Five Worst Songs of 2011

Was 2011 a particularly rough year for you? Do you always want to look back on these last 12 months with a seething rage and a feeling of forever-burning resentment? Then do we have a playlist for you!

In a year filled with some great hits and releases, these five tracks did their best to lower the average greatness of 2011’s music. Banal, insipid, repetitive, nauseating—all these adjectives aptly describe the following tsunami of poor taste and generic beats. They may be numbered, but these are all equally terrible.

1. “Roll Up” by Wiz Khalifa

It’s a song about being there for someone you love, sung by someone who seemingly learned English from reading bathroom stall walls. It’s literally like Khalifa translated a Shakespearean love sonnet into the inane rantings of someone with 2nd Grade reading comprehension. Hands down though, the worst part is how often he repeats the words “roll up.” WE GET IT! You “roll up,” how nice, Khalifa, but here’s on idea: “roll up” silently, in your head, in a corner somewhere in the Arctic, OK?

2. “What’s My Name” by Rihanna, ft. Drake

Like “Roll Up,” this Rihanna track suffers from the numbing repetition of the chorus lyrics: “Oh na-na, what’s my name?” Over and over and over. Seriously it’s repeated approximately 2, 000 times in a span of 3 minutes. After about 20 seconds it feels like you’re undergoing brain washing. It’s like a specific kind of torture—this is the song Gitmo guards play to get terrorists to break down. Rihanna, sweetheart, we get it, you’re suffering from sudden amnesia—but we’re not—we remember you saying “What’s my name” the first 100 hundred times. It doesn’t help that Rihanna sounds like she’s sleepwalking through this entire track. Rihanna: we know you work hard, but it’s OK to take a rest every now and then, and come back to the recording studio when you have some damn energy.

3. “How to Love” by Lil Wayne

Our best guess for what went wrong here is that Lil Wayne suffered a stroke before entering the recording studio; a very specific type of stroke that only allows you to pronounce the first half of a word. How else do you explain how the chorus lyrics “how to love” becomes “ha ta la” in Lil Wayne’s pronunciation? Maybe he just got out of the dentist and couldn’t wait for the Novocain to wear off. To boot, like the previous two tracks on this list, Lil Wayne feels it necessary to fill in every spare second of this track by repeating “ha ta la” incessantly. Sometimes, Lil Wayne, silence is golden.

4. “What the Hell” by Avril Lavigne

When vril Lavigne first emerged on the music scene, many thought, “I’m too old for this.” Well, here we are 10 years later, and everyone else has grown up and moved on… Everyone, that is, except Lavigne herself. In this comeback track the 27-year-old pop-“punk” rocker shows that not only is she incapable of pronouncing David Bowie’s name, she’s also incapable of maturing. Despite being three years shy of her 30th birthday, Lavigne still sings about relationships at the emotional level of a 12-year-old girl. We wouldn’t be surprised if we went to her home and found Lisa Frank neon hugging penguins notebooks scribbled with such inanities as “Ramones Rock” and lists of boys she thinks are cute. We think we know why equally obnoxious band Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley divorced her: he was worried about statutory rape charges for having sex with a mental child. Are we being too harsh? No. Lavigne’s heyday is over; this is not the early 00s anymore, and Lavigne just needs to accept that and grow up.

5. “Jam” by Kim Kardashian

There will be a special hell for Kim Kardashian. If there’s anything positive to say about this song, it’s that it proves no amount of money makes up for talent. Despite having access to pricey producers and sound mixers, “Jam” still sounds like it was written and sung by a mentally disabled hamster. If you listen closely, you can hear the recording studio employees laughing in the background as they count Kardashian’s cash. There’s literally a line that goes “I’m going to work like I’m paying my bills.” What the hell does that mean? Kim, don’t pretend like you’ve ever worked a day in your life, or know what a “bill” is. Just shut up and hide in a closet for the next few years while the world struggles to forgive you.

This article was originally published on AllMediaNY.com