I'm sure the members of this band thought hamfisted-ly name-checking common and universally expected conventions of decent English songs such as rhyme scheme, originality, and creativity would be "meta", but it just comes off as douchey and lazy to note you had the potential to be decent but just decided against it. This song is very clearly inspired by Madness tracks like Baggy Trousers, which would be a really cool idea if that influence wasn't slowed down to a terribly sluggish pace. Then there's the theme of the song: I understand forty-year-olds wishing for a time when they had less responsibility or more to look forward to, but hearing twenty-year olds wish to simply be toddlers again is novel to me. Maybe it's not my place to judge the members of Twenty One Pilots' desire to curl up into a fetal position, their desire to suckle mommy's tit or curl up into a ball over the terrible, crippling anxieties that all twenty-seven-year olds face.
29. Selena Gomez - Good For You
"What the hell do you mean you have no idea for the music video, you were supposed to have a storyboard ready today!" "Sorry boss, but this song is so uninteresting and flat, I couldn't think of any compelling visuals for it", you begin. Interscope threw out this slop to stave over the brainddead public for the next totally unremarkable Selena single, but it turned out to get a lot more interest than even what they thought the song was worth. Now you've been handed a deadline to put together a cheap video for this thing, and you're stumped. The song is totally unstimulating and one-note. "Maybe something decent will inspire me" you tell yourself as you browse some seedy music download site.
Then you see it.
HOT SEXY BARELY LEGAL LATINA BABES
THEY'RE 18 AND LONELY, CLICK NOW!!
FIND HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA 2NITE
"Yes, yes!" You jump up in excitement. "That's how we're going to get people to sit through this boring turd, yes!"
28. Ariana Grande - Focus
A novice artist rehashing their first breakthrough hit for their second effort in the limelight is not nearly as unusual or as unsuccessful of a phenomenon as most people make it out to be. Record labels want to get their hands on a song with as much potential as their artist's first hit, what better way than to build a song with the blueprint of their act's original smash? (Receipts here: Mariah Carey's label even stopped initial pressing of her debut just so they could stuff the Vision of Love send-up Love Takes Time on it.)
Focus is very much in the vein of Problem, taking its minimal chanting non-chorus and floating prechorus. Nearly everyone hated this song for one reason: the Jamie Foxx appearance in the chorus. Strange thing is, I don't think that's the worst part of the song. No, the worst part is the awful implementation of go-go rhythms, the same kind Beyonce ruined forever with her terrible Crazy in Love and the entirety of B-Day (Talk about milking your biggest hit, that album is a huge offender.). I'd like to think this song underperformed because the public wised up to buying Crazy In Love for the 50th time, but maybe that's expecting a bit too much of them.
DiaGirls's Gently did something amazing: It starts off with a completely left-field dubstep break, and that dubstep ended up being the best part of the song. Not because that break was any good, it just happens that was the only part of the song that was a bit interesting. Everything past the intro is a mix of A Pink's Luv and AOA's Like A Cat at half-speed. It's astounding how dull and listless this song is, and it seems to be boring the girls just as much. They wander around the sets like the living dead, or like Sulli used to do on stage. Never thought I'd wish for more dubstep in a song.
29. Asha - Mr. Liar
I clicked play on this song and was very impressed with the opening instrumental, totally ace and really well done. But then the stupid "Ooh ooh-ooh OOH" riffing started and I was out. Some might say that this song is bad because the singers are bad, but that's not it at all: the MELODY they're singing is bad. A trained ear will tell you this song, and especially that riffing, is composed extensively in the blues scale, which is a terrible, limited scale. I did enjoy the part where the girls lynch the boyfriend, I guess.
28. Mamamoo ft eSNa - Ahh Oop!
You enter Salon de Mamamoo within trepidation: your regular barber is out of town, but a co-worker insisted that this place has great service. When you enter, you immediately notice some crappy blues song playing over the radio that you've sworn you've heard twenty times over by now, but no matter: the barber has called you up to her chair. She's pretty unpleasant; you're not sure why she needed to touch your face and hair for, and ...is she sniffing your scalp right now? While a ritual like this would usually ensure friendship between baboons, she must've not liked what she found. The barber rudely throws a catalog of hairstyles in your lap. Generally you tell what haircut you'd like the barber to give you. "Crazy bitch..." you mutter as you wait for her return. Only she doesn't come back: two of her assistants announce that they will be cutting your hair instead. No difference to you: the cutting is normal enough, except the blonde stylist doesn't seem to be very focused on the job at hand. Holding clippers in one hand and a phone in the other, you're quite sure she's shittalking you in Korean. You doze off eventually, only to be awoken by the original barber whispering lyrics to that same damn blues song from earlier into your ear. "The hell?" You rise with a start. The woman cracks a devilish leer and pulls a shaving razor from a nearby cart, slitting your throat in an flash. Your eyes bulge and skin pales, blood staining the styling cloth you're covered with. The demon barber gives you no time to struggle, she pulls a lever on the side of your chair and a trap door opens underneath you. You fall into the basement of the salon and your cranium is shattered, instantly killing you. The barber and her assistants later recover your body, chucking it through an industrial meat grinder and selling your offal as meat pies to unwitting civilians. Oh well, at least you don't have to listen to whatever anonymous blues song that they were playing in that salon ever again.
Charli XCX's Boom Clap was one of the best songs to be released in 2014, and then she turned around and released the terrible Break the Rules. Doing It reapproaches the quality of Boom Clap, it's very catchy and stuffs as much melody as it can into its running time. The video is the result of what happens when you try and re-create Lady Gaga's Telephone with about a tenth of the budget, resulting in what's supposed to be a wild party: The director just rolls out a mechanical bull, plops some palm tree props down and scatters some pineapples across the set and calls it a day. Oh and the woman from Empire features on a remix of this.
29. Mark Ronson ft Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk
We're all fucking sick of this song by now, but you probably thought it was a decent song when it was still new. The lyrics to this are really just a bundle of non-stop nonsense hooks meant to buy time for the excellent instrumental that everyone tried to imitate this year but failed because they oversimplified it. The production and writing of the underlying track is great, and its radio mix definitely hinders it: Radio listeners want instant gratification, but I think the build to that final brass hook is absolutely necessary. My favorite element of the mix has to be that constant scatting in the bass vocals.
28. Years & Years - King
What a fantastic video. We all know how cheap videos from the West are, but rarely do they make their tight budget work as well as Years & Years does for King. The song's not as great as the video, but it's still good: And before someone draws parallels between it and 2014's house hit Rather Be (Despite them not being similar in the slightest.), I just want to say that while Rather Be has the better instrumental, King definitely has the better melody and vocalist. The song sounds glamorous and glitzy, especially that chorus, it would slot in nicely next to the 70s disco classics, in my opinion.
I'll be fucked if it seemed like 4Minute were ever going to release a decent song again. What's Your Name had about as much coherency as a message spelled out in a bowl of alphabet soup, Is It Poppin was as lit as a mortuary, and when Whatcha Doin Today? came around I was avoiding their texts and pretending that I had lots of work to get to, taking notes from my previous love interests. Crazy changed that, though. It's balls-to-the-walls bonkers and exactly the kind of club banger ala HuH and Volume Up that 4Minute do best. In short, it's a YG song in an alternate universe where YG still puts out acceptable music.
29. Jooheon, Hyungwon, IM ft Yella Diamond - Interstellar
Let's continue with these kickass bangers, shall we? Interstellar was one of the two good songs to be produced by a reality show this year. Most rap songs in Korea nowadays have switched into employing some lame, namby pamby R&B beats so they can get coffee shop airplay or something, but this proved to be very refreshing. Brash brass stabs, aggressive backing for the rap parts, a Nic Nac-styled R&B beat with some nice backing in the prechorus, and finally culminating in a unexpected guitar padding in the chorus. Really like how this one turned out.
28. BTS - Dope
I thought pretty hard about whether Dope or I Need U would make the mainlist, but Dope won out in the end by the virtues of being faster than I Need U and having less of those pterodactyl shrieks courtesy of BTS's vocal line in it. A great party track, it's clearly biting off Flo Rida's GDFR, but improves on it by filling out the track substantially. The music video for Dope is perfect for... basically any type of uniform fetishist you can imagine. Banging the bellboy in the hotel elevator? Check. Military roleplay where aliens eventually show up and anally probe you both? You got it. Sex with a cop who strips you of your clothes and chokes you, denying you of basic human rights? Sure thing. Roadhead with a racecar driver who's not paying very good attention to the road and eventually plunges your vehicle over the side of a cliff to an instant death? Why not. That dance though; easily one of the most show-y and impressive dances since SHINee's Lucifer.
Nearly everyone hated this song for one reason: the Jamie Foxx appearance in the chorus. Strange thing is, I don't think that's the worst part of the song
Right? The verse melody is just... a whole lot of nothing.
Hm not sure if I wanna expose myself to the Worst of K-Pop list, "Where is my PUPPYYY???" was enough for me
Luv how KPop managed to be the BEST & WORST of the year, simultaneously. No chill.
If you want a kii then listen to the worst of because not much of it got a lot of buzz and you'll be entertained by the fail, but if you want to keep your faith in music then skip it.
And yes K-Pop was metal enough were it was literally among the best and worst things I've ever heard, kind of crazy to think about it that way.
"Stressed Out"...how did we get to this point with 21p? And the worst part is that it's severely overplayed now...and it's only going to get worse from here.
If you want a kii then listen to the worst of because not much of it got a lot of buzz and you'll be entertained by the fail, but if you want to keep your faith in music then skip it.
And yes K-Pop was metal enough were it was literally among the best and worst things I've ever heard, kind of crazy to think about it that way.
oh gerl,
okay I must admit listening to the worst of's was a good decision after classes, cauz I kinda giggled @ Mr. Liar and Gently. The former has the worst AND laziest "Ooh ooh-ooh OOH" hook of all-time, and the latter is just....INCREDIBLY boring, I could not get past that 1 minute, and it reminds me of the 2011-2012 K-HORROR of dubstep in every goddamn song
Oh K-pop, how I love you
P.S. Hilarious commentary. Esp. Dope and Good For You
Ofc I enjoy all three KPop entries 
I'm living.
Great graphics! 
(Though I must admit I didn't like the song at first.)
