While 2012 saw some fantastic artists breakout into the wider musical world, saw some greats come back just as strong and a few bands prove their cracking debuts weren’t just a fluke, it also saw some absolute stinkers hit the charts.
So, we thought we’d marvel in awfulness and list the worst songs that crossed our path over the last twelve months.
And before you pipe up, we’re not including terrible YouTube songs, just single releases throughout the calendar year here in the UK. So Hot Problems will not be making this list, despite how bad it is.
7) Far East Movement ft Justin Bieber – Live My Life
Mix together the routinely pants Far East Movement with a horrifically autotuned Justin Bieber phoning in a chorus so bland it hurts, and you have one hell of a combination.
We’re not the biggest fans of Bieber, let’s be honest, but here he just sounds like he really can’t be bothered with the gargantuan task of a four line chorus. If you can’t be bothered to record it Justin, then I won’t be bothered to listen.
A song that manages to both be headache inducingly annoying and also tediously dull, this is a track that makes us ache for the halcyon days of ‘Like A G6’. And that is not a phrase that I didn’t think I’d ever be typing.
Click here to buy Far East Movement ft Justin Bieber – Live My Life
6) Rihanna – Birthday Cake (Remix) ft Chris Brown
Saying the word ‘cake’ 500 times doesn’t make a song RiRi!
This full length remix of an interlude off her last album Talk That Talk, this sees Rihanna teaming up with Chris Brown to make a song so unsubtle it gives you a concussion when listened to.
It doesn’t even have the same musical safety net as many of her other sex-crazed tracks, with Birthday Cake being a mess of a record, constantly dragging it’s feet.
It’s impossible to take the song at its smutty face value though with the history between Rihanna and Chris Brown. With that in mind, it’s just another tasteless reminder of this very public and very troubled relationship.
Click here to buy Rihanna – Birthday Cake (Remix) ft Chris Brown
5) Pitbull – Back In Time
Pitbull may not be the world’s greatest hip-hop artist, despite his much expanded reputation over the last two years, but very rarely does he venture into the realms of terrible. Cheesy, he might have been before, but his Men In Black themed song Back In Time is beyond salvation.
Utterly shapeless, filled with musical inconsistences and a chore to listen to in its entirety, Back In Time makes you wish you could do just that and stop it from being recorded.
Click here to buy Pitbull – Back In Time
4) JLS – The Hottest Girl In The World Right Now
While I’m not ashamed to say that I would have loved to have put One Direction on this list, the boy band quota is filled this year by JLS, who may have recorded one of the most repetitive and boring pop songs of the last few years.
Ok, we get it, you want to be Michael Jackson and try and have some sort of sex appeal, but this is the most
Horrible, repetitive to the point of nausea and so shallow that not even atoms could drown in it, JLS’s debut single off their fourth album was a new low for the quartet.
Click here to buy JLS – The Hottest Girl In The World Right Now
3) LMFAO – Sorry For Party Rocking
How LMFAO made Sexy and I know It and Party Rock Anthem look like classics I don’t know, but they did it in the shape of Sorry For Party Rocking, a song so bad that even the titular apology isn’t enough.
While LMFAO were never going to be considered great artists of their time, but their previous entrys to the hit parade were just about fun enough to avoid contempt. Not so this time, as Redfoo and Sky Blu’s fourth release from their second album wasn’t even able to raise the odd cheese induced smile as its forebears.
Thankfully, it proved to be their last single together, as the duo have since broken up, shattering the hearts of dozens around the globe. Or at least that guy in the robot mask.
Click here to buy LMFAO – Sorry For Party Rocking
2) Nicki Minaj – Stupid Hoe
While Nicki Minaj has proved more divisive than a 25 foot high wall, no one can possibly try and defend Stupid Hoe.
Nicki has always dealt in fairly random lyrics, quite a lot of them barely making sense to the logical human brain, but Stupid Hoe was truly a new low for the rapper with such paradigm altering lyrics such as “How you gon’ be the stunt double to the n**** monkey” and “Yes, My name is Roman, last name is Zolanski/But no relation to Roman Polanski.”
That’s even before we get to the fact that the phrase ‘Stupid Hoe’ is in the song nearly fifty times in three and a half minutes.
Stupid Hoe tipped Minaj over the cliff into parody of her already highly exaggerated self, something only made worse by its seizure inducing video.
Click here to buy Nicki Minaj – Stupid Hoe
1) Will.I.Am – T.H.E (Hardest Ever)
Will.I.Am will never go down as one of the world’s great songwriters. Neither with The Black Eyed Peas or in his solo pursuits has he ever made anything quite as un-musical and painful as T.H.E, his collaboration with Jennifer Lopez and Mick Jagger.
Starting with a noise that could only be described as autotuned flatulence; the track only gets worse, hitting its nadir with a chorus that’s barely even that. Simply uttering the a tautology over and over again in a barely tuneful manner does not make a chorus it seems.
The awful Mick Jagger cameo at the end just nails this track onto the very top of this list, with his attempts at the song’s ‘chorus’ just being embarrassing for anyone unfo. How Will.I.Am got his to agree to it is a question I will ponder to my grave.
Click here to buy Will.I.Am – T.H.E (Hardest Ever)
Which tracks made you instantly switch radio stations this year? Let us know in the comments below, and make sure to check out what we think were the best tracks to come this year right here and come back tomorrow to see the beginning of our countdown of the best albums of the year.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith
Tagged in Chris Brown Jennifer Lopez Pitbull Sir Mick Jagger will.i.am Justin Bieber Rihanna JLS Nicki Minaj LMFAO