the top ten worst hit songs of 2019

I'm not going to mince words about this, there was some real struggle in assembling this list. And some of you might be thinking, 'well, that's good, right, the charts got better in 2019, with about the same number of good songs but far less offensively bad or stupid ones in comparison with other years this decade. Besides, this is the year of 'Old Town Road and the new guard swaggering in to disrupt the music industry wide open -'

And at that point I just have to stop the conversation outright because that narrative is both badly misconceived and yet widespread enough to make me question audiences, fans, and fellow critics alike. It's certainly not new, that's for damn sure: I'm reminded vividly of how the grassroots underground acts in grunge and punk were swallowed up across the mid-to-late-90s by the record industry after Kurt Cobain's death to present an illusion of disruptive rebellion that only had credence because a few older establishment acts failed and the sound seemed to be in the same ballpark. And it's hard not to see something very similar now with how the streaming economy was both taken over and then further marginalized in favour of acts with obvious radio crossover appeal instead of unique personality. And what's more alarming is that so many people who should know better bought into the "success story" thanks to a colourful stream of misinformation and memes while missing the bigger forest for the trees, neglecting to follow a record industry that's gotten a lot more cunning online and is now raking in record profits from streaming while pushing music that feels not just increasingly indistinct, but in some cases barely even finished, knowing that if the vibe clicks on the playlists long bought-and-paid-for, the mass audience wouldn't care! 

Now granted, that’s a ledge for me, as a lot of pop fans and poptimist critics don't want to believe that they've bought into smarter marketing that obscures worse music, especially if said music is of cheaper, lower quality that's disguised by an industry-backed shift at large, and I'm still on the fence of how much you can assess the non-effort behind a song: sometimes it can be a lot of work to sound like you don't care, or to 'curate a vibe', and on some occasions from non-effort you can even strike gold. But the more I listened through the charts at the year's end, the less impressed I was, and we all reach a limit on playing 'live and let live' when the suspicion that none of this is as good as it should be. And 2019 was absolutely my limit, not because the Hot 100 is under any obligation to have quality but you'd like to think some artists should deliver more. In other words, as YesJulz discovered, 'curating the vibe' isn't the pass to deliver substandard work, and while as per usual the picks had to debut on the year-end Hot 100 list of 2019, some sacred cows are about to be slain, starting in our Dishonourable Mentions with...

Honestly, there’s a part of me that feels like this song is starting to get a little too much hatred from people. Yeah, the chord structure and production and lyrical sentiments are painfully basic and there’s this ugly self-serving element of the song that even if expressed sarcastically kind of taints any genuine attachment I get to it… but I do see how a song like this could work. I do get the feeling that Lewis Capaldi is at least somewhat self-aware of how lightly toxic this entire thing sounds, with a hint of a comeuppance in its raw honesty, which could make the sarcasm and clumsiness feel heartfelt… except that delivery, which is so oversold and yowling that it gives me more of the impression of an artist who has no idea of his own strengths as a performer. I’ve definitely heard far worse singer-songwriter cuts in this vein, but I do get the uneasy feeling Capaldi might want to get used to winding up on lists like these if he makes more like this.

It’s amazing how many critics gave Kodak Black a pass for getting steel drums, as if this isn’t just swiping the groove from ‘Ric Flair Drip’ - with bonus mindless Offset guest verse - with Travis Scott droning on how he’s an ‘ass and titty lover’ and Kodak… look, do I have to dignify any sort of attempt at sympathy for him running from the cops, given what he’s done? And does any of this mean we have to care about his terrible, mugging delivery and the flexing that doesn’t even care to be coherent? Yes, steel drums that don’t sound bad, but where there’s this much non-effort on display, the fact this nearly went to #1 is unnerving. Would have otherwise been tolerable… but Kodak is grating enough to clinch spots regardless.

I’m sorry, didn’t I already talk about this in some capacity in 2015 when it was called ‘Nasty Freestyle’ by T-Wayne? I mean, bargain-barrel production, choppy delivery with its fair share of painfully basic punchlines, driven to popularity on short-form video where the most anyone will know is the opening lines? But what probably makes ‘Shotta Flow’ worse is some frankly terrible mastering and the fact that he seems to be trying way harder to imitate the oversold Soundcloud rap approach, but with no tangible grit to match his threats. I’ll give the kid a little more credit for breaking a second single successfully… credit I’ll promptly take a way for shooting people in the back, saying he’s super hot like a frying pan, and saying that my bitch sucks a dick like a kool-aid pickle. Meat-headed, utterly generic except for when it’s faintly embarrassing, he runs out of ideas before the two minute mark so I’m not about give him that much time either.

You know, there’s a part of me that looks at Chase Rice with a bit of pity - he was one of the writers instrumental for launching bro-country, but his debut album in 2014 flopped when he jumped on the wave too late, so in the face of Sam Hunt’s career death spiral, he swiped his sing-talking and married it to a Kane Brown snap beat for this forgettable dud… and somehow got his biggest hit because Nashville radio would rather prioritize also-rans instead of putting any number of women on the radio. Instead we’ve got a song that prioritizes leering at them that takes the Luke Bryan ‘Crash My Party’ approach in describing everything fun around him that he missed because he’d rather just drool over her - as well as one of the most gummy and unpleasant bits of acoustic texture we got all year. There was absolutely no excuse for Chase Rice to have any sort of success in 2019, and the only saving grace is that he sure as hell has no staying power - good.

At some point A Boogie is going to have to discover some personality in both delivery and content, but it’s not here, which takes the percussion line from ‘In My Feelings’, a leaden melody, and seems to have entirely too many lines emphasizing how nervous this girl is while he’s flexing and failing to compliment her. Granted, when 6ix9ine shows up like the belligerent frat boy at the dinner party waving his guns in the air and saying he’s going to be fucking her in the lobby, I get the trepidation - although if I was A Boogie, given 6ix9ine’s year I’d be nervous I was getting snitched on too. He’s not even in the official video on the song - very telling given how much traffic that would have drawn just last year - so instead we’re just stuck with a boring, uneven clunker that can’t even bother to crash properly.

This is a single that should never have been released. Actually, scratch that: even though I still like ‘Press’ I’d argue Cardi should have just rested on her laurels for 2019 and released nothing at all instead of spreading herself thin on too many forgettable verses that raise the worrisome probability that Atlantic is going to fumble her follow-up. ‘Money’ is the most emblematic of it, but it’s not just the principle that clinched its spot. No, that goes to the go-nowhere hook, that MC Hammer reference that I really hope isn’t prophetic, flagrantly undercooked production, and a cheap, staccato piano line that Cardi keeps trying to give flair or any sort of edge but instead sounds barren and hollow. And as much as Cardi still has buckets of personality… 2019 proved that there’s a lot more competition forcing their way onto the scene for women in hip-hop, and charisma won’t carry her forever… especially if it starts to sound like she doesn’t care. And also… leather pajamas? That can’t be a comfortable flex, all I’m saying!

Someone needs to remind me of when Disclosure used to be good, and when Khalid was able to lean into an organic groove instead of another song that was a headache and a half. If he wanted to make a pop song as uncomfortable as the question ‘can we just talk’ with its awkward trap skitter, overmixed synth, and him failing to convey any warmth… well, he got there, but the song is a total dud as a result. But what gets actively distracting is that if you dig even a little into the lyrics and delivery, Khalid might want to open the door for conversation, but he’s retreating into apologies and non-answers even before he can engage, which was a cute trick when Open Mike Eagle was self-aware about it on ‘Insecurity’ but here comes across as utterly ineffectual. It’s the sonic equivalent of getting stuck on hold with a cable company and yet when they get on the line, you stammer that you’re missing your paperwork and have to go back on hold - and it’s anathema why anyone finds it remotely enjoyable when ‘Right Back’ was right there. Even with the A Boogie remix, I’d take it over this.

So okay, perfunctory list of honourable mentions that gave me a headache, now onto the stuff that actively gets under my skin, starting with…

10. Given how the hype cycle has evolved in today’s day and age, it almost feels like cheating to put acts where it already seems like their careers have collapsed by the time I’m making this list - especially in hip-hop with predatory major labels, the hype cycle is alarmingly fast, even for acts that might gain critical prominence. Granted, when said hype wears off, or you never bought into it in the first place…

The next three acts on this list are going to be rappers who came and went where you can tell their label mined them for a quick buck and then either didn’t know how to extend their momentum or didn’t care. And we’re dealing with Sheck Wes first because there’s at least a part of me that kind of gets it - the beat switch into aggressive, aggro shouting, the ominous atmosphere, the pile-up of effects near the end, it might be basic hypebeast shit but I can see where this might have worked enough for Pitchfork to call this ‘Best New Music’. But then pay even a little more attention and everything falls apart - he says he’s no joke but the only thing that makes this song interesting is the clumsy switch-up so offkey and leaden you might as well consider it a joke, where he can’t even be likable because he then doubles down on fucking your girl! And while I could be crass and say that the titular basketball player’s decline matches that of the song, I think the bigger insult is that he got such an underwritten, sloppily performed hype anthem that’s aged badly - in other words, it’s no surprise we haven’t heard much from him sense. Next!

9. It seems like every year we have the obvious pick - hell, I’d put money on many people thinking this would be my #1, I certainly advertised it like that when Billboard put out their year-end list. So to place this song here… we’re dealing with something a little unexpected, a different sort of justification than I’m used to arguing. And thus…

The fact that ‘Robbery’ made the year-end Hot 100 felt weird to pretty much everyone involved - it was barely a hit, it certainly didn’t lead to future success, it was one of Juice WRLD’s first ever songs that Interscope instead chose to make the second album lead single because the label had badly mismanaged his career across the board - I said it when I reviewed Death Race For Love, disposability was built into his career… made all the more tragic when he died. But even before then, despite the fact that ‘Robbery’ is a pretty terrible song - the vocals are an oversold disaster, the bright pianos don’t match with any of the content or delivery, and the lyrics are overflowing with noxious manosphere nonsense that I’d almost consider a parody if there was the slightest bit of sophistication - but in the following I never actively hated this song. For me the most consistent comparison was Simple Plan - acts that boil down complex emo archetypes into the broad catchy basics and embarrass themselves doing so - and as such it’s laughable and almost pitiable… if the ideas behind it weren’t so actively toxic. And thus if I have any real anger it’s directed at the miserly, negligent shitpistons at Interscope around Juice WRLD who instead of pulling the kid away from living his lyrics just sought to rake in the profits, and you just know the posthumous albums are waiting in the wings. Yeah, this is a terrible song and regardless of Juice WRLD’s fate it would have made this list, but enabling it? Yeah, that’s the real crime here.

8. Well, that was depressing… let’s tackle one of the easier targets on this list, shall we?

I’ll be very honest: I didn’t hate ‘Thotiana’, at least not to the level the backlash Blueface received - maybe it’s just hearing so much from the underground where going offbeat doesn’t really phase me, but I figured if he was able to expand his unique style maybe something would come of it… and a few months later and the hype dies down and you realize you gave everyone involved entirely too much credit. What I perceived as potentially interesting wound up as consistently incompetent - especially whenever he made the conscious effort to be closer to the beat - and when the production and content got nowhere close to being interesting, I lost whatever tenuous hold I had on the bandwagon. If you’re looking to make a good ass anthem - and they do exist, shout out to the good ass anthems - maybe it’d sound a lot less awkward if you cared to follow the groove, or didn’t have production that sounded so cheap and utterly by the numbers. Or hell, even if you sounded like you cared - what tends to get glossed over is how offbeat rap is often compensated for by big personality, none of which Blueface had, especially on this fragment of a song. And I don’t recommend you read any annotations from Blueface about this song on Genius, where not only is he convinced of his presence, he thinks he’s every woman’s fantasy - because every lady likes the guy who acts like she never existed after they fuck and can’t even show basic competency or enthusiasm about his tenuous success. Again, it’s almost unfair to go in on this given how quickly his career has sputtered to a halt, but I can’t say he’ll be missed.

7. So I said at the start that non-effort can be difficult to qualify, and that sometimes you can even pull a good song out of it. My counterpoint would be that when the band openly admits to only spending ninety minutes per song, where they churn out underproduced gunk in a day or less because they know the right promotion guarantees people will buy it…

I don’t know how even the fans of the Jonas Brothers can look at their comeback as anything beyond a colossal, cynical disappointment. Sure, ‘Sucker’ was underproduced but passable, but then ‘Cool’ had all of the smirking, obnoxious flair of a band playing into their self-aware at precisely the angle to seem both sincere and ironic simultaneously - hell, when they’re making money hand over fist, why care that much? But that single tanked and thus we’re stuck with the same unpleasant leering of ‘Swervin’ with even worse production - farting horns, weird zippy squonks of synth, cheap snares, gummy synthesized vocal effects, and the same chintzy lounge feel epitomized by the non-effort in the performance. This is the sort of song that gets played in one of the seedier casinos in Vegas or Jersey off the main strip, with the brothers playing the part of bad pick-up artists unironically wearing leisure suits and too much cologne trying - and failing - to be sexy. How in the Nine Hells do any of you know her body’s got other plans besides reaching for the mace, especially when the only promise is to dance in a living room? I haven’t heard a song this cloying and full of anti-charisma since Mike Posner and a sign that if the Jonas Brothers were going to make a comeback, they should have put more than ninety minutes into it! And like Rag’n’Bone Man’s ‘Human’, it’s a claim that doubles as an excuse when you have nothing else to really offer - next!

6. So I’ve already taken some potshots at Nashville radio, which in the conversation about country and genre crossover didn’t get enough abuse this year. It’s bad enough the delinquent bean counters over there run an ossified boy’s club at the expense of women and anyone with independent groundswell and talent in favour off giving Chase Rice of all people a hit, I also blame them for being the largest factor to why Lil Nas X got turfed from the Billboard country charts, mostly because he refused to play by their antiquated and stupid rules which aren’t so much racist as they are composed of bad marketing, nepotism, and adherence to old power structures. And while that picks up the spicy undercurrent of racism by extension, what truly got exposed was not Lil Nas X blending trap and country outside of Music City, nor the hurried ripoff cash-in of Blanco Brown who got real traction coming from Broken Bow, giving those labels a convenient out. No, it exposed that if they have a problem with Lil Nas X, they sure as hell shouldn’t be enabling this.

I don’t know if there’s a mainstream producer who has such delusions of competence as Marshmello - he’s convinced he can work with anybody because his formula lacks dimension and that works for limited singers like Selena Gomez. It does not work for a bastardization of pop country crossed with EDM where a hapless but complicit Kane Brown struggles against the second worst production in this sort of crossover in 2019. Because while it might not be worse than Zac Brown destroying a decade’s worth of credibility in two devastating blows, there are way too many things wrong with ‘One Thing Right’. How is it that you’re known as a producer and you have such shoddy mastering for vocal lines, so heavily reliant on blown-out compression that your electric strumming is clipping every edge of the mix against hideously flattened and buzzing backing vocals which is trying for impact off the pedal steel drop but was delivered with the intensity of a wet fart. And Kane Brown… as much as it’s easy to give him crap for his by-the-numbers pop country and streaming manipulation that got him success, even he can’t be asked to show enthusiasm for this, which in its content is basically Hoobastank’s ‘The Reason’ by way of a girl who should have dumped this guy off the first line! Factor in the awkward jangle of the off-beat acoustics, the horrible autotune, and an utter lack of impact… folks, you know we don’t have to keep Marshmello around, right?

5. So one thing that’s been pretty common with songs on this list is that they’ve soured with time - there are very few songs that were immediate disasters in the same way ‘Freaky Friday’ or ‘Body Like A Backroad’ or ‘Treat You Better’ were - in 2019, they needed to linger a little bit. So while I disliked this immediately from the jump, especially after its remix I had the hope it might become tolerable long-term. And yet…

Let’s not dance around this: 2019 was a bad year for Halsey. She might have started on “top” with a big break-up anthem, but from every single that’s either underperformed or outright sucked, it put the lie to any claim she could put anyone anywhere. Because that was the ugly reality of ‘Without Me’ - Halsey leaned into the reality, tried to frame the song as raw and personal as ever, referencing her messy break-up with G-Eazy… and yet it only revealed the ugly sense of self-importance that felt hollow with every passing month. When I put ‘Him & I’ on my worst list last year, I made the statement that it sounded like an edgy instagram story between high schoolers… well, ‘Without Me’ is just the followthrough but somehow worse in every regard. For one there’s the lie of it all: she put G-Eazy on no platform or pedestal, and given his collapse into anonymity this year, any sympathy towards her bitter scorn immediately evaporates. Worse still is that none of the text nor subtext in lyrics or delivery implies revealing self-awareness - she can’t use the ‘Bad At Love’ excuse while simultaneously claiming it’s her most raw and personal song to date, and the inclusion of the ‘Cry Me A River’ interpolation just seems desperate, a swing for a true kiss-off this song can never truly be. It’s one reason I actually tolerated the Juice WRLD remix as it embraced some form of artifice and at least implied some toxic complexity in the breakdown! But what has always killed this song is the production: the watery gunk passing for guitar pickups, the sloppy bass mixing off of cheap drum machine pickups that sound increasingly grainy, overlayered vocals that can’t disguise how bereft of convincing intensity Halsey is, and some of the muddiest blending I’ve heard all year. It sounds like it was half mixed in the shower or at the bottom of a sewage drain, and yet if Halsey doesn’t stick the landing for that album supposedly dropping in January, that’s where her career might end up.

4. But say what you will about Halsey, as much as I think ‘Without Me’ is incompetent and petty and utterly lacking in tangible impact, that’s been a consistent assessment I’ve had about much of her career, and at least she’s clearly trying. But if you want to see folks who aren’t, and how it led to some ugly results…

Another song I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt… until I realized there was absolutely no point in doing so; all three men clearly don’t care besides lazy flexing, so why give them that lazy pass that Gucci Mane has had ever since he got out of jail and that Kodak Black has been given through his entire career? Because nothing about this song is likable beyond the intro: cheap trap percussion, keyboard twinkles that don’t match with any of it, and not an ounce of real groove - which is exactly what you need when Gucci Mane is going to meander through a rote and basic verse; he went on the record this year about how little effort he spends on each song, so can somebody just call all of this token and lazy? And then there’s Kodak Black… and look, on the scant few songs where his delivery works at all the production is more grimy and textured, not this blissed out vibe where his flexing mentions piss multiple times and ends with a Glee reference of all things! But the biggest disappointment comes with Bruno Mars, who decided to pitch all the retro grooves that could back real confidence for the most basic, lethargic delivery he’s ever put on record - that’s not smooth, that’s taking the other half of the xan from Drake and literally being out like a light! But what’s more galling is that you can tell everyone is playing down to the lowest common denominator because that’s really all Gucci Mane will handle - we heard how uncomfortable he sounded on Migos’ production, so instead we’ll give him a testament to non-effort coasting on star power that feels increasingly flimsy in the air. There are few songs that made me want to change the song faster than this - want to hear one of them?

3. So I’ve said before and will say again that I’m not outright against negative or ‘toxic’ subject matter in music - provided it’s framed and executed well, I can enjoy a lot of nasty shit. Hell, for as much ugliness as I’ve already discussed on this list, it’s come through more in how its described and shown than anything. But what happens if you take the ‘toxic’ side of art and then marry it with the dismissive non-effort that was endemic in 2019…

I’ve gone on the record multiple times that thank u, next has many more problems than people will admit - the production is rushed, the rollout was sloppy, and thematically there are more holes than many will admit. And the fact that ‘break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored’ was pushed as the single is the most blazing indictment of all of it, an undercooked whiff of a song that in following a moment of emotional catharsis on the project chooses to dive into capricious posturing, where the entitled mean girl can stroll into the party in the hills and pluck her target at will. Not because she’s that interested or expects anything long-term, but because of boredom, which is the attitude you can have when you never really have to face hard consequences - and thus when framed coming off an album where there was genuine angst, to land here as your conclusion betrays both non-effort and the cheapness of the artifice. She’ll get a pass from some thanks to the veneer of self-awareness that she blows right through, and yet even if she plays the villain, it’s ultimately not all that compelling because bored capriciousness rooted in self-love just doesn’t add to that much; even if you buy into the video’s thesis that she’s talking more to herself, it doesn’t match the text of the song which is focused on the guy near exclusively, just a lazy bait-and-switch. And when you pair it with painfully cheap-sounding drum machine skitters, a goopy melody that slides into flattened buzzes and ad-libs, it has the feel of a bonus demo tacked onto the album rather than get too real… which is exactly what it is, as Ariana Grande herself would later reveal on Twitter. Charming, Ariana, but given how your other singles underperformed this year, you might find there are others who have stopped caring.

2. I already know the picks for my top two will be contentious, albeit among two completely different fanbases. Hell, when I finished assembling this list I was a little shocked that this wound up this high, especially from an artist who has received so much popular acclaim. And yet for what was advertised as a shot heard around the world, one that took its time to really sour on me…

J. Cole has been one of the biggest disappointment in hip-hop in the 2010s, full stop. I’ve been reviewing his projects since 2013, and while his fans place him at the top of the totem pole, all I’ve heard is a wildly overrated, self-obsessed and flagrantly hypocritical rapper whose competency has been excused as excellence and who has been chasing more innovative and interesting acts for years, a hip-hop everyman who with every project sounds like he hates that pedestal and the culture that’s reinforced it. And his behaviour this year leading into this song cemented it, not just the colourless, uneven, and already forgotten Revenge Of The Dreamers III but a solo cut released as a warning shot between two camps that wound up dubiously tacked onto the project to boost streaming certifications and promise something that was never properly delivered. That’s the huge risk with playing the peacemaker, you run the risk of attacks from both sides… attacks that never came, likely because nobody wanted to acknowledge this squiddering shit of a song riding on monotony, ugly autotune, and a lingering undercurrent of contempt. J. Cole wants to act as the intermediary on the surface, but you can tell he’s spoiling for a fight - why else include the obvious shots at Kanye West on the first verse and the reference to a watch Drake gave you - I thought the money didn’t make you real? But there’s no names called out as agitators so much as an assumption of misunderstandings between two camps with him as the centrist arbiter, with the same rote pablum about how money and guns don’t make people ‘real’ in the bigger picture - all the while giving all the passes to 21 Savage and Kodak Black, whose entire appeal is rooted in street violence and flexing! But the larger problem, the entire core of this song’s message relies on the tension of him caught in the middle, force them both to see the bigger picture for black men in America, while also taking on all comers - which is why so much of his flexing her is an attempt to assume the throne by birthright - but the larger problem is that there is no real tension from any side, and there wasn’t this entire year! This isn’t Kendrick’s call for competition on the ‘Control’ verse, this is J. Cole looking for something that he can ‘feel’ while tonally remaining completely incoherent. Hell, on the first verse he flips from a populist call to elevate everyone to his flex, saying everyone is equal… but some are more equal than others. Oh, and the production sounds lazy as hell - for T-Minus’ big return, we have a basic horn loop, by the numbers leaden trap percussion, verses with zero investment, and let’s not forget the autotuned mumbling mess of a hook, all framed as an ominous warning for more to come… that nearly a year later leaves nothing but a sour taste in my mouth as more failed promotional stunt than song - paired with hollow insights that Cole has repeated countless times until they’re discarded as not convenient to him or outright contradicted in his subtext, it’s rich saying that anything here is ‘real’ - or remotely passable.

1. But to end things off at the top… again, bring together non-effort, transparent lies to the audience that smack of disinterest and a faint veneer of contempt, with cheap and sterile production that sounds like ass from an artist who should absolutely know better, actively excused by the industry, and you’ll have a pretty awful song. But as I’ve always said, disappointment will always place a song higher on this list. And in this past year, I don’t think there’s been a bigger disappointment in pop music than the flanderization of Brendon Urie.

I don’t know if I can even get properly angry at this or just grimace with absolute disgust at how Brendon Urie as Panic! At The Disco has transformed his band. What was once one of the more colourful and promising pop rock acts to break out in the mid-2000s, where critics could at one point make a comparison to the ambitious pop of Brian Wilson… has now become a sad sideshow act, coated in flop sweat, corporatized satire with no punch, and horrible production. It’s the fundamental lie that should have consigned this song to the waste bin of history on its first release and it wasn’t until I realized how much I secretly cared that the loathing surfaced: because the song implies urgency, that he had finally made it… when I was there in 2006 when Panic! At The Disco actually made it without the corporate chicanery and sellout. It’s the subtext and assertion that because he hadn’t ‘made it’ with his best we should celebrate him getting there on his worst and that the rest never mattered, hiding behind a veneer of self-awareness that can’t even commit to its subversion by the hook, which is sold with straightforward sincerity. It might have wanted to be satire at some point, use the pop mechanism to take the piss out of the industry, but it becomes the equivalent of a live-action Disney remake, self-correcting where it never had to and becoming all the more soulless as a result. And look, if an artist wants to play the major label game and pull in the massive paycheques, I’m not about to begrudge that… but I’ll ask what’s been sacrificed along the way, how I doubt any longtime Panic! fan will call this a favourite providing they stuck around at all, how the guitars sound like runny mush against the jackboot percussion, how all the swells of orchestral horns clip the top of the mix with garish abandon as the effects sound like they’re swallowing Urie with every line, and before you even notice the horrible mixing and total lack of groove, the trap passage comes in off the hideous compression and you hear a toothless parody that should never have been accepted. Always a product, but now shameless in accentuating it, with a phony veneer of irony that can’t disguise the oversold vaudeville husk trying to shill it. And even if that was all intentional… did anyone who wanted the Panic! At The Disco who made ‘I Write Sins Not Tragedies’ or ‘Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off’ or ‘When The Day Met The Night’ or ‘Sarah Smiles’ or ‘Memories’ or ‘Casual Affair’ or even ‘Crazy = Genius’ make this? All I hear is the hollowest of victories - and it’s the worst hit song of 2019, without question.