The Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 2025

Just a heads up it looks like one of the artists got their feelings hurt from their inclusion on the list so they copyright striked the video. (Which is extra funny because I looked up all 10 entries and it doesn't seem like any of them belong to the label that copyright-striked the video). (Here's the Nebula link for those who didn't get to see it in time: https://nebula.tv/videos/todd-in-the-shadows-the-worst-hit-songs-of-2025) Someone on Todd's reddit also uploaded an MP4 of it to a Google drive but I have no clue if I'm allowed to post that so I'll wait for permission.

I counted 7 Taylor Swift songs in between laughing my ass off. That might be a new record for the Worst list. What a year.

Todd, from the bottom of my heart THANK YOU for that takedown of Actually Romantic. This song has bothered me since it dropped and I needed someone like yourself to put to words the frustration I’ve been feeling so hard while my swifty best friend gaslit me about it saying “it’s not even about Sympathy is a Knife”

I don’t know if it’s actually another strike against it or not, but David Bennett pointed out that “Actually Romantic” is based on the same chord progression as the Pixies’s “Where Is My Mind” and has a similar guitar strum pattern, too. Not so similar as to invite a lawsuit, but given how rarely Swift ranges outside of her favorite chord patterns, one wonders if there was some “inspiration” going on there.

Bo Burnham's Welcome to the Internet is a good song about the internet.

That Hamilton comparison had me fucking dead. Good shit.

Nickelback are a damn good band so I don't consider that a bad sign at all.

Cody Johnson's take on "Travelling Soldier" reminds me of how Ronald Reagan tried to use "Born in the USA" for his 1984 re-election campaign, until the Boss said, "It's not morning in Pittsburgh. It's not morning above 125th St. in New York. It's midnight."

“Enough talking about Taylor Swift” *immediate first 3 honorable mentions are her songs* Masterful gambit, sir

I'm a weekly churchgoing Catholic, and here's my opinion on the #1 song: Some people come to religion to ask hard questions, and some people come for easy answers. "Your Way's Better" appeals only to the second crowd.

Today I found out that Forrest Frank's grandfather was 1. the head of the National Hurricane Center for 1.5ish decades, and 2. is a global warming denier

Savage shit, even more than usual. And I can say that even if Taylor can't. Gonna give it another watch on YT for the algo bump but I've already watched it twice here, lol

Morgan Wallen's "I'm the problem" sounds like people who go "WELL I GUESS I'M THE WORST PERSON EVER" whenever you tell them they did something bad

The SECOND I heard “Your Way’s Better”, I had such a negative reaction to it. I’d go so far as to call it the worst hit of the decade so far. It’s trying to be this earnest song, but Forrest Frank has such a smarmy sounding voice that it comes across as phony

2025 being mostly seen as a pop music famine is interesting, since I thought it was a pretty okay year. Granted, a lot of what I liked was by artists who are either Pitchfork darlings or not exactly household names: Oklou (my AOTY), Jade, FKA twigs…The Weeknd’s last album was pretty excellent, despite having some bloat and being attached to a shitty movie. Kali Uchis didn’t really do it for me this year, but other people seemed to like the slower, more mature direction. I mean, yeah, Taylor embarrassed herself, Lorde’s new material got eclipsed by her back catalog, Sabrina just sort of did more of the same but with a more scandalous album cover. Still, I wouldn’t say it was like 1974 levels of bad. FD Signifier did a B-Side a year or so ago about how all the mid-tiers were killing it in hip-hop, and maybe something similar is happening across the music industry? Like maybe it’s because I don’t follow Billboard, listen to the radio or spend time on social media, but I have NEVER heard of Alex Warren outside of this channel – I’m still not convinced that this edgeless “we have James Blake at home” shit is an actual song. All of this is to say – good music is out there, people. DIG. And thank you, Todd, for the early Christmas gift. Edit: You also might want to specify Johnny Cash's COVER of Hurt. NIN's fanbase can be as hostile as the Barbz.

"Johnny Cash's Hurt" - why Todd?.. Why?!

i usually find the taylor hate train really tedious, and genuinely, i really appreciate that you talk about taylor with more grace than a lot of other people, even when she makes you mad. i think taylor's dedicated haters are just as bad and parasocial as the swifties (they're probably worse, actually...), and i can say that you don't have true Taylor Derangement Syndrome; the people who actually have that would say way worse than you did, and for much less reason. as someone who's been disappointed by her last two albums, all i want is for her to take a break, go back to the drawing board, and make something better next time.

Thank you Todd! God I was mad at you a few years ago when “anti hero” was your top song and then you didn’t even include any of the “tortured poets” stinkers in last year’s worst list…but man, have you made up for that. The only thing we will be keeping from 2025 will be “where is my husband” & the continued swifty mass exodus 🤞🏼

37:30 there's some issues with the 8 Mile clip going data mosh.

Todd, there was empty audio in 49:38-49:45 mark of the video, but the rest of it...(chef's kiss)

Fuck a duck the auto-tune on those country songs. Am I the only person who notices this? Morgan Wallen sounds like T-Pain?

I'm shocked you didn't mention Pixies or George Michael when talking about Taylor Swift's songs, Todd.

Well, I just made the mistake of listening through Wood for the first time through after hearing about it through reputation and seeing it on this episode. Two thoughts: 1) Being sexy is a skill/talent just like being funny is and there's more to it than just being good looking. Taylor Swift is by no measure an unattractive woman but if she were to play this to a dude I pretty sure it knock him a couple notches up the Kinsey Scale. 2) I am starting to think the Gaylor conspiracy theorists are right. I refuse to believe a woman who genuinely interested in having sex with men would write something like this. It's either that or Taylor is asexual or a virgin because Lil Nas X referencing bull riding and boobies is convincing than this song. Actually, I have way more than two thoughts. The problem is that they are obtrusive thoughts I am trying to get them out of my head. Most of them are just some variation on "Why?". This song is not the fun type of bad. I feel like I just visited the rotten website (don't Google that) as a teenager and immediately regretted it after what has been burned into my memories. Save yourself. Don't let your curiosity get the better of you.

...yeah, that's about as pissed off at this year from hell I am too. Some popular songs touched my heart this year that I hope you pick up on the Best List (I seriously cried once just at Shaboozey saying "man, what a hell of a year it's been") but it just was not worth my time nor my anger.

I think 2025 is going to be remembered as an interesting year in pop. It's like one of those years where there are sudden big changes and new people are scoring all the hits (e.g. 2017), except this time none of the new people are gonna keep mainstream attention for the next few years. I also think this is still to some extent an outcome of COVID, since a lot of people artists delayed their releases, therefore their album cycles got synchronised and now there's a vacuum. And the ones that did release this year (e.g. Gaga, Lorde) didn't connect, even when they were good or interesting. So anyway, what'd you think about Cena Vs GUNTHER?

Love the shout-out to Some More News. Did not expect that.

I prepared for this video by listening to the year-end Hot 100. Taylor Swift wasn't on it for some reason, even though many/most of her singles dropped before the October 26 cutoff. F for me, I guess! Blue Strips was my worst song of the year. I'm glad Todd made this video, which validated my sense that this year's music was sparse and grim. There weren't a lot of songs on the Hot 100 that felt worth having feelings about. Honestly, I kind of looked forward to the Morgan Wallen songs because he usually has at least one good line in there. "There's a lot of reasons I ain't Jesus, but the main one is that I ain't comin' back." Lol. I'm looking forward to the Top Ten Best more, as I do every year, but it sounds like for Todd it may be more like "ten songs I didn't hate." P.S. I hope the Top Ten Best addresses the fact that almost literally 10% of the Hot 100 is songs from KPop Demon Hunters

I think what says most to me about the #1 is that the vid starts with him not even facing the crowd and then when he is bouncing in front of the crowd, he's not doing the same rhythm they are waving the lights in. Like this doesn't match up.

I'm a Christian and even I don't like that #1 song. Taylor's new album sums up why I never fully got on board the Taylor Swift train. She's clearly talented, but her megastardom is baffling to me, and her new album doesn't help matters. R&B was great this year except Chris Brown, who seriously needs to go away already. Outside of one song, I'm not a fan of Tate McRae. And Morgan Wallen also needs to go away already. Overall, great list.

Amazing list Todd thanks for always summarising the year so effectively! (Said even as someone on the other end of the Taylor Swift disillusionment syndrome spectrum who still likes/defends most of her songs you put on here and will hold out hope that one of the few remaining sneaks onto the best list!). Just a minor PS but I think the chicks weren’t the original artists for travellin soldier (but absolutely the definitive version!)

The Tate McRae-Morgan Wallen track really is unpleasant sonically. And there are worse songs on the list??? Augh

“There was no cool Christian music when I was growing up—“ dude no Jars of Clay was way cooler than you’ll ever be.

For some reason this isn't loading for me. Possibly a broken link?

Literally joined patreon just so I could hear Todd shit on Taylor Swift sooner. Worth every cent. As a recovering swiftie who hated her past two albums, this video was made for me. Excellent video dude

I joined Todd's Patreon a few years ago because of one of these year end lists and I hate to kiss ass but this may be his best one in his career. You can tell how angry some of these songs make him and that just makes the list all the more fun and cathartic to watch. AND I BARELY FUCKING LISTEN TO MODERN MUSIC. That is saying something!

I basically stopped listening to new pop music at this point, so I find out about it largely from Todd's lists, and at this point, I'm happy believing he's making it all up for my entertaining.

Well, at least Kanye wasn't on it this year

The mark of a good reviewer is that even when I'm disagreeing, you can still have me cackling. Maybe it's the middle-age in me, but I have no objections to Myles Smith. I am a bit surprised that Ed Sheeran got away completely scot-free.

I fucking growled when Chris Brown came on 🤦 Rough year for us all. Jesus Christ, the DHMs are all just the newest TayTay album. That says more than a full review. Weirdly I've been listening to Tate McRae's one good song (All I Wanna Be) a lot lately. Thanks for the update, and confirmation that she does in fact sound like Tweety Bird. Happy holidays Todd!

"this is why Christians have such a persecution complex: because they grew up listening to stuff like this" as far as I can tell, this has a lot of actual truth to it, although explaining this point would involve starting a fight about religion in the Patreon comments, which is gauche. Anyway, it's impossible to make this stuff good, because it being unrelatable to people outside the church is the point.

With the year 2025 has been, I'm surprised that we didn't get a Taylor Swift/Morgan Wallen duet with a rap verse by Chris Brown. And as someone who has been to a strip club, you aren't missing much.

When you find out who is only at number 7: thisgonnabegood.gif. You could probably use that fact as a hook to promote this episode on bluesky because you know the year deserves a good thrashing if that only made it to 7. Part of me wonders if the Kendrick/Drake beef was a disco demolition type moment where it made the biggest force in music incredibly uncool and right now the industry is scrambling to figure out how to fill out the vacuum.

Series of Tubes is a good song about the Internet.... right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cZC67wXUTs

8:00 Drake says "I _can't_ say it didn't surprise me", as in it _did_ surprise him.

Pausing the video less than a quarter in to argue with Todd in the comments about there not being a good song about the internet when "welcome to the Internet" by Bo Burnham exists.

There's some blank frames before the Patreon credits. 49:39 is where it starts.

"There's never been a good song about the internet" is Valentina Monetta's "Facebook (Uh Oh Oh)" erasure!! Otherwise brilliant as always. Thank you for this wonderful annual gift that ruins your life.

Maybe next year "The Top Ten Worst Artists of 2026"? It get's a little boring if the same artist shows up again and again...

There is a blank gap before the credits roll after the ad read in this one. Also, it might have been my wifi but during the 8 Mile part one of the clips went all pixellated and blurry

A true xmas miracle that this came out on time

I remember when the #1 song came up in one of your videos earlier this year, and your description of it as "AJR in a cult" was stone dead accurate. That song is the musical equivalent of that meme of the smooth SpongeBob

god this was funny

As soon as I saw Alex Warren at 7 I knew it was gonna be a dozey! I'm almost expecting the best list to be like 5 songs lol

"No good songs about the Internet"? Let me introduce you to "Superhighway", a high energy gospel number by Aretha Franklin, from the soundtrack of the direct to video banger The Brave Little Toaster To The Rescue

Glitchy part around 37:31-37:33. Also, long pause between when you say “thank you and goodnight” and the end screen. Man what a BAD year for music

37:31 The 8 Mile footage seems to have botched render

There’s some good songs about the internet. The Internet is for Porn from Avenue Q, Welcome to the Internet by Bo Burnham.

"A double entendre needs two entendres" is a glorious line. Tysm.

Spectrum Pulse called one of these tracks ending up pretty high on Todd's worst list specifically when it came up for Billboard Breakdown, so points to him there.

I hereby decree the third Saturday in December as National Take Out The Trash Day

Oh my god! I was just about to wrap my christmas presents for the less fortunate but fuck that Todds worst list is out

I guess we know what song Todd is picking in the next SvS match up, since he got the name of one of the songs wrong lol

Remember to charge us this time Todd, we deserve it.

Having abandoned top 40 radio since I graduated high school in 2012, Todd’s years end video are my education in who’s popular in music. After listening to these songs, I remember why I don’t listen to top 40 anymore.

Just checking, did you remember to charge for this?

The greatest Christmas gift ever, thank you ToddFather!

lets gooo

Approaching levels of Back not previously imaginable

Time for the trash. Lets fucking go

In December? Am I hallucinating? Is everything okay Todd???

Christmas came early!