Before I reveal the worst Rock and Alternative song of the year, let’s go over what I’ve gone through so far.

RECAP

#10. On their fateful journey down I-75, A Day To Remember failed to pack “Everything We Need.”

#9. Five Finger Death Punch is “Living The Dream” by threatening our health and safety with the worst music video ever.

#8. 24kGoldn is in a “Mood” because he did it all for the nookie.

#7. Machine Gun Kelly’s “Love Race” ended in a crash for last place when facing Kellin Quinn and Travis Barker.

#6. Papa Roach’s complaining about others causes “The Ending.”

#5. Thanks to their lousy cover, Three Days Grace is just “Somebody That I Used To Know.”

#4. With their desperate attempts at being edgy, The Offspring “Let The Bad Times Roll.”

#3. It’s a “Shame Shame” that the Foo Fighters failed to generate excitement with their lead single.

#2. AJR is “Way Less Sad,” and I am way less happy.

#1

For how much I complained about AJR for their repetitive sucking, Three Days Grace for their unnecessary cover, and the Foo Fighters and The Offspring for their shocking drops in quality… they were never going to top this worst list.

There was no other song this year that was going to be named my worst song of the year.

The battle for the worst song of 2021 was not a hard-fought battle or a nail-biter. Last year in 2020, I knew I hated my worst song of the year on the first listen, but I needed several more listens to assure myself that it was indeed the worst. It was similar to this situation when I did 1963. When I did 1992, two arguably worse songs cancelled each other out because I wanted to emphasize what had made that year’s worst rock music so disappointing. And for 1977, two titanically bad songs – one song known for being among the most infamous of the Seventies and one long-forgotten novelty song – bashed each other with massive clubs in an epic battle of suckitude. But not with 2021. It was a runaway. It was a blowout. The race to win the worst song award resembled Ronald Reagan winning every conceivable thing except Minnesota and DC in the 1984 Presidential Election, or Smarty Jones winning the 2004 Preakness, or the Jaguars crushing the Dolphins in the 1999 playoffs 62-7. Ok, maybe AJR would have gotten 14 points, but it still would’ve been a rout. And the second touchdown would have been in garbage time.

Even though this is a rock and alternative music countdown, the title is correct: this is the absolute worst song of the year in my opinion. In all genres. It’s worse than the Drake song where he claimed he was a lesbian. It’s worse than the hateful political songs released by Aaron Lewis and Tom MacDonald. And yes, it’s even worse than “Fancy Like.” And the reason is simple. At least the political songs make me react less like an angry madman and more like a cat when she becomes suspicious of her human’s motives. At least I can laugh at “Girls Want Girls” and “Fancy Like.” I can’t think of a single song, from any year or any genre, that has made me this angry in a long time.

And it was one of the biggest hits not just in Alternative music in 2021, but of the year. It was one of the 20 biggest songs of the year according to Billboard. It was a massive hit throughout the world. I continue to hold my standards that people should like what they like, but this song is so miserable that I don’t understand why anyone would listen to it, let alone make it a worldwide smash. A warning to all, my anger is about to hit supernova levels for the remainder of this entry. No use waiting, so let’s just get this over with.

Drum roll please. The number one worst song of 2021 is…

Excuse me, this is the wrong cover art. Let me get something more appropriate…

“Without You” – The Kid LAROI

Pop
#8 peak, #17 year-end

Alternative
#6 peak (March 20-April 3, 2021)
#15 year-end, 24 weeks on chart

Ever since I started this hobby, I’ve been subjected to a lot bad songs. I’ve been subjected to a lot of immature songs. But this… “Without You” is an unbelievably immature and basic song, so much so that it makes the protagonist of “The Ending” sound kind-hearted and selfless. There are bad songs like “My Humps” or “Baby Shark” that become extra annoying because they’re catchy, but this song literally makes me angry just thinking about it. I don’t even know where to start with this nuclear bomb of a song, so let’s just go over the artist while I’m thinking about where to begin.

For the second year in a row, the worst song of the year is from someone who goes by a pseudonym. The Kid LAROI is Charlton Howard, an 18 year old from Sydney, Australia who moved to Los Angeles with his mother and brother in order to be mentored by JuiceWRLD. After JuiceWRLD’s tragic passing, The Kid LAROI kept going and released his debut album F**k Love in July 2020, before extending it in November 2020 with the release of “Without You” and again in 2021 for the even bigger hit “Stay,” a collaboration with Justin Bieber that, yes, has over a billion plays on Spotify already. I will say this in defense of The Kid LAROI. He has gone through quite a lot of adversity so far. He grew up poor in both Sydney and rural New South Wales before emigrating halfway across the world and losing his protege. However, he has also stated that “Everything I make is the s**t. I love everything I make.” Granted, The Kid LAROI was still a kid when he wrote this song, but after listening to this, his first hit song… Oh my God. Someone needs to tell him that just because something sounds good to you doesn’t mean it will fly with someone else.

First off, this music. Holy crap, the music on “Without You” sucks. The first problem is the acoustic guitar. While The Kid LAROI is primarily a hip hop/rap artist, he likely got to cross over to the Alternative charts for this song since it is an acoustic ballad, a format numerous rock stars have gone with in order to cross better to the mainstream. I have heard numerous people, both critics and fans, compare “Without You” to “Wonderwall,” the all-world-conquering 1995 smash hit by Oasis. And to that I say, OH HELL NO. YOU WILL NOT TELL ME TO MY FACE THAT THIS SOUNDS LIKE OASIS.

“Without You” features a single acoustic guitar that plays a very standard pop song chords format: Am, Fmaj7, C, and G. And honestly, if you sub an F for the Fmaj7, you won’t really be that far off. The first problem with this chord progression is that this is so easy a caveman could do it. A first-month guitar student could play this song with his or her eyes closed. Heck, this song is so easy, that when I was playing around with the chords of “One” by U2 while writing my last best list, I accidentally stumbled across the chords to play this song, and had to quickly move on to the next song to hide the embarrassment that I had just unintentionally played the worst song of the year. Now, just because a song is easy to play doesn’t mean it’s bad. One of the all-time great guitar riffs is “20th Century Boy” by T.Rex, a song whose legendary riff is just two chords with no single note riffs involved. But “Without You” never does anything with these chords. For the entire 2 1/2 minute song, it never changes the chord progression. EVER. No new chords. No new ways of playing the progression. Heck, except for the bridge and the outro, the guitar is strummed the same way for THE ENTIRE FREAKING SONG. And to support the acoustic guitar, there is… absolutely nothing. No bass. No drums. All there is are some keyboards and backing vocals on the chorus and pre-chorus. No interesting countermelodies or anything. There was absolutely zero effort put into this song! It was nothing more than an easy day at the office for co-producer Omer Fedi where, instead of doing actual work, the employees all goof off and run around the building yelling random insults at people.

Here is why “Wonderwall” is not just infinitely better than “Without You,” but a song it isn’t fair to compare to the latter. Yes, “Wonderwall” is a song that is notorious for being every guitar player’s go-to song to woo people at colleges (Plot twist, my college classmates were subjected to lots of “Supersonic” and “Champagne Supernova” instead). The first problem is that unlike “Without You,” “Wonderwall” finds many different ways of varying the melody throughout the song. The chord structure changes in the pre-chorus and again in the chorus, unsung member Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs adds a mellotron simulating strings with Noel Gallagher backing his guitars with a piano, a lead guitar riff comes in on the pre-chorus. Additionally, “Wonderwall,” a song known for being ludicrously easy to play on guitar, is “Through the Fire And Flames”-level difficulty compared to “Without You.” It’s not F#-A-E-B, it’s F#m7-A-Esus4-B7sus4. And those chords are a lot harder to master than “Without You” and its simple chords. And most crucially, “Wonderwall” is the most notable song of all time featuring a capo. So many of those impromptu versions of “Wonderwall” suck because a capo is not being used. None of these features are on “Without You.” While “Wonderwall” takes its basic acoustic guitar and adds deceiving and interesting elements and melody changes to the primary riff, “Without You” does nothing. NOTHING. AT ALL. Heck, even “Shame Shame,” which I just trashed a few minutes ago for being so minimalist, has better instrumentation than this! At least it switches up the chords in the chorus! At least the Foo Fighters added strings to try to add a distinctive element! THEY DIDN’T EVEN TRY ON “WITHOUT YOU”! I’M RUNNING OUT OF WAYS TO CALL THIS WRETCHED SONG BASIC AND BLATANTLY SIMPLE! IT SUCKS! SUCKS! SSSUUUUCCCCKKKKSSSS!!!!!!!!!

They wanted to put me into anger management class after that last couplet, but no amount of therapy is going to keep me calm after this. For how bad the music is on this song, the element that instantly made this song a 1/10 in my eyes is the lyrics. Note to everyone, if you are within 1000 feet of me, please leave because your ears will explode from me screaming and yelling.

“Without You” is about a breakup. I don’t think I needed to tell this to anyone. I mean, the other big song called “Without You,” written by Badfinger and most famously covered by Mariah Carey Harry Nilsson, was also about a breakup, so what did you expect? A lot of breakup songs are whiny. Heck, the other famous “Without You” is centered around the line, “can’t live if living is without you.” But at least along with Nilsson’s amazing falsetto, that song was backed by a beautiful sparse piano and the lyrics showed some self-awareness about the narrator’s role in their breakup. We’ve already gone over that The Kid LAROI is getting no help from his production team on this one. But “Without You” devolves from a breakup song that sounds like it was written by a teenager who was just told by his parents to mow the lawn, into a song that was written by a teenager who destroys his TV with an axe, smashes the remains against the wall several times, and then hurls the TV out the window… all because his favorite football team lost a game.

The first lyric of the song immediately demonstrates what this song is going to be about.

You cut out a piece of me and now I bleed internally!
Left here without you! Without you!

This isn’t just about a breakup. It’s going to be 2 1/2 minutes of “(crying hysterically) I BROKE UP WITH MY GIRLFRIEND AND IT’S ALL HER FAULT! I DID NOTHING AND SHE RUINED EVERYTHING!” A motif that gets expanded on the first verse:

I can’t believe that you wouldn’t believe me!
F**k all of your reasons!
I lost my s**t! You know I didn’t mean it!

From the first verse, all I am getting is that The Kid LAROI is intentionally de-emphasizing his conduct in the relationship to focus on what the woman did. So already, we’re encountering one of my least favorite relationship tropes in songs: a song where the man has all the power and the woman doesn’t get to state her opinion. And the further problem, which is yet again a point I will have to make over and over and over again during this review, is that this song is so VAGUE! What does the girl not believe about The Kid LAROI? What are her reasons for breaking up with him? What did The Kid LAROI lose control about? None of these questions are answered! It’s just more “YOU HURT ME AND YOU NEVER GAVE ME A CHANCE!!!! WAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!” I mean, there are numerous good reasons someone can give for ending a relationship. Could you imagine the argument between the song’s narrator and the poor girl who has to endure his temper tantrum?

GIRL: “I’m leaving you.”
BOY: “WHAT?! YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME!”
GIRL: “You spend much more time with your friends than with me.”
BOY: “BUT I SPEND SO MUCH TIME WITH YOU ALREADY!”
GIRL: “And when we finally get to do things, you never ask me what I want to do. We only do what you want to do.”
BOY: “THAT’S NOT TRUE! YOU WANTED TO GO TO THAT STUPID BROADWAY SHOW!”
GIRL: “We only got to do that one time! So many of our dates involve me watching you play video games!”
BOY: “WELL YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO YOU HO!”
GIRL: “That’s it. You don’t call me that. Goodbye.” (walks out the door)
BOY: “F**K ALL OF YOUR REASONS!!!” (runs off to cry in his room)

And we haven’t gotten to the worst part yet. The part that everyone agrees is among the worst song lyrics of the year. Time to just jump 100 feet into the ocean and just get this over with.

So there you go!
Can’t make a wife out of a ho!

The first time I heard this lyric, it was in the middle of my daily drive. I was so angry, I could have crashed my car into the center guardrail. Just because of the breakup, The Kid LAROI labels his ex as a “ho.” You do realize that “ho” refers to a woman who has casual sex encounters with numerous people, right? RIGHT? And again, there is no evidence in the song that the woman is cheating on him! The narrator just comes to the conclusion that his girlfriend cheated on him, because she left him! You know how I trashed all those songs from 1963 earlier this year because they were about breakups or dangerous women? At least in songs like “Little Town Flirt” or “Donna The Prima Donna,” they at least mentioned how the woman in question was treating the guy wrong! The bad songs, like “I Wanna Be Around” or “The End Of The World,” were bad because like “Without You,” they didn’t bring up anything as to how the girl was so bad! But “Without You” is even worse than those songs, because it blows the story out of proportion and places an extra label on the woman, with no evidence that she fulfills said role!

I HATE ALL THESE LYRICS! IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY! HOW DID THIS BECOME SUCH A BIG HIT?! THIS ISN’T EVEN A SONG! IT’S AN ANTONIO BROWN-ESQUE TANTRUM SET TO MUSIC! YOU KNOW WHAT I’M GOING TO DO NEXT! UUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH…..

(ANGER METER INTENSIFIES)

I can’t analyze any more of this ridiculously biased and unsympathetic whinefest that was sold as a “song.” I just can’t. I don’t have time to discuss the bridge, or the Miley Cyrus collaboration. This is, without a doubt, one of the worst breakup songs I’ve ever heard in composition and especially in lyrical content. An incredibly basic, zero effort song about throwing a childish temper tantrum just because a relationship failed, placing an unwanted label on the ex just because she left him. It’s so bad that it makes the other whiny songs I’ve heard sound that much better by comparison. I’ve done tons of comparisons to prove just how awful “Without You” is, but there is one comparison I have yet to bring out that will end this song’s whole career. I’ll just go out and say it. Ahem…

Simple Plan is better than this.

Yeah. You heard me. I would rather listen to the band most associated with whiny, immature songs over this pile of trash any day of the week. And there’s a big reason for that. For how ridiculously bad “I’m Just A Kid,” “God Must Hate Me,” and “Untitled (How Could This Happen To Me?)” are, at least they’re laugh-out-loud funny over how immature they are. Whether saying that life is horrible because they forgot to study for a test or blowing a serious song by making it all about themselves and how mad they are over their consequences, Simple Plan songs are just so cartoonishly exaggerated. And again, Simple Plan at least tried to make songs with full band arrangements and chord changes and stuff, unlike here! It brings me back to the core element of why “Without You” is not just the worst song of 2021, but also one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. This song makes me angry. I seriously cannot listen to this song without making this face:

When I first heard this song while listening to the year-end list for Alternative and Mainstream Rock, this song’s lyrical content about throwing a massive tantrum at a woman and making her a villain with no evidence whatsoever made me inconsolable and it still does. I could at least make it through AJR without getting angry. The only time I have been able to handle hearing this song so far is while watching worst lists for music in 2021, because I at least get to hear someone give this song the thrashing it deserves. No joke, whenever I see this song on a worst list, I whisper to my computer screen, “Thank you.” I know that’s mean, but when the song in question is this indescribably bad, what do you expect?

It all adds up to the worst breakup song, and quite possibly the worst song overall (it’s either this or the “parody songs” from Nostalgia Critic’s The Wall) since “Sad!” by XXXTentacion, a monumental achievement of awfulness considering that “Sad!” currently stands as one of my two least favorite songs of all time (“Black Chick, White Guy” by Kid Rock is the other). And after blowing thousands of words on my hatred of this song, I’ve exhausted my brain and can’t keep this going anymore. “Without You” is not just the worst Rock & Alternative song of 2021. “Without You” is the worst song of 2021 and the 2020’s so far. In any genre. Period.

SOURCES

Beato, Rick. “What Makes This Song Great? Ep.38 Oasis.” YouTube 1 August 2018. Web. 7 January 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=silOU_BvPWc/.

DeVille, Chris. “The Kid LAROI Situation Is Escalating Rapidly.” Stereogum 19 July 2021. Web. 7 January 2022 https://www.stereogum.com/2154368/the-kid-laroi-stay-without-you/columns/the-week-in-pop/.

Fry, Courtney. “Meet The Kid LAROI, The 17-Year-Old From Sydney Who’s Smashing The US Music Charts.” Pedestrian 18 August 2020. Web. 7 January 2022 https://www.pedestrian.tv/music/the-kid-laroi-sydney-rapper-us-music-charts/.

Chords for “Without You” taken from Ultimate Guitar: https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/the-kid-laroi/without-you-chords-3407780.

IMAGE SOURCES

Baby crying photo from Metro Parent

Anger photo from The Guardian

Genie jaw drop GIF from Tenor

Pouting kid photo from UC Santa Barbara