The WORST “Country” Songs of 2023

Down with Pop Country 93 Comments


We’ve run down some of the best songs and the best singles in country music in 2023. Now it’s time to dredge up the worst of the worst, which in 2023 sees multiple songs attempting to rework older songs, signaling the lack of ideas coming from some entertainers.

Overall, popular country music continues to improve from the height of the Bro-Country era. But as the below songs prove, there is still a ways to go.

WARNING: Language


Dustin Lynch – “Chevrolet”


It should be of no surprise to anyone that as we check in on the bulbous, pus-filled malignant growth that is Dustin Lynch’s pop country career that it’s in need of laceration, draining, and intense radiation to keep it from metastasizing and destroying country music. To think this asshole is a Grand Ole Opry member is enough to anger the blood and keep one writhing in the sheets at night.

His latest monstrosity is a naked advertisement for General Motors that like the meth heads in your neighborhood going after your catalytic converter, pilfers key elements from the iconic song “Drift Away” made famous by John Henry Kurtz and later Dobie Gray. “Chevrolet” is a gross bastardization of an American musical standard in the attempted service to keep Dustin Lynch’s stupid career steadfastly on the county fair and casino circuit.

Consumer advocates should demand an immediate recall of Dustin Lynch’s “Chevrolet” on the grounds that it can result in serious bodily injury and/or death when someone hears this song while operating a motor vehicle and immediately succumbs to violent and uncontrollable projectile vomiting. I’d rather be mangled in a gruesome car wreck and left within an inch of life, bleeding out on the asphalt as opposed to having to listen to this song once again. (read more)


Katie Noel – “Southern”

As if Kid Rock ejaculated into a half empty Code Red Mountain Dew bottle, shook it up with some residue left in the bottom of a vat after a meth batch, passed it around a circle of inbreds so they could spit their tobacco juice into it, and then this unholy concoction was allowed to fester in a stagnant mire until certain chemical processes occurred, Katie Noel has spontaneously generated into existence like a demon redneck hellspawn with terrible taste in music to rape your ears incessantly with her tractor rap noise.

The simple truth is the shitty musical stylings of someone like Katie Noel have been around for a dozen years or so in the devolved underworld world of hick hop, which requires its population to be devoid of any taste or self-awareness for inclusion. The only difference is that she’s a woman, while we’re used to fat white male losers releasing this kind of refuse. (read more)


Jake Owen – “On The Boat Again”

So Jake Owen is still a thing, huh? You’d think he’d be managing a Chipotle in Murfreesboro at this point. Reminiscent of the time he fucked up John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane” back in 2018, Owen proves once again that all of those ultraviolet suntan treatments have eradicated any original thoughts from his melon, and he’s resigned to foraging through previous songs for ideas.

This time he’s reworked “On The Road Again” into the mindless and indolent “On The Boat Again.” You can probably guess how this goes. If there was ever a song that deserves to be infested by zebra mussels and red tagged by the game warden, it would be this one. Somebody should tie cinder blocks to this song’s ankles and drop it in the deep water where they can’t dredge.

The producer Joey Moi needs to go back to jerking off Nickelback. And of course, it took not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE people to write this monstrosity, which includes giving Willie a credit. (read more)



Shania Twain – “Pretty Liar”

First off, whoever is in charge of whatever they’ve done to Shania Twain’s voice should be dragged in front of a musical tribunal and charged with high crimes and misdemeanors. You’ll never hear a more artificial-sounding, almost demonic tone than whatever is emanating out of Shania Twain’s mouth on her new album Queen of Me. It’s been run through such a merciless gauntlet of studio transmogrifiers resulting in something so distinctly inhuman-sounding, it’s nightmare-inducing.

When you mix this with utterly vapid songs that offer absolutely no stimulus aside from maybe a tacit pulse rise for gullible audiences from the simple repetitiveness of phrases, the songs of Queen of Me leave the listener aggressively unfulfilled. Forget coming across anything even closely resembling “country” in this effort. You’d be happy to just run into anything that feels organic on this barren moonscape of creativity.

The ridiculous track “Pretty Liar” is a perfect example of this, with it’s dumb DJ booth/dance floor callouts, and literal “pants on fire” nursery rhyme writing intertwined with completely unnecessary yet equally immature f-bombs that crater any last confidence you had that Shania Twain 2.0 would be any semblance of “good.”


Parmalee – “Girl In Mine”

If Walker Hayes is the pallid, generic version of softcore country rap, then Parmalee is the generic version of Walker Hayes. Their name sounds like a candle scent, or something you would earn by purchasing 10 peppermint-flavored lattes. But not even the people in Parmele, North Carolina where these brothers, cousin, and best friend came from know who the hell they are, and those that do hang their head in shame.

This band officially performed career seppuku in 2018 with their offensively terrible and mush mouth fuck nutted song “Hotdamalama” that tried to lick the boot of “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” and spectacularly failed. Inexplicably, they’ve been enjoying what on paper is a career resurgence with shitty songs like “Girl In Mine,” but still 99% of Americans couldn’t pick them out of a lineup, and instead would finger them as an ice cream flavor.

“Girl In Mine” isn’t as much as “bad” as it is so aggressively generic to the point of being exceptionally exacerbating. You couldn’t set out to make a more generic song in 2023 if you tried.


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