10 real events that made songs a difficult listen

‘I Miss You’ – Blink-182

Songs usually have a funny way of entering back into the cultural conversation. There could be a song from ages past that no one has thought about in a million years, but the minute they hear it in the right context, everyone listening will be reminded why they loved that tune, either when they were a teenager or still in diapers. There’s no rhyme or reason for it, either, so songs could end up coming back in style thanks to everything from movies to sporting events to commercials. Or in this case, memes.

Because while everyone who grew up in the 2000s recognises those opening guitar lines from Blink-182’s ‘I Miss You’, Tom DeLonge’s voice developed a life of its own once it reached the next generation. Compared to everyone else who had the traditional Valley Girl accent in the 1980s, DeLonge has everything cranked up to 11, leading everyone to take that signature ‘Where are you?’ and turn it into the epitome of adolescent angst when it comes on shuffle.

But considering the resurgence in pop-punk that has been happening in recent years with people like Olivia Rodrigo, it’s only out of love that people are poking fun at what DeLonge was doing. Blink-182 were never a band that took themselves terrible seriously at the best of times, and it’s nice to know that even at their most vulnerable, they could be the butt of the joke and take it in stride.

‘Victim of Love’ – Eagles

The entire appeal of Eagles’ music was about listening to tracks that didn’t sound like they had a care in the world. Despite the tight ship that Don Henley and Glenn Frey ran, you would have sworn that none of the members of the band had a damn thing to worry about in their lives when they sang tunes like ‘Take It Easy’, and it didn’t seem like that streak would change on Hotel California. There was a dark side to the record, though, and ‘Victim of Love’ was when things got a little more sinister.

Considering the band’s reputation for breezy, lighthearted music, this kind of heavy riff is exactly what they needed to even things out, but Henley’s performance was all done in bad faith. Since Don Felder had been promised a lead vocal on one of the songs on the record, the band decided to play fast and loose with the rules, eventually recording Felder’s vocal and forcing their manager to take him out to dinner while the rest of the band stayed behind and laid down the real vocal.

And since Felder never recovered from that body blow to his ego, it’s easy to look at this song alone as why the band broke up, with all those tensions boiling over once they hit the touring circuit for The Long Run. The tune itself might not be in the upper echelons of Eagles songs, but the fact that Felder could play through the tune live knowing what had happened had to be brutal.

‘Beauty and the Beast’ – Angela Lansbury

Many of us take Disney musicals for granted half the time. Although many people can claim to have fond memories of listening to tunes like ‘Part of Your World’ from Aladdin or even ‘The Circle of Life’ from The Lion King, there comes a point where everyone enters a particular rite of passage when they think those songs are for babies. That might be true, but there’s a lot of craftsmanship that goes into making those tunes, and when talking about one of the greatest musicals the Disney Renaissance ever spat out, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ got torn through the mud by a bunch of meatheads with guitars.

First of all, I need to deliver some much-needed context. Since the 2000s were inundated with records in the Punk Goes… series where everyone would cringe their way through punk bands trying their hand at crunk and pop songs, hearing the grown-up version on Metal Goes Disney is the kind of atrocity that no one should endure. It’s not quite on the same level as Cannibal Corpse, but listening to the “D-Metal Stars” try their hand at Disney songs is a travesty, especially on ‘Beauty and the Beast’.

Angela Lansbury’s performance in the original movie is among the most beautiful songs that Disney ever spat out, and while Emma Thompson may have done a serviceable job doing her justice in the remake, this is the equivalent of taking a priceless piece of art and blotting out everything with a graffiti drawing of a middle finger. This might have been clearly done as a joke, but any good humour has gone too far if it desecrates a piece of someone’s childhood.

‘Family Matters’ – Drake

No one really seems to have any need to defend anyone in the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake any more. Although some delusional fans swear up and down that it was a fair fight, it’s clear that Drizzy got his ass handed to him and has been spending that time ever since doing damage control, even if that includes trying to win in a court of law. When listening to the ins and outs of his main contribution to the rap battle, though, ‘Family Matters’ reads like watching someone who’s about to experience a car crash.

Then again, it’s not like Drake didn’t have a few decent jabs going in. ‘Taylor Made Freestyle’ did have some solid bars despite the tasteless use of AI, but hearing him gloat about how he can release as many songs as he can before K-Dot can even respond did seem to have some truth behind it given how he whooped Meek Mill’s ass on ‘Back to Back’. All Drake fans could revel in their happiness for about an hour, but when Lamar responded with an even darker diss track within the hour, people were shellshocked.

Outside of both ‘meet the grahams’ and ‘Not Like Us’ becoming two of the most essential songs in modern rap beef history, they also make Drake look worse in different ways. Not only does he have various allegations levelled against him, but it practically makes his claims of dropping whenever null and void, since he backed out of that tactic as soon as ‘The Heart Pt 6’ came out. But by that point, though, everyone already knew that Drake was being dragged off the battlefield.

‘The Warning’ – Eminem

Anyone who’s even thinking about stepping to Eminem in any type of rap battle is going to have to have an infinite amount of protection. Slim Shady isn’t known to mess around that often when he goes after someone, and when he has his teeth out, there are seldom few rappers who have managed to walk away without a few scars on their legacy, if they haven’t already lost their dignity. But there was a step too far Eminem wouldn’t go down, and listening to ‘The Warning’, it’s probably for the best that he never bothered releasing his bomb at Mariah Carey.

There were already different one-off lines that Eminem put out on Relapse regarding their time together, but seeing how ‘Mimi’ worked her way out of that, looking classy on ‘Obsessed’, it seemed like she was happy to take the high road. But poking the bear is only going to make him more angry, and when Eminem put this out, he came for everything, saying the kind of stuff that isn’t worth writing down in this copy.

Even though Eminem has made numerous claims that he can’t be cancelled, given how controversial he was in the past, the public might have a good case for never listening to him again had he gloated about himself like this on that big of a public stage. It was already pushing it when he played leaked phone calls between him and Carey, but this kind of threatening tone was Slim Shady getting a little too close to reality. 

‘Break Stuff’ – Limp Bizkit

At the best of times, nu-metal was the kind of goofy brand of metal that no one had to think very hard to understand. Limp Bizkit was far from the greatest band in the world by any stretch, but given how much artificial anger was in thier music, it was clear that Fred Durst was playing the role of a high school bully in the same way that Kid Rock was posing as a cowboy pimp from Detroit. When that kind of tasteless behaviour becomes real, things start to get inexcusable.

Whereas most bands don’t tend to act on the negative impulses they have in their songs, Durst’s choice to play this song at Woodstock 1999 made for one of the worst riots in concert history. He probably meant nothing when he told the crowd to let out all their negative energy, but when everyone in the audience took that as a cue to destroy as much as possible and sexually assault every woman in sight, it was no longer the tongue-in-cheek version of being a tough guy.

Although Durst has taken responsibility for being one of the main things that Limp Bizkit fucked up in the 1990s, that doesn’t get him off the hook in the eyes of his peers, with Jonathan Davis of Korn saying that he incited the riot on purpose. A lot of the parents of those at Woodstock 1999 probably remembered a song like ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ living on in infamy for what happened at Altamont, but this one song is a better indication of the kind of indecency that can result when things get out of control.

‘Time’ – Pink Floyd

There aren’t many pieces of music that can manage to make a dent in the legacy of Dark Side of the Moon. Pink Floyd had worked for years to create a masterpiece, and when they finally managed to combine all the elements of their sound under one roof, they made something that acted as an excellent analysis of the human condition in under an hour. As time passes, things can change, and Roger Waters’s decision to redo the entire album without his bandmates is one of the biggest blunders of any classic rocker’s career.

Since ‘Time’ does the best job featuring every band member’s strength, hearing Waters speak-sing over parts of the album where David Gilmour would be singing his bluesy runs is enough for someone to not listen on principle. The instrumental backing is at least serviceable, but hearing him add different pieces for the modern age and sound effects that shouldn’t be there sounds like he’s actively trying to make a more morose version of what he had done before.

For an album displaying a cover showing all the different colours of the rainbow, there are not nearly as many musical colours to be found, as if the band washes out every tune with a smooth shade of grey. Some people are more than willing to give it a shot for Waters’s vision, but it’s time for some hard truth: if this were any other than Waters performing this at a karaoke bar, you would walk out.

‘Blackstar’ – David Bowie

By the mid-2010s, most people were fine with David Bowie retiring from music. He had given every one of us reason to dream of something bigger in music, and listening to his discography is a case study in how someone can change over time without compromising their vision. Although Blackstar itself is one fantastic foray into the world of jazz rock and avant-garde music, it took on an entirely different meaning after Bowie passed away.

Without us realising it, the title track was the equivalent of him saying goodbye to his fanbase. Over the course of ten minutes, he seems to be going through every single stage of his own grieving process, to the point where the composition goes from uncertainty to horrifying low points to eventually hearing him triumphantly proclaiming himself to be that burned out star, with a voice that sounds like he’s lifting himself towards the heavens.

But the biggest message that he imparted on everyone came from the fact that he died of terminal cancer that he had been living with for years before the album’s release. He did not need to be doing something this extravagant when he had so little time left to spend with his family, but he knew that if he was born to voyage into uncharted waters, he would spend his final hours doing that as well.

‘Jesus Walks’ – Kanye West

Talking about Kanye West these days is enough to make any genuine hip-hop fan sad. Even though there have been times when he hasn’t been in the greatest frame of mind, it was at least reassuring to know that he was using his music to get his head straight and figure out who he was in real time. Now that Mr West feels that his time is better spent praising Nazis on his latest records, hearing him talk about something as heavy as religion on ‘Jesus Walks’ only rings hollow today.

It’s not like West didn’t have some good points back in the day, either. There would always be tunes that didn’t hold up to the passage of time, but listening to the production of ‘Jesus Walks’, it’s easy to hear him plant the flag for people questioning their faith and being forced to keep their mouths shut about it. But now that he has gone back on a lot of his statements and made sure that no one with a conscience can possibly agree with him, it’s enough to make anyone start to question if he was using this song to get a rise out of people in the 2000s.

Because while many people claim there is a fine line between being a genius and being crazy, there’s no doubt on which end West has fallen under now that he has fallen down the rabbit hole this far. It’s nice to go back and reminisce about those days of The College Dropout, but looking at how far gone he has been for the past few years, you’re better off doing yourself, his audience, and especially him a favour by not putting more money into his pocket.

‘About A Girl’ – Nirvana

There are far too many tragic moments in Nirvana’s history to keep track of everything. The whole point of their success was to help bring rock out of its funk in the 1980s and make everyone realise that having genuine emotion in songs is the only way to get a rise out of people. While Kurt Cobain did end up losing his battle with his demons by 1994, that didn’t stop fans from paying tribute to him. But not every tribute is meant for primetime.

While every subsequent generation has found a friend in Cobain’s music, hearing Puddle of Mudd try their hand at the song ‘About A Girl’ is downright excruciating. It’s clear that Cobain was far from the greatest singer in the world, and there are more than a few times on MTV Unplugged when he is noticeably offkey, but Wes Scantlin’s performances is nothing but rough edges, with every single high note sounding like he giving himself a hernia trying to make it through the tune.

Even if the whole thing was meant as one massive joke, how does that make the whole thing better? Sure, there are people that are laughing at the piss-poor performance, but every time that people hear the tortured soul of Cobain, all they’re going to get back to is this massive bro who sounds like he’s passing kidney stones. It’s easy to love and hate Nirvana for valid reasons, but no band deserves to have their song eviscerated like this.