Ye, Drake, Coi Leray among artists included on ’Variety’s “Worst Songs of 2023” list

There are plenty of “best of” music lists from this year, but Variety has entered the chat with its list of the “Worst Songs of 2023.”

Coming in #2 spot is “Vultures” by Kanye “Ye” West and Ty Dolla $ign featuring Bump J. The magazine, which provides a paragraph or two explaining why each song made the list, writes, “Enough said” of Ye’s “antisemitic” lyrics. In the song, he raps, “How am I antisemitic? I just f***** a Jewish b****.”

Coi Leray is listed on the roundup twice: At #4 for “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” with David Guetta and Anne Marie. Variety calls the song “an empty rehash of Haddaway‘s 1993 club smash ‘What is Love.'” And although the magazine gives Coi her flowers as an artist, she’s also knocked for basing her song “My Body” around another sample: Lesley Gore‘s “It’s My Party.”

It may surprise you to learn that Drake is on the list: He takes the #9 spot for his song “Search and Rescue.” Variety writes that the track “scans as shapeless, something akin to a stream-of-thought freestyle that escaped the studio.”

Nicki Minaj, who currently has the #1 hip-hop album in the country, is named alongside Kim Petras for their collaboration, “Alone.” It too, features a sample: “Better Off Alone” by Alice Deejay. As Variety writes, including the song on Kim’s debut album slowed its “momentum” to a “crawl.”

Other tracks on the list include country star Jason Aldean‘s “Try That in a Small Town,” or “a hostile anthem of proud xenophobia,” as Variety puts it; “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Fall Out Boy; “Mind Your Business” by will.i.am and Britney Spears; and “Vulgar” by Sam Smith and Madonna. 

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