I am not a negative person, but it has become mandatory that I follow my best songs of the year list with my worst songs of the year list. Limiting my choices to top 40 music released over the past 12 months, I have identified five songs I especially hated.

As I said yesterday, I am not really a big music fanatic. It is easier for a song to annoy me as opposed to inspire me. Because of this, I usually have a much bigger pool of candidates for this list as opposed to yesterday’s list. This year was no exception. I give you Brent’s Top 5 Worst Songs of 2016:

5. Dangerous Woman – Ariana Grande

I won’t be as hard on this song as I will be on the others that make the list because I really like the music of Ariana Grande. However, the disappointment I had over “Dangerous Woman” was just too much for me not to include on my countdown.

Grande has made her living off of fun, energetic tracks. This song was just too slow and too sultry for me. No part of it made me want to devote three minutes to listening to it. It is one of those songs where the more I listen to it, the more I lose patience with it. Sometimes a change of style works but I think she missed the mark with “Dangerous Woman.”

4. Close – Nick Jonas featuring Tove Lo

I have never been a big fan of the collaborations between a male singer and female singer describing the hardships of a relationship. By now it is such a cliché practice and when the lyrics are sub par it just means you have the inconvenience of listening to two people sing a bad song instead of just one. I never liked “Close.”

The song is just too whiny. The build up to the chorus is almost just as brutal as when the singers croon “clooooooose” over and over again. Speaking of repetition, even the words in the verses sound like broken records (i.e. I know, I know you know you’re scared). This song was a bore.

3. Toothbrush – DNCE

The title says enough, right? If you can get past what the song is called, don’t think anything better is waiting for you once the music starts. To me, this song is plain annoying. The aggravating and slow portion of the chorus that goes at my place, at my place turns me off. The verses are slow as well and the elementary rhyming used throughout the track don’t do it any favors. I get what the song is about and I get the significance of the toothbrush, but I just don’t think it was put together well.

In all fairness, I just don’t really care for the sound of DNCE. I almost put “Cake By The Ocean” on this list as well but I thought it would be mean to include two different songs by one artist. Nothing adds more to the frustration of waiting in traffic than when a DNCE song comes on the radio.

2. Megan Trainor – No

I dislike this song from top to bottom. First, the track sounds awful with the word “no” used over and over again. Yes, I get the device they were trying to achieve, but Trainor took it overboard. I appreciate the effort made to give the song a few different distinct sounds but the problem is I don’t care for any of them. The I’m feeling untouchable part takes repetitive to a whole new level and to put the icing on the cake, the only other words in that verse come at the end when she sings/says nah to the ah to the no, no, no.

I actually like the message of the song and I think it is very important, I just don’t think it was performed well. To me, it was just arranged in a very jumbled way.

1. I Hate U, I Love U – Gnash ft. Olivia O’Brien

This song embodies all of the critiques I have given the other songs above. It is repetitive, annoying, whiny, and uninspiring. In short, it is unlistenable.

Nothing dooms this song more than the words of the title. Hearing both Gnash and O’Brien singing I hate you, I love you in such a nursery rhyme way over and over again is beyond bad. Aside from that, the rest of the song is just a depressing mess. There is no energy, no passion. The song manages to actually get on my nerves. Until this song hit the mainstream, I had no idea who either of the singers were. With that said, I would normally give them the benefit of the doubt but the track was just so draining that I had to name it the worst song of 2016.

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Sorry for the negativity. If you disagree with me, well, good…..I know zilch about music. Until the 2017 list a year from now, I will try to restrain the musical critic inside of me. Don’t Blink.