Worst Songs of the 2010's

How do you not know that song!? It was a big hit around late 2010. Its definitely a guilty pleasure for me .

Even though I considered Kesha a fun breath of fresh air when she became popular at the turn of the decade, this song specifically has always bothered me. In hindsight, it’s pretty much a perfect representation of everything I can’t stand about the millennial generation and the 2010s in general. To begin with, the title is shameless queerbaiting; even though Kesha herself is bisexual, there’s absolutely nothing LGBT-related beyond the song’s name as I came in expecting; hell, she even specifically refers to hitting on boys. Beyond that, the lyrics are lazy, repetitious, lowbrow, and self-congratulatory, while even the composition itself feels like it’s putting up a facade of vulnerability to hide its sleazy core. There’s just this really shallow vibe about this song, that it epitomizes how 2010s millennials headline themselves as progressive free spirits when in actuality they’re just a bunch of vindictive cool kids who look for every cheap excuse to claim some sort of moral high ground.

Surprisingly, I actually don’t mind the much more despised “Blah Blah Blah”, as I feel that there’s a sort of light-hearted beauty to all its madness. All those bleepity synths and drunken, auto-tuned vocals fit the song, even though it isn’t really aimed for somebody like me specifically. It’s no less reckless than “We R Who We R”, but it’s also much more candid and doesn’t come across as a musical equivalent to some deceptive Buzzfeed article.

Indeed. It's very evident Kesha is actually a very deep and layered person, but as I've personally experienced in the eurobeat industry, the shot-callers of the music world can put some serious restrictions over what gets approved and promoted versus what gets spat aside.

The company Avex, which pretty much monopolizes the eurobeat market right now, sets very narrow standards over how they want their eurobeat songs to sound, and they've told the Italian labels they hire several rules that basically stifle the creativity diversity of the genre. Among the boundaries they've laid down, songs have to be in a minor key, they have to have a high-pitched/airy synth hook, they have to follow a specific structure, they have to be roughly 140-150 bpm, and apparently the female vocalists they want are primarily sopranos (like Ariana Grande), while lower-ranged contraltos such as Dua Lipa, myself, and Rachel Stevens don't fit the style they want. It's all shamelessly calculated, based on the arbitrarily formulas laid out by Avex's primary marketers, resulting in stale, predictable material.

Everything you just said is pretty much exactly my own motto with Carlsbeat. As a super niche genre, eurobeat should be a safe space for outcasts who want to produce whatever they want while taking respectful cues from its long tradition. That's just not happening nowadays, so the industry is stuck in a paradox, being much more obscure than even the most avant-garde pockets of the music world, yet simultaneously more controlled and restrained even than the mainstream pop industry, which at the very least allows for a decent gamut of subject matter (just look at Ariana's most recent work) and female singers who have lower, more sultry ranges like Dua Lipa and Jess Glynne and still achieve mega-success.

I think the reason Avex is so tyrannical about the eurobeat industry is because how how vast its legacy is in the eurobeat industry. Avex itself is one of the biggest music companies in all of Japan, famous for a lot more than just eurobeat, and during its existence, the Super Eurobeat series lasted 250 albums and was once successful enough that a single installment or spinoff could sell in the sextuple digits, a huge feat for a Japan-only record. Artists from the Italian labels like Dave Rodgers, Domino, and Niko/DeJo have huge resumés in the industry and are thus much more attractive for Avex to promote, as they want to bank on previous successes and familiarity. They're all super talented and have released many great songs in the past, but everything the veterans come out with now is just a shallower rehash of their older work, and usually gets forgotten within weeks. With eurobeat having fallen out of favour over the past several years, Avex has been leaning so desperately on nostalgia that they've compromised the creative flexibility that once existed under their watch.

With how much of a mess the eurobeat industry is in right now, it's likely that I will ultimately start my own genre, as opposed to producing straight eurobeat. The "carlsbeat" genre is basically heavily influenced by all the things I love about eurobeat, but isn't shackled by the restrictions on tempo, structure, lyrical content, vocal stylings, or rhythm that plague the eurobeat industry right now. Not to mention, Carlsbeat won't have to be so indelibly associated with anime and Japan the way eurobeat is; as much as I respect eurobeat's heritage, I dislike seeing it almost exclusively tied to such limited subcultures, when I always appreciated the genre just as anything else. You can I guess consider "Feel the Music" a basic example of the carlsbeat genre, but I plan on being even more flexible with my productions down the road.

This would definitely have to be up there as being one of the worst songs from this decade.

Every mumble rap song