennheisers. Not worth it. There might be a good song in here if you re-recorded everything with different background tracks and different vocals.
08 | Your Type | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
I kind of liked the verse. Then the pre-chorus hit, and my mood took a turn for the worse. Then the actual chorus hit. Good Christ. I've seen waiters in French restaurants with decades of experience grating $1000 white truffles less efficiently than this song grates.
09 | Let’s Get Lost | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
This song starts off with a bang. An awful synth melody that sounds like something Jez from Peep Show would have written on an off-day. By the end I was wishing whoever produced this track would get lost and never get found.
10 | LA Hallucinations | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
Christ, the chorus in this song is more embarrassing than getting caught wanking to furry porn. Felt like I was hallucinating from sheer rage by the end. I don't get how I can walk down the 2nd St Promenade in Santa Monica and see artists with actual talent playing their hearts out to get a few dollar bills and loose change for a night's work while songs like this make it onto the radio.
11 | Warm Blood | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
This is another of those songs that starts out interesting and then quickly devolves into utter shit. I was kind of okay with the first verse and even managed to tolerate the first chorus. Then some atrocious modulated vocals came in around 1:16, sounding like a female HAL 9000 getting its memory chips removed. The song never really recovers from there. I may have heard 11 worse songs than this in 2015, but I can only remember 10 of them.
12 | When I Needed You | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
This should really be #1 on my list. Until I heard this song, I firmly believed that Last Christmas by Wham! was the worst song ever conceived. I was so wrong. Everything about this song is just awful. Alvin and the Chipmunks-esque autotuned vocal hooks, bass that sounds like a pre-set on a $100 keyboard from Best Buy, horrific lyrics - this song has it all.
13 | Black Heart | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
This song is really good for the first four seconds when it sounds like a lower-tier Daft Punk beat. Then Jepsen starts singing about loving on a new dimension, and we get some poverty-tier TLC vocal fills, followed by a nonsensical chorus about how you'll find her in your black heart, followed by an end to the chorus that's literally just a vocal warm-up exercise. Fuck this song.
14 | I Didn’t Just Come Here to Dance | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
I had high hopes for this song from the cool title. I love a good dance floor number. This is like the opposite of that. Everything you'd want in a dance song is not done here. This reminds me of a really bad high-school DJ awkwardly playing prom night. The beat is disjointed, and the song has worse flow than the LA River in August.
In its defense, this song probably could be turned into something good by a remix. The vocals aren't prohibitively awful in and of themselves, only awful in the context of the song. With a decent beat and maybe some bass drops, this could actually inspire people to dance. Possibly.
15 | Favourite Color | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
This should really be #2 on the list. Awful processed vocals leading into a terrible chorus that sounds like something you'd hear in the trailer for a Mandy Moore movie in 2002. And she misspells "favorite". Fuck this song.
Those are my nominations. Let's hear yours!
I'm not doing anything fancy like compiling a tally, so the format isn't particularly important, but something like:
01 | Song Title | Artist | Album Name
would probably be best.
That said, here goes. My nominations for worst songs of 2015 are as follows:
01 | Run Away With Me | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
Carly gets this list started off with a bang. From the beginning we're treated to a terrible synth intro, followed by what sounds like low-rent Spice Girls vocals updated for 2008. The synth melody running through the chorus almost evokes an actually good song like Haim's The Wire. Almost. The beat is "driving" the way an octogenarian grandmother navigating a CVS parking lot in her Pontiac is technically "driving". But not quite. The "bridge" is more embarrassing than something a 2 year old would build out of Legos. The vocal buildup at the end almost evokes something from an actually good artist like Florence & the Machine. But not quite.
02 | Emotion | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
Continuing on, my second-least favorite song of 2015 starts off like a bad Vanessa Carlton cover with the piano replaced by a beat someone put together in the base version of Fruity Loops. This song features some of the most insipid lyrics I've seen outside of a Hot Topic:
Not a flower on the wall
I am growing ten feet, ten feet tall
In your head and I won't stop
Until you forget me, get me not
Outstanding.
03 | I Really Like You | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
Earlier this year I decided to try out the Carly Rae Jepsen station on Spotify and saw that this was the most-played song besides her big hit from a few years ago. I was not expecting to get a poor man's Taylor Swift b-side. I swear people in survival situations have crafted better "hooks" out of those twistie-ties on a bag of hamburger buns.
04 | Gimmie Love | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
When I first heard this song I actually had high hopes. It kind of reminded me of one of those EDM tracks by someone like Calvin Harris that features a female vocalist no one has ever heard of. I tend to like those songs. Then the song proper started. After hearing "Gimmie love gimmie love gimmie love gimmie love gimmie touch..." a few times I was ready to die. Fuck this song.
05 | All That | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
I actually kind of like that 80s keyboard and single note of slap bass in the intro. Then the vocals start.
06 | Boy Problems | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
Is she using auto-tune in this? Either way it's terrible. These lyrics about romantic failures make Taylor Swift seem like a master of subtlety. Terrible, grating melody that's more like fish repellent than a hook.
07 | Making the Most of the Night | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
This song is to good production as that fuck-ugly skyscraper in Pyongyang is to good architecture. Maybe the beat would have sounded better on some good headphones, but I couldn't be assed to plug in my Sennheisers. Not worth it. There might be a good song in here if you re-recorded everything with different background tracks and different vocals.
08 | Your Type | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
I kind of liked the verse. Then the pre-chorus hit, and my mood took a turn for the worse. Then the actual chorus hit. Good Christ. I've seen waiters in French restaurants with decades of experience grating $1000 white truffles less efficiently than this song grates.
09 | Let’s Get Lost | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
This song starts off with a bang. An awful synth melody that sounds like something Jez from Peep Show would have written on an off-day. By the end I was wishing whoever produced this track would get lost and never get found.
10 | LA Hallucinations | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
Christ, the chorus in this song is more embarrassing than getting caught wanking to furry porn. Felt like I was hallucinating from sheer rage by the end. I don't get how I can walk down the 2nd St Promenade in Santa Monica and see artists with actual talent playing their hearts out to get a few dollar bills and loose change for a night's work while songs like this make it onto the radio.
11 | Warm Blood | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
This is another of those songs that starts out interesting and then quickly devolves into utter shit. I was kind of okay with the first verse and even managed to tolerate the first chorus. Then some atrocious modulated vocals came in around 1:16, sounding like a female HAL 9000 getting its memory chips removed. The song never really recovers from there. I may have heard 11 worse songs than this in 2015, but I can only remember 10 of them.
12 | When I Needed You | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
This should really be #1 on my list. Until I heard this song, I firmly believed that Last Christmas by Wham! was the worst song ever conceived. I was so wrong. Everything about this song is just awful. Alvin and the Chipmunks-esque autotuned vocal hooks, bass that sounds like a pre-set on a $100 keyboard from Best Buy, horrific lyrics - this song has it all.
13 | Black Heart | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
This song is really good for the first four seconds when it sounds like a lower-tier Daft Punk beat. Then Jepsen starts singing about loving on a new dimension, and we get some poverty-tier TLC vocal fills, followed by a nonsensical chorus about how you'll find her in your black heart, followed by an end to the chorus that's literally just a vocal warm-up exercise. Fuck this song.
14 | I Didn’t Just Come Here to Dance | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
I had high hopes for this song from the cool title. I love a good dance floor number. This is like the opposite of that. Everything you'd want in a dance song is not done here. This reminds me of a really bad high-school DJ awkwardly playing prom night. The beat is disjointed, and the song has worse flow than the LA River in August.
In its defense, this song probably could be turned into something good by a remix. The vocals aren't prohibitively awful in and of themselves, only awful in the context of the song. With a decent beat and maybe some bass drops, this could actually inspire people to dance. Possibly.
15 | Favourite Color | Carly Rae Jepsen | Emotion
This should really be #2 on the list. Awful processed vocals leading into a terrible chorus that sounds like something you'd hear in the trailer for a Mandy Moore movie in 2002. And she misspells "favorite". Fuck this song.
Those are my nominations. Let's hear yours!
