Songs We Hated in 2015

Hating ain't always necessary, appropriate, or welcome. At year's end, however, we all spent an hour or so debating the very worst songs of 2015. Some were chart-toppers. Some flopped, as they were destined to flop. All of them have sparked some wattage of repulsion among our editors and writers. Here we present our staff picks for Songs We Hated in 2015.

Adele "Hello"

I remember reading an article in some women’s mag when I was in middle school that said if you didn’t know what foreplay was, you weren’t ready to have sex. That is what “Hello” is to me: all main event without any warm-up, like moving from a handshake to a cum shot in 60 seconds. The stone-faced piano chord progression and Adele’s flattened voice on the verses do nothing to build to the chorus that destroys everything in its blast radius. Adele’s voice is indisputably gorgeous on all occasions, but here it’s sapped of its personality. “Hello” turns Adele into some generic-sounding diva, one who is capable of hitting the climax but without any finesse. I prefer her a little more freeform, a little less, well, stiff from the get go. Right? —Christine Werthman

The Weeknd "In the Night"

Instead of simply allowing the Weeknd to advance to the next stage of his career by letting Max Martin give a spit shine to his debauched late night haunts, we felt the need to compare the Torontonian—with worse dance moves than Justin Bieber—to the late, great Michael Jackson. Why? Probably because Usher is washed, and Justin Timberlake no longer owes Live Nation any paper and, therefore, is no longer making music. Or perhaps it’s because Mr. Martin laced Abel with the amazing Jackson-esque “Can’t Feel My Face.” If only that's where he stopped. The Weeknd was also given the less spectacular “In the Night,” a song that sounds like an approximation of a track that would have been left in the console during the Thriller sessions. “In the Night” isn’t the worst song on Beauty Behind the Madness—that award goes to “Losers”—but it’s the one that most distracts from everything that’s great about the Weeknd. It's so transparent about its idolatry that it's tough to listen to the song without thinking about the motive behind it. Abel Tesfaye is not the second coming of Michael Jackson. He’s a guy who sings tenderly about horrific bedroom activities; as he puts it, “the nigga with the hair singing ’bout pills, fucking bitches, living life so trill.” Why do we refuse to let him be that? —Damien Scott

Wiz Khalifa “See You Again” f/ Charlie Puth

Two things: My grandmother died in October. I could write about her life and her passing, and what I produce could still be bad (even if I'm moved by the memories of her). Which is to say it could be done without any sense of language, without detail, without insight, without making you think differently about a universal experience that nevertheless wrecks us all. Seriously. I could do it. You wouldn’t like it. My sentences would dribble out like saccharine notes on a piano, and my voice would be whiny, thin, and, ugh, so white. (Disclosure: I am white.) And then, remarkably, after brief platitudes about how my grandmother and I will be reunited somewhere, Wiz Khalifa would turn in just the laziest bars about “how hard work forever pays.” I’d attempt my singing some more, in this piece of bad writing. Wiz would rap again. That’d be that. It would clarify nothing. It would reveal nothing. It would be very bad and empty. No one would benefit. No one would be saved. —Ross Scarano

Ty Dolla $ign f/ Charli XCX and Tinashe “Drop That Kitty”

When I first heard "Drop That Kitty," I hated the song, and I knew it would flop, as its peculiar badness sped my reckoning with a certain genre of childhood recollection: Oh, what it must have been like for my mother, resting in the living room downstairs, to overhear teen-me blowing farts down the throat of an alto saxophone. What a goddamned violation of neo-liberal peace and quiet. "Drop That Kitty," with its off-key, cattle prod honking and its Hong Kong Phooey gist—and then there’s the music video, a sloppy onslaught of stanky leg pantsu and cat porn—is such a cruel clusterfuck of four musicians whom I'd otherwise enjoy. It’s unfair, I suppose, to resent Ty Dolla $ign, Charli XCX, Tinashe, or the producer, Cashmere Cat, individually, since you know this minor pop synergy record was some label lackey’s big idea. “Drop That Kitty” is the unalloyed sort of gusto that only a deaf mother could love; and, even then, such a mother would inevitably regret her seed investment in the instruments and all those singing lessons. For this shit. —Justin Charity

Silento "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)"

You know what? Silento is absolutely right. “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” does deserve a Grammy nomination. It deserves one because the song is that bad. Let’s not let the Grammys finally having respectable rap nominees this year cloud our vision. They’ve been giving bad rap songs Grammys for decades. The dance is cool, the kids love it, white people love it, everybody loves it. The song, though? Trash. One of the most annoying things to ever exist. The video has half a million views. I pray to god that people watch it on mute. Let’s leave this song in 2015. Please, I beg of you. We have to stop giving white people dances to ruin. Do it for the culture. —Angel Diaz

Justin Bieber "Sorry"

The other weekend I was Spotify "DJing" some '80s Italo disco at a holiday party, dancing and having fun with friends, when some rude-ass people decided to turn off my music and put on "Sorry" instead. I was fuming. It felt like someone came up to me and dumped a bucket of mop water over my head. Not so much because I'm a crazy music hog, but because you chose to put on JUSTIN BIEBER? BIEBER! “Sorry” is not even a good song to dance to! Other people's rudeness aside, I have never been a Belieber, and no way have I bought into Purpose-era Bieber. As fascinating a celebrity as Justin Bieber is, this music still sounds like pre-pubescent garbage to me. "Where Are Ü Now" is surprisingly okaaaay, even though the idea of Bieber + Skrillex + Diplo makes my head hurt. I could not, for the life of me, understand the "What Do You Mean" craze. IS THIS ACTUALLY ENJOYABLE? Are you guys liking Bieber in a belated post-ironic sort of way? Please let me know because I. Do. Not. Get. It. Sorry, not sorry. —Kristen Yoonsoo Kim

Bryson Tiller "Don't"

I get it. Short of the excellent "Kehlani's Freestyle" and a few unofficially released loosies on Drake's radio station, PARTYNEXTDOOR didn't release anything this year. Without a relatable "Recognize" to jam to, in your time of need, you all turned to an imitator, an aper of OVO's sound. I'm surprised this guy didn't change his Wikipedia to claim Toronto. Trapsoul fucking sucks, down to the name. It's R&B with contemporary rap influences, get it?! What a blatantly basic distillation, all sensibilities and zero of the intangible talent powering artists like PND to create undeniable grooves that oscillate between lusty mood music and crude come-ons. Even the way he says "vibe" sounds forced and calculated. I gotta go listen to "Break From Toronto" like 86 more times to flush this thin-voiced triddash out of my memory. My appeal to everyone trying to coronate Bryson Tiller, with his villain in a Victorian period piece-ass name, as the new Guy? Don't. —Frazier Tharpe

DLOW “Bet You Can’t Do It Like Me Challenge”

This guy DLOW just took every popular dance rap song in recent memory, combined them into his own song, and called it a challenge. Though catchy, it's quite lazy and turns into the rap version of the "Hokey Pokey," but somehow worse. At least "Watch Me" has some original aspects to it. “Challenge” is like when the scientists in Jurassic Park created dinosaurs instead of living in the natural world. We all know how that turned out. —Zach Frydenlund