Best Song: Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill
Picking the best song from this Top 40 was easy. This originally charted in 1985, but returned to top the charts in 2022 thanks to it's inclusion in something on Netflix or some other streaming service. It's the youth of today discovering what proper music is.
Worst Song: Cat Burns - Go
Picking the worst song on the other hand was difficult because there were so many candidates. I've gone with this record though. It's a boring depressing song, the singer is a terrible singer and there's lots of needless swearing in it. The only way to make it worse is if David Guetta was to do a remix.
Top 40 Review
After concluding my best year series earlier on this year, I thought it would be a good idea to revive it once a year to see how the latest charts compare.
In recent months I've been reading interviews with Mr. C from The Shamen and he describes commercial dance music as lowest common denominator worm fodder. I would say this is a pretty good description of this Top 40 overall, regardless of genre.
If we begin with EDM, a very strong contender for worst record was "Crazy What Love Can Do" by David Guetta ft Becky Hill and Ella Henderson. Even by David Guetta standards this is bad, I struggle to think of anything that has more irritating vocals on it.
The other EDM records are the usual formula, DJ and vocalists and not the sort of music people into proper dance music are likely to like. Perhaps one exception is "Afraid to Feel" by LF System which doesn't feature every man and his dog on vocals, but does have vocals and is cheesy nonsense.
Inevitably we have Drake and Ed Sheeran in there with 3 songs each, all crap. Also with 3 songs in there is Harry Styles, again all crap.
We're also seeing rock music for people not into rock music. OK not really rock music, more pop music with electric guitars. Examples include "Hold My Hand" by Lady Gaga and "She's All I Wanna Be" by Tate McRae. Again all crap.
Then there's the depressing acoustic guitar/piano type nonsense which there's a few of. By the time I was listening to "Flowers" by Lauren Spencer-Smith, perhaps the most depressing of all I was really losing the will to live.
As is the trend in recent years though, rap is the dominant genre. I've recently seen a video of someone listening to modern rap records and the looks you see on her face were pretty much the looks I was making.
One exception that gets half a mark is the disco rap record "About Damn Time" by Lizzo. The vocals are a bit iffy, but it has a decent backing track.
Score: 1.5
Table
2022 is the joint second worst year in chart history:
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