Dec 18, 2015

Ten Worst Country Songs of 2015

First off, I need to address the elephant in the room. There are no Sam Hunt songs on this list. I didn't exclude him because he isn't country (he isn't) or because he isn't the worst thing that happened to country radio in 2015 (he was). I just found all 10 of these songs to be far more a tax on my nerves than anything Hunt released in 2015. He still sucks, don't get me wrong, but here are truly the 10 worst country songs of 2015!

1. The Band Perry - Live Forever
The Band Perry plays country music, or at least that's what their Twitter bio read in 2013. Fast forward to 2015, past a couple hits and several underperforming singles and TBP completely reinvented themselves as a grating pop band with this bit of pointless fluff. Nonsensical lyrics, an overpowering shade of yellow, and absolutely no ties whatsoever to the genre in which they so shittily released this rancid pile of vomit. Evolution schmevolution, this is full on pop, and not even good pop. Embarrassing. A torpedo to a modestly promising career if ever there was one. There's talk of them "going pop" like Taylor Swift did, but Taylor had name recognition and good songs. Maybe the Perry brood should go into hair-styling.

2. Luke Bryan - Kick the Dust Up
The butt of endless jokes and memes here at FTM, this song had the nearly middle-aged Mr. Bryan tossing out slang, partying with the youngs, and inviting them under the bridge as long as they left their cell phones at the truck and didn't tell anyone. Wait, what? Nearly as bad as "That's My Kind of Night," one of the worst country songs ever released.

3. Florida-Georgia Line - Sun Daze
Released in 2014, puked …err peaked in 2015. Maybe that's cheating a little, but this song is bad enough to make "worst of" lists in multiple years. Our heroic lead singer, in this classy gem, refers to his penis as an umbrella and his paramour's vagina as a drink in which he plans to insert his tiny decorative umbrella whilst she perches uncomfortably upon the sink, hoping not to be grinded into the dirty dishes by the stoned Tyler Hubbard. Hot garbage. Not even the catchy kind.

4. Zac Brown Band - Beautiful Drug
Enough's been said about this lame-ass EDM song to fill a book the size of Benedict Arnold's biography. Can one song ruin the legacy of a heretofore mostly respected artist? Maybe not, but this is at least enough to leave a smelly stain and cause a great deal of worry about this talented band's future.

5. Old Dominion - Break Up With Him
This creepy bastard wants you to break up with your boyfriend, for whom you've confessed no ill will towards, and come over to have sex with him. When I used to write lyrics, one of the oft-repeated rules was to back up your message. In this song, they needed to prove the current boyfriend actually deserves to be broken up with to make the singer more sympathetic. They did nothing of the sort, coming off as an Axe-sprayed, too-tight-tshirt-wearing douchebag just looking for a little play, not caring about the repercussions on other people's lives. Just a pile of crap.

6. Cole Swindell - Let Me See Ya Girl
This song proved bro-country in its purest form hadn't left us in 2015. In fact, it went to #1 on the charts with this craptastic half-written rehash of everything Florida-Georgia Line has wet dreams about. Drive truck with hottie, find place to party. Come up with new and exciting figures of speech to describe the sexy movements of the aforementioned hottie. Hey, I know!... "like wind moves cotton?" Really?

7. Chase Rice - Gonna Wanna Tonight
Insipid. Every time I went in Dollar General this year, there was a 1/3 chance this song was playing over the intercom. I made my visits quick. 

8. Haley Georgia - Ridiculous
This song would be ranked higher if it had had any impact whatsoever upon the charts or "country music" culture, but it didn't… thankfully. This tune was basically an excuse for a girl to sing the word "dick" over and over without getting censored for it. True ear torture.

9. Jason Aldean - Gonna Know We Were Here
Jason Aldean doesn't care anymore and he doesn't even care if you know it. In the point of his album era when Aldean usually releases a song that seems way too good for an a-hole of his calibre, Jason this time chose to put out one of his least distinctive and worst singles of his career.  

Rant: As mean as I can be on here, I don't actually hate or even dislike (as people) most of the artists that I pick on, but Aldean's a tool and I truly don't care for the guy, and he's certainly not making it easy to change that line of thinking with his music, his attitude, or his actions.

10. Danielle Bradbery - Friend Zone
Just listen to this shit.

6 comments:

  1. Great list. Kick the Dust Up and Sun Daze were my #3 and 4, but would have been 1 and 2 if I didn't also include pop. (My list is in the link.) Gonna Wanna Tonight has the most dull, cliche lyrics. Ridiculous is the worst sonic torture I've ever experienced, but at least it wasn't a hit. Live Forever is a bad Katy Perry song (like the last five Katy Perry songs).

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  2. Can't say I disagree with ANY of these. I can't believe you were able to narrow it down to 10---not sure I could pull that off. It was a bad year for the quality of "country" music---even if this shit sells.

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  3. I'm amused and a little sad I listened to that shit, #10.

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  4. Thankfully I've only heard two of those - I'll miss listening to the others, thank you! The odd thing is that though I agree that the Zac Brown deserves its place on the list, their gig that I went to at Wembley this year (even including the EDM parts) was bloody fantastic!!!

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  5. Eh, can't say I entirely agree with this selection.

    Firstly, you mentioned the reason you have "Ridiculous" ONLY at #8 is because it failed to make any cultural impact. But can't the exact same thing be said about "Live Forever", which happened to top your list? It failed to chart altogether on the Billboard Hot 100 and was also their worst-peaking single related to an album to date.

    Honestly, as infuriating as it was that "Live Forever" allowed itself to be marketed to "country radio" in the first place................on its own, it's not bad as a pop song. In comparison, "Ridiculous" induces seething anger with every listen on my end.

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    Also, "Gonna Wanna Tonight" would be ineligible as it was released as a single in 2014, and I disagree with "Gonna Know We Were Here" and "Let Me See Ya Girl" being among the ten absolute worst singles of 2015. The former's main sin is being a blatant retread of "Take A Little Ride" but doesn't smack as especially awful like "Burnin' It Down" was, while the latter..............as much as it has terrible lyrics...............has a sound that's more milquetoast and innocuous more than anything. I can definitely think of at least ten songs worse than that.

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    Here's my list:


    1) Haley Georgia: “Ridiculous” (Sure, it flopped big time. Still, this is particularly bad in that it heinously leaves an impression on you. It is for that reason why Haley walks away with the asbestos-laced nuclear waste cake.)

    2) Sam Hunt: “Break Up In A Small Town” (The single most damaging single release of 2015 on musical, lyrical and production fronts combined. Its ability to impact the Top Ten this coming week is terrible news.)

    3: Old Dominion: “Break Up With Him” (The single most offensively douchey single of 2015. It falls below Sam Hunt only because the production is uneventfully bland.)

    4: Brett Michaels: “Girls On Bars” (Another stone cold flop. Still, it had this infectiously toxic cult curiosity driving it that leaves it deserving of a thrashing in the year-end countdown anyway.)

    5: Chris Lane: “Fix” (It’s only now beginning to highly impact radio via On The Verge, but it isn’t escaping my sight for 2015. Between the Old Dominion-esque sleaze factor, comparing list to Walter White highs and the shamelessly lightweight pop production, this is a new low to closely watch with fright.)

    6: Dallas Smith: “Kids With Cars” (Even with Joey Moi helming his entire country recording career thus far, his earlier efforts and “Lifted” showed signs of relative promise. Not here. The rap-like delivery in the verses is painful listening to, and the production is arguably Moi’s single most cacophonously cluttered heap of eardrum whiplash yet. Stop “Wasting My Time”, Dallas!)

    7: Danielle Bradbery: “Friend Zone” (What makes this track especially toxic are lyrics that make apologies to Men’s Right Activist rhetoric. From a woman. Forget the atrocious production and personality-deprived vocals: there are some disturbing insinuations in the songwriting.)

    8: Zac Brown Band: “Beautiful Drug” (Another single that’s holding its own at country radio and spells terrible news for the format’s future if it reaches the Top Ten because it will likened to a referendum on allowing more synthetic production antithetical to country music and shallow lyricism lacking narrative.)

    9: David Fanning: “Doin’ Country Right” (You know it’s an especially brutal year for mainstream “country” music when this single wound up tanking to #9 on the year-end worst countdown. Especially seeing how stuttering vocal production is the only thing memorable about it for the very worst reasons.)

    10: Abi Ann: “Truck Candy” (This would definitely be in my Top Three if, somehow, it didn’t seem like it HAD to be a novelty song-esque joke on us. Still, it’s painful listening to in any context.)

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