“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