‘Frantic’ – Metallica

It doesn’t take legacy bands long to realise when they’ve clearly upset their fans. The people are the ones who ultimately decide, and when there’s an audio equivalent of vomit in front of them, they’re not exactly going to be nice when going over it. And while Metallica could have happily hung their heads in shame after making St Anger, they have remained defiantly proud of what they achieved with that record.

Then again, the album is probably better for what it represents than what it is. The band were on the verge of collapse and these sessions helped bring them back from the edge, but that meant making some truly awful with production that is barely there. That’s not the most glowing review by any stretch, but in terms of the entire record, fans have warmed up to the album opener ‘Frantic’, which is pretty close to the garage-rock/nu-metal/punk attitude that they were going for on the record.

All of the trappings of the album are still there, though. The drums are the worst part of the entire thing and there’s no real solo to latch onto, but the riff is fairly catchy, and the phrase “my lifestyle determines my deathstyle” is fairly decent by the writing standards on the rest of the record. All of this would make for a decent experimental single, but we are all sitting here wondering why they didn’t quit while they were ahead.

‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ – Bobby McFerrin

Not every song that hits the charts gets there by being a decent track. Some of the greatest tunes of all time like ‘Hey Jude’ the hit parade, but there are also those flashes in the pan that are clearly going for a trendy snapshot in time whenever they make one of their tunes for the pop market. ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’, though…that’s in a weird dead zone where it’s too weird for the pop charts yet too catchy to escape for too long.

Acappella hits are already a strange art in general, but Bobby McFerrin had the kind of tune that’s too simple to leave your head. Since this came from that era of the 1980s when everything was about having a good time 24/7, this was at least a good snapshot of everyone trying to be happy all the time, but whether it was the gloomy sounds of the 1990s or anything that’s happened in the past few decades, McFerrin’s simple tune quickly morphed into one of the most loathed songs of all time.

So did he deserve it? Hardly. The tune is far from the death of music, but it’s clear that some people got way too sick of it, including McFerrin himself, who eventually went into the world of acapella music and didn’t play his signature tune for years when he played shows. ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ might not be the perfect example of everything wrong with music, but hearing something that sounds like a children’s song is probably the equivalent of seeing BabyShark on the charts today. It wouldn’t be shocking, but it would be infuriating to see as well.

‘Ebony and Ivory’ – Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder

It’s hard to find too much to dislike about any of The Beatles’ solo careers. There is always the experimental albums for people to at least gawk at in amazement whenever John Lennon brought them out with Yoko Ono, but every one of them could be counted on to make something at least listenable. But most people could only stand so much Paul McCartney at a time, and ‘Ebony and Ivory’ couldn’t help but be 150% Macca despite him only singing half of the track.

While the legendary collaboration with Stevie Wonder was a great idea for the time talking about racial equality and bringing people together, the song has quickly developed the reputation as the worst duet in history. There are many McCartney defenders who remain fans, but much like people will get annoyed whenever ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ comes on during the holiday season, there are many music fans who would have rather preferred having a car battery hooked up to them than have to hear the tune again.

McCartney’s fascination with sweet melodies cannot be overstated, and even when they work alright in his solo career, this is the moment where he crossed over a line for many fans. He’s known as one of the great melodists of his time, but this was the definitive moment when everyone remembered John Lennon talking about his partner making “granny music” and understood exactly what he meant.

‘Tattoo’ – Van Halen

Van Halen getting back together wasn’t simply a dream in the 2000s; it was an impossibility. The minute that it seemed like everything was going to work out with either David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar, something would inevitably go haywire, leaving the Van Halen brothers stuck without a band and everyone involved with broken egos. Once Eddie found it in his heart to bury the hatchet with Roth, he figured he close up shop on his own terms, but that he did have those moments where he overstepped his bounds

Whereas most of A Different Kind of Truth was based off of the riffs the band had stockpiled during the Roth era, ‘Tattoo’ was a new song they recorded off the floor for the record. And while the pure euphoria of finally hearing Eddie’s guitar on the radio was enough for most people to get onboard, Roth came through with some of the corniest lyrics of his career, talking about the wonders of getting a tattoo with the same kind of swagger as an elderly grandpa showing someone their ink from their hippy days.

Although some of the riffs are great, it’s easy to see how quickly people turned on the tune when looking at the reviews, with most people praising the album to high heaven and then completely forgetting about once the year wrapped up. Getting rock legends back from the dead was no small feat for anyone to pull off, but in the case of ‘Tattoo’, the fanbase may have been a bit too overeager to dive into something new.

‘Radioactive’ – Imagine Dragons

For those that don’t remember, there was a moment when Imagine Dragons actually sounded like they could be carrying the torch for rock. The entire landscape of the genre seemed to be a wasteland in the early 2010s, but listening back to their first EP, tracks like ‘It’s Time’ were charming little pieces of indie goodness that might actually have a shot at making it to radio if they played their cards right. Once they embraced the electronic elements a little more, though, it went from a bold new innovation to the kind of music that fades into the background.

While it’s easy to see the influences from what Linkin Park was doing around the same time in ‘Radioactive’, what was once a cool idea morphed into this massive hunk of nothing that dominated the charts for the next few years. After all, that was the biggest hit off of that album, so when the band started working on their next few records, they seemed content to make everything even more electronic and washed-out, to the point where it read like one big string of musical beige dominating the landscape.

And for all its issues, there are a few bonus points levelled against this track since everyone tried to sound like this later, with bands as diverse as 30 Seconds to Mars, Fall Out Boy and Papa Roach all trying their hand at sounding atmospheric for the sake of chasing trends. Nickelback may get some shit for being one of the more piercing bands to come out of the 2000s, but Imagine Dragons may trump them by accidentally screwing up other bands with their one hit.

‘Slow Dancing in a Burning Room’ – John Mayer

For anyone in the entertainment industry, reputation goes a long way. Even though people have the ability to dislike someone like Kanye West on principle based on every word that comes out of his mouth in recent years, it’s easy to appreciate someone like Dolly Parton for simply being a good person rather than the music she makes. John Mayer may have fallen in the former camp for a while, but when guitarists stepped aside and started paying attention, ‘Slow Dancing in a Burning Room’ slowly turned into one of the classic tracks of the 2000s.

Despite the album it’s from being home to tracks like ‘Waiting on the World To Change’, the tone that Mayer got out of his guitar on this track was from another dimension. It was going to take someone with guts to cover someone like Jimi Hendrix properly, but if we’re using that level of comparison, this is his answer to ‘The Wind Cries Mary’, which became strange when people had to explain that it was by the same person who made instantly punchable songs like ‘Daughters’.

And going into any Guitar Center now, ‘Slow Dancing in a Burning Room’ is one of the few modern songs that people use to test their equipment so they know they can get a clean sound out of their instruments. The art of poptimism hadn’t yet started when Mayer arrived on the scene, but when compared to everyone else making music as dated as JNCO jeans, he made the 2000s equivalent to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours in one song.

‘The Cave’ – Mumford and Sons

The entire indie boom of the 2010s has already gone through its fair share of hazing since its inception. The idea of the ‘Stomp-Clap’ genre was charming when everything on the charts was focused on dubstep, but whereas someone like Ed Sheeran rose to the top, hearing bands like The Lumineers for more than a few songs made it clear that they didn’t have what it took to go the distance like other pop acts. But when talking about this random upstart genre, no band flew the flag for rootsy rock than Mumford and Sons.

So, naturally, they’re the ones that had the greatest fall from grace. Despite many of their tracks being catchy enough for radio like ‘I Will Wait’ and ‘Little Lion Man’, ‘The Cave’ is the crux of what the band was in one song. By playing in open tunings a la Joni Mitchell and having layers of harmonies on top of each other, this felt like a return-to-roots that was going to have about as much staying power as milk, especially when the biggest names in music were hip-hop artists that were about to dominate the conversation.

It’s easy to look back at ‘The Cave’ and see a lot of passion and determination, but when Wilder Mind came out and everyone realised that they were incredibly boring, they started to renegotiate things. Because once you take the band out of the context of the Dust Bowl, their one trick was enough to make you never want to hear anyone play a banjo on the charts ever again.

‘Interstate Love Song’ – Stone Temple Pilots

The entire Seattle scene was incredibly protective the moment that they got the spotlight. No one in the “grunge” scene wanted to be one of the biggest bands in the world, and yet they were being flaunted around like rock and roll gods, with people like Eddie Vedder being treated like the Jim Morrison of the 1990s. Naturally, any band sounding like that who wasn’t from Seattle was going to take a beating, but Stone Temple Pilots deserved absolutely no side-eye for ‘Interstate Love Song’.

Granted, it’s easy to see why people were upset. Coming out in 1992, Core is so on-the-nose that it comes off like a parody of what alt-rock was supposed to sound like, down to Scott Weiland having that deep baritone that Eddie Vedder was so good at. They needed to evolve quickly, and while Purple got the same critical questions from Seattleites, this wasn’t grunge anymore. This was pure 1970s-style rock and roll that blended alt-rock with Eagles, complete with the kind of heavenly harmonies most people hadn’t heard since at least 1976.

It’s easy to say that Stone Temple Pilots only traded in one rock cliche for another, but doing so would only be in bad faith. Because in 1993, no one was bold enough to make something that sounded this sunny, and by going against the grain and making something that sounded cheerful, the band actually found their own way of being the antithesis of the mainstream. For a band that had been called sell-outs right out of the gate, it’s an insane 4-D chess move to gain one’s credibility back by making a pop tune.

‘D’You Know What I Mean’ – Oasis

When it comes to British rock and roll music, Oasis’s Be Here Now occupies the same kind of curiosity among fans as the Star Wars prequels have with cinema fans. While everyone freaked the hell out the minute that both of them came out, it was clear that everyone overreacted, only to reel so far the other way that people started to wonder what they were smoking to like them in the first place. Many parts of the album can be picked apart as terrible, but ‘D’You Know What I Mean’ does the best job at setting the template for the record.

Along with being the first single, hearing Noel and Liam Gallagher sing along in their best Beatles impressions for the better part of seven minutes would always be a mixed bag. The band were never known for being exactly punchy. Still, everyone figured that if they made something that was as good as ‘Champagne Supernova’ every time they went into the studio, that would surely be the key to their success, right? Wrong.

But while the backlash has been incredibly harsh when talking about Be Here Now, there are also some who are willing to go to bat for it as a flawed piece of their catalogue instead of an outright misfire.  Noel may not have helped by contributing to the hatred for the record, but when you think about it, half of Oasis’s greatest tunes were about swagger, and while that may have upset some people, it was impossible not to get wrapped up in the whirlwind of it all circa 1997.

‘Like A Rolling Stone’ – Bob Dylan

If there’s one thing that people are afraid of most in this world, it’s change. The idea of someone straying from the path that they were originally on and working on something entirely new might be fun and exhilarating for artists, but the minute they start making something beyond their fan’s comprehension, they will be shunned like they have some musical plague. Then again, there was hardly anything that was going to kill Bob Dylan once he started making his turn towards rock and roll.

For everyone that hated him playing an electric guitar, though, they were warned in advance. Bringing it All Back Home had some experimentation with rock and roll tunes, but the minute that he played ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, it was clear that the version of him that played pointed folk tunes was dead and a new afro-haired rockstar had taken his place. There are many instances of fans getting incredibly upset and even booing him during his first shows, but this was far from selling out. This was revolutionary.

Regardless of how people took it, this was the moment things turned a corner in rock and roll. Most fans could only hope to write a rock and roll song as pointed as ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’, but Dylan was out to prove that he could not only play rock and roll, but also pull it off better than anyone else. The folk revolution may have died, but Dylan was already looking at a new revolution on the horizon.