Hilarious In Hindsight / Todd in the Shadows

Although this video has a pretty long introduction,^note as the video proper begins at around 6:18 (for those who want to skip ahead), it still contains approximately 20 minutes of failed Toddstradamus predictions and them being proved wrong.

It's become a Running Gag that Todd has a terrible track record of correctly predicting pop music trends. Whenever he figures out that he got something wrong, Todd is the first to quip "Toddstradamus strikes again!" at his mistakes. Notable examples, as well as some other comments that were hilarious in hindsight, are listed below.

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• In "Bedrock", he completely dismisses Nicki Minaj, including her with the many artists on the track he feels won't go anywhere. While he was right about most of them, Nicki turned into quite a successful star afterward, earning a few episodes of her own. (and when "Only" made it on his Worst List for 2015, Todd went "I didn't even think her verse on "Bedrock" was that bad!")
• Todd's review of the Britney Spears song "3" from 2009. In the TGWTG fandom, Todd was often part of a popular OT3 series, paired with Pushing Up Roses and Paw. In the same review, he expresses disbelief that women find two men together hot. Suffice to say, the fandom has proved him wrong on that one.
  • In the same review, after Todd comments on how Spears had tackled lesbianism (in her 2003 MTV Video Music Awards performance), nudity (in the "Womanizer" video), and now group sex (in "3"), he wonders "What's next, pedophilia?". Come the 2011 VMAs, Todd would describe in his vlog that the tribute performance to her during the show was "horribly pedophilic".
• At one point in "Club Can't Handle Me," he sings a few lines from Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" before realizing he's got the wrong song. Then a bootlegger came up with just the same idea... Even more amusing, singer-songwriter Tyler Ward included this song as part of his cover version's outro.
• In his Q&A thread in the Channel Awesome forums, we have this wonderful gem from June 2010.
  What, you mean like the admins? I've talked to Bhargav, he walked me through the process of uploading my videos to TGWTG and he also politely informed that no, he didn't think I had a chance of dating The Nostalgia Chick. Does that count?
• He once (reviewing "Like A G6") used the term "Oriental" to describe East Asians, unaware it could be taken as a slur. He eventually reviewed "Born This Way" which got Lady Gaga in trouble for exactly the same thing.
• In his review of "Tonight...", he says he thinks that song was inspired by Pitbull. Guess who the original remix of the song replaces Ludacris with?
• When reviewing "Empire State Of Mind" for the list of his favorite songs of 2010, he pointed out the tendency for the people he's met from New York (the one time he's been there) to claim to be superior over the slightest things, and eventually finds he identifies with the idea. Guess which state's residents he's been spending a lot of time with lately? And where he eventually moved?
• In his "Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 1976," he mentions a few soft rock singers that he likes, including Bryan Adams, but stops just short of Michael Bolton, saying that he would still pick him over Peter Cetera. Then, first Bolton makes something Todd likes (a guest spot on "Jack Sparrow", which even had Bolton listed as a better guest for "Give Me Everything" than Ne Yo), and then, Adams does something Todd despised, ordering the removal of his profile on Allmusic. During his list of the Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1991, where bashing Bolton was a Running Gag, he precedes his #1 pick by defending Michael Bolton, and imploring the viewers to "fight the real enemy": Adams, whose song "Everything I Do (I Do For You)" tops the list.
• In his "Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 1987" list:
  • He says that he likes "Tonight" and "Tonight, Tonight", but "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" is too many tonights for him. He probably wasn't expecting Hot Chelle Rae to put his theory to the test before even a year had passed. (Not to mention "Tonight..." (I'm Fucking You) in the same year.) To prove the point further, he ends the review of HCR's song with "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight"! And if that wasn't enough, "Tonight..." and "Tonight, Tonight" were his two least favorite songs of 2011.
  • During his #2 pick, Glenn Medeiros's "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You", he comments on the line "I love you just the way you are" with "Uh, Mr. Medeiros, call for you from Billy Joel's lawyers on line two". Less than two months later, Bruno Mars topped the Hot 100 with a song titled exactly that.
  • He also cites this trope by name when he mentions Lionel Richie's song to his daughter, "Ballerina Girl." Let's just say that nobody knew the subject of the song would become famous in her own right two decades later.
• In his review of "We Are the World 25", Todd claimed that Enrique Iglesias's Latin Lover shtick was beginning to wear thin and told him to "find some testicles". 1 year later, Enrique released the more aggressive dance song "Tonight...", which Todd hated — he thought the "Tonight I’m fucking you" line sounded threatening and was completely unfitting for someone like Enrique. Todd even named it the #2 worst song of 2011 because of that line, and argued that the song ruined Enrique's image as a "smooth, sensitive man of romance", making it impossible to buy into his earlier songs.
  • In the same review, when noting that the song was structured like the 1985 original, he compared the 80s stars to their 2010 equivalents, including T-Pain being 2010's answer to Stevie Wonder. In 2016, T-Pain would portray Stevie Wonder in Epic Rap Battles of History.
• In his Top 10 Worst of 2011, he guesses that the success of Jeremih's "Down on Me" was entirely due to a popular lip-syncer making a video with the song's artist, leading to this weirdly prophetic statement:
  We regular internet morons are finding out that we have power, and some of us are using that power in horrible ways. I envision some dark days ahead for us.
• Back in his review of "Grenade", Todd used a joke where he accidentally shows a picture of Brüno (2009) instead of Bruno Mars in the opening bit. Royce Da 5'9" made a similar reference at the end of his verse in 'Lighters' (which had Mars on the chorus), reviewed by Todd nearly a year later.
• In his review of Timbaland and Justin Timberlake's "Carryout," Todd says that if James Cameron spent millions on CGI for a film with nothing but a guy getting hit in the nuts, it still would have been better than Avatar. Todd would later make a video about the Top Ten Groin Shots in Movies.
  • In the same review, he attempts erotically eating fast food, and once he starts rubbing a cheeseburger over his chest, a text appears reading "I sincerely hope my family never sees this." Cut to that year's Thanksgiving, and his (at the time) six year old cousin couldn't stop laughing at him for doing so.
• In his "Replay" review, Todd complains about the "Vaguely foreign, reedy-voiced R&B singers" and asks for the Boy Bands to make a return. Two years later, guess what group is topping the album and singles charts worldwide? Not to mention, other groups are having similar but significantly less success, and the first band's hand-picked successors having an infamous lyric cement their spot on his "Worst of 2014" list. Even moreso with another worldwide phenomenon from the late 2010s onward.
• In his Top 10 of 2010, he declared Neon Trees weren't going to get another hit after "Animal", two years later, they returned to the Top 40 with "Everybody Talks".
• When reviewing Bruno Mars's "The Lazy Song", he derided it as a typical "white guy on acoustic guitar" song, despite how Bruno is not white and possibly not a guy. In a later review, he pointed out that his Distaff Counterpart to the genre is "white chick on piano". Is it any wonder that when Bruno later released a piano ballad ^note "When I Was Your Man", he firmly established himself as a man in the title?
• During his "Firework"/"Born This Way" review, he begins thinking of a parody of the former and tells "Weird Al" Yankovic to watch out. Al ended up parodying the latter instead.
• Declaring he would never review another Kesha song becomes funny after "Die Young" made his list of best songs of 2012.
• In his review of "Cooler Than Me" by Mike Posner:
  • He lists a number of things cooler than Mike Posner. One being the Bill Engvall Show. Now it's safe to say that someone from that show is indeed cooler than Posner. Made even more hilarious by the fact that Engvall's show has become a footnote remembered almost solely for launching Lawrence's career.
  • Near the end of the video, Todd says, "Watch, I'm gonna be wrong; he's gonna have, like, dozens more hits." Mike Posner only had one more major hit in 2011, and he didn't chart again in 2013/14. However, he had another hit in 2016 with "I Took a Pill In Ibiza"...which Todd reviewed, specifically bringing up how wrong he'd been when he said Posner would never have another hit (it was even bigger than "Cooler Than Me" was). And indirectly, Posner helped write two #2 songs, Justin Bieber's "Boyfriend" and Maroon 5's "Sugar".
  • Todd brings up how lame Posner's name is, in comparison to someone like Taio Cruz. While Posner has lasted longer, Cruz hasn't had a Top 40 hit anywhere since 2012.^note He had three Top-40 hits in the UK in 2011-2012 from the album TY.O. Only one of them charted in the US, and it peaked at 62.
• In his Top 10 of 2012, he declared Kanye West and Kim Kardashian's kid was going to be seriously screwed and it looks like he's on his way to being right considering reports that they named their daughter North West.
• Similar to the "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" example above, Todd used the song "Time of My Life" for the credits to the "Worst Hit Songs of 1987" video. He probably didn't expect the Black Eyed Peas to sample that song and run with it in "The Time (Dirty Bit)" half a year later.
• On the same note, "Take on Me" was his very first One Hit Wonderland episode, and it's safe to say he didn't plan on Pitbull and Christina Aguilera sampling it in "Feel This Moment" late that year.
• For yet another credits example (and possible Foreshadowing), Todd ended the "Want U Back" review with a heavily censored version of Eamon's "Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)". Just a few months later, it's on his "Worst Hit Songs of 2004" list.
• In his "Blurred Lines" review:
  • He says if Robin Thicke wants to be Justin Timberlake "He should start hosting Saturday Night Live and stop talking to other members of *NSYNC". This becomes funny when it was revealed Timberlake initiated the *NSYNC reunion at the 2013 VMAs. Also hilarious: in spite of said reunion, it was Thicke's performance with Miley Cyrus that made more headlines following the show (albeit, negative ones — and it was Cyrus who was getting all the attention).
  • In the review he says the song samples "Got to Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye, which is not present at all. A year later, however, Robin Thicke and Pharrell lost millions of dollars over a lawsuit by Gaye's family, who claimed "Blurred Lines" sounded too similar to "Got To Give It Up". Ironically, Todd would later imply on his Trainwreckords review of Thicke's Paula that, as much as he didn't like Thicke, the lawsuit was unjustified.
• In the beginning of his Hannah Montana: The Movie review, Todd mentioned that, because "Can't Be Tamed" wasn't a hit (despite fan requests for him to review it), he wasn't sure if Miley Cyrus would ever have a career again. Well, fast-forward to 2013, and after both "We Can't Stop", her VMAs performance, and "Wrecking Ball" it's safe to say that Miley Cyrus certain has made an infamous return.
• In his "Wrecking Ball" review, he states that the pop charts have gotten so boring, he's wishing some of his old nemeses, like Lil' Wayne and Kesha (but not Chris Brown), would come back. One year later, all three artists have big hits, with Kesha's collaboration with Pitbull, "Timber," reaching #11 on the 2014 Year-End Hot 100, while Chris Brown and Lil' Wayne's collaboration, "Loyal," reached #30 on the same chart (and #3 on Todd's Worst Hit Songs list).
• When he reviews fun.'s "We Are Young", he commented that they were trying to emulate Queen. It's been announced that Nate Ruess will be performing with Queen at the iHeartRadio festival. Too bad Freddie Mercury cannot perform with them to drive in the Freddie/Nate comparison...
  • He also mentions after his research on both fun. and Gotye that "These guys better not turn out to be flashes-in-the-pan, or I've just wasted a lot of time." Sure enough, fun. had two more hits but faultered until taking a hiatus in 2015, while Gotye never charted again and also took a break.
  • Additionally, he mentions that he's confused why fun. and Gotye somehow broke through the rock barrier in the pop chart and not an already-established band like Linkin Park, Nickelback or the Neon Trees. When the Year-End list for 2012 ended up being released, Linkin Park and the Neon Trees (but not Nickelback) ended up having hits on there (with "Burn It Down" and "Everybody Talks", respectively) in addition to fun. and Gotye.
• In his "Back in Time" review, he says that there are soundtrack hits that no longer make you think of the movie anymore...
  • A year later that changed when Anna Kendrick's "Cups" became a huge hit that firmly makes people think of Pitch Perfect. Made even more hilarious with the success of "Let It Go" and "Happy". However, on Twitter he said he didn't consider "Let It Go" to be a true pop hit and he didn't associate "Happy" with Despicable Me 2 at all (indeed, as the song became a hit months after the movie, and thus their successes were completely independent of each other).
  • In early 2015, two songs from the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack have become #3 hits: Ellie Goulding's "Love Me Like You Do" and The Weeknd's "Earned It." The latter is a lot easier to associate with the movie it came from than the former is though. Still, their successes are firmly tied to the movie.
  • Additionally, Wiz Khalifa's "See You Again", another soundtrack song, has hit #1. And unlike "Happy" it's impossible to discredit its parent film as having fueled its success as it soared to the top of the charts almost immediately after the movie came out and Paul Walker's death playing a role. In fact, on both Radio Songs and the Pop Songs airplay chart, "Love Me Like You Do," "Earned It," and "See You Again" were back-to-back-to-back number one hits. Therefore, it's safe to say the soundtrack song is back in full force.
  • "Can't Stop the Feeling" by Justin Timberlake, anyone? Hell, Todd even would later mock Timberlake as doing music for children's movies.
  • And then in 2022, the Encanto soundtrack would dominate the charts, with "We Don't Talk About Bruno" even going to #1!
• All the way back in his third video, he mocks the idea that a celebrity like Miley Cyrus could be as unused to L.A. life as she claims to be in "Party in the USA", speculating that she was probably snorting cocaine with the Jonas Brothers before recording the song. Four years later, when reviewing "We Can't Stop", he is actually surprised when she puts a cocaine reference in the lyrics.
• In his Worst of 2012 video when discussing "The Motto", he says "If You Only Live Once is your motto, try to sound more enthused about it". Not long after did The Lonely Island and Adam Levine release their version of the song, the Hamtastic "YOLO"
• In his Worst of 1976 list, Todd is upset that two novelty songs ("Disco Duck" and "Convoy") hit #1. His Worst of 2012 list has him upset that a novelty song ("Gangnam Style") did not hit #1. Of course, he also listed "Gangnam Style" in the honorable mentions on his Best of 2012 list.
  Todd: It grew on me. Shut up.
• In his review of "Titanium", Todd says that David Guetta was leading us all into our "bland, boring, robot future. I approve!" A year later, he's lamenting how pop music in 2013 was just boring EDM.
• In the "Top Ten Songs About Mediocre Romance", Nostalgia Chick tells Obscurus Lupa to back off from Todd by quoting "Super Bass" ("You'll get slapped if you' lookin', ho!"). A year later, in the "Want U Back" review, when Todd goes on a "date" with Lupa and asks her about Nicki Minaj, Lupa says she thinks she knows who she is.
• In his Best of 2012 video, he notes that in comparison to the iconic sounding 2012, 2013 "just sounds lame." As it turns out, he would find the entire year to be just that when it came to pop music.
• The description for the "Party Rock Anthem" review says that LMFAO want to "Party all the time". Half a year later, Todd covered "Party All the Time" on One Hit Wonderland.
• When listing "Meet Me Halfway" as one of his Top Eleven Best Hit Songs of 2009, he says "Yes! That's right! Two Black Eyed Peas songs on the list! And you know what you can do about it? NOTHING!" Well, aside from inform him that "Meet Me Halfway" didn't meet the list's criteria until 2010, which he later admitted. However, starting with the "Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 2012", Todd had expanded the eligibility criteria for his Best and Worst lists to include any single that peaks within the Top 20 during the year in question. Also, he commented in his Worst Hit Songs of 2013 list when discussing will.i.am's "#thatPOWER" that he no longer likes the BEP songs he said he liked, which likely included this and "I Gotta Feeling", which was #8 on the 2009 Best list, and speaking of...
• A twofer occurs earlier on in the same segment when he claims that the age of Justin Bieber is over and that he isn't worth talking about anymore unless he does something really bad:
  • Barely a week after the video came out, Bieber was arrested for drunk driving in Florida, and needless to say, there was another media circus.
  • In the following years, Todd would review another three Bieber songs^note "What Do You Mean?" (in a joint-review with Shawn Mendes' "Stitches"), "Sorry," and "Yummy." Technically four, if you count his appearance on Lil Dicky's "Earth." and two of them would be on his Worst list seven years later.^note "Lonely" at #10 and "Yummy" at #1, with honorable mentions for "Intentions" and "Stuck with U," plus Bieber appeared in the video for his #5 pick, "Popstar" by DJ Khaled feat. Drake.
• He says Fergie sounds like she's doing a Cartman impression on "Boom Boom Pow." In a South Park episode two years later, Butters does a brief karaoke version of Fergie's verse on said song.
• In the video for "If I Die Young", Todd decides to answer the lyric "Send me away with the words of a love song" with the sheer Lyrical Dissonance of "I'll Make Love to You". 4 years later, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt had a scene of that exact song being performed at a funeral.
• In his One Hit Wonderland on "Baby Got Back," he says that Sir-Mix-A-Lot was, as of April 2012, the only rap star to break out of Seattle. Within a year, Macklemore would burst onto the music scene and become more successful than Sir-Mix-A-Lot ever was (for one thing, he very quickly disqualified himself from ever being the subject of an OHW).
• On Twitter, Todd compared Pharrell's "Happy" to Cee-Lo's "Fuck You". One can only imagine how he felt when Gwyneth Paltrow also covered "Happy" on Glee, and even more so when Pharrell replaced Cee-Lo on The Voice.
• Regarding Ed Sheeran:
  • In his "Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 2013," Todd states that he misses Sheeran after hearing Passenger's "Let Her Go." A year later, Sheeran's "Sing" and "Don't" were #8 and #7 on his "Best of 2014" list...and then "Thinking Out Loud" would go on to become a much bigger hit than "Let Her Go"—and one of Todd's most hated songs by him to boot. Additionally, while Sheeran ended up becoming a massive superstar worldwide, Passenger never charted on the Hot 100 ever again after "Let Her Go"... and to cap it all off, Passenger would release an anniversary edition of the song in 2023 featuring Sheeran.
  • When putting "Sing" on the 2014 best list, he is pleasantly surprised by Sheeran's ability to serve as a poor man's Justin Timberlake in a time of need, and suggests that he keep it up. As of 2017, Sheeran has topped the chart with a sex jam, "Shape Of You", which utterly repulses Todd and makes him wish he hadn't said that, complete with spot in the year's worst list.
  • In the "Shape of You" review, Todd suggests that in order for Sheeran to interest him again, he should set foot in a genre that he hadn't explored such as Death Metal. In February 2022, Sheeran released a remix of "Bad Habits" featuring Bring Me the Horizon, a band which started out in Deathcore, and later that year, it was confirmed that Sheeran would be releasing a song with Cradle of Filth.
• He says "Baby Got Back" is quotable, highlighting the "My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns, hon" line. Two years later, Nicki Minaj would base a song around that line, which Todd eventually reviewed.
• In the "Anaconda" review, Todd refers to Sir Mix-a-lot as the "Tim Gunn of butts." In season four of BoJack Horseman, Sir Mix-a-lot has a guest spot as a judge on what is basically a Project Runway formatted show judging girls with huge butts.
• In his "#selfie" review, he says that a review of Turn Down For What is not likely to happen due to the fact that it doesn't have many lyrics. His next review was, well...
• In his "Fancy" review, he compares Iggy Azalea's good flow to being able to chop vegetables really well. Her next video for "Black Widow" has Iggy actually chopping vegetables. He also says that Iggy Azalea will be have a long career with her and is more than the female Vanilla Ice. Nowadays, Iggy's relevancy is nearly obsolete and has been called a lot by her detractors as "The female Vanilla Ice".
• In his One Hit Wonderland on "Tubthumping," he talks about how fun it was to research Chumbawamba's history and make the video, saying at the end "I'll be depressed when I'm covering something stupid like 'Pac-Man Fever' in the next video." His next OHW wasn't on "Pac-Man Fever," but "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer," in which he talks about how much he loathes the song and at the end declares the entire episode to be a mistake.
• In his "Shake it Off" review, he calls Taylor Swift more thin-skinned than "...Eminem and Kim Jong-un combined." Mentioning those two in the same breath is funny because Eminem would actually have a very self-deprecating cameo in The Interview.
• In the same video, while he is ranting about Taylor's fake claims, he asks if Pitbull would end up in the song. While that would not be the case, "Blank Space" happened even later in the year. Three guesses as to what song Pitbull does get a hold of a guest verse in - and the first two don't count.
• He has great distaste for Lady Gaga's stuttering lyric "I live for the applause-plause..." in "Applause", calling it the most inane made-up word Gaga has used. Later on, he expresses identical distaste for Adam Levine using "...like animals-mals" in "Animals".
• In his review of "Grenade," he says one of the things he likes about Bruno Mars is how he's a very traditional artist, yet his music never comes across as a throwback. Starting with "Locked Out of Heaven," nearly all of his singles would be attempts to recreate styles of the past. Not only that, but Todd routinely states that he prefers these throwbacks to his traditional work.
• In his Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2011, he also claims that "The Lazy Song" is the kind of song "he can never forgive" Bruno Mars for. Three years later, and Bruno Mars has been in the top three of his Best Hit Songs of 2012, 2013, and 2016, and Uptown Funk was his favourite song of 2014 - and of course all of those songs ("Locked out of Heaven", "Treasure", "24k Magic", and "Uptown Funk") were throwbacks in some capacity.
• In his "Dark Horse" review, after two years of not being impressed with Katy Perry's singles, he declares he's going to stop liking her from now on (Probably a relief given that he was pretty embarrassed to like her early singles to begin with.) However, her very next single, "Birthday," landed on his Best of 2014 list.
• In his "Scream & Shout" review he brings up Britney Spears' previous collaboration with will.i.am, "Big Fat Bass," an obvious song about butts whose lyrics include "I can be the treble, baby; you can be the bass." And then "All About That Bass" was released a little more than a year later, becoming a much bigger hit than "Scream & Shout" was and eventually getting reviewed by Todd.
• On Twitter, he asked viewers which song he thought was better, Bryan Adams' Everything I Do (I Do It For You) or Aerosmith's I Don't Want to Miss a Thing. Not a month later, the former ends up on the top spot of his Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1991, something that many people wouldn't have anticipated.
• In his Worst of 2011 video, Todd identifies Jeremih as a "One-Hit Wonder who technically has a second hit." Then later Jeremih released "Don't Tell 'Em" and was featured on Natalie La Rose's "Somebody," both of which became top 10 hits as well. Also hilarious as this would go on to accurately describe the public perceptions of Carly Rae Jepsen and PSY.
• In his "Thinking Out Loud" review, Todd says that the song in question is in the Billboard Hot 100's top ten as he's recording the video...only for it to drop out of that region shortly afterwards.
• In "The Top Ten Best Hit Songs of 2014," he comments in "Love Me Harder" that "The Weeknd is over much too quickly." 2015 would go on to be a massive year on the charts for The Weeknd, spawning no less than three top five hits, two of which hit #1—one of which, "Can't Feel My Face," ended up on Todd's best list for the year.
• In his Worst Songs of 1976, he thinks that "Shannon" by Henry Gross is stupid because it's "dedicated" to a dog that died. Now, just check his Twitter feed for pictures and comments about his dog Kali (like this one). He's even said that having a dog has changed his opinion on the song. (though he stated he still hates it)
  • And in 2018, he is decidedly disheartened to see the dog dying in the music video for "Happier."
• The Top Ten Songs About Mediocre Romance video starts with the Nostalgia Chick again trying to win over Todd, this time by bringing out Kali. Todd's refusal is immediate. Years later, Lindsay hasn't appeared in Todd's videos since To Boldly Flee ended their storyline, but Kali remains a recurring guest.
• Todd was horrified at the reference to The Hills Have Eyes on "The Hills". Later, in his "Treat You Better" review, he refers to a song by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello that shares its title with another well-known horror movie. This time, he actually thinks the song is okay, but he hates the movie.
• In his Cinemadonna review of Who's That Girl, he complains about the Running Gag of the two cops who are clearly a couple, with the payoff of "It turns out these two gay cops...are gay! That's how jokes work, right?" Then Gravity Falls showed how to actually do that same joke and make it work.
• In his Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1976 video, Todd claims that he refuses to believe that anyone could ever make a sex song as unsexy as "Afternoon Delight". 4 years later, "Marvin Gaye" by Charlie Puth and Meghan Trainor comes out - and it's Todd's least favorite song of 2015.
• Todd putting Justin Bieber's "Sorry" as an honorable mention for 2015's worst list for the reason of "Bieber's such a shit" becomes funnier when the Jerkass nature of the song ends up affecting his enjoyment of it.
• In his review of Glitter, Todd described the Timothy Walker character as being played by "a strikingly miscast" Terrence Howard. Nowadays, his role in Glitter feels like a dry run for Howard's highly acclaimed depiction of the very similar character Lucious Lyons in Empire. (In all fairness, Empire gives Howard a lot more to work with and is significantly better written, allowing him to come off much more convincingly as a villainous type.)
• In his "What Do You Mean / Stitches" duo review, he finds out that the latter was written by Teddy Geiger, and Mendes himself was indeed not behind it. He then rants about how Teddy Geiger shouldn't be trying to make music anymore. And sure enough, in June 2016, the song gets its successor, "Treat You Better", which had not only Teddy Geiger behind it again, but it actually had Mendes on the writing board. Todd gave it a full review and briefly lamented Geiger's involvement (saying they might as well bring back Kevin Federline).
• Before the actual Pop Song review of "7 Years" by Lukas Graham, Todd first rants about current trend of songs sounding monotonous and shows a clip of Zayn's "Pillowtalk" as an example. Care to guess which song Todd unloaded on with both barrels in the next Pop Song review?
• A whole load from his 2011 FAQ. Some examples:
  • Saying he'd probably never review older songs several times over, when the following year would bring the debut of One Hit Wonderland.
  • When asked who his favorite and least favorite artists on the radio (at the time) were, he said he disliked Beyonce and surprisingly enjoyed Rihanna's music. Since then, he's flip-flopped a lot with Rihanna and stated on Twitter that he enjoyed Lemonade and Renaissance.
  • Closer to Heartwarming in Hindsight: His saying he'd love to team up with TGWTG members, but was still a junior member; one of Doug's final (pre-revival) Nostalgia Critic episodes was a crossover with Todd on The Wiz. Ditto for a question about making an appearance in the anniversary special (the FAQ came out before both Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee, both of which prominently featured Todd).
    • ...which then turns right around and becomes Harsher in Hindsight following the #ChangeTheChannel movement, which led to Todd leaving the site.
  • His being asked if there are any WGWAG songs he actually likes. He gives a few names, but he neglects to mention "Hey There Delilah", a particularly embarrassing favorite of his that gets brought up as an example of a good WGWAG song in the "Thinking Out Loud" review.
  • Todd saying he won't do an April Fool's episode. Three years later, he covered "Float On" for One Hit Wonderland...by the Floaters, not Modest Mouse. "APRIL FOOL'S, BITCHES!"
  • Saying he's not sure if he'd do worst lists for years from the '90s and '00s. He even mentions not recognizing most of the hit songs from 2004, in particular.
  • On B.o.B.: "I've only heard those two songs ^note  Presumably "Magic" and "Nothin' on You," both of which made his Best of 2010 list, but he also mentions "Airplanes" earlier in the thread. — he's got definite potential but he needs to be careful not to get too boring." As Todd would find out in 2016, he's got some opinions that definitely aren't boring.
  • On Nicki Minaj: "...she's great in small doses but I'm distrustful of her trying to carry a song on her own." Todd became quite familiar with the Nicki Minaj oeuvre as the show went on.
  • Saying he'd rather listen to The Darkness for the kind of music Tenacious D want to make. He'd prove it when they were covered on One Hit Wonderland (though he also makes a lot of references to the D, interestingly enough).
• Todd says in 2015 that he's run out of visceral hatred for Chris Brown, and that he's downgrading to dislike. In 2016, Brown was arrested for threatening a girl with a gun, which might bring Todd's loathing back up again.
• In his Worst of 2014 video:
  • Todd says The Chainsmokers will have to live with the embarrassing legacy of being the duo that made "#Selfie." 2016 would see The Chainsmokers have three top 10 hits, one of which was a 12-week No. 1 and Todd's top song of 2016. 2017 would given them two more.
  • He mentioned that "#Selfie" was barely a song. As it turned out 2 years later, he would find that most of the pop hits to be just that.
• In his review of "We Are the World 25 for Haiti," Todd sarcastically comments, "Yeah, because there's no way you can have a real celebrity team-up without Tony Bennett." A few years later, none other than legit celebrity Lady Gaga (whom Todd noted was conspicuously absent from the song) recorded an entire album of duets with him.
• In his One-Hit Wonderland episode on SR-71's "Right Now," he discusses the band's follow-up single "Politically Correct." He literally wants to set the song aflame for the line "You couldn't make a Mel Brooks movie today/I saw Blazing Saddles yesterday," mentioning in a caption that the reason Mel Brooks could is because he was actually funny and was using stereotypes ironically. About a day later, Lindsay Ellis puts out a retrospective of Mel Brooks and how to do (and not do) humor on touchy subjects, quoting SR-71's song at the beginning. Todd and Lindsay admitted it was a coincidence, but the reference to the song may have been added last minute as a reference to Todd's review. And then, four months after the review was posted, Mel Brooks himself said he couldn't have made Blazing Saddles today, reawakening the debate again.
• In the "Tonight, Tonight" review:
  • Todd said, "Now I know I've covered what I thought were surefire one-hit wonders on the show...only to watch them pull a second song out of nowhere. But please, please, God, do not let this band have another hit." While Hot Chelle Rae technically had another Top 40 hit with "I Like It Like That", it failed to have the cultural impact of "Tonight, Tonight", so he more or less got his wish.
  • One of his last lines says the song is "intended for the kind of people threatened by the raw, dangerous sexuality of the Jonas Brothers." Four years later, he's reviewing "Jealous", an attempt by Nick Jonas to be a sexy singer.
• In the "Moves Like Jagger" review, Todd mockingly attempts to coin "schmogerty" as a slang term to "make John Fogerty popular again" through something that like Mick Jagger rhymes with his name. Years later, he does a Trainwreckords episode on Creedence Clearwater Revival's Mardi Gras, remarking how in a way Fogerty's music was popular, but the man himself wasn't due to being camera-shy and overall unremarkable.
• In The Top Ten Best Hit Songs of 2012, he says this about his #1 pick: "'Take Care' is astonishingly good, almost too good for the pop charts, and certainly too good for Drake or Rihanna." It's funny in hindsight that he says "too good" due to the fact that the duo reunited for a 2016 hit of that name, similarly landing on Todd's favorite hit songs of that year.
• In the Worst of 2015 list, Todd said that if Rachel Platten's "Fight Song" is your fight song, you're going to lose. The song was frequently used during Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Yes, she lost. This joke, however is a lot less funny to people who actually supported her, especially given who she lost to. And Todd himself was horrified to see Trump win, even though he wasn't thrilled at the idea of Clinton being president.
• Todd mentioned in his "Worst Hit Songs of 2004" list how it was ridiculous that Jadakiss was complaining about Arnold Schwarzenegger, a celebrity, being elected Governor of California. Guess what America did in 2016?.
• In The Top Ten Best Hit Songs of 2013, Todd has this to say about "Get Lucky" by Daft Punk: "What a fascinating approach this 'Daft Punk' guy has come up with—dance music you can actually dance to. Has anyone told Calvin Harris about this bold new development?" Clearly someone must have done so, because in 2017, Calvin Harris began releasing electro-disco songs reminiscent of Daft Punk's 2013 work, landing two worldwide hits with "Slide" (which made Todd's best list of 2017) and "Feels".
• Not actually music related, but meta nonetheless. In his "Fireworks vs Born This Way" video, Todd calls JesuOtaku fat to prove that women are sensitive about their body type, but JO just goes "Excuse me?". JO came out as a trans man in 2016, so he wasn't a woman to begin with.
• When Todd placed "It's Time" by Imagine Dragons on his Best of 2012 list, he remarked, "Good luck, Gonad Migraines. Expecting good things from you." The moment he gives them a full review, he trashes "Demons" and puts it on his Worst of 2013 list. Then, in 2017, after giving them another review, he put both "Thunder" and "Believer" on his Worst of 2017 list and says he can't stand them at all. The "Demons" review was a joint review with "Counting Stars" by OneRepublic, who he initially hated but turned around on as a result of their new direction. He even added their song "Kids" in the Honorable Mentions of the Best of 2016, a contrast to his opinions on Imagine Dragons.
• Todd himself acknowledges in his Worst of 2017 video that his prediction of what Taylor Swift's future sound would be like back in the "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" review sounds eerily close to "Look What You Made Me Do," his second-least favorite song of the year.
• While talking about "Look What You Made Me Do" in his Worst of 2017 video, Todd says, "I get the feeling we’ll never see another song about [Taylor Swift's] haters because, as this video shows, she hasn’t really thought about anyone but Taylor Swift for a long-ass time." 2019 saw him reviewing Taylor Swift's "You Need to Calm Down," which is mostly about how her haters need to get a life.
• Kinda example: Todd mentions in his Worst of 2010 video that the Stanky Leg is not a dance craze. The Stanky Leg was prominently featured in Silento's "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)," a legit dance craze that Todd despised.
• In his "Sorry" review, Todd theorizes that the apology is so phony, it must have taken Justin real restraint to not name the song "Sorry Not Sorry". In 2017, a song with that very name by Demi Lovato made the top ten.
• On Todd's worst of 2016 list, "One Call Away" is a dishonorable mention, in which he says "Charlie Puth sucks, he sucked last year, he's gonna suck this year, and in all likelihood, he'll suck every year after that." A mere three months later, Charlie released "Attention", which not only became his biggest solo hit ever but ended up as high as #3 on Todd's best list for 2017.
• The 2017 Best list could basically be dubbed "Todd Eats Crow for 45 Minutes": an abundance of artists he swore up and down he hated or was done with all made the cut.
• In his "Talk Dirty" review, one of his criticisms was the backing vocal singing "neck" at the end of a line, saying, "You don't have to emphasize random words^*Words!." Later that year, the pop charts would welcome Migos, whose main gimmick is to end every one of their lines with a random word ^note or a sound effect In fact, when Todd reviewed their song, "Bad and Boujee", one of the parts of the song he liked was that every line ended with them emphasizing a random word.
• During the OHW episode on "What is Love," Todd shows another song of Haddaway's, "I Love the '90s." The clip he shows features a sample of "Scatman" by Scatman John, leading Todd to say he should take notes for future episodes. Sure enough, a user request a few episodes later prompts him to do an episode on Scatman John.
• In his Worst of 2017 list, Todd mocked Lil Pump for his stage moniker, questioning why somebody would go by a name that means "small dick". A few months later, he reviewed "Freaky Friday" by Lil Dicky, a comedy rapper.
• In the "Meant to Be"/"The Middle" review, he points out that there was only one actual solo country female (Carrie Underwood) in the Top 20 of the country charts at the time of writing (the other females present were, like Bebe Rexha on "Meant to Be", pop women singing duets with existing country artists — namely, Julia Michaels on Keith Urban's "Coming Home" and Tori Kelly on Chris Lane's "Take Back Home Girl"), but two black guys (Darius Rucker and Kane Brown). Later in the year, the females did start having more country hits again (Maren Morris,^note who also provides the vocals on "The Middle" Miranda Lambert,^note Advertised Extra on a Jason Aldean song Carly Pearce, and a duet between the female-fronted Sugarland and Taylor Swift)... but Jimmie Allen became the third black guy on the country charts that year! Doubly hilarious in hindsight, possibly even Harsher in Hindsight, when in December 2018, for the first time in the chart's history, there were no women (solo or part of a group) in the top 20 at all...
• In the "Give Me Everything" review he mistook Daddy Yankee for Pitbull. In 2017, Daddy Yankee scored one of the biggest hits of 2017 with "Despacito" while Pitbull has faded from the limelight.
  • In the same video, Todd remarked on how Ne-Yo's relatively joyless energy clashed with the tone of the song, ultimately concluding that Ne-Yo was not a good feature for a club track and wishing that Pitbull chose someone else to sing in it. 3 years later, Ne-Yo would collab again with Pitbull to create "Time of Our Lives", a club track Todd enjoyed so much that he gave it an honorable mention in his "Top 10 Best Hit Songs of 2015" video.
• At around the 2014/15, Todd stated his dislike towards Calvin Harris, claiming that he doesn't like his voice or music in the slightest. As time has gone on however, Todd has gradually started to warm up to him in various ways, including featuring him on his Best of 2017 List, apologizing for making fun of his voice after hearing Andrew Taggart's voice in Closer, and agreeing with this statement Harris made about EDM in 2018. Todd even admitted that he finds a lot of his work much better than what his peers have been making.
• In his "Worst Hit Songs of 1987" video, Todd called Chicago the "Nickelback of the 80s". Fast forward 8 years, Todd states in the Maroon 5's "Girls Like You" review that he regretted ever making that statement, because to him, Chicago were "clearly the Maroon 5 of the 80s".
• He gave "Back to Back," Drake's big diss track towards Meek Mill, an honorable mention on his best hit songs of 2015, saying that "no one's gonna touch Drake ever again." Fast forward three years and Drake got into a beef with Pusha T that resulted in Pusha T revealing that, among other things, Drake was hiding a child. Almost everyone is in agreement that Drake was utterly destroyed, and Todd himself said it was "the biggest L of his career."
• His review of Maroon 5's "Girls Like You" gives a twofer:
  • After Maroon 5 were announced to headline the Super Bowl halftime show, Todd said on both Twitter and in the review that Maroon 5 were just a Trojan horse for a Cardi B halftime show, where she'd do a mini-set and blow Maroon 5 out of the water, which isn't an unreasonable prediction, since Cardi was the guest rapper on "Girls Like You". But then, as part of a protest against the NFL for their blackballing of Colin Kaepernick, Cardi refused to perform at the Super Bowl.^note Ironically, she still appeared on the Super Bowl in the form of a commercial for Pepsi broadcast during it.
  • Todd's immense dislike for the band reached its high point around the time of the review, to the point that him saying "Fuck you, Maroon 5, you suck!" became a Running Gag in this review and in the Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2018 video (when he listed "Wait" as a honorable mention, and placed "Girls Like You" at #1), and basically wondering how they are still popular. In the weeks leading to the Super Bowl, Maroon 5's decision to play at halftime was highly criticized due to many bands and musicians having previously turned down performing because of the aforementioned protest for the NFL's treatment of Kaepernick, and the performance itself and Adam Levine's antics during it were at best widely derided and mocked and at worst renewed the slew of criticism towards the band.
• In his One Hit Wonderland episode of "Achy Breaky Heart", Todd says: "I don't think we're ever gonna get a major Billy Ray Cyrus revival." Years later, Cyrus's popularity skyrocketed with his guest verse on Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road". And no, it didn't go unnoticed by Todd in his review of the latter song.
• Todd's dig on "Timber" in 2014's "Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2013" video is even funnier given the success of "Old Town Road" five years later:
  Todd: Cowboy hip-hop is the future, you say.
• In his review of "Old Town Road", when discussing how the song comes off as pretty average to him, one of the reasons Todd cites is that the song (at the time) didn't even have a music video, instead only showing footage of Red Dead Redemption. About two weeks after the review was released, the song did get a music video.
  • The start of the review has him parody Anthony Fantano's "The Internet's busiest music nerd" catchphrase. OTR's "Area 51" music video has Fantano cameo in it.
• In the "You Need to Calm Down" review:
  • Todd discusses how the song's music video is an attempt by Taylor Swift to squash all of her feuds. Literally as soon as the review dropped on YouTube, Taylor was in the news due to her outrage at the fact that her old music recorded under Big Machine Records is now owned by Scooter Braun (who was Kanye West's manager at the height of their feud) after Scott Borchetta sold the label. Todd himself lampshaded this on Twitter.
  • Todd makes a comment about how the song is going to stick around in part due to the controversy it generated. In the following week after its #2 debut, it crashed out of the top 10 altogether.
• After the success of "Fancy" (her team-up with Iggy Azalea) and "Boom Clap", Todd called Charli XCX the version of Lorde who didn't think that she was too good for pop music, and expected Charli to continue notching hits while Lorde became more experimental. Turns out he had it backwards. It was Charli who turned more experimental on her later music and largely abandoned the pop charts, to the point where she came to regard her breakout pop record Sucker as a Sell-Out album. (Todd even joked that Charli was the "Dippin' Dots of pop stars" in the sense that she "has been the pop star of the future for like five years now".) Lorde's subsequent album Melodrama, meanwhile, was a lot more heavily pop-influenced, and while it turned out to be a Hitless Hit Album with only a single Billboard Top 40 hit in "Green Light", it still debuted at #1^note It ultimately went Gold in the US and the UK, Platinum in Australia and Canada, and 2x Platinum in her native New Zealand, earned rave reviews, and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. That said, while their creative directions didn't track the way Todd predicted, their public personas did, with Charli XCX known for her flamboyance and embrace of the stylistic artifice of pop while Lorde maintained only a minimal social media presence and a very "alternative" public image.
• In the Top Ten Worst Songs of 2019 list, he started his entry on Maroon 5's "Memories" by saying, "ONE YEAR! That is all I'm asking for Just one goddamn year where I don't have to put your stupid, smirking face on the Worst list, Adam Levine! Just take a year off!" He would get his wish the next year, as Maroon 5 did not make the 2020 Worst List beyond the honorable mentions, which it only made out of "tradition", and Todd acknowledged the song wasn't that bad.^note In truth, Maroon 5 did not appear whatsoever in his Worst of 2016 video, and their hit that year, "Don't Wanna Know", only showed up as a decoy entry in his Worst of 2017 list, where he included "What Lovers Do" instead.
• In his Worst of 2012 list, he calls Hunter Hayes a "Country Justin Bieber". In 2020, Bieber himself had country duo Florida Georgia Line appear on one of the remixes to his song "Yummy", complete with Bieber himself putting on a country accent.
• In his review of "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga, he comments on the bizarre imagery in the video by stating "If Miley Cyrus sang this, that would be something!" Several years after the review was originally uploaded, Miley would change her own image to a more shocking persona.
• In his Best of 2020 list, Todd named the moment during the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, where Billie Eilish is seen pleading God not to win any more Grammy Awards whilst the Academy was unveiling the "Album of the Year" recipient^note Which still ended up going to her 2019 album WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? as the most defining moment of the year in music, while discussing about her single "Everything I Wanted", which made its way to the Honorable Mentions category. Not even two months afterwards, at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony, Eilish and Finneas managed to score yet another award for that very song, which was the winner in the "Record of the Year" category (which Todd lampshaded on Twitter, noting that every Grammy for Eilish "is a crushing burden", which he'd later lampshade when she won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2022).
• In this tweet, Todd states that he finds it weird that there are two big hit rap songs called "ROCKSTAR" and "POPSTAR", but no "Rapstar". Eight and a half months later, and Polo G releases a song with that exact title.
• The "I sell out all the time" bit in the "Payphone" review can come off as this after Todd started to do YouTube sponsorships.
• At the beginning of his "Hey, Soul Sister" review, he said he hadn't heard "This Is Why I'm Hot" by MIMS in years and that suited him fine. 12 years later, he does a One Hit Wonderland on that one.
• Todd notes in the Trainwreckords video on Two the Hard Way that what works on television may not translate well to record, saying "Kelly Clarkson is not gonna release a full CD of Kelly-oke." She did just that (albeit as an EP) in June 2022.
• In an example that happened almost immediately, in the "Break My Soul" vs. "Falling Back" episode, Todd notes that Beyoncé and Drake's careers had barely intertwined with each other aside from Drake appearing on Beyoncé's self-titled album in 2013. Not long after, the tracklist for Beyoncé's album Renaissance (which "Break My Soul" was the lead single from) was revealed, with one track ("Heated") having a songwriting credit from Drake.
• Todd's suggestion in the review of "Unholy" that Sam Smith should have portrayed a priest (who gets aroused to listening to someone confess to having an affair) became ironic when Smith and Kim Petras went to the opposite direction and held a satanic-themed performance of the song at the 2023 Grammys. Made even more hilarious when the Church of Satan later said that the performance was "alright" and "nothing particularly special." Maybe Todd's idea would've been better?
• In the One-Hit Wonderland episode for "Timothy" by the Buoys, Todd reveals that songwriter Rupert Holmes (aka the "Pina Colada Song" guy) deliberately created the song with shock value in mind, under the age-old belief of No Such Thing as Bad Publicity. In 2023, Rupert Holmes released a bestselling murder-mystery novel with its own shocking title: "Murder Your Employer."
• In the Top Ten Best Songs of 2019, during the honorable mentions, he referred to "Eastside" Benny Blanco, Halsey and Khalid as "Tracy Chapman's 'Fast Car' for Generation Z." Come 2023, and Luke Combs may have claimed that spot with his own cover of "Fast Car."
• In the One-Hit Wonderland episode for "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" by Iron Butterfly, Todd mentions how this might be the only time where his review would be shorter than the actual song covered (Todd's video was 14 minutes long, while the full song was 17 minutes). Ten years later, Todd would do a OHW on "Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield, which lasts 22 minutes compared to the full song's 49 minutes.
• In his review of "Blank Space" Todd ends up angry that the song is not actually from the real Taylor Swift's POV and is just (according to Swift herself) a fictious exaggeration of what the press was making Taylor out to be - with Todd saying that Taylor "writes her fictional characters better than she writes herself" and should "start writing novels". Not only did Swift end up releasing Folklore and Evermore, two albums based around fictional characters, but in 2023 it was announced that Swift would be directing her own movie - so while Todd was wrong in predicting the form, he was right in suggesting that Swift should/would take up narrative storytelling.
• In his best of 2015 video, Todd comments that he's going to miss Pitbull when he's gone, if he ever leaves. In his worst of 2023 video, he verbatim says "I miss Pitbull."
• In his "Am I the Only One" review, Todd mentions that he was planning on a review of Tom MacDonald, but decided against it because it felt more like debunking MacDonald's claims than an actual music review. Two and a half years later, Todd would release a video chronicling and debunking James Somerton's frequent factual errors.
• During the OHW episode on "You Get What You Give", Todd commented on Gregg Alexander's writing discography after the group disbanded, noting that his personal favorite thing he did afterward was Sophie Ellis-Bextor's "Murder on the Dancefloor", saying "look it up, love it forever", while also commenting on Danielle Brisebois' own writing discography as well, including Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten". In early 2024, both songs would receive chart resurgences following their prominent roles in both Saltburn and Anyone but You, respectively.
  • On a similar note, Todd mentioned on Twitter a story about how he tried to get a wedding DJ to play "Murder on the Dancefloor" two years prior to its chart resurgence, but the DJ declined because "no one knew what that was".
• In his "Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 2023" video, Todd comments on the Kim Kardashian audio sample from his #8 pick, Drake's "Search and Rescue", signifying it as proof that "that Kanye/Drake feud is back on". Four months later, Future and Metro Boomin would release a remix featuring Kanye of their song "Like That", a song that heavily disses Drake.

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