4 of the Most Hated Songs in Human History

Pop songs are designed to be catchy, addictive, and easy to fit into any radio rotation. However, those attributes usually lead certain pop songs to the dreaded label of “overplayed.” That’s what happened to the following four tracks, each of which is considered one of the most hated songs of all time. But for a few of them, that hatred is a little bit more complicated… and maybe even unwarranted.

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This list of the most hated songs is quite short and far from definitive. There are a lot of hated songs out there, after all.

1. “Boom Boom Pow” by Black Eyed Peas

The late 2000s was the era of The Black Eyed Peas. They had a ton of hits that dominated the airwaves around that time. One such song was “Boom Boom Pow”, an EDM hip hop hit released in 2009. It topped the Billboard Hot 1000 for a whopping 12 weeks and was also the group’s very first no. 1 single on that coveted chart.

Sadly, “Boom Boom Pow” got old really quickly. And nobody told radio stations that fact. It continued to get played to death until everyone within earshot of a radio or speaker would bemoan its intro.

2. “Friday” by Rebecca Black

Few musicians with a rough start have enjoyed a comeback moment as glorious as Rebecca Black’s recent return to music. After becoming one of the most (unfairly) hated musicians with the release of her 2011 single “Friday”, Black returned to the music world in recent years with a talent for hyperpop production. 

I’m glad she’s doing well, considering she got bullied nonstop for the song “Friday” when she was just 14 years old. I’m not saying “Friday” is a good song, but man were people cruel to her over it.

3. “Baby” by Justin Bieber

If a song gets well over three billion views on YouTube, it’s bound to become a heavily hated song. “Baby” was one of Bieber’s first hits, released back in 2010 when he was still just a kid. It was an enormously popular teen pop tune, hitting no. 5 on the Hot 100 and ranking even higher on Canadian charts.

Pretty quickly after the song’s release, it became cool to hate Justin Bieber. The YouTube music video for the song became the fourth most disliked video in the history of online video streaming. 

4. “Photograph” by Nickelback.

“Photograph” and Nickelback as a whole became one of the most hated songs and bands ever. However, when this track was first released, it was a pretty big chart-topping hit. Released in 2005, this post-grunge tune hit no. 1 on multiple US and Canadian charts, and made it to no. 2 on the Hot 100. 

Still, people got sick of it, and “Photograph” was reduced to a meme in the years following its success.

Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

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