the top ten worst hit songs of 2022

It’s difficult to place the mainstream charts of 2022 in context.

On the one hand, a lot of hay is made every year about how broken the Hot 100 is, myself included, especially in a year where holiday songs occupy nearly five percent of that year-end list, to say nothing of extended holdovers from 2021. It leaves you feeling that there’s just less to work with courtesy of the months where the chart didn’t move much and thus saw extended crossover with a goddamn Disney movie - in other words, like 2014 but with more album bombs!

But also like 2014, I’m not as quick to call this year a total disaster. Make no mistake, for some genres like mainstream pop and rap and trap it was rough, as radio traction often proved to be a deciding factor whether songs lasted beyond their streaming window, which wound up screwing over some promising releases. And unfortunately the radio dragged even harder, letting songs from years back stagnate on the Hot 100 long past their expiration date while being rather unwilling to list and platform anything in a timely manner - for a brutal example, ‘Heat Waves’ by Glass Animals first dropped in 2020, was one of my worst hit songs of 2021, and was the biggest song of the year-end Hot 100 for 2022 - if I’m at Billboard, that’s a massive red flag that the inertia of the existing system might not reflect the timely tastes and consuming habits of an audience.

But the bad songs don’t make me as angry as they have in the past - this is not 2016 - or even bring up much deep-seated embarrassment or revulsion like the last two years. The good songs also weren’t always that consistently good - we’ll get to that in the next list - but when I look at what actually wound up here, the most consistent emotion is dumbfounded amazement, the ‘wow, this is what radio callout scores and TikTok virality gave us this year’, shambling disasters that would almost be fascinating if they didn’t give me a splitting migraine. And while I originally shrugged with the thought, ‘well, this is what the public wanted this year, it’s never going to align with your tastes, get over yourself’, I remembered that often said public relies on what they’re given, what they’ve been told is available, not what they choose to seek out, and industry machinations play a lot more of a role in what gets popular these days. And while this has always been true, they’re all getting more informed and smarter with their marketing plans, and Billboard can be agonizingly slow to close loopholes and respond to changing times.

What this means is that this list was pretty draining to assemble - it might not surprise many of you who watch Billboard BREAKDOWN, but there are some shifts that I can tell will draw some ire. And as per usual, they had to be selected from songs that debuted on the year-end Hot 100 in 2022 - yes, in some cases that might mean there was less to choose from and I should probably revise this rule to be more ‘representative’, but really that’s just trying to change the lens of what I want to be more representative of popular music, good or bad. And in the spirit of sticking with a consistently broken system, let’s start with Dishonourable Mentions!

I think some are going to be surprised that this is only here, I know a lot of pop fans hate this way more than I do thanks to the lazy sample and obvious ripoff energy and whatever Dr. Luke contributed to it, and the crowbarred remix with Mariah Carey and DJ Khaled even more! And maybe if I was stuck hearing this on the radio constantly, I’d agree, but this is the sort of stiff, awkward, fidgety song that isn’t remotely sexy or can convey any tangible big dick energy as it rips off Doja Cat and Megan Thee Stallion, but ultimately it’s too hollow and disposable to be worth any energy at all. Not the first song on this list that can’t make its bland softcore remotely compelling, and while the goopy synths don’t help - I’ve actually never been all that fond of the sample, even when Mariah used it originally - the larger problem seems to be Latto, with basic flows, weak punchlines, and nowhere near the personality to make this work. It just falls flat - or rather, flaccid.

I hated this song nearly two years ago when I reviewed Dangerous: The Double Album, and while I get how the muddy trap country might contribute to Morgan Wallen’s alcohol-soaked misery, it almost succeeds too well in sounding like a manosphere garbage fire not written by Mitchell Tenpenny or Jason Aldean. What throws me is that the song seems to start with brighter guitars before diving into shambling, washed-out ugliness before we hear Morgan Wallen bitching about the girl who wasted his time and money, where it’s very telling he gives us no details about her or the relationship or the breakup - it’s not even credibly bitter or angry, it’s just a boring wallow for someone who blew the majority of his sympathy the past two years and doesn’t seem like he’s changing. In other words, this song needs therapy, next!

I debated whether it would be this song or ‘Boyfriend’ by Dove Cameron in this slot, the latter of which is messier in its disastrously produced attempt at Riverdale-core. But that’s at least hilariously bad, whereas I grew to dislike this as a minor hit from another obvious ripoff - this time chasing Olivia Rodrigo and ‘drivers license’, but with a weak central metaphor and a drippy, angry theatricality that isn’t remotely convincing. ‘drivers license’ made the breakup at its core feel huge, opening a doorway to so many complicated possibilities, whereas this feels like high school melodrama that thinks it’s a lot more significant and dramatic than it is. You’d think the angry pettiness of the song and Spencer-Smith venting would be backed by something beyond this limp acoustic guitar, flat synths and fake snap - it’s not organic or charmingly lo-fi, it’s amateurish and relies on a conceit where they might as well have made a pinkie swear. I know some folks will say I’m clearly too old for this, but I can appreciate teenage angst done well - this isn’t it.

I should not have had to learn so much about US college football to follow the Hot 100 this year, but Walker Hayes pulled out a second hit where he references Alabama and Nick Saban, and it feels just as corny and stale as the rest of the sitcom-level humour of this song. It’s not worse than ‘Fancy Like’, which was just gross all the way down in truly mystifying ways, but the production here is considerably worse with the crummy twang of the guitars, godawful vocal mixing, and painfully cheap sounding drum machines where you can tell Monument was rushing this out the door to capitalize on viral success. More importantly it’s trying to establish Walker Hayes as the basic everyman where he’s trying to keep his daughters off the pole, write songs that’ll get him a little play - ask Morgan Wallen how that’s worked keeping him away from booze - and try to contain his vices before his wife nags him; it feels like the truly dumbest elements of Home Improvement mashed into Married With Children, the hapless American dad who just “wants what’s best for everyone”. This archetype was dead in the water a decade ago at least, and while there’s an audience that’ll chuckle along anyway, they deserve better than this. And to end on football, not only did Alabama not make the playoff this year, there’s a lot of angry Kansas City Chiefs fans who blame Walker Hayes for the AFC Championship collapse last year after his overblown performance; not exactly fair, but when the song is this bad, I’m not defending you!

But wait, you say, this was the one Drake song from Honestly, Nevermind that the public seemed to like, why is it here? And my reply is… exactly, the Drake fandom appear to have standards so low that a lousy repeat of ‘Knife Talk’ was the only thing they could accept from Drake’s house experiment and it ultimately led to Her Loss, comfortably his worst album! We’ll deal with the aftermath of that album in 2023, but looking back on this song, beyond the fact that including on the album stunk of cowardice, it’s a bad song, with the feel of two entirely different fragments smashed together with Drake bitching about fakeness that he’s often helped perpetuate over the decade and the fact that nobody really tells it like it is to him - funny, after this summer we should ask Anthony Fantano how well you take someone sayin’ something. And 21’s verse isn’t that special either - the standard array of gunplay and sleaze alongside the already dated Will Smith line, but the couplet that stands out to me is where back to back he calls his gun a sexual predator for how many folks he’s hit with it, and snaps back at a girl for asking questions whether she thinks she’s Nadeska - you know, a music journalist who from even the days when people cared about Everyday Struggle has received constant disrespect. Coupled with what was coming on Her Loss, what ‘Jimmy Cooks’ reveals are two men who want to be called out, but can’t handle it - very telling.

I can’t get that angry at Parmalee - this is hacked out, basic, and utterly forgettable until you realize it’s produced like shit with the fake snap, underpowered trap elements, and the rest of the instrumental stolen from Kane Brown in 2018. But this is a proposal song for Hallmark original movies that eventually wind up forgotten in the bowels of Netflix, and while it’s clingy and rushed and has some weird lines - what does ‘forever on your lips’ taste like - it’s such a wildly dumb swing at sincerity that it’s hard for me to hate with any degree of intensity. This band’s ‘hitmaking career’ the past few years is honestly more punishment than anything I could say here, let’s just forget this exists.

And speaking of whitebread boyfriend country, this one baffles me. It only made the year-end list thanks to Music Row giving this a bafflingly long run on Nashville radio, and I feel like the notes got mixed up for this between your usual Dan + Shay sterility and a song all about country lovemakin’. Because on the one hand, you have two happily married men - not to each other, that could have made this interesting - with no vocal personality between them, rattling off lists of things she likes that he does that feel beyond basic - and the Bose namedrop on the hook feels like cheapest commercial plug waiting to happen. But then you have all the sexual innuendo on the prechorus and hook with the spare electric guitar and a bass so leaden and crushing that it shakes the glassware when I put this on my stereo! I’d call it a torch song but the guitars are too bright - if anything, it’s a demo where it sounds like someone forgot to properly master it! And there’s just something about their mugging delivery where you can tell they’re way more impressed with their attempt at sexuality than they should be; I may have started off mystified, but now I’m just embarrassed.

And now, the list proper, starting off with….

10. One thing I find interesting - if a bit nauseating - is the arc of the reputational rehab tour, particularly how it spills into the art. We’ll get more into certain elements of this later on, but normally the label will advise you present yourself as contrite, take a break to get right, maybe stick with more sincere moments that can win back heartstrings and get folks to forgive and forget. And in America, it tends to work - especially if you like the art or artist, you tend to have a vested interest in the performance of contrition so everyone can get back to consuming without issue. But if the artist never truly goes away, and you can see the mechanism of this arc play out in real time, you can start questioning how sincere any of it is… especially when they eventually get back to making songs like this.

Morgan Wallen is at his absolute worst playing to cavalier, alcohol-soaked bro-country leftovers, and what this reminds me of are the slew of overly obnoxious breakup songs those acts would shovel out in 2013-14 - these guys always tended to be better at the hookup than the breakup. And in a way this is the natural extension of ‘Wasted On You’, but considerably worse - the brittle acoustics, fake snap, keening pedal steel that gets suffocated by the bass and synthetic vocal echo as the trap percussion slides in, but what’s worse is that there’s no sense of melancholy or sadness, a barroom commiseration that only works if you actually want to extend sympathy to Morgan Wallen who wants a high enough percentage of alcohol to forget ‘you’. So not only are some of the underlying issues behind Wallen’s behavior not remotely resolved, he’s now leaning into it for a bizarrely major key song; it’s the tone that gets me, and with one of Wallen’s weaker performances, this is cheap, Sam Hunt-esque filler that nevertheless became another hit. The disinterest in actually changing feels palpable, and more than a little gross - next!

9. I’m going to make a contentious assertion: there are some artists where some are way more enamoured in protecting what the artist represents than any of their actual art. And as a critic it’s a lose-lose situation, because you want to talk about the art, but you’re talking past the audience - it’s really more about what that artist validates for them rather than anything they actually say or do, and you speaking against the artist is an attack on them. And I feel obligated to say that there’s actually not many of these artists - normally it’s reserved for acts with more personality than talent, and a laundry list of transgressions that overshadow all of it. But when they have a song that becomes one of the biggest hits of the year…

I’m so tired of talking about Kodak Black, because it’s so rarely about anything he actually says or does on record that’s remotely interesting or good - and it’s not just the response from fans that back this up, it’s a large part of why he was on Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, to highlight the odd kinship where many rappers see their darkest impulses in him. Now I could question why so many are so eager to extend friendship and clout to a violent convinced sex offender who can’t seem to stop getting caught up in bullshit, but despite them constantly bringing him up and elevating him, you’re considered the killjoy if you actually broach that conversation or threaten his reinforced platform. So fine, I’ll play it your way: the chipmunked vocal sample got on my nerves in record time, the trap percussion is stale, there’s multiple bad poop references on the hook and verses and he talks about taking fake Percs - a good way to get at best the worst trip of your life and at worst a surprise overdose - and then by the second verse he’s dropping ableist slurs. And he’s not framing himself as a villain but as a martyr, a troubled antihero constantly in his own redemption arc, because he knows that’s essential for any flimsy justification to defend him - whereas with this crap and gremlins in general, I’d prefer a little sunlight.

8. The fastest way to date yourself as a content creator is to critique the slang of the kids - you immediately come across as old and out of touch, and what does it even matter - it’s slang, yours was garbage too, just let them have this. It’s generally the same attitude I’d take towards memes where I’m on the outside looking in - but I can tell when somebody’s forcing it, and nowhere in 2022 was it more obvious than this.

I remember so many people making such a big deal when Gunna beat The Weeknd in album sales going head-to-head, which was dispiriting and overlooks a lot of factors surrounding the rollouts of both artists, such as Gunna being one of the most disposable rising stars of recent memory, whose monotonous flow and empty brand name porn actually seemed to spin around to become a meme for how unbelievably boring he is! The problem is that ironic meme hypebeast consumption is still consumption, and thus ‘pushin p’ became a thing in 2022 with its watery synths, bargain barrel trap percussion, and one of the forced attempts at creating slang that sounds cool in recent memory; you can’t even argue that it’s ‘from the kids’, these guys are my age or older… but fine, put aside the regurgitated brand names or Young Thug saying he fucked a cup of water - again, another case of not nearly being as sexy as he thinks it is, unless she’s a water-bender down there or something - or Future’s line ‘she not a lesbian, for Future she turn pesbian’, it’s ultimately all about ‘p’. What does it mean… basically anything you want it to be for an easy rhyme, and while the toilet humour could just spill forth, the larger truth is that ‘p’ means product, cheap disposable hype that as soon as Gunna falls off you’ll forget this exists. Even in the context of gym playlists and clubs, this got rotated out fast - I can’t blame them

7. So I don’t tend to crack down on ripoffs that often - they’re all over the charts any given year, sometimes they wind up making good music on an established template or sound, and while you could wish for more originality, sometimes craftsmanship will make up for it. I only really get annoyed when you can tell they’re years late to the bandwagon and are looking for a cheap formula to get a hit really bad and kind of missed the original point altogether…

A colleague of mine once said that OneRepublic is a band you either like or don’t care about, which is why the long-running vanity project of Ryan Tedder isn’t trying to sound like whatever OneRepublic was in the mid-to-late 2000s, just instead rip off ‘Feel It Still’ by Portugal. The Man for some extremely obvious commercialcore. So all of Ryan Tedder’s increasingly squawky falsetto alongside whistles, guitars smothered in reverb, and a flair that has none of the idiosyncratic charm that made ‘Feel It Still’ at least novel - not surprising because this is a tacked on soundtrack hit for the newest Top Gun movie that wouldn’t be fit to lick ‘Danger Zone’’s boots, but that’s arguably not what pissed me off the most. No, that comes with the lyrics and tone - ‘Feel It Still’ because there was something kind of off about the weird, surrealist swing of the thing, and it leaned into that groove, whereas ‘I Ain’t Worried’ also acknowledges time is running out and you’re broke and scared and desperate - which is still mostly echoed in a minor key melodic progression - but wants to dive into willful delusion instead, a nostalgia trip where i kept expecting something to diffuse the tension or lean into darkness, but that would require taking chances that nobody involved here had the balls to make. It’s trying to induce carefree thrill-seeking but it comes across like a fake painted smile in the middle of the uncanny valley, and for an underpowered advertisement, it’s still a total failure of a comeback nobody wanted - next!

6. So the next two songs here… they both shouldn’t surprise anyone that they’re here, although I can imagine some might be surprised they’re this low, especially after the rant I went on when I reviewed it. Because remember when I mentioned Riverdale-core? Yeah, here’s the much larger specimen… time for an exorcism.

What I think frustrates me most about ‘Unholy’ is just how obviously it could have worked: make Sam Smith a more active participant in the narrative instead of a stagemaster, sideline Kim Petras entirely for, well, obvious reasons given everything she says on social media but also to find someone who can match Sam Smith’s brand of theatrical vamping. Hell, get Hozier onboard opposite Sam Smith and if you listen faintly in the distance you can hear a whole swathe of Tumblr just swoon! Or just do what everyone who remixes this song does and rip out the clanking disaster of a groove for something with tempo and sinuous energy, actually lean into goth or darkwave! That’s ultimately the reason this isn’t higher on the list - the song is an overproduced, theatrical disaster that again, isn’t as sexy as it thinks it is and really just wishes it was ‘Sacrilege’ by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but the potential was at least there. Now the original is still atrocious - there’s no chemistry, the production elements clash awkwardly, the dramatic build-up is poorly sold and it all feels rushed - but there’s a part of me that hears Sam Smith making more songs like this on that upcoming and album and thinks, ‘you know, with the right producer they can pull it off, maybe?’ So yeah, this is still awful and I’m kind of amazed the radio actually got onboard, but hey, it was at least trying… unlike…

5. I’ll freely admit that a lot of my experience with this subgenre of hip-hop has been from the outside looking in - I’ve heard a lot from the UK, New York and Chicago scenes, but given the often accompanying violence and subsequent political stigmatization of the genre, it feels like a lot of crossovers burn out before they get traction. This is not one of those cases… but the reasons why kind of make you wish it could be.

So you’re going to have to follow me on the waves of suck around this song: it starts off with an abbreviated cover of Bruno Mars’ ‘Talking To The Moon’, one of his earliest ballads from Doowops & Hooligans, but since this cover was done by UK singer-songwriter Sam Tompkins, his bargain-barrel willowy croon strips the song of any R&B or soul flavour. And yet since drill often grabs samples like this and drops stock, stuttering but hammering percussion all over it, we have UK drill rapper JNR Choi, who had an album last year that got no hype whatsoever, but does his wannabe Pop Smoke impression all over this… and the song goes viral based off of ‘to the moon’ being a common catchphrase in the crypto scene, so much so that the single cover is a screenshot of Elon Musk tweeting it. Now all of this would be reasons to dislike this, but factor in how it’s a painfully sterile drill beat and how JNR Choi doesn’t acquit himself well at all - for the most part this is a sex song where he’s screwing this girl doggystyle and sprays all over himself - and how naturally this got an American remix… with Fivio Foreign and Gunna delivering more bland garbage. So let’s make this clear: the only reason this became a thing is because of a bad cover, a worse remix, and a goddamn crypto meme perpetuated by the most insecure emerald failson imaginable - and given the downward trajectory of crypto and Elon Musk, this is less Apollo 11 and more Apollo 1 or 13. Utterly worthless.

4. I’ve said before that the fastest way to wind up high on one of these lists is to disappoint me. And yet here… I didn’t expect to say it with the lead artist, given my messy and complicated opinions on his work for years now. But I have to: Post Malone, I expected better of you.

Of course, the argument with this song is whether it was something Post Malone wanted to make at all - given the notoriously troubled production and promo behind Twelve Carat Toothache, I had the suspicion that the label would find the most pop-friendly song with the big guest star and push it however they could. But after ‘One Right Now’ underperformed and ‘Cooped Up’ outright bombed, they took the surest bet possible with the worst goddamn song on the album, the one that sounds like Post Malone bought it from songwriters for hire and delivered his laziest possible performance. But it doesn’t stop there - the incessant squeak lodged in the percussion, Post Malone saying that he’s about to pull some other guy’s girl like a hammie before pleading desperately that this girl stay, along with a plea that he fit in her plans that sounds like he’s texting a groupie before the tour bus pulls in. And then there’s Doja Cat, and while I could go off about how the more the industry wants her to become the all-purpose pop rap diva the less interesting her music gets, you can tell when she cares to rap her ass off, or sound more sensual. This somehow delivers neither, where she has no chemistry with Post Malone and in the most baffling line, ‘now he got me on a leash ‘cause he said no strings’ - what sort of bafflingly bad attempt at kink is this, how are you of all people bad at this? So naturally thanks to the radio this became one of the biggest hits both artists had all year, and one of their worst - I don’t like this and I’m not happy, in case you can’t tell.

3. So I remember back in 2017 Imagine Dragons released ‘Believer’ and folks were so shocked at how in your face and aggressively obnoxious the song seemed to be, a load of hollow shrieking that barely even tried to make sense. I also remember a lot of folks being surprised that it didn’t make my worst hits of that year… and I’m not going to say the song is good, but when it got featured in the season one finale of Riverdale soundtracking a sex scene between Archie and Veronica - not kidding about any of that - I was laughing way too hard to hate it. Fast forward to late last year, and all that antipathy folks felt back then? Yeah, I got it now.

Honest question: why does the radio still play Imagine Dragons? I know this band has more aggressively commodified their sound than few else in their era, but their disastrous compositions, howling delivery, and genre-pileup atrocity of production almost makes it feel like they’re daring someone, anyone, to try and stop them! In this case, we have a song that was explicitly tied to a cartoon theme song for the TV show based on League Of Legends, all about alienation that can’t credibly sell anger but absolutely delivers jerky, grooveless, melodramatic whinging. Maybe it’s just me, but if you’re trying to sell an empowerment fantasy, it could come across as unbelievably sour to lean on a powder keg of resentment and paranoid victimhood, especially coming from pop monoculture staples Imagine Dragons! And it absolutely breaks my heart to see JID on this - The Forever Story is one of the best albums of 2022, and his presence very nearly saved this song… until you realize that he’s basically here because Dan Reynolds can’t afford to get Kendrick Lamar anymore and with how his hook smashed back in without any transition after JID’s verse, he shows a distressing lack of regard for any of it - structurally, this song just feels wrong! Hell, pile on the warping, painfully fake sounding production from Mattman & Robin - they were the one who dropped that synth leftover from brostep into this - and you realize that if this was made by anyone who didn’t have Imagine Dragons’ connections, this would have bombed spectacularly and anonymously and nobody would be anyone’s enemy. So this might have turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy - and yet why do I feel like we lost in the end?

2. So I mentioned near the very start that in the opening months of the year, the charts seemed to stall out, especially on the radio where especially in the top 10 it got stagnant fast. And it wasn’t like new music wasn’t being released - maybe the mainstream was a bit slower, but this was the time for programmers to take a chance; your industry is dying, and if you won’t rotate in any of the new pop songs from The Weeknd for thoroughly stupid reasons in the US, maybe try something outside the box? Instead, backed up by the fact that certain kids songs get inordinate traffic on streaming platforms thanks to distressed parents just leaving the soundtrack on repeat, they took the safe option… and we got this.

Look, I didn’t like Encanto. The plot is messy, the musical numbers feel awkwardly positioned amongst too many characters, and I could go off at length surrounding some of the themes and moralism in its conclusion - I get how to some target audiences it might have emotional resonance, but the overwritten tangle of this movie with its questionable themes and weird refusal to spark conflict while escalating internal tension really prevented me from connecting to it; I know that’s how real life family drama often materializes, but if you’re going to play that card and then lean on cheery forgiveness and sentimentality for the conclusion that doesn’t feel earned, your dramatic stakes are going to feel askew. And would you look at that, in microcosm that’s this song: Jessica Darrow plays a character with all that strain on her shoulders and you can hear the anxiety continuously ramp up, but there’s no outlet, it’s forcing a smile and never allowing the scream of frustration; not the first song on this list where instead meeting the tension there’s endless deflection and it feels so much worse. But then there’s the execution - Darrow cannot sing well in this register, the tempo shifts feel incredibly sloppy, the production is weedy, inorganic and painfully unbalanced - you’d think they’d try and go for something that fits the setting and time of the movie rather than this creaking, cheaply produced mess - and then there’s Lin-Manuel Miranda’s writing. I think it’s very telling that he’s described this as inspired by an older sister given he was the ‘baby of the family’ - the song comes across as observing how one deals with pressure rather than living with its real experience - but his overwritten, increasingly forced rhymes make this song impossible to hear as anyone but him behind it, which doesn’t help embody a unique character, certainly not one who’d internalize thoughts in these cadences! And for even those who experience that sort of pressure and anxiety, beyond the initial pop of relatability, what is gained from a song this cloying and badly executed to constantly hammer that nerve? Because let’s be real: this became a hit because of frustrated and desperate parents needing something to distract the kids sick at home with Omicron, and the radio taking the safest option following behind it. At least ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ had some flair - talk about pressure, this needs a wrecking ball.

1. I’ve talked a lot on this list surrounding how these songs became hits - a lot of this is speculation, I’ll admit, but tracking the charts over the course of a year does give you way too much perspective surrounding how the sausage gets made. And for a lot of folks that doesn’t matter, be the music good or bad - but I’ve also referenced artists on this list where you can tell the popular reputation is way more important than any actual music that serves as the vehicle, all the more important when it comes to protecting or redeeming said reputation. And thus, at the epicenter of all of this noxious, cynical plotting where I’m openly questioning whether it was all worth it in the end…

This feels gross - and not just the experience of listening to this trashfire of a collaboration that served as a major launchpad to ensuring Morgan Wallen has mainstream traction again and Lil Durk embarrassing himself as a tokenized voice; yes, he wasn’t forced to do this, and he did include the song on his album this year, but that was for the streaming numbers, don’t be stupid here. When I heard this song, all I could hear was a favour exchanged between labels, giving Lil Durk a crossover he’s struggled to attain and a bit of reputational rehab for Morgan Wallen - cynical and disgusting, sure, but I get the business rationale, dusting off an old marketing plan because the trap country seeds were planted on Dangerous so why leave the potential diseased fruit rotting on the vine? And unfortunately I can’t stop thinking about that because otherwise I’d be stuck focusing on the song, which is atrocious! Morgan Wallen possibly gives his worst ever performance - he’s already got no chemistry with Lil Durk, but why does his yowling vocal fry have to sound so badly tracked and muddy, which doesn’t match Durk’s pickup at all - and the mix is a slurry of guitars drizzled over the cheap trap percussion; there are competent industry veteran producers and engineers who worked on this, it shouldn’t sound this awful! But then there’s the content - I’ve already described Wallen is at his worst when he’s embracing the douchey runoff of bro-country, and this is square in that territory, a hectoring rant about the girls of Broadway strip in Nashville, the girls who seem a little alienated by your bullshit when you meet them at Jason Aldean’s bar and have to take away their phones to party! And some of the reference points are just bizarre - Lil Durk mentions this girl is into P!nk and not rap music, and P!nk has never been a country artist - but what’s most telling is that Morgan Wallen did give this girl his number at the start of the song, and the entire sentiment is that these girls are dishonest and won’t respond to a phone number by some guy at a bar - isn’t this your scene, dude, you cannot be so damn aggrieved that she won’t text you in the morning! But again, nobody really cares that this song blows so hard, or that Durk is even here - he might be The Voice, but it’s getting co-opted for the purpose of muscling Morgan Wallen back into the mainstream where it’s increasingly revealed that if you’re unrepentant, following in the wake of Jason Aldean you’ll get more than a big enough audience who’ll appreciate you for not changing or growing at all, and the douche-bro attitude of the song only feeds that vibe. And it stops being about separating art from artist or any subjective notion of forgiveness - this is about power, and what it reveals about everyone involved. And that’s why it’s my worst hit song of 2022 - it may have worked for what it was trying to do, but it’s rotten all the way down - and unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to leave it all alone.