10 songs from the 21st century that should be deleted from history
The 21st century has been an interesting time for music. Whatever genre you’re talking about, rock, R&B, rap, punk, they’ve all had the highest highs and the lowest lows.
In the past couple of decades, music has never become more accessible, both in terms of how we make it and also how we consume it. Artists are able to sit down with their laptop and a plug-in and put together masterpieces. Meanwhile, we as music fans don’t have to look away from our phones to find the next band we want to obsess over.
With this accessibility has come the making of stars who may not have found a platform without it. However, it also opened the floodgates for some absolute garbage. The past 26 years have given rise to some exceptional pieces of music, but also some songs that history could do without. Today, we’re going to be looking at the songs which the world would be better off not having.
Here are ten songs from the right-hand side of millennia that history should delete.
10 songs from the 21st century that should be deleted:
Drake – ‘Hotline Bling’
I’m one of those rare Drake fans who like some of his work and dislike other bits. In the hip-hop world, you tend to find that there is no middle ground; people either love him or hate him. Some think his songs are fun and catchy, others think they’re silly and over-reliant on social media. I believe both statements can be true. With that in mind, it’s worth noting that ‘Hotline Bling’ certainly falls into the latter category.
This was one of the biggest songs in the world at the time of release, but it represented a side of Drake that a lot of rap lovers would rather ignore. It felt less like he was trying to make good music and instead was just wanting to put together a song that would get stuck in your head. It’s hard to hear the track these days without wincing, and it might be one of the worst of the century, not just because of how bad it sounds but because of the precedent it set for someone who is undeniably a hip-hop great.
Paul McCartney – ‘Fuh You’
I feel a bit bad about including Paul McCartney on this list. Realistically, ‘Fuh You’ isn’t one of the worst songs from this century, but when we compare it to the kind of music that we know McCartney is capable of, it makes what is a garbage song sound 100 times worse. Of all the things that we needed on this side of millennia, a horny Paul McCartney was not one of them.
The Beatle collaborated with Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic on this track because he was a fan of his work. The two set out to make it a hit, and wound up making one of the worst tracks out there.
“That was the basic idea,” said McCartney when discussing the dud, “And it developed from there… sort of a love song, but a raunchy love song. There you go – fuh you.”
Imagine Dragons – ‘Believer’
The sentiment of this song is lovely. The lead singer, Dan Reynolds, has openly admitted to struggling with different mental and physical conditions throughout his life, and confirmed this song was supposed to represent his emotional response to these issues.
“This last year has really been the most centred and positive of my life,” he said. “This song explains my realisation that the emotional pain I faced the last few years actually helped me progress to this healthier mental space – that adversity truly is what helps you become a believer in yourself.”
They’re wonderful words to read, and in that sense, it seems pretty harsh to include such a track on this list, but it is a bad tune. I mean, try telling that to the stadiums of people belting it out night after night, but this song sounds like if you explained what a motivational song was to someone who had never heard music before and they tried to replicate it. It’s a route one tune, and regardless of the nice sentiment behind it, it’s very hard to listen to.
Madonna – ‘American Life’
Madonna. Just the name alone evokes images of pop royalty, as she’s a musician who has completely dominated the charts ever since she started singing. She pushed the boundaries of pop, writing about subjects that other musicians never would, and performing in a way that made her an undeniable force within the music industry. Her numbers speak for themselves, but this 2003 track… It’s not the one.
The song pushes boundaries once again, as Madonna, someone who has achieved the American dream, reflects on whether or not she actually wants it. Fair play to her for creating such an introspective pop song, but it seems she spent too much time looking inward and not enough time actually listening to the track itself, as everything from her vocals to the music to the execution of it leaves something to be desired.
One of the greatest pop acts of all time, one of the worst songs of the 21st century.
Maroon 5 – ‘Moves Like Jagger’
Mick Jagger’s moves are those of rock loyalty. Even now, at 82 years old, when you see Rolling Stones live, he struts around the stage as if he owns it. It’s not dancing, but instead is essentially an aura that he projects onto the crowd. It’s something that should be remembered forever… but not like this.
Maroon 5 sometimes get a hard time in the music world. If we’re all being honest with ourselves, if someone put on the album Songs About Jane now, we’d be singing along without hesitation. But my word, they went on to make some poor tracks, and this over-the-top pop number is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s annoying to listen to, and a track that has truly earned its place on a list as damning as this.
Kid Rock – ‘Don’t Tell Me How To Live’
When I listened to this song, I was shocked by how shit it was. You know you’re in for a wild ride when a track starts off with a 55-year-old country rap singer blurting down the mic, “fuck all you hoes”. And it only gets stranger from there.
Staring down the barrel of a society that keeps trying to INFRINGE ON HIS GOD DAMN RIGHTS, Kid Rock writes a song in rebellion against it. If it came from anyone else, you would think it was the stuff of parody. The guitar line, the vocals, the lyrics, they’re all so bad and out of touch that it’s laughable. Nobody is trying to tell you how to live Kid Rock, if they had any kind of say over what you did, this song would never have seen the light of day.
Robin Thicke – ‘Blurred Lines’
There was a very specific period in our collective lives when this song was inescapable. You went on a night out, it was there. You got in your car, it was there. You drifted off into a dream-filled sleep, it was there. Robin Thicke and Co had taken over the world with this pop song, and on the surface, it sounded pretty good, but after the 50th listen, something dawned on us, as we all took a moment to ask, “Hang on, what the fuck are these lyrics?”
It’s surprising that it took us all so long to realise how twisted the sentiment behind this track was, but we got there in the end, and now ‘Blurred Lines’ is rightly considered one of the worst tracks of the century. The way that the song hints at non-consensual sex is disgusting, and one of the track’s contributors, Pharrell, has even come out to say that he’s now embarrassed whenever he listens back to them. That embarrassment should have set in long before now, though.
“Some of my old songs, I would never write or sing today,” he said, “I get embarrassed by some of that stuff. It just took a lot of time and growth to get to that place.”
Tones and I – ‘Dance Monkey’
Damn, people loved this song when it first came out. Tones and I wrote it when she grew sick of busking and began to feel like a performing monkey in the process.
“I had already been busking for six hours,” she said. “One person ran past and stole my money, and another was drunk and tried to lean over and play my keyboard. The crowd was very drunk and rowdy. I said, ‘I’m sorry, but this is it.’ They tried to get me to keep playing, then they started booing me, and I was so frustrated because it showed me how people didn’t have much patience anymore.”
The inspiration behind the track is interesting enough, but its execution is horrendous. The lyrics, the production, the vocals, they all grate so much, and the chorus is one of the most irritating out there. You hear this song, and it’s in your head for days, but you don’t want it there; it’s the musical equivalent of a migraine, or perhaps more appropriately, a really bad hangover.
Justin Bieber – ‘Yummy’
Let’s get something right: Justin Bieber has some excellent songs. Over his years of making music, the pop sensation has managed to put out some exceptional pieces of music, and yet still receives a hard time from a lot of listeners. However, let’s get something else right: this song is incredibly annoying.
That seems to be the only word for it. Annoying. It comes on, I turn it off, and so the cycle repeats itself. When you have someone with a voice like Bieber and with a stature in pop as he has, why has he decided to release such a one-dimensional and frustrating track? It will always be lost on me, and the less we hear of it, the better.
Gal Gadot and Friends – ‘Imagine’
A lot of people don’t realise just how controversial the track ‘Imagine’ was when John Lennon first released it, and not because they disagreed with the sentiment, but because they hated the fact that it was Lennon peddling it. It felt hypocritical to have a millionaire essentially talk down to the people, telling them to imagine no possessions.
“Well,” the world collectively sighed, “That’s easy for you to say, John.”
They say that history repeats itself, but not normally as quickly as this. When covid kicked off, and the world went into lockdown, families were worried about where the next meal was coming from, how they were going to pay their bills, and whether or not they would be safe in the midst of a pandemic. Out comes a poor cover of ‘Imagine’, as a load of millionaires, from their mansions, smugly sing one line of the Lennon track and then smile as if it’s made a difference. I’m not even sure if you can call it a song, but it’s so bad we need to include it on this list.
