As the year winds down, a lot of publications will be looking back at the best of the year, but Variety has decided to go in the opposite direction, sharing its picks for the worst songs of 2023.
One artist making the list this year is Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Roger Waters. He earns a prominent spot for his solo remake of Pink Floyd’s classic The Dark Side of the Moon, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year.
While the publication notes that it isn’t totally against The Dark Side of the Moon Redux, calling it “interesting,” it does single out Waters’ new take on “Money,” which lands at #5 on the list.
Variety points to Waters’ decision to rid “one of the most-loved songs in the 1970s rock canon” of David Gilmour‘s solos, and replace them with what it calls “a four-minute poem about … boxing.”
Billy Joel also made the list — sort of — thanks to Fall Out Boy’s update of Joel’s 1989 #1 hit “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which Variety ranks as the third-worst song of 2023.
The mag calls the band out for updating the Joel song that’s “universally considered most annoying — not only in his catalog, but maybe of the 20th century,” and adds that Fall Out Boy made the events mentioned in the song “as jarring as possible,” as opposed to putting them in chronological order, as the original does.
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