Far Out’s Wooden Spoon Awards: The 10 worst songs of 2025

Olly Murs – ‘Bonkers’

If there is a name for the kind of song that resonates with people because they have two glasses of wine on a school night, let me know so I can stay as far away from it as possible, like this track, which is a prime example.

Maybe I’m being too cynical, but I just can’t imagine a room full of adults writing, recording, playing this song back, and being genuinely happy with it, but if it’s a cash grab, I don’t know what possible money there is to be made from something like this.

The intention behind a track that sounds like the kind of thing people who run down aisles in supermarkets for a laugh would listen to is a mystery, and ‘Bonkers’ easily fits the bill as one of the worst songs of 2025.

Cruz Beckham – ‘OPTICS’

OK, we’re going to have to bend it like Beckham a little bit here, but instead of bending a ball into a goal’s top corner, we need to bend the definition of what a song is.

Don’t get me wrong, I have respect for the Beckham children, as they’ve been born into a life of privilege and never need to work a day in their lives, but rather than piss about, they’re using this freedom to engage with their creativity. 

There’s nothing wrong with it, but I just don’t understand how they’re all so relentlessly terrible at everything they pursue. ‘OPTICS’ is to music what elephants are to photography: elusive, difficult to capture, and an apparent waste of time.

Will Smith – ‘Pretty Girls’

Usually, when someone finds themselves in the unwanted spotlight that is public controversy, they use this time to reflect, take a moment for themselves and become better people for it, which is what most people thought Will Smith was going to do after he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, but talk about a slap in the face. 

Instead, he saw this as the perfect time to revitalise his music career, and while the news was met with excitement, there was a problem. Originally, even when he was churning out bangers back in the day, Smith’s music career was viewed as a bit of a laugh, and the reason it worked so well was that it felt as though he was in on the joke, but that’s no longer the case.

Will Smith seems to be taking his music career totally seriously, but still releasing cheesy songs that can only ever be listened to as a joke, and ‘Pretty Girls’ is a song that is better avoided, as it’s the kind of tune that only an AI audience can enjoy.

Machine Gun Kelly – ‘Cliché’

Fair play to Machine Gun Kelly, it’s a lot of effort to be generationally bad at making one specific genre of music, but to apply that same lack of talent to every single musical endeavour you pursue really takes some doing. We’ve had rap, punk, rock, all dreadful, and now, further evidencing that no style of music is safe, this year, he decided to dabble in pop.

This track is a blend of country and pop, with a vocal rhythm that is akin to what you would hear in those Blink-182-esque emo ballads from yesteryear, which technically sounds like a pretty good combo, but the last time anyone was this tone deaf and musically inept, they were one of David Beckham’s children.

Ten Hands High – ‘Leeds’

There are plenty of bands that we turn to for nostalgia, and there’s nothing wrong with listening to music because it reminds you of a specific time of your life or takes you back to a certain moment in time. I mean, just look at the Oasis gigs, nobody is going there hoping to hear new music, they want to be taken back to the ‘90s.

But while music and nostalgia go hand in hand, writing a song like this that leans into nostalgia but frames it as sacking off everything, “and go terrace” isn’t cool; it’s not really anything.

When the track starts, it’s already bad enough, with a weak indie guitar line that lacks any kind of punch, and once the lyrics start, things really take a turn for the worst, as you’re thrown into the words of a band who have no doubt hosted the worst afters that Yorkshire has ever been privy to.

Taylor Swift – ‘CANCELLED!’

The pop star that Jack Osbourne called “vanilla ice cream” continued to prove him right on her newest album, The Life of a Showgirl.

There were a lot of jokes circulating about this album when it first came out because some listeners found the lyrics a bit too cheesy, even for Taylor Swift, and out of all the tracks on the LP, ‘CANCELLED!’ found itself (rightly) in the firing line first. 

I’ll say this much that the actual song is fine: the chorus is catchy, the production is good, and Swift’s voice sounds raspy and smooth. However, it’s hard to really appreciate any of that when the lyrics are what they are, and I’ll say no more, as I’m not looking to upset too many Swift fans around Christmas, but considering she’s an artist renowned for her lyrics, this track misses the mark by a large margin.

Benson Boone – ‘Mystical Magical’

Benson Boone remains the biggest waste in modern music, and honestly, if the man would just stop backflipping for a second and take a moment to properly assess the direction he wants to take his career in, you never know, he might actually make something good. But alas, the man continues to backflip, and in the process, churns out songs like ‘Mystical Magical’.

The worst thing about this song isn’t that it’s bad; it’s that Boone’s voice is fucking killer. When you hear him sing, whether it’s originals or covers, there is no escaping the fact that he has a really amazing singing voice, which is capable of great things, so it’s more annoying that, rather than pursue these great things, he releases TikTok-friendly garbage like ‘Mystical Magical’, where he can and should do so much better.

Lace Manhattan – ‘ODDWADD’

I’ll be honest with you all, I haven’t seen Honey, Don’t, and so I don’t know the context in which this song exists. It may be that it fills a very specific role within the film and is perfect, but if I’m judging it as a song and as a song alone, then honey, don’t.

I imagine the brief was to make Charli XCX shit, put a synth into a blender and see what comes out, because I can’t believe the intention was to ever make something remotely listenable. If it were, then we would have something better than this Kraftwerk adjacent car crash; those autobahns can be dangerous.

Villanelle – ‘Hinge’

It must be really hard starting a band when you’re the son of someone like Liam Gallagher, as no doubt you wind up being into music because your dad has released some bangers. So you probably want to be similar to him, but then you also don’t want to be compared to him, so make music which is different.

Well, I’m happy to report that Villanelle have managed to separate themselves from those nepotism-tainted shackles by making music which is nothing like that of Liam Gallagher and something that is very bad. 

‘Hinge’ is post-punk if punk never existed; it’s just post and doesn’t draw inspiration from anything, nor does it inspire. The vocals are poor, the guitar work is dull, and the song is simply not worth listening to, making it one of the worst of the year, with real potential to be one of the worst of the decade.

Dame Andrea Jenkyns – ‘Insomniac’

My life is divided into the time before seeing this video and the time after. I remember the time before well, where bad stuff happened, sure, but I lived in hope, I still saw beauty in the world, and when I left the house, I did so with a spring in my step.

Then we have the after, and all I see is darkness, the end times coming, and I don’t have the energy to try and stop them, as we’re ushering in the apocalypse with a hellish symphony of shit songs. 

As if having to sit through a Reform UK speech delivered by Dame Andrea Jenkyns isn’t already enough to make you want to cut your ears off, she decided to kick things off with a song she had written herself about having insomnia. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the members of Reform have trouble sleeping at night, but I wasn’t ready for them to make such a big song and dance about it.

It takes a real piece of garbage for me to miss when Reform was just talking about immigration, but that’s what Jenkyns delivers; end times are coming, hold the cross high so I may see it through the flames.