“Yummy” by Justin Bieber

Between 2015 and 2017, Justin Bieber had evolved from ‘the worst Pop star in the known universe’ to ‘kinda-sorta-almost-okay-ish-if-you-squint-at-him-a-little-bit’. Well, his most recent material definitely represents a return to form…in the sense that it plummets right back to the rock-bottom awfulness of his pre-2015 work. This song is probably the most notorious among those releases, and indeed, it’s hard to think of a more abjectly bad song in recent memory.

That the lyrics are terrible could be gleaned from the song’s title alone, but it goes beyond that: virtually every word choice in this lyric is profoundly wrong. It’s like a Train song, but without any of the off-the-wall insanity that at least makes their stuff entertainingly bad.

On top of that, Bieber’s brief flirtation with being remotely tolerable came about mostly because the EDM style he was dabbling in at the time was as good a fit for his terrible singing voice and utter lack of personality as any genre was going to be; it gave them an opportunity to process his voice into something vaguely listenable, and the fact that he sounded like an emotionless robot could be passed off as a stylistic choice.

But of all the genres I could imagine Bieber trying to pull off, Hook-Rap is probably the absolute least credible choice for him. He sounds ridiculous trying to be soulful, and his weak vocals are a bigger liability than they’ve been in years. We’ve seen a lot of Pop stars embarrass themselves over the course the last ten years, but rarely in this abject and humiliating a manner.

Verdict: You have to ask?

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