‘Heavy’ – Linkin Park

As the sounds of nu-metal came and went, it looked like Linkin Park was the last band standing. Outside of artists who could only play drop-tuned guitars and complain about their troubled home lives, Linkin Park managed to escape the 2000s with a semblance of dignity, even going atmospheric on the album A Thousand Suns. Once they proved themselves as a metallic force on The Hunting Party, though, their decision to go in the opposite direction was too much for rock fans.

While Linkin Park was never far from the sounds of pop on their radio-friendly cuts, ‘Heavy’ was one step too far into the hit parade. Featuring a guest performance by Kiiara, the lacklustre production and the constant 2010s-era beats from Mike Shinoda make the song sound designed to be played in department store overhead speakers every summer until the end of time.

Though the lyrics reveal Chester Bennington’s struggles with his inner demons, the tone is all but kneecapped because of the delivery. Since Linkin Park was never able to make a proper follow-up following Bennington’s death a few months after the record’s release, ‘Heavy’ remains the last song that the nu-metal heavyweights managed to scrape onto the charts.

‘Woman is the N***** of the World’ – John Lennon

John Lennon was never a man necessarily shy about his politics. Ever since opening up on ‘Revolution’, Lennon welcomed his position as the most political of The Beatles, going on one tirade after another across most of his albums. While his first handful of solo albums dealt with personal politics, his choice to make songs ripped from the headlines hit a brick wall as soon as Some Time In New York City dropped.

Then again, there was a slim chance that any radio station would play a song in which a white man says a racial slur in the lyrics. Compared to the usual sunny Lennon fare, this song has no intention of sugarcoating the subject, as Lennon sings about the average woman’s plight and the inherent sexism and misogyny going on in the world that has led the opposite sex to this position.

Even though the message at the song’s core is fairly decent, Lennon’s way of delivering it is clumsy and dull, almost like he was trying to use that word only for shock value to get the naysayers to pay attention to what he said. John Lennon may have enough hit songs in his arsenal to last a lifetime, but this was the first time he seemed to be selling his politics first and his music second.

‘Creep’ – Radiohead

If Radiohead had only gotten the opportunity to make their debut album, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t be heralded as musical gods today. Since most of Pablo Honey is about cribbing ideas from the sounds of the grunge scene, half of the material seems like half-baked attempts to co-opt what Kurt Cobain had already done better a few years earlier. Although they were able to get one hit out of the deal, fans have kept a distant relationship with ‘Creep’.

Despite having a great hook with Jonny Greenwood’s distorted electric guitar, the song has been all but overshadowed by what would come afterwards. Just a few years after their debut, Radiohead would be releasing bolder new adventures, going down the rabbit hole into experimental territory that would be much more exciting on records like Kid A and OK Computer.

Ever since fans knew what they could do, a certain subsection of the Radiohead faithful have cast the song aside, thinking that it pales in comparison to what the band are truly capable of. Although many artists come to resent the hit that made them stars, this is one of the rare occasions where the fans hate the group’s biggest hit just as much as they do.

‘Why Can’t I’ – Liz Phair

As the indie pop scene became more pronounced in the mid-1990s, no lyricist was more cutthroat than Liz Phair. Although she may have had the most infectious melodies of her era, her ability to casually break your heart into a million pieces across Exile in Guyville boasted the songwriting power it would take most decades to achieve. Though Phair came out swinging on her first handful of records, she got one terrible idea floating around in her head once the 2000s kicked in.

With pop-flavoured rock on the rise, Phair capitalised on the trend with her self-titled album, taking all of the goodwill she had garnered and turning it into pop drivel. Although most fans would call the entire album the nadir of Phair’s catalogue, ‘Why Can’t I’ was the first time she started going wrong, featuring the most toothless lyrics she would ever put to tape. Whereas her early albums had complex stories about relationships, this was the kind of sentimental stuff that most pop-punk bands would have used as their first draft.

Rather than realise the error of her ways, Phair continued going down the path that her label most likely wanted from her, peaking with an almighty trainwreck, Funstyle, featuring tracks that sound like they are meant to be hated by the fanbase. While Soberish got Phair back to the music that everyone loved her for back in the day, her attempt at being the wiser version of Avril Lavigne was not doing her any favours.

‘Ebony and Ivory’ – Paul McCartney

Regarding The Beatles’ solo careers, Paul McCartney might be one of the easier punching bags. Although no one expected Ringo Starr’s solo career to have the same songwriting qualities as Lennon or McCartney, Macca’s eternal sense of whimsy was enough to turn more than a few heads and a handful of stomachs. While his years with Wings got him back to his rock roots, McCartney’s turn as a pop star resulted in one of the biggest earworms ever.

Then again, maybe the worst part about the song is the wasted potential. Since McCartney was working with Stevie Wonder, a song about bringing people together in racial harmony should have been a slam dunk. Though it certainly cleaned up on the charts, fans were not happy once they heard it more than once, feeling that the melody and the tone were far too sugary even by McCartney’s standards.

Although there are more than a few surprises throughout the tune instrumentally, fans were more inclined to see what the experimental side of McCartney had to offer on his album Tug of War, from the touching tribute to John Lennon ‘Here Today’ to the even better Wonder collaboration ‘What’s That You’re Doing’. McCartney has made his trade out of writing pretty melodies, but the amount of sugar in this song is enough to give any casual listener diabetes by association.

‘I Was Made For Lovin’ You’ – Kiss

If there was any band that represented rock and roll in the US in the early 1970s, it was Kiss. While they may have been far from the best of their contemporaries, the larger-than-life persona of each member, coupled with their astonishing makeup, made them a go-to band for the teenage males of the time. Paul Stanley wasn’t set on making rock music forever, though, and his dip into the world of disco is still something fans have never forgiven him for.

Working with songwriting genius Desmond Child for the first time, ‘I Was Made For Lovin’ You’ is a fairly decent attempt at bringing disco into the world of rock. While the song is no match for tracks like ‘I Feel Love’ from around the same time, it didn’t matter what disco fans thought. It was all about how Kiss fans felt, and they reacted like they just saw their idols burn down their entire empire.

Since half the band didn’t want to go along with the song, its success became an albatross around the group’s neck, earning them a whole new audience wanting to see the glamorous side of themselves while still having to cater to the fans that never wanted them to stray from rock in the first place. Although the tension has soothed since its release, the band tries to satisfy both camps now, playing a heavily distorted version of their major hit.

‘Kokomo’ – The Beach Boys

The modern standard for a pop star is still cribbing from The Beach Boys’ rulebook. From their amazing harmonies to Brian Wilson’s immaculate ear for production, albums like Pet Sounds have become the gold standard for what perfect pop should sound like. Amid the various troubles that Wilson suffered with his mental health, though, the band fell into the hands of Mike Love, which made for one of the goofiest rock songs ever created.

Finally establishing their footing again in the late 1980s on the soundtrack to the movie Cocktail, ‘Kokomo’ put The Beach Boys back on top again, featuring those famous harmonies and Love singing about taking his lady love away on an island vacation. While the lyrics aren’t thought-provoking, the more obvious problem was that it sounded like garbage, as if Love found the hack’s guide for how to write a song and ran it step by step until he forced his way onto the charts through willpower alone.

The song’s success only ended up being the start of the horror show, with the following album, Summer in Paradise, boasting the worst production to be heard on a Beach Boys album and showing the world what Mike Love sounds like when he attempts to rap. Though the term ‘dad rock’ has existed for years, this is ‘retirement rock’…the kind of music bands make when they’re too big to fail and don’t care anymore.

All of <em>Self Portrait – </em>Bob Dylan

Probably no other artist was more willing to throw away their icon status than Bob Dylan. Although his words may have defined what the 1960s counterculture meant for many people, the pedestal his audience put him on made Dylan uncomfortable right from the start, leading to him constantly switching up his sound. While many folkies were pissed the moment that Dylan went electric in the mid-60s, the real issues started to pile up once Self-Portrait was released.

Looking to make an album that was deliberately unsophisticated, half of this double record is comprised of Dylan making the most scatterbrained artistic choices of his career. When he isn’t making strange genre experiments, he’s covering other people’s material, turning in a warped version of Paul Simon’s ‘The Boxer’ and croaking his way through the standard ‘Blue Moon’.

Finally free from the creative hot streak that he found himself on for most of his career, Dylan took the album as an opportunity to shed his old skin and pave the way for a rootsier version of himself later down the line. While it’s pretty funny that Dylan made an album designed to be terrible to a certain degree, the result isn’t exactly fun for the audience to listen to, either.

‘Nothing Else Matters’ – Metallica

In metal circles, Metallica has always carried a nasty reputation among fans. Either the band was responsible for the heaviest metal music to come out of the 1980s, or they are the most middle-of-the-road metal act of all time, playing to fans who just want to hear loud, distorted guitars and songs about the darker sides of life. While both camps have a point, the haters were kicked into overdrive the minute they heard The Black Album for the first time.

Even though most of the album was designed to break down Metallica’s material into more straightforward fare, the track ‘Nothing Else Matters’ was a change of pace no one saw coming. Featuring delicately picked guitars, James Hetfield sings about his love for his wife back home, creating the equivalent of a hair metal ballad with the same force and aggression as a metal song. While Hetfield was initially reluctant to release the track, Lars Ulrich convinced him to give it a shot, turning it into one of their biggest hits.

As fate would have it, though, Hetfield was right to be worried, with fans becoming enraged by what they saw as a betrayal of the band’s metal code and slagging the band off as yet another cool band that fell prey to “sell out” music. Although Metallica would take even more twists and turns for the next few years, ‘Nothing Else Matters’ remains one of their best songs and a subtle reminder to fans. While many can feel possessive over their favourite acts, no band can go wrong when writing a track from the heart.

‘Revolution 9’ – The Beatles

There was a good chance that any Beatles fan listening to The White Album would encounter their fair share of problems. Since most of the band weren’t on the same creative page, their only double record of original material featured various styles that could fluctuate between aggressive rock and roll and folksy balladry. While there was nothing wrong with an eclectic mix of tunes, John Lennon’s experimental side came back to bite him when cutting ‘Revolution 9’.

As a spiritual successor to the recent single of the same name, the album’s penultimate song is a musique concrete piece made by Lennon and Yoko Ono meant to give the listener the feeling of revolution. Featuring a few genuinely terrifying sound effects, the song became an instant dislike for many Beatles fans, wondering where the witty Lennon had gone under a host of different screams and Ono singing phrases like “you become naked” into the microphone.

Fans weren’t the only ones puzzled by the decision, with Paul McCartney even pushing for Lennon to leave the track off the album because it didn’t connect with the rest of the songs on the record. While Lennon would always express himself how he wanted to, ‘Revolution 9’ feels more like a relic from one of his experimental albums with Ono than anything remotely connected to The Beatles.