2016: A Year In Review

*Note: Please read this post before you continue reading ahead. It adds on to some of the things that I state here. Thank you.*

Well guys, 2016 is at its end. I started this blog one day when I was on vacation because I had found myself with so little to occupy my time. Then I started to pay attention to this countdown more, and actually listen to it as it went on. And what did I think of this year as a whole?

Well... To say the least, it did not live up to the expectations I had hoped for. Coming off of the wonderful year that was 2015, I found 2016 overall an incredibly underwhelming year for pop music, both on the Weekend Countdown and the Hot 100. A lot of the songs that blew up weren’t up to standards. It didn’t help that there were times that the countdown had long periods of inertia, and we were constantly getting one-exit weeks in the second half of the year, along with drops and jumps that would average around 15 spots or so, as opposed to previous years that had lots of 20+ spot drops and jumps out of nowhere and an average week would have at least three exits. Not only that, but while unrelated to this, we even had the deaths of several major names in music, most notably David Bowie and Prince. There was also some major feuds including the Taylor Swift vs Kanye West and Kim Kardashian battle, and Ke$ha's lawsuit against Dr. Luke. It wasn't long before people were calling this the saddest year in music history, and you can bet that this is a year many want to forget.

But you know what? It is what it is. I'll talk more about the unfortunate matters later, but for now, let's focus on what's important here. Anyway, we had quite a few songs that achieved the #1 spot on the countdown this year, some of which completely hogged it. You guys already know the color code for these at this point, so let's have a look at them, shall we? (These are sorted in the order of when they first hit #1.)

Hello by Adele (12 weeks, 5 in 2015*) (Tied for all-time record)
Confident by Demi Lovato (1 week)
Perfect by One Direction (2 weeks)
Stressed Out by Twenty-one Pilots (5 weeks)
One Call Away by Charlie Puth (2 weeks)
My House by Flo Rida (1 week)
Cake By The Ocean by DNCE (4 weeks)
Victorious by Panic! At The Disco (1 week)
New Romantics by Taylor Swift (2 weeks)
Can't Stop the Feeling! by Justin Timberlake (10 weeks)
I Took a Pill In Ibiza by Mike Posner (2 weeks)
Send My Love (To Your New Lover) by Adele (1 week)
Don't Let Me Down by The Chainsmokers featuring Daya (3 weeks)
Closer by The Chainsmokers featuring Halsey (8 weeks)
Heathens by Twenty-one Pilots (1 week)
Treat You Better by Shawn Mendes (2 weeks)

* Although Hello had 7 weeks at #1 in 2015, the last two will count towards the coming final Top 45, so I am saying that 5 of them counted in 2015.

Congrats to those acts for taking the top. As always, we have songs that we tend to like for a while, but die on us thanks to radio overplay. I'm sure I've said before, but that rarely bothers me as much as it does many others. More often than not, I don't let overplay be my whole reason for hating otherwise excellent songs. On the other hand, there were songs that I hated from day one to the end, or thought they were mediocre at start and quickly got worse. It was not pleasant hearing them. There were a handful of songs I could have gone with for this, but these were some that came to mind right away. These are just countdown related, and not outside of such because if I were to do that, I'd be here for a while. And here they are:

Bottom 10 Countdown Songs of 2016
10. This Is What You Came For by Calvin Harris with Rihanna
We start this list off with a song that I actually liked when it first dropped and I felt like people were being too hard on it. But after a while (read: overplay), I realized there is so little to this song worth caring about. The "you-ou-ou"s get so annoying and it sounds like they're trying to cut her off most of the time. And there's the beat which comes off as more of the tropical house that we've been getting all year. Now, Calvin Harris has made a handful of songs I like, but in the bigger picture, this is not one of them.

9. That's My Girl by Fifth Harmony
As if those fart-sounding trumpets in the verses weren't grating enough, the title-only chorus does not sound good with those pitch shifted layers over the girls' voices. The lyrics are nothing worth talking about either. Now, it's not that I have anything against self-empowerment anthems - I can respect what they want to do, but quite a few of them just sound terrible, or usually recycled and don't do much to really be powerful. Case in point...

8. Rise by Katy Perry
Oh, I am definitely gonna piss people off with this one... But I was definitely too kind to this song by never putting it in my Bottom 5 during its time on the countdown, because listening to it again it's even worse than I thought. The verses feel like an intro with zero momentum, it gets worse when the vocal layering comes in afterwards, and the chorus is extremely grating between the synths, brittle trap snares and Katy stretching out her lines. And need I remind you that Katy Perry sold out to the friggin' Olympics and barely even charted? This one only got worse and worse every time I heard it. And yes, she has made songs I like and I do want to see more from her, but she really needs to cut it out with these recycled self-esteem anthems and go back to the fun tastelessness of her first two albums. And the public seems to agree on that, because not only did this flop on the Billboard Hot 100, debuting just outside of the Top 10 and then sinking, but it lasted a very short three weeks here on the countdown. And mercifully so, which is the only reason it isn't higher up here. More on that in a bit, but good riddance.

7. Treat You Better by Shawn Mendes
Most critics have already ripped into this one, and yeah, to say the least there is no defending this from how not subtle its nature is. I liked it at first until I seriously paid attention to others' takes on it. I wanted to like it in the long run, but couldn't. As many have said, this is not the nature of song that works best for wanting to take a girl from her boyfriend, as he doesn't give any reason why he thinks having him is best for her as opposed to her current one. The guitar is okay, and that stupid line at the end of the chorus has been mocked by more people than one. Yeah, there's no way to defend this song at this point.

6. Sit Still, Look Pretty by Daya
While this song is better than Hide Away, which I considered putting here because it was on 2016's Year-End Hot 100, I decided to not include it because it was on 2015's final Top 45, and even then this being better isn't saying much. To start, its predecessor talks about how Daya is longing for a nice person who will appreciate her...and then this song comes along and throws all of that out the window, saying how she doesn't want a guy because she thinks they're out for her to "take control", or what have you. While the production here is better, the song was never exciting to me, and when I take into account how obnoxiously overplayed on Hits 1 it was for a song that never even cracked the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100, there is no way for me to condone this. Next!

5. Work From Home by Fifth Harmony
The beat here is just boring, and the lyrics are a bunch of innuendos about things like trying to get this guy fired and him "being the boss" at home and how he should basically just quit his job. Not to mention I can hear the sound of a sad puppy in the second verse. That puppy feels just as sad to be in the song as we are to hear it. With Camilla Cabello being no more from the group, hopefully they'll be in for better things in the future. And I did say "hopefully".

4. Work by Rihanna featuring Drake
This song is a mess. The chorus is just gibberish, and so are the verses, Drake does little for the song and they even outright admitted that the song was not finished. I mean, it's not as bad as Birthday Cake from 2012, which is EASILY the worst thing she's ever been a part of, but this is still pretty lousy. And while several have considered the above song worse, I find this worse because at least Work From Home I could remember how it goes.

3. Gold by Kiiara
The verses expect us to buy this Kiiara chick as some gangster who leaves "bodies on the pavement" and leaves the roof on fire and abandons some guy "without ever letting him know". And of course that's before we get to the choppy sampled chorus which is just asinine. Who would have thought that a YouTube Poop of a song would've caught on?

2. No by Meghan Trainor
Now this may be a bit high for a song like this, especially for one I actually kinda liked at first, until I realized how stupid it really was. A failed attempt at late 90's/early 2000's do-wop, and it's not the message of the song that annoys me so much as it is Meghan's lack of style and charisma, and more importantly, this just doesn't fit her, at least what she had on her first album. And the overplay didn't help at all. But even at that...

1. Me Too by Meghan Trainor
It should be no surprise that this is my utmost bottom pick. In fact, I can safely say that this is one of the worst songs I have ever heard. In short, it's Meghan Meghans being narcissistic and telling you, the listener, that you are worse than her, over a stupid beat that at times sounds like distorted burping. Lines like "So bless me baby, achoo" just make me hang my head in shame. The song sounds like something that will.i.am from The Black Eyed Peas would make and then give to someone else, in fact it basically rips off of will.i.am if I do say so myself. Almost every music critic I've seen on YouTube or blogs have ripped this song apart and I really don't think I need to say anything more about it.

And with that, now for a few songs that aren't in my Bottom 10, but do deserve a few words from me.
S.O.B. by Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats - One of the most infamous songs in this countdown community, and when I first heard it, my reaction to it wasn't the most positive. I thought, "Are we sure this song isn't from the 50's or something?" But as someone who does know a lot of old music, it's not a song I can really show disdain towards. It's admittedly kinda funny, nothing spectacular but it's comedic.

Kill 'Em With Kindness by Selena Gomez - Now, initially I had this one REALLY high on my bottom 5 during its time here. Listening to it again, it doesn't really enrage me as much as I thought it did. I mean, it's still pretty repetitive and I still don't like it at all, but it honestly doesn't elicit much of a response from me at all anymore.

Dessert by Dawin - I'll say it, this is one of my guilty pleasures of the year. Yes, I'm not going to deny that that chipmunk voice is silly, but aside from that the song does try to pass itself off as a nice love song, and the verses are alright in that regard, at least to me.

We Don't Talk Anymore by Charlie Puth and Selena Gomez - While I know that this is a very infamous song between both YouTubers and certain bloggers, I can appreciate what it wants to be, even if it's a sad song without much to it. I guess it's because of the production. I didn't like it at first, but it kinda grew on me, and while I don't think it's still great per se, I think it's at least passable.

Starving by Hailee Steinfeld and Grey featuring Zedd - I juggled between whether to mention this song this year or save it for next year, but I decided to deal with it now. Anyway, yeah, the lyrics are clunky and really don't make any sense, the guitar feels like it's just there, and then of course the drop, which just feels like distorted sounds. You may have seen that this was my least favorite song on the countdown the two weeks so far that it's been #1, but it barely missed the list. Consider this my dishonorary #11. The other songs in this mold are ones I kinda just wanted to discuss for their infamy.

Now for some other mentions. To start, we have five songs that were all cut pretty short before their time to shine could really come. Two of these songs are fun ones that I think deserved better, one I didn't care about, one I kinda just ranted about, and the last one I didn't care for but admittedly took a brutal exit after what looked to be a promising start (I say the word "promising" because I know that some liked it). Here they are:

Most Hysterically Short Tenured Song Of 2016: Tie between:
Hold Me Up by Conrad Sewell (debuted 1/23, departed 2/13)
El Taxi by Pitbull featuring Osmani Garcia and Lil Jon (debuted 3/5, departed 3/26)
Sound of Your Heart by Shawn Hook (debuted 4/2, departed 4/23)
Rise by Katy Perry (debuted 9/3, departed 9/24)
The Little Things by Big Gigantic featuring Angela McCluskey (debuted 10/1, departed 10/22)

Also, fun fact: not only did all of these songs except Hold Me Up departed while they were in the 20s, but they debuted and departed in the same month.

Then we come to the biggest stand-out of the year. The one. The one that lasted the longest here. It was just cut short, and I'm still mad that it failed to last a year on the countdown. It debuted the week that last year's longest tenured song lasted a year on the countdown. With that, here it is:

Longest Tenured Song Of 2016: Stressed Out by Twenty-one Pilots (debuted 12/26/15, departed 12/17/16)

Then we had a handful of songs on Hit-Bound that never made their way to the countdown. Some of them deserved so much better, and here I am going to pick the one that I think got the hardest shaft. And I'm not going to mention songs that are still on Hit-Bound right now. But with that being said...

2016 Lights Over Paris Hit-Bound Hero Award: Back 2 U by Steve Aoki and Boehm featuring Walk The Moon
Honorable mention: This Girl by Kungs vs Cookin' On 3 Burners

Finally, we come to the song that, while it was huge most elsewhere around the world, never made its way onto the countdown. A very infamous song among this countdown community, and for good reason. It actually appeared on the YouTube15, but not the countdown. Not too much to say about it at this point, unless you're into Vine songs or the like and are sad that Vine is no more. But here it is:

Biggest Countdown Whiff of 2016: Panda by Desiigner
Honorable mention: Needed Me by Rihanna

And I think that's everything I had to cover! Sorry if this post seemed rushed, but it had to be out before the year. I might refine it a bit at a later time, but it's not a high priority. Hopefully I can get my top countdown songs of the year and the Year-End Hot 100 post out soon. All this being said, thanks for reading!