A year ago at this time, if you’d have told us that Van Morrison would be single-handedly responsible for nearly a third of a worst-songs-of-2020 list (and that this would not be some kind of weirdly perverse, contrarian view, but something that had wide public agreement)… well, we would’ve assumed you’d dipped a little too much into the mystic Christmas edibles. Yet here we are the end of this anything-can-happen year, with Van the Man having written not one but four horrific anti-lockdown songs, three of which he recorded himself, assigning the last to Eric Clapton, whom we can only assume was the victim of a blackmail scheme.
Was Morrison’s quartet of conspiracy theme-driven anti-quarantine tunes really as bad as, or worse than, the mind-bogglingly bad work of fellow worst listees like Jake Paul, Tory Lanez, Mike Love and Lil Pump? Listen through this list of an unlucky 13 songs that made a bad year worse, if you dare, and judge for yourself. (Click on the photos accompanying each entry to watch the music videos for these regrettable entries.) If it gets to be too much to bear, you can always turn to our list of the 40 best songs of 2020 as an immediate antidote.
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Eric Clapton: “Stand and Deliver”
Image Credit: YouTube You would think that Clapton might lay low and avoid espousing really, really unpopular right-wing positions in a year that already had some antagonists dredging up some of his unfortunate comments about race and immigrants from the 1970s. Instead, for reasons unfathomable — apart from the existence of an embarrassing sex tape, falling off the wagon, a personal gambling debt, or just trolling the world — EC accepted an offer to sing one of Van Morrison’s risible new anti-quarantine duds. “I just wanna do my job, playing the blues for friends… Is this a sovereign nation, or just a police state?” Clapton sings, accusing both the U.S. and U.K. of being fascist countries for not allowing him to play “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man” in front of a live audience for a few more months. When that time does come around, it’ll be difficult for many fans not to picture him wearing his “Badge” of shame.
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Van Morrison: “No More Lockdown”
Image Credit: YouTube When Morrison went down his list of famous friends willing to debase themselves by covering his new COVID-transmissibilty-is-a-hoax classics, it apparently stopped at one, forcing Van to record the remaining three numbers in this grim quadrilogy himself. How is it possible that Morrison was not invited to headline the Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve party after penning lyrics like: “No more taking our freedom / And our God-given rights / Pretending it’s for our safety / When it’s really to enslave?” All this flagrant anti-masker baiting, and they still went with Vanilla Ice.
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Jon Bon Jovi: “Fairytale of New York”
Image Credit: YouTube Bon Jovi really must have been pissed all those years ago when the remix version he recorded of “Who Says You Can’t Go Home” with Jennifer Nettles for the country market was universally much better received than the original. Perhaps it was then and there that he swore: As God is my witness, I will never duet again. Whatever the reason, he took the Pogues/Kirsty MacColl classic “Fairytale of New York,” a Christmas song that has been covered by many artists, always respecting the duo format of the original, and… took the woman’s part for himself, too. If only he would take it a step further and record an entire album this way: Just imagine the potential for a Bon Jovi/Bon Jovi take on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” in which we’d get to hear the singer seducing himself — and no complaints about sexism anymore! Or, moving outside the holidays, Jon-Jon versions of “I Got You Babe,” “Senorita,” “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart,” “Suddenly Seymour” or even an all-“Grease” “Tell Me More”/”You’re the One That I Want” medley. The possibilities for unisex mic-hogging are endless. (Speaking of which: a JBJ-on-JBJ “Endless Love,” please?)
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Jake Paul: “Fresh Outta London”
Image Credit: YouTube At least when it’s the Worst Person in the World recording a Worst Song of the Decade candidate, the universe seems to be following some kind of natural order. Naturally, Paul believes that COVID is a hoax, but escapes the No. 1 spot for at least having the good sense not to put that into song (yet). That was the extent of his sense in 2020, which included, as one of many narcissistic nadirs, “Fresh Outta London.” “They wanna hate on the music but I’m makin’ hits,” raps the man who has never had a song go higher in the U.S. than No. 86 (and that was three years ago). His inability to assess his own chart success makes you wonder whether he is also misrepresenting his asking fee for live appearances when he reports: “These hunnids, I throw ’em, I need like 80a show, that’s some minimum shit / I leave the house and I’m wearin’ some shit you can’t get (woo).” The one good thing about the schadenfreude-baiting “Fresh Outta London” is that you probably never heard it, until we subjected you to it here. Sorry about that.
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Tory Lanez: “Money Over Fallouts”
Image Credit: SHOTBYKYLE Apparently no one advised Lanez that he had the right to remain silent — and, by doing so, possibly maintain the support of at least some fans willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in the Megan Thee Stallion shooting incident. Instead, finally speaking (or rapping) publicly a couple of months after the initially enigmatic encounter, Lanez mounted a defense that really came down to one now infamous line: “How the fuck you get shot in your foot, don’t hit no bones or tendons?” (Megan had an answer for that, eventually, as she gradually rolled out more details of her side of the story.) Without rendering any verdict on what may or may not have criminally gone down last summer, it was still possible to make one on Lanez’s “Daystar” album: Guilty, of filling a record with unbecoming self-pity.
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Justin Bieber, Florida Georgia Line: “Yummy (Country Remix)”
Image Credit: YouTube Some have already called out Bieber’s original version of “Yummy” as one of 2020’s [p[ lowlights — let’s face it, with that title, it could be the greatest song of the 21st century and still show up on some worst lists — but clearly, it has its fans, having picked up a Grammy nomination for best pop solo performance. So maybe call that one polarizing and call it a draw. On the other hand, good luck finding even one individual who’ll publicly confess to finding the song’s country duet version with Florida Georgia Line a good idea. Because “You get ‘er done” is not a term of endearment anyone needs to hear in this or any song. And the country boys manage to make the original tune’s oral sex undertones more explicit, and not in a, you know, tasteful way: “Shoutout, girl, I’m on my way / I been up in Waffle House, but you my Chik-fil-A… / Ain’t got time for playin’, I’ma clean your whole plate (Girl, I’m-a lick it up).” If this version hadn’t disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared back in February, it could have single-handedly killed cunnilingus.
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Lil Pump: "LIL PIMP BIG MAGA STEPPIN"
Image Credit: YouTube There was no troll in 2020 quite so trollishly trollish as Lil Pump, who managed to get himself invited on stage by the president on election eve to cement his MAGA bona fides, presumably for reasons owing less to deeply held Republican convictions than, you know, living under a bridge. At that rally, Donald J. Trump initially introduced the rapper as “Lil Pimp” — because when you’re throwing out Hail Marys the night before an election, why not hint that you’re in favor of reopening the brothels? Rather than take it as a slight, Lil Pump soon recorded a track in which he gleefully adopted the new nickname Trump had blessed him with. The song is barely more than a minute and a half long, so there’s not much time for Pimp/Pump to explore his political positions… just “Got a Rolls truck with no license, ooh / And I’m screamin’ out ‘Fuck Sleepy Joe.'” But it does leave time enough for lyrics like “Dumb lil’ bitch, come eat it” and “Fuck a bad bitch, send her back to ISIS,” which, sadly, we will not get to hear at a second Trump inaugural gala.
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Mike Love: “This Too Shall Pass”
Image Credit: YouTube The subtitle could have been: “…Like a Kidney Stone.” Van Morrison was hardly the only singer determined to make a tough year extra-grueling with COVID-themed material, albeit with no conspiratorial content in this case. Even if Love had never jumped on the Trump train, he still would have fallen afoul of many Beach Boys fans this year for releasing a song that besmirches the good name of “Fun, Fun, Fun” by quote-tweeting it amid lyrics like: “Washing hands and wearing masks and it’s not even Halloween / Shaking hands is a thing of the past due to social distancing.” Be sure to check out the split-screen music video, in which guest drummer John Stamos is somehow outmugged by some of the other musicians currently hitting the Mar-a-Lago circuit under the Beach Boys’ banner.
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Van Morrison: “Born to Be Free”
Image Credit: YouTube He’s ba-a-ck. “Don’t need the government cramping my style / Give them an inch, they take a mile,” Morrison sings, more prosaically than a fan could have ever imagined. “The new normal is not normal,” he further explains, Van-splaining normalcy for those of us who might not have gotten it.
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Robbie Williams: “Can’t Stop Christmas”
Image Credit: YouTube Make… it… stop. Christmas being canceled might not be too high a price to pay for never having to hear this a second time — a fate that will be spared most Americans, but let’s not let our longtime U.K. allies go down in defeat to this holiday-spirit-killing hokum.
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Luke Bryan: “One Margarita”
Image Credit: YouTube Back in the day, country drinking songs used to have at least a semblance of psychology to them, whether they were celebrations of or laments about drunkenness. Occasionally they still do: Justin Moore had a pretty good No. 1 single in 2020 with “Why We Drink,” which, just as the title promised, at least offered a nominally reasonable list of rationales for getting plastered. But that’s too much effort for most of the songwriters who continue to stock the country charts with straight-up odes to alcohol abuse. No better or worse than most of them is Bryan’s “One Margarita,” the title of which is only getting started on how many stiff drinks the singer thinks should be downed in succession. (Spoiler alert: it’s four.) This is no knee-jerk slam against Bryan; he’s recorded some of the better country singles of recent years, but peppers the catalog with pandering choices like this one, too. You could say it was the wrong song at the wrong time — with a music video that celebrates a spring break that never arrived in 2020 — if not for the fact that it, too, did go No. 1, as radio listeners sought escapism in music as well as the bottle. But in the middle of a pandemic, the video’s vision of crowds gathered on a beach, getting shit-faced just for the sake of getting shit-faced, looked like a vision of hell.
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6ix9ine feat. Nicki Minaj: “Trollz”
Image Credit: YouTube There was little love left for 6ix9ine by the time he released the much-abhorred “TattleTales” album, so why Minaj wanted to hitch herself to that wagon at all — let alone on a track that has 6ix9ine proudly boasting, “Told her she could get Chanel if she let my friends fuck” — remains an unsolved mystery.
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Van Morrison: "As I Walked Out"
Image Credit: YouTube One more from the Van-ster, as he reaches for new heights of protest poetry: “Well, on the government website from the 21st March 2020 / It said COVID-19 was no longer high risk / Then two days later they put us under lockdown / Then why are we not being told the truth?” Listen, if Charlie Kirk, Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson don’t need an exact rhyme scheme, why should Morrison bother himself with one?