The “Bad” #1 Hits – A Wrap-Up and Farewell (for now)

Our museum of the supposed worst #1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 is complete with 75 entries.  Now it’s time to take a look at a few extra achievements in this field.

Worst Opening Line of a #1 Hit:  Quincy Jones was a genius as a producer, yet he couldn’t talk Michael Jackson out of starting “Bad” with “Your butt is mine.”  The lyric was so awful that it reportedly caused Prince to forgo a proposed collaboration with Michael.  Given the quality of most 1980s superstars duets, this may have been for the best.

Worst Geography Mishap in a #1 Hit:  The English band Paper Lace’s “The Night Chicago Died” tells us of a gun battle that took place on the east side of Chicago – i.e., in Lake Michigan.  They should have asked someone from this side of the Atlantic to review their lyrics.  Even a city boy who was born and raised in South Detroit would have caught this error.

Most Defamatory Verse in a #1 Hit:  In last year’s chart-topper “Carnival”, Kanye West hinted that he had something in common with R. Kelly, Bill Cosby, and P. Diddy.  This was outrageously unfair to those three men, who have done nothing so awful as to merit being likened to Kanye.

Worst Overall Lyric in a #1 Hit:  There are so many candidates for this award that “Marconi plays the mamba” probably doesn’t even make the top fifty.  Ultimately, I must defer to noted bad song expert Dave Barry’s opinion on this matter.  The late Mac Davis wins the trophy for these two lines in “Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me”:

Girl, you’re a hot-blooded woman child
And it’s warm where you’re touchin’ me

Most Pathetic Ballad of Lost Love to Hit #1:  Long before James Blunt and Lewis Capaldi, there was Billy Vera.  In “At This Moment”, Vera practically weeps while begging his woman not to leave him.  ”If you stay I’d subtract 20 years from my life.”  I think she’d be happier if he would just subtract two minutes from the song.

Best Save of an Otherwise Bad #1 Hit by a Featured Guest:  Charli XCX, for “Fancy”.  Does anyone doubt that this track would have been intolerable if Iggy Azalea had handled the whole thing by herself?

Worst Political Statement in a #1 Hit:  Nelly’s “Grillz”, which peaked atop the Hot 100 in 2006, contained a guest rap by Ali & Big Gipp that name-checked the junior senator from New York:  “Got a bill in my mouth like Hillary Rodham.”  This makes Jason Aldean’s social commentary seem almost Dylanesque by comparison.

Worst Song to Hit #1 Twice:  Songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King have the winning composition, and it isn’t a close contest.  “Go Away Little Girl”’s baffling return to #1 in 1971 left everyone asking serious questions about where we went wrong as a species.  The planet was under better stewardship when it was covered by twenty-foot-tall fungus.

Lifetime Achievement Award in the Field of Bad #1s:  New Kids on the Block existed in an era in which lousy #1s were sprouting up like hairs on a hog, yet their three chart-toppers still managed to lower the bar.  As if that wasn’t enough, they helped Tommy Page make it to #1 too.  They deserve a special place of honor in our Hall of Infamy.

Worst-Rated #1s by Decade

These are the #1 hits that Rate Your Music users hate the most.  The overall lowest-rated #1 song of each decade is denoted by an asterisk (*):

Worst #1s by Male Solo Acts

1950s (mid-1958 through 1959) – “Why” by Frankie Avalon
1960s – “The Ballad of the Green Berets” by SSgt. Barry Sadler (*)
1970s – “Go Away Little Girl” by Donny Osmond
1980s – “Rock On” by Michael Damian
1990s – “I’ll Be Your Everything” by Tommy Page (*)
2000s – “This Is the Night” by Clay Aiken (*)
2010s – “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi
2020s (through 2024) – “Try That in a Small Town” by Jason Aldean (*)

Worst #1s by Female Solo Acts

1950s (mid-1958 through 1959) – women were not allowed to have #1 hits without a chaperone
1960s – “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You” by Connie Francis
1970s – “You Light Up My Life” by Debby Boone
1980s – “Wind Beneath My Wings” by Bette Midler
1990s – “Coming Out of the Dark” by Gloria Estefan
2000s – “A Moment Like This” by Kelly Clarkson
2010s – “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor
2020s (through 2024) – “Super Freaky Girl” by Nicki Minaj

Worst #1s by Duos, Groups, and Other Unfortunate Collaborations

1950s (mid-1958 through 1959) – “The Chipmunk Song” by the Chipmunks with David Seville (*)
1960s – “Hey Paula” by Paul & Paula
1970s – “(You’re) Having My Baby” by Paul Anka with Odia Coates (*)
1980s – “I’ll Be Loving You (Forever)” by New Kids on the Block (*)
1990s – “I’m Your Angel” by R. Kelly & Celine Dion
2000s – “Laffy Taffy” by D4L
2010s – “Girls Like You” by Maroon 5 featuring Cardi B (*)
2020s (through 2024) – “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)” by Jawsh 685 x Jason Derulo x BTS

Best-Rated #1s by Decade

Just in case you’re tired of the negativity, I’ll leave you on a more uplifting note.  Here are the #1 singles with the highest Rate Your Music scores:

1950s (mid-1958 through 1959) – “Sleep Walk” by Santo & Johnny
1960s – “Penny Lane” by the Beatles
1970s – “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac
1980s – “When Doves Cry” by Prince
1990s – “Doo Wop (That Thing)” by Lauryn Hill
2000s – Tie:  “Hey Ya!” by OutKast ; “Ms. Jackson” by OutKast
2010s – “Somebody That You Used to Know” by Gotye featuring Kimbra
2020s (through 2024) – “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar

“Try That in a Small Town” by Jason Aldean (2023)

One person’s view:  “[H]ere you have these violent and evocative lyrics, and the composers couldn’t even bother to give them a musically exciting vehicle?  …  Jason could’ve just as easily been singing a love song with the exact same instrumentation.” – Torches @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  0.79 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of all-time

Some passage of time is usually needed before we can judge the merit of an endeavor.  On rare occasions, however, we don’t need this historical perspective to know how things are going to shake out in the long run.  For example, it was painfully obvious by 2005 that President George W. Bush’s visage was never going to replace Lincoln’s on the $5 bill.  After only three or four episodes had aired, it was already clear that The Simpsons was destined to outlast its bitter rival The Pat Sajak Show by many decades.  Likewise, it’s safe to assume that Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” will still generally be considered a bad #1 hit in 2050 just as it is in 2025.  While I would prefer not to include any songs released after 2020 on this blog, Aldean has earned an exception to this rule.

Many people have slammed this hit for being nothing more than a right-wing grievance ballad.  I don’t think this is an entirely fair criticism, because conservatives need protest songs too.  They deserve better efforts than this, however.  Even with four experienced Nashville songwriters helping him out, Jason Aldean ain’t exactly a match for Woody Guthrie.  Guthrie proudly adorned his guitar with the slogan “This machine kills fascists.”  If Aldean’s guitar ever kills anyone, it will be by stereotyping them to death.

Aldean’s earlier songs had established him as a defender of rural America.  “Amarillo Sky” was one of his first singles, and he put some passion into that performance.  He sounded like he wanted to punch Jesus in the face for cursing the farmers of the Texas panhandle with drought and damaging hail.  On an artistic and emotional level, “Try That in a Small Town” doesn’t give him as much to work with.  The clanging, dissonant guitar chord is a great beginning, but the rest of the track is a three-minute exercise in cashing a paycheck.  I can’t think of many other #1 hits that work better as a slogan or a meme than they do as a piece of music.  Indeed, you’re more likely to see someone wearing a “Try That in a Small Town” T-shirt than you are to hear the tune playing anywhere.  “Don’t Worry Be Happy” at least had a melody – this song barely does.

In his 2012 country hit “Fly Over States”, Aldean derided two coastal city slickers who refuse to visit the wheat fields and funny-named villages of Indiana and Oklahoma.  Those two guys don’t know what they’re missing.  They will never see the two-headed calf at the Osgood farm, the 12-foot-tall egg beater outside of Debbie’s Daybreak Diner, or the plaque commemorating the birthplace of Orville Redenbacher.  But the “small town” described in Aldean’s later chart-topper is not a welcoming tourist attraction.  It is more like the setting of Deliverance.  This town is where your girlfriend’s best friend’s uncle mysteriously vanished after stopping for a drink at the local bar and asking if one of the TVs could be changed to a women’s soccer game.  The town sounds a siren at 6:15 every evening to warn anyone with red hair or a hard-to-pronounce name that it’s time to hit the road.  The speed limit here is 25 m.p.h.  Are you thinking of driving 26?  I recommend you don’t.  While “Try That in a Small Town” strikes a forceful blow against the flag-burnings and cop-spittings that are a daily hazard in large metropolitan areas, it fails to convince us that less populated locales are any safer.

This song’s effectiveness as a protest evaporates in the second verse when Aldean whines that Uncle Sam may someday try to confiscate the gun that his grandpa gave him.  Of all of the unlikely ways in which the government could trample on his rights, this is perhaps the unlikeliest.  Why not complain about one of the many things that the feds have actually taken from U.S. citizens?  Thanks to owl-coddling bureaucrats, I can no longer obtain the leaded gasoline that I need to keep my Edsel running or the DDT that I need to kill the ladybug that got into my kitchen.  I can’t purchase a box of Sudafed without presenting two forms of ID, a clean criminal background check, and a mucus sample that proves I am congested.  Worst of all, the safety-obsessed alarmists in D.C. have banned the sale of lawn darts, making it impossible to replace these enjoyable outdoor game sets after some of the darts get stuck in the neighbor’s kids.  Menthol cigarettes, high fructose corn syrup, and red dye #3 are the next everyday products that regulators have in their sights, but Aldean is more worried about the one possession that is specifically protected by its own constitutional amendment and hundreds of Federalist Society judges.  Paranoid much, Jason?

I will, however, defend the song from the accusations of racism that have been leveled against it.  Its video was filmed in front of a Tennessee courthouse where, in 1927, a violent mob hanged a young black man who had been misidentified as a rape suspect.  This has been a point of controversy for Aldean, as the lyrics seem to endorse this type of vigilante justice.  Also, the original version of the video included scenes of unruly Black Lives Matter protesters.  These segments were later removed for copyright reasons, and much of the remaining footage is of unrelated demonstrations in Toronto and Montreal.  Although these protest clips have nothing to do with the liquor store robberies and carjackings described in the song, they contain some of the most violent imagery ever to emerge from Canada outside of a hockey broadcast or the mosh pit of a Gino Vannelli concert.

Aldean says that he was unaware of the courthouse’s sordid history, and I believe him.  He selected this spot because it is where he renews his car tags, and he wanted us to feel the same joy that he does during that annual trip to the BMV.  (Maybe he’ll film his next video at his dentist’s office.)  He pointed out that there are no racial references anywhere in his song’s lyrics.  Aldean’s ideal small town is a color-blind utopia where lynching is an equal opportunity sport that can be enjoyed by people of all backgrounds and ethnicities.  And it isn’t like his video director could have found any footage of white Republicans assaulting police at a political protest, right?

This is the last hit that I will feature on this blog.  For those of you just now joining me, feel free to go back to the beginning and catch up on the history of “bad” #1 records.  Without the groundwork laid by Lawrence Welk, Tony Orlando, and Air Supply, we never could have had Lewis Capaldi, 6ix9ine, or Jason Aldean.

My rating:  2 / 10

“Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)” by Jawsh 685 x Jason Derulo x BTS (2020)

One person’s view:  “‘Savage Love’ is the future:  artists trying dispassionately to predict the course of a soulless algorithm that is trying to predict the desires of millions of other humans.  Like 2020 itself, ‘Savage Love’ is a yawning chasm of meaninglessness.” – Sean Doyle @ Sean’s Newsletter, ranking “Savage Love” as the worst song of 2020

The public’s view:  1.13 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2020 to 2022

When I was in high school, I did my homework with the same technique that Jason Derulo uses to write songs.  I would begin by writing my name at the top of a piece of paper.  Satisfied that I had made some progress, I would play a video game for 7 hours before returning to the task.  Likewise, Derulo gets a good start on each set of lyrics by using his name as the first two words.  (This trait was noted by my favorite gospel group, the Toilet Bowl Cleaners, in their 2015 hymn “Jason Derulo Probably Announces His Name Before Pooping in a Public Bathroom”.)  Once you have a great opening line like “Jason Derulo”, recited as if it were an interesting trivia fact that had just been learned, the rest of the song writes itself.

This is where the similarities between Jason Derulo’s music and my homework end.  I didn’t have internet access in high school, so after writing my name I had to plagiarize the 1981 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica that I had won as a second-place prize in a spelling bee.  It was easiest to grab the first volume off the shelf, so I mostly did essays on things that started with the letter “A”.  Derulo, on the other hand, is a social media guru with 65.8 million followers on TikTok.  Whenever he is in need of a new idea, he can peruse that app for clips by random teenagers from New Zealand who probably won’t mind too much if he borrows their work.  Now that TikTok is on the verge of being banned, Derulo will require a new source of inspiration.  I suggest that he invest in a high-quality encyclopedia.  I’d love to hear a track about aardwolves or the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto.

Jawsh 685 happened to be a New Zealand teen who dabbled in music on TikTok.  Derulo stumbled across one of Jawsh’s catchy beats and merged it with his own lyrics.  The combination of the two artists’ talents led to an incredibly infectious tune titled “Savage Love plus a gratuitous parenthetical part that I am not going to keep typing”.  After just one listen of this track six hours ago, I am still involuntarily hearing Jason’s music in my head.  Unfortunately, the earworm stuck in my brain is by a different Jason:  Mraz.  Yes, for whatever reason, Jason Derulo’s “Savage Love” reminds me so much of Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” that I can barely keep them straight.  Despite that unwelcome resemblance, “Savage Love” is entertaining enough to deserve to peak at #7 on the Hot 100.  This would put it in the same league as such fondly remembered #7 chestnuts as Herman’s Hermits’ “Just a Little Bit Better”, George Michael’s “A Different Corner”, and Hot Chelle Rae’s “Tonight Tonight”.  Sure enough, “Savage Love” topped out at the #7 position in August of 2020 and then bopped around the lower reaches of the top 10 for the next couple of months.

At this point, I should be able to say “And we all lived happily ever after.”  However, this story was about to get really stupid.  According to Jawsh 685, his teams linked up with BTS’s teams and decided to collaborate.  I have no idea why an obscure 17-year-old TikTokker would have teams, and what the rest of us are doing so wrong as to reach middle age without having teams.  Regardless, the result of all that teamwork was that BTS recorded a new verse for “Savage Love” – in Korean.  When this gibberish was concatenated with Derulo’s English lyrics, the song became the sort of absurd non sequitur that would typically not exist outside of a weird dream or a Family Guy gag.  Jawsh’s new collaborators also refashioned that thought-provoking opening lyric – “Jason Derulo” – into the less compelling line “BTS”.

This BTS “remix” of “Savage Love” was demonstrably worse than Derulo’s original in every way.  Accordingly, it soared to #1 the moment that it appeared.  Some cultural critics viewed the remix’s success as a predictable backlash against pandemic lockdowns, the killing of George Floyd, and the unexplained arrival of dangerous Asian murder hornets in the Pacific Northwest.  The world had given young people nothing but bad news in 2020, and they retaliated by sending a uniquely unlistenable song to the top of the Hot 100 so that elder chart buffs like me would have to hear it.

So what do those incomprehensible new Korean lyrics actually mean?  With the help of Google Translate, I’ve found one possible answer:

Love is perhaps a listing of fleeting emotions
All conditions are attached, so what do I love?
The word eternity is perhaps a sand castle
It collapses helplessly in front of the gentle waves

However, Google assumes that BTS used the Seoul dialect of Korean.  I suspect that this is not really the case.  If we translate from the North Korean dialect, we get a slightly different message:

A balloon is perhaps landing in Bellingham, Washington
Murder hornets are attached, from Pyongyang with love
Yankee imperialism is perhaps a sand castle
It collapses helplessly in front of the stinging bees

My rating:  2 / 10  (the version without BTS is a 5 / 10)

“TROLLZ” by 6ix9ine & Nicki Minaj (2020)

One person’s view:  “While not as bad as GUMMO or FEFE, TROLLZ is still absolutely awful.  The beat is annoying, 6ix9ine’s voice is ear bleedingly bad, the lyrics are dumb, and it’s just an annoying, obnoxious experience.” – Jeremy @ Jeremy U’s Music Corner

The public’s view:  1.54 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 2020

Would you like to hear about a male-female duet loaded with weak rhymes and with self-indulgent and vaguely threatening lyrics?  A song whose male performer is disliked to the point that some listeners actively wished for him to be put in prison?  A song whose brief domination of the Hot 100 was so baffling that it suggested the possibility of an unsavory chart manipulation scheme?  If so, I recommend that you read the entry for Peter Cetera & Amy Grant’s “The Next Time I Fall”.  But maybe “TROLLZ” fits the bill as well.

“TROLLZ” is a better song than “The Next Time I Fall”, but its back-story makes it difficult to defend.  6ix9ine is the kind of rapper whose Wikipedia article has lengthy sections titled “Legal Issues” and “Feuds” which completely overshadow the portion devoted to his musical talent.  Many of the lyrics of “TROLLZ” are disses directed at those who have run afoul of either him or Nicki Minaj at some point.  Almost everyone falls into this category, but at least we are fortunate that the song does not try to address all of us individually.  I’m thankful there’s not a verse about the cashier at CVS who refused to honor Nicki’s expired shampoo coupon in 2014.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with a good diss track.  Virtually every person in my demographic appreciates Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” and its derisive slap at Neil Young.  “TROLLZ” could take a few lessons from that song.  Skynyrd was direct but not defamatory with their lyrics.  They never called Young a snitch or insinuated that he had V.D., as “TROLLZ” does with its targets.  More importantly, Skynyrd was responding to a perceived slight against the entire American South – not some gripe that no one outside of the band cared about.  “TROLLZ”, on the other hand, is all about paltry personal disagreements.  Am I supposed to be angry that Meek Mill offended 6ix9ine by giving him unsolicited advice?  Judging by 6ix9ine’s life choices, maybe he should have listened.

The week after it debuted atop the chart, “TROLLZ” became the first non-holiday song in Billboard history to drop all the way out of the top 30 from the #1 position.  Its flim-flamming of the public was just beginning, however, as 6ix9ine would then use the song to launch a line of NFTs.  An NFT is a virtual collectible – essentially a trading card that doesn’t actually exist in any tangible way.  It is a scam by its very nature, and yet the rapper allegedly made it even more of a scam by not delivering all of the imaginary stuff that was promised.  Who could be so lazy as to fail to provide a make-believe product?  Maybe someone lazy enough to rhyme “fuck” with “fuck”, then with “up”, and then again with “fuck”.

There is one very good thing about “TROLLZ” from my perspective.  After decades of waiting patiently, I was delighted that we finally had a second #1 hit that references a Sesame Street Muppet in its lyrics.  (The first was John Parr’s “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” in 1985, but you already knew that.)  Unfortunately, the relevant line in “TROLLZ” is this demand from Nicki Minaj:  “Yeah, eat it, Cookie Monster.”  I would have preferred something less sexual and more in keeping with the spirit of the Children’s Television Workshop.  Maybe “You’re a really good friend, Bert.”  Or “Hey Snuffy, it’s time for your rabies shot.”  Instead, I am left with the mental image of Nicki picking blue fur and cookie crumbs out of her nether regions.  It still beats listening to a Peter Cetera ballad.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi (2019)

One person’s view:  “A bland, drippy piano ballad that would have been boring if not for Lewis Capaldi bellowing every line like he's at the bottom of a well; unfortunately, that just makes it insufferable instead.” – Cosmiagramma @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  1.32 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2019

Every so often, the world’s eardrums are rattled by a white male singer-songwriter howling his lungs out while lamenting a lost love.  This type of ballad is just begging to be bullied.  You might as well dress it in a Cub Scout uniform, give it a My Little Pony lunchbox, and put it on a school bus with some guys from the football team.  “Someone You Loved” is probably expecting to get its head knocked in by this blog, but I’m going to let it off with just a wedgie.

“Someone You Loved” is one of the most basic, unsophisticated tunes to reach #1 in recent decades.  The instrumentation is mostly just a piano playing the same simple riff over and over again, varying only slightly during the bridge.  Likewise, the lyrics repeat themselves like a local TV newscast that tries to milk a city council meeting, a house fire, and a slight chance of rain for 90 minutes of air time.  Even a terrific top-of-the-crop singer – someone like Ann Wilson or Adele – would struggle to make this track interesting.  To catch the listener’s ears, it needs a performer who is a decent vocalist but who also sounds kind of weird.  Just as James Blunt’s odd bleating was enough to distinguish “You’re Beautiful”, Lewis Capaldi’s imprecise diction rescues “Someone You Loved” from oblivion.

Some have speculated that Capaldi was drunk when he recorded this song, but I have a different theory:  he was Scottish.  Of course, “Scottish” and “drunk” are listed as synonyms in some thesauri.  (It isn’t the Scots’ fault that their whisky tastes so good.)  Regardless of whether and what he may have imbibed, Lewis’s slurring tugs at our emotions:  “And you’re not here / To get me froo it all.”  I actually enjoyed his histrionics enough to listen to the song four times before hitting my lifetime limit.  In other words, I liked “Someone You Loved” less than “All About That Bass” but approximately four times more than “Shape of You”.

Lewis has said that the song is not directed to an ex-girlfriend, as most people assumed, but to his late grandmother.  This raises some uncomfortable questions about the level of intimacy that is suggested by the lyrics.  Maybe it’s best not to open that bottle of Glenfiddich single malt when Grandma Capaldi comes over.

Let’s abruptly change the subject to something more appetizing:  toilets.  Much like Meghan Trainor, Lewis Capaldi is brimming with anecdotes about everybody’s favorite variety of plumbing fixture and its usage.  My favorite is the time a grocery clerk recognized him and permitted him to relieve himself in a staff restroom that is normally off-limits to the public.  Capaldi realized at this moment that he was now a celebrity, and that the best perk of fame was that he could now pee wherever and whenever he wanted.  If you get a front row seat to one of his concerts, you might want to bring an umbrella.

With that, we are now done with the 2010s.  I bet you never thought we would get froo it all.  I’m running out of steam but I still have a few more “bad” #1s to subject you to before this blog calls it quits.

My rating:  5 / 10

“Girls Like You” by Maroon 5 featuring Cardi B (2018)

One publication’s view:  “Cardi B’s verse is the only saving grace of this inexplicable chart-topper, which sounds engineered to soundtrack department-store commercials.” – Time

The public’s view:  1.09 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of the 2010s

I’ve relied heavily on Rate Your Music scores when deciding which songs to feature on this blog, and Maroon 5’s “Girls Like You” excels by this metric.  Its rating (1.09 at the time of this writing) is, by far, the lowest I have encountered up to this point.  I didn’t even know that a score this bad was possible to attain.  Ed Sheeran could remake “(You’re) Having My Baby”, with a minute-long armpit-fart solo after the first chorus, and still probably manage a 1.25.  Clearly, there is something about “Girls Like You” that gets under people’s skin.

But it isn’t just this one song that raised the collective dander of the universe.  Adam Levine and his anonymous bandmates had been careening toward this outcome for a decade.  Judging by the reviews that I’ve read, there are many people who adored the group’s early music but became disenchanted and even angry when hearing their later material.  If we’re going to pinpoint the moment when things started to go wrong, it was probably when the act changed its name from Kara’s Flowers to Maroon 5.  It was all downhill after that.

Yet Maroon 5’s commercial success has soared in inverse proportion to its critical reputation.  This is one of several paradoxes about the group and its leader.  For example, Adam Levine looks like he should be an MMA fighter but sings like a castrati.  He judges other singers’ vocal talent on a TV show despite smothering his own nasal falsetto with generous amounts of Auto-Tune whenever he records a track.  There are also stylistic contradictions in Maroon 5’s music.  This band has developed a recipe that awkwardly merges the bland ubiquity of adult contemporary with the edginess of rap and alternative rock.  “Girls Like You” is probably the purest incarnation of their hit song formula.

Adult contemporary’s goal is to appeal to ladies ages 25 to 54.  Radio advertisers love these household-heading females who buy tons of groceries and baby supplies, and who undergo expensive electrolysis treatments any time they grow a stray beard hair.  “Girls Like You” scored points with these women by addressing them directly, using the second-person.  None of them wanted to hear Levine singing about how some other type of girl runs around with guys like him.

Both sonically and lyrically, Maroon 5’s hit is reminiscent of a chart-topper from 11 years earlier:  Akon’s “Don’t Matter”.  This evokes nostalgia for the happy-go-lucky time before the 25-to-54-year-old listener had four lazy kids, two worthless ex-husbands, and a stressful position as a Senior Restroom Break Timer in the HR department of a mid-sized bank.  Akon recognized the similarity to his work, and responded by making his own version of “Girls Like You”.  This was kind of a smart-ass move, albeit entirely justified.

But a successful AC song can’t have any indelicate content that will drive away all of those timid radio advertisers, and Maroon 5 likes to push the boundaries.  They usually toss in a profanity or two, and “Girls Like You” also suggests that Levine and his woman will “roll that Backwood”.  A Backwood is a brand of cigar whose purchasers frequently discard the tobacco filling and replace it with a more potent herb – just as Akon threw out most of Maroon 5’s lyrics and replaced them with better ones.

Cardi B’s rap is the most risqué part of “Girls Like You”, but it did not stop the song from topping Billboard’s adult contemporary airplay chart for a stultifying 36 weeks.  I’m not sure why her jarring remarks about playing with herself weren’t a deal-breaker for AC radio.  Censoring the rap interlude wasn’t a viable option, because it is generally considered to be the best part of the song.  Any listeners who sit through four minutes of Adam Levine’s coma-inducing prattle are going to be pretty darn upset if they don’t get to hear 30 seconds of Cardi near the end.  They might even sue.

Although Maroon 5’s formula was overused by this point, I am impressed that they adhered to it with such professional rigor.  They calibrated all of the parameters perfectly to maximize this song’s chart endurance.  It reminds me of how McDonald’s uses the ideal amount of calcium lactate to extend their food’s stay in the human digestive system.  Much like a McNugget plodding through the large intestine on a weeks-long trek, “Girls Like You” got stuck in the slow-turning gears of American radio for far too long.  Even with Cardi B’s spicy dipping sauce helping to make the experience more bearable, most people were glad when the track finally completed its voyage and came out the other end.

My rating:  3 / 10

“Look What You Made Me Do” by Taylor Swift (2017)

One critic’s view:  “This sounds like the Black Eyed Peas.  And not one of the middling [songs] either, one of the really bad ones.” – Todd in the Shadows

The public’s view:  1.71 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 2017

Highly respected, generation-defining musical talents are not immune from making an appearance on the Bad #1 Hits blog, because there’s always the risk that one of their hits will later be deemed unbearable by a public that once adoringly accepted it.  For example, Elton John is a pop music legend, but that doesn’t mean that people want to hear “Island Girl” anymore.  “Go Away Little Girl” is probably the reason that Donny Osmond has never been nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  And Taylor Swift will be remembered a millennium from now for “Blank Space”, “You Belong to Me”, and the 522-minute long Taylor’s version of Taylor’s version of “All Too Well” that she plans to release in 2036, while “Look What You Made Me Do” will be but a sad footnote in the history books.

In my last post, I said that I didn’t enjoy writing about someone as over-exposed as Ed Sheeran.  So, you can imagine how I feel about this entry.  While I have welcomed maybe a dozen of Taylor Swift’s songs into my MP3 library – which is an incredibly high honor for her – I pay little attention to her love life, her political pronouncements, or the stunned facial expressions that she exhibits upon winning a trophy for Best Female Video That Cost More Than The International Space Station.  I am really not a very good Swiftie.  Therefore, my opinion of this chart-topping single comes from a certain level of detachment that may not perceive all of the nuances involved.

With its atonal chorus, “Look What You Made Me Do” is devoid of the pleasant melodic qualities that usually characterize a Swift tune.  It didn’t cruise to #1 on the basis of musical superiority over its competition.  Its primary appeal is that it poses a mystery for the listener.  The lyrics are clearly about a conflict between Taylor and some unspecified person, but we are left to wonder who she is singing about.

A few onlookers have suggested that “Look What You Made Me Do” is about Kanye West, because Taylor and Kanye got into some kind of argument back around 2009.  No one really knows the details of their dispute, but I think it had something to do with footwear.  Apparently, Swift loathes people who promote overpriced sneakers.  It’s the same reason why she and Donald Trump don’t get along, and why Michael Jordan was never invited on stage during the Eras Tour.  But do you really believe that she would hold this grudge for eight years?  Or that listeners would care enough about it after all that time to send a single to #1 on that basis?  Pop culture is pretty stupid, but is it that stupid?

Of course it is, but there’s a detail that undermines the Kanye hypothesis:  the unknown person in the song once asked Taylor for a place to sleep.  Kanye isn’t exactly homeless, so I don’t think this could have been him.  This sounds more like one of the minor celebrities whom Swift has dated.  It’s a relatable complaint that she is expressing, because every successful woman has had a similar uncomfortable moment with an impoverished boyfriend at some point.  It’s always awkward when Tom Hiddlehopper, or whoever, asks to borrow one of your spare penthouses or beach mansions because he can’t afford a room at the Days Inn.  However, it would be quite uncultured and gross to write a song that publicly airs petty quibbles about an ex, and I find it hard to believe that Taylor would operate in that fashion.

Regardless of who the target of this track is, I take issue with the idea that anyone has made Taylor Swift do anything.  She is among the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world.  If she commits some vengeful act that is detrimental to all parties involved, it is because she wants to do it – not because some lesser personage is forcing her.  I would respect this song more if it was called “Look What I Felt Like Doing and So I Did”.

People still ask Carly Simon and Alanis Morissette who they were singing about in their mystery records, decades after the fact.  I doubt anyone asks Taylor Swift about “Look What You Made Me Do”.  The song just isn’t memorable enough for anyone to care who it was trying to embarrass.

My rating:  3 / 10

“Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran (2017)

One person’s view:  “Ed on this song sounds like when he gets in bed with this girl, they are having sex on a racecar bed with Batman sheets.” – blendernoob64 @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  1.43 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2017

I made a pact with the devil when I started this project.  I knew that I would have fun at first, but that I would eventually be forced to say something about Ed Sheeran.  Ed is someone who sparks no emotions in me whatsoever, either positive or negative.  Worse still, everything that could possibly be written about him has already been written.  Multiple critics have already commented on his Muppet-like appearance, so even my usual Sesame Street comparisons won’t break any new ground here.  By necessity, this will be a brief post.

“Shape of You” annoys many people with its pseudo-reggae sound.  Some listeners find it inappropriate that Sheeran – the least Jamaican person ever to be born outside of Greenland – is profiting (albeit in a highly attenuated manner) from the legacy of Bob Marley.  Others have a more practical complaint about the song.  Its first few notes are nearly identical to the opening of Sia’s “Cheap Thrills”, which was a #1 hit just a few months prior to it.  Try playing “Shape of You” at a party and watch what happens ten seconds into the track when Ed’s half-hearted attempt at rapping begins.  Everyone inevitably groans in unison upon realizing that they are not about to hear Sia.

The lyrics, however, are the bigger problem.  Sheeran opens by boasting about his technique for picking up women at bars, as though he has a lot of experience in this area.  But in the rest of the song he comes across like a guy who has just had sex for the first time and is making weird observations about the incident.  For example, he marvels that his bed sheets now smell like this woman rather than his own usual stench.  Maybe it’s time to finally wash them?  Then there’s the verse about the couple going to the all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant, feasting as if it’s their last meal, and sneaking more food home in the girl’s purse.  One suspects that the shape of her body – the shape that Ed loves so much – is quite round, and that the odor in his bed is a mix of soy sauce, garlic, and post-buffet flatulence.

There is one thing I like about “Shape of You”:  its video, or at least the last minute or so.  The clip depicts the 5’8” Ernie-headed balladeer as an improbably gifted athlete who is, in the thrilling conclusion, tossed around like a Frisbee by an enormous sumo wrestler.  The video’s payoff almost justifies the laborious build-up.  If the video for “Separate Lives” had featured a sumo wrestler beating the stuffing out of Phil Collins, I would have given that song a far better review than I did.

“Shape of You” spent 12 weeks at #1.  Its unfathomable success marks the moment at which pop music completely ran out of original ideas that were worth expressing in a song.  Billboard should probably have discontinued the Hot 100 at this point, but it did not.  Thus, this blog will regrettably stumble onward for a few more entries.

My rating:  3 / 10