Dec 21, 2016

The Ten Worst Country Songs of 2016




1. Thomas Rhett - Vacation
I mean, there have been worse songs in human history. The song your drunken friend made up about farts one night after eating Taco Bell at 2:14 a.m. "I'm Too Sexy?" Nah, that's better. Uh, "Who Let the Dogs Out?" Nah, still better. Um. Starship's "We Built This City"…yeah, that's a toss-up. You get the point. "Vacation" is bad; real bad; torture bad. It's not only poorly written by FOURTEEN PEOPLE, it's shoddy, sounding as if your friend's "fart song" was given a modicum of production by an intern. "Vacation" transcends bro-country because it's a perfect storm of awfulness. A shit hurricane. A dumpster fire in hell. A train wreck in a funeral home. Thankfully, radio somehow agreed that it was terrible and prevented it from becoming an actual hit. Still, Rhett Akins, what hath thou wrought upon us?


2. Chris Lane - Fix
Farce the Music probably made more memes about this song than any other in 2016. Twenty-sixteen was one of the worst years in the lifetime of most people reading these words, so imagine being one of the two worst songs during that time-frame. It's almost like you have to try to make something this bad. It rides on the 'love as a drug' cliché metaphor like a screaming toddler on the Booh Bah ride at Chuck E. Cheese. That might sound pretty entertaining, but imagine you're the parent, and the kid just threw up and his change of clothes is in the car and you locked the keys in. Yeah, that bad.


3. Clare Dunn - Tuxedo
This would be number one if it had actually made an impact on the country charts. Or 1b, anyway; yeesh "Vacation" is so bad. As it stands, the sheer horror of this thing still gives it a top 3 finish. This makes 2015's "Friend Zone" sound like "Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain." Clare Dunn, you should be embarrassed. I'm embarrassed for you, anyway.


4. Luke Bryan - Move
"Move" is the next in a long line of shaking it for me and kicking dust up on my kind of night. In fact, it's part 4 in that nightmare of a quadrilogy. Luke Bryan is probably on the verge of leaving crap like this off of his albums, being over 40 and all, but he's still hanging onto those last threads of his frat bro days. "Move" isn't quite as bad as the first three I referred to, but it's still "turn the channel within the first five notes" material.


5. Dustin Lynch - Seein' Red
This isn't a country song. This isn't a good pop song. Dustin Lynch has a pretty nice country-sounding voice. The fact that he's made such a swift move from semi-traditional pop-country to disco metro garbage like this is surely a clear sign that he's more enamored with dollar signs than art.


6. Dierks Bentley - Somewhere on a Beach
Dierks is better than this, but 2016 was the year Dierks decided he fully did not care what he's better than. He and his management and handlers were probably hoping this was the one that'd finally make him an A-lister, but nope. Still on that B-list, D. I'd rather hang just below elite level with songs I could be proud of than follow the crowd and still miss the mark.


7. The Band Perry - Comeback Kid
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha.


8. Florida-Georgia Line - H.O.L.Y.
(insert stock commentary about FGL trying to put out more mature songs and sounding ridiculous doing so)


9. Brantley Gilbert - The Weekend
I don't have the energy to make fun of Brantley again right now. This is just not good. Brantley's voice only sounds (relatively) good singing the random ballad now and then. He'd rather do these bro party anthems. I'd rather not hear them.


10. Kane Brown - Ain't No Stopping Us Now
Just stop. Kane has been another example of "the internet is not the real world" in 2016. You know… how internet popularity and social media bubble mindsets don't necessarily have any footing in the real world… One of those examples will be inaugurated in January. The other will be doing county fair shows for passionate Tumblr fans in the years to come.

2 comments:

  1. Dierks is better than this...

    He most certainly is not. None of the people on this list is "better" than the lowest level of gully dirt. Not one of them has any meaningful talent.

    But I quibble.

    Good list, though I can't listen to more than a minute of any of this garbage.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm happy to say that I didn't know most of these songs haha. The joys of not having to sit in a little box listening to all that shit anymore. I did play a couple of the videos and one stuck out to me most, the Brantley one, and I have a couple of questions.

    When he says "It's time to go do what I'm good at." What the hell is he talking about? Looking like a failed MMA clothing model?
    He's sober, right? Why the hell is he advocating his fans to "wake and bake" in this song?

    That's really all I've got. I'm going to listen to some Gary Stewart now.

    ReplyDelete

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