No one mourns the wicked, but we do take it upon ourselves to eulogize the truly awful every year about this time. Some pop artists seemed to be outrightly trolling to get onto a list like this — you don’t release a song called “Think U the Shit (Fart)” thinking you’re going after a Grammy — while others at least started out with the best intentions. Take “Woman’s World,” which ended up being an anthem of empowerment, as intended … if empowering a global sense of schadenfreude counts.
Sometimes a song doesn’t reach peak wretched until the music video hits. And, yeah, such was the case with Katy Perry’s single, which on its own merely seemed like a kindergartner’s attempt to remake “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves” or “I’m Every Woman.” It took the video to make it clear just how confused everyone involved in the enterprise was, even as it was the audience that got blamed for being mixed up, when we had to be informed that the first half was supposed to be a send-up of sexism, while the second half was honestly woman-glorifying. (For the record, the satirical and sincere parts seemed interchangeable.) Surely this could have been avoided by putting it in front of a focus group? Or was there a focus group that whispered amongst themselves and collectively decided to prank Perry? (It brings no joy to say this, by the way, speaking as somebody who often loves Katy. Sometimes it’s hard to be a Kat.)
One thing we can’t help noticing: Out of the 15 tracks in this worst-of-2024, eight have featured guests or involve collabs, all of them mismatches where the artists just brought out the worst in each other. (And this isn’t even including other match-ups that could just as easily have made our list, like Imagine Dragons and J Balvin’s equally misbegotten “Eyes Closed.”) Remember, kids, in music, the buddy system can result in a bomb even more readily than a boon. —Chris Willman
Katy Perry, ‘Woman’s World’
Was “143” the worst pop record of all time? No, but it failed to live up to the throne-regaining ambitions that Katy Perry envisioned for it. The rollout for “143,” handicapped by reports that Dr. Luke would contribute across all of its tracks, hit a wall with the July release of “Woman’s World,” a faux-feminist anthem about as tone-deaf as calling something “purposeful pop.” Mainstream pop has largely skewed confessional over the past decade, and the glassy remove of “Woman’s World” felt woefully out of step with the times. Not to mention that the lyrical construct is about as creative as singing the ABCs; “Sexy, confident / So intelligent” is a slog of a way to start a song, and it only goes downhill from there. —Steven J. Horowitz
Ice Spice, ‘Think U the Shit (Fart)’
Introducing… Miss Poopie. Maybe, just maybe we could’ve laughed this one off. At the very least, we could’ve forgotten about and remembered it now as a cringy novelty from the year 2024. Unfortunately, and maybe even surprisingly for Ice Spice, most of the world is still not vibing with songs about feces and farts. This is especially disappointing because it was the lead single to Spice’s debut album, “Y2K” – what was supposed to be the climax to momentum that started with a Grammy nomination and a smash hit EP (“Like…?”). We were never expecting earth-shattering lyrical greatness, but even with a song like “Munch,” Spice was far from the flailing and vapid delivery she gives with lines like: “Bitches be quick, but I’m quicker / Bitches be thick, but I’m thicker / She could be rich, but I’m richer.” —Thania Garcia
Nicki Minaj, ‘Big Foot’
Hindsight is 20/20 so it’s no surprise that Nicki Minaj’s “Big Foot” set the tone for such a horribly contentious year. Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hiss” poked Minaj just far enough over the edge – with a now infamous reference to her husband being a sex offender – to light the firestorm that birthed the nearly five-minute crisis manifesto. Megan was the obvious victor, even before “Hiss” became her first No. 1 solo hit, while Minaj was embarrassingly outlandish in her deliveries and threats. Minaj is no stranger to problematic contributions to rap music but this is a hard listen for anyone and appears far from a seasoned pro. There are so many perplexing verses but the most unsettling portion comes at the end when Minaj directs her insults to Megan in ASMR. Why she chose to release an a capella version is beyond us. —Garcia
Jojo Siwa, ‘Karma’
What better way to wash off the Nickelodeon stink than to rip a page from the Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus playbook. JoJo Siwa decided to shed her skin and rebrand as an edgy pop star with her debut single “Karma,” where she establishes upfront that she’s a “bad girl” and “wild child.” But that’s only in theory. On this tepid, 2011-sounding track, Siwa is unconvincing in her good-girl-gone-bad overhaul, with a hook and aesthetic that evoke the lifeless thump of a Chuck E. Cheese jingle. Turns out she was right about one thing: She should’ve known better. —Horowitz
Camila Cabello featuring Playboi Carter, ‘I Luv It’
Cabello’s “I Luv It” is a multilingual single. Camila is singing in English, and Playboi Carter is rapping in… well, eight months later, our greatest linguists are still trying to figure that one out. It’s fun imagining the recording session in which the rapper was dragged into the studio in his pajamas, did some murmuring without ever being woken up, and sleepwalked back to the limo even as the producers said, “Sure, we can do something with that.” At least there’s no trouble translating Camila’s part, which consists almost entirely of repeating the title phrase. Honestly, the production isn’t bad, and the whole track is less terrible than it is just hilarious. But you have to imagine that the folks who laid out big bucks for the music video were hoping for more than a collective “That’s amusing” response and a No. 81 peak on the Hot 100. —Willman
Tom MacDonald featuring Ben Shapiro, ‘Facts’
“MAGA rap” is a subgenre that will never die, as much as a “star” of the genre like MacDonald tries to go out of his way to kill it. The wrestler-turned-wordsmith’s rhymes here start off as an unedited list of right-wing talking points: “There’s only two genders, boys and girls… I’m not ashamed because I’m white… Go woke, go broke, no hope, it’s pathetic.” And then, when he runs out of ultra-conservative cliches and starts repeating himself, he asks the question no one else can or will — “What would Ben do?” — and brings in The Man himself as his wingman. “All my people download this / Let’s get a Billboard number one,” Shapiro says. (That didn’t happen, though the single did peak at No. 16 on the strength of those marching orders.) Shapiro’s “rap” is a thing of wonder: It’s like he’s approximating a crude version of a robotic voice he imagines AI would sound like, when just feeing his voice into actual AI would’ve produced a more lifelike result. —Willman
Ye and Ty Dolla $ign, ‘Carnival’
“Carnival” is easily one of Ye’s more inferior hit singles, and that’s saying a lot. Never mind that its chorus, provided by the Inter Milan Ultras, is the worst kind of drunk chant you’d hear at a soccer game, that type of gross misogyny Ye consistently invokes. On “Carnival,” Ye dials in with crass lyrics — crass even by his standards — that send a shudder through the track: “Anybody pissed off, gotta make ’em drink the urine / Now I’m Ye-Kelly bitch, now I’m Bill Cosby, bitch.” Being an edgelord usually requires some sort of shock value, yet “Carnival” feels artless and, above all, tactless. —Horowitz
Pitbull featuring Jon Bon Jovi, ‘Now or Never’
What was the point of this? If I had to guess, Pitbull remixing Bon Jovi’s overplayed “It’s My Life” was a calculated attempt at expanding his demographic to include white Baby Boomers. In a convoluted way, it could’ve also been both artists’ attempts at striking soundbite heaven or TikTok gold. In the end, Pitbull’s lackluster rhyming over the “It’s My Life” chorus for two minutes is really not worth following that initial curiosity you may feel when you see “Pitbull featuring Jon Bon Jovi.” Save your energy and listen to an AI version instead. —Garcia
David Guetta featuring OneRepublic, ‘I Don’t Wanna Wait’
The year 2010 called and it wants its sound back. David Guetta is stuck in the past on his single “I Don’t Wanna Wait” featuring OneRepublic, one of the most generic mainstream pop songs to grace our presence this year. Even the message of the song — “Let’s make tonight the weekend, I don’t want to wait, got no reason not to celebrate,” sings Ryan Tedder — feels like an overt bid to impact Bar Mitzvah playlists, or at least a radio DJ’s Friday night mix. For two artists who have consistently elbowed their way into pop’s good graces, there should be more to a song like this. And yet. —Horowitz
Bailey Zimmerman, ‘New to Country’
The day after November’s CMA Awards telecast, viewers were split on what the highlight of the show was. But there was close-to-universal agreement on the low point: Zimmerman jumping around in his white shorts, doing his best, or worst, to redneck the joint up with “New to Country,” his weirdly defensive new rock ‘n’ roll rabble-rouser. Zimmerman got off to a great start in his country career with a series of sensitive, forlorn ballads, but apparently what he really wants to be known for is being a hypermasculine party animal who’d rather be out boozing it up in the mud with the boys. The song is a heated defense to some sort of accusations most of us are not aware of, maybe because he’s from Illinois, maybe because he didn’t come up playing country music. But while other singers might reflexively name-check Hank or Cash to assert their country bona fides, Zimmerman cites his love of Guns N’ Roses to prove how country he is … which, as an argument, seems counterproductive? Let’s hope this knuckleheadedness is something he just needed to get out of his system, however misguided, and not a total change of direction. —Willman
Julia Fox, ‘Down the Drain’
Not every actor is meant to cross over to music. As if she’d just discovered the Meredith Brooks ’90s hit “Bitch” for the first time and wanted to dumb it down her own electropop remake, Fox sings “I’m a bitch, I’m a girl, I’m a mother, I’m a whore” … and that’s practically all she sings, because this is one minimalist tune. But then there’s the maximalist music video, which begins and ends with Fox transporting her son to school, but otherwise consists of a wild, somewhat incomprehensible ride in which she plays the vengeful dominatrix. The single is probably meant to be more of a teaser for her memoir of the same name than spearhead for a full-on move into music… if so, it can be forgiven as quickly as it’s forgotten. —Willman
Lisa and Rosalía, ‘New Woman’
*Deep breaths.* Individually, Rosalía and Lisa are virtuosos in crafting immersive worlds to amplify their music. Each an exceptional vocalist in her own right, both are masters of curation, bringing unique aesthetics that extend into their production styles. Together, they unfortunately fall short on “New Woman,” a collaboration that sounds great in theory, but fails in practice. Lisa starts on her own, making the statement that she’s set on a new path of edgy experimentation, hence the title of the track. The upbeat tempo comes to a screeching halt at around the one-minute mark, and suddenly a completely new song begins. Rosalía’s entrance feels disjointed, an obvious marker that artists recorded their part separately, and it doesn’t get any better when Lisa picks back up. —Garcia
Jason Derulo & Michael Buble, ‘Spicy Margarita’
If it seems Jason Derulo has released the same song multiple times for the last 10 years, it’s because he has. Derulo frequently relies on samples and “Spicy Margarita” follows that practice, adding an extra thick layer of commercial pop to the melody of Dean Martin’s “Sway,” which Bublé covered on his 2003 self-titled album. Any song that compares a woman you met in Cabo to a spicy margarita is also such a “been there, done that.” There’s really no point to you clicking play on the provided video but it’s there if you want to waste nearly five minutes of your life. —Garcia
Brian Kelley, ‘Kiss My Boots’
If there’s anything worse than a really virulent diss track, it might be a really mild diss track. The rise-and-fall story of Florida Georgia Line reaches its natural end here, as half of the defunct superstar country-pop duo releases a solo single taking a thinly veiled shot at his former partner … and it gets so little notice, it’s like a tree in the forest that no one is around to hear fall. Kelley hasn’t been explicit in saying that this about FGL’s Tyler Hubbard, as opposed to an ex-girlfriend, but the guardedness in his language has made it clear he knows that’s how it will be read. The music video reinforces it by having Kelley hunt a snake in the woods and then, yeah, make boots of it, before a closing shot has a closeup of his “Florida” belt buckle while he carves up a Georgia peach. He could at least have had more vengeful fun if he was really going to go there, but as tea goes, this is some pretty weak sauce. —Willman
Meghan Trainor featuring T-Pain, ‘Been Like This’
Meghan Trainor has high highs and even lower lows in her discography, from the soaring “Let You Be Right” to the bumbling “Mother.” “Been Like This,” the T-Pain-assisted single from her latest record “Timeless,” isn’t offensively awful, but it lacks the depth and soul of the speakeasy music she channels here. A flapper, she isn’t, and “Been Like This” feels like a factory-made paean to 1920s aesthetics, coated in a highly Auto-Tuned sheen. But, to be fair, there’s something to be said about even the most grating Trainor songs: Even if it feels like an AI monstrosity, you have to admit that she has the sincerity to carry it. —Horowitz
