Current streaming playlists are a conundrum. It’s clear that listening habits have shifted, and more and more people reach for timeless classics to refresh their palate in the face of the onslaught of new releases that drops every Friday. The problem is that they’re becoming too much of a cliché, and not all of those classics deserve to cling to playlists the way Feijóo clings to making a fool of himself. Some should disappear from the face of the Earth forever and stop terrorizing playlists beyond Halloween.
Shawn Mendes / Treat You Better
That archetypal song about a guy trying to persuade a girl to leave her boyfriend because he can “treat her better” is well-trodden, but Shawn Mendes gives it an unprecedented twist with this swelling chorus that’s creepier than Iker Jiménez’s drift toward fascism. I endured cold sweats in a taxi years ago after a night of partying, when the song was playing on the radio and threatened to make me puke in my seat. Okay, probably Shawn wasn’t to blame for me having one too many drinks, but few songs have done so little good. I have no proof, but no doubt that this track has side effects.
P!NK, Nate Ruess / Just Give Me a Reason
Macklemore is better Give me one reason, a single reason, why we have to endure this exhibition of manufactured drama dragged straight from the official manual of tear-jerker ballads, with Nate vocally dueling P!nk to prove why he’s the member of Fun. that no one talks about anymore. Meanwhile, the gaudy rhythm section desperately tries to lend radio muscle to a song already overloaded with intensity. The lyrics carry a nice message about repairing a relationship, but Nate seems willing to ruin it for good.
Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj / Beauty and a Beat
Justin Bieber’s eternally prepubescent voice is reason enough to bolt, but ‘Beauty and a Beat’ caps the act with a maximalist EDM production and brostep splashes that never sounded like «3012» and certainly recall that awful 2012 that even Skrillex would rather forget. Nostalgics, and sicker still, pretend that pop of 2012 was cool, but this track makes a strong case that the world should have ended that year. Not even Nicki Minaj in her glorious pre‑Trump-era can save this sonic blow.
The Police / Every Breath You Take
Enough already, right? Forty years of the same. Sting has spent all that time somehow getting away with watching every one of our moves, obsessed with a breakup to the point of not taking a no for an answer. The lyrics are textbook stalking, but little is said about the psychological siege triggered by those tacky eighties guitars and Sting’s voice, as if he were a poseur rocker. The song is pure love bombing: it convinces you that it loves you, but in reality it wants to possess you. And there are still people who play it at weddings as if it were a declaration of love rather than a looming restraining order.
Jennifer Lopez / Pitbull, On the Floor
If there is anything more unexpected than Jennifer Lopez staging a comeback in 2011 with ‘On the Floor,’ it’s Jennifer Lopez staging a comeback in 2026 with ‘On the Floor.’ We call it a sample, but it was really a cruder interpolation of ‘La Lambada’ than a statement from La Oreja de Van Gogh. The gaudy dance-pop production simply serves to remind of what her film This Is Me… Now: A Love Story already proved aloud: that even a mountain of money in the bank can’t buy good taste. Okay, the song worked, but once was enough. This is masochism.
