10 songs written by bands to annoy their fans
Every musician strives to satisfy their fans, even though it can sometimes be challenging to discern their desires. Nonetheless, the primary focus remains on creating the best music possible, hoping it resonates with someone. However, rock and roll artists like Nirvana have been known to craft songs intended to challenge or provoke their audience rather than simply cater to their expectations.
For some bands, antagonism is part of the art form. Rock has always thrived on friction, and occasionally the most honest response to adulation is to undercut it. When expectations calcify, rebellion can just as easily be directed at your own fanbase.
Compared to artists who want to make the world a better place with their music, there’s a certain chaotic energy behind every one of these songs before they even get started. From a questionable title to instruments that are intentionally out of whack, most of them feel like they were made with the intent of pissing the audience off personally.
Not every band could have called that they would be ridiculed by their fans. They may have had pure intentions going into making these records, but given how much they had built themselves up as the kings of rock and roll, a sharp pivot to another direction or a suspicious lyric sheet will tell you everything you need to know about what was really going on here.
There is a peculiar bravery in knowingly courting backlash. Commercial logic would suggest doubling down on what works, smoothing out the rough edges that made you famous in the first place. Instead, these artists chose disruption, testing the loyalty of their listeners in the name of creative restlessness.
These artists were taking the piss, and they made sure that everyone knew that they were making songs because they knew a certain subset of their audience would get upset hearing them play it. It may not have been the most moral thing to do, and it may have left a lot of fans feeling betrayed, but you can’t say that each of them wasn’t following their heart when they made them.
10 songs that were made to upset fans:
‘Mother’ – The Police
There was never a particular genre that The Police said no to. As much as they could have found a formula and stuck with it, most of their career was spent toying with whatever genre suited them in the hopes that they would strike a nerve with a more sophisticated side of rock and roll. ‘Every Breath You Take’ was pure pop and ‘Walking on the Moon’ was reggae, and ‘Mother’ was unlistenable.
Considering how much effort went into making the album Synchronicity, ‘Mother’ seems like a trauma dump that Andy Summers wanted to inflict on the audience. After coming out of moody songs like ‘Walking In Your Footsteps’, this entire track feels like a bad acid trip, as Summers talks about his troubles with his domineering mother.
Even though the song is at least fairly short, this practically illustrates the frustration going on between every member of the band at the time, as Summers gets out his frustration at both his parent and his bandmates on the song. Summers did the right thing by letting out his emotions, but these repressed emotions should be reserved for therapy sessions…not a prime slot on the album.
‘We Are The Clash’ – The Clash
The ending of The Clash reads more like a punk rock Greek tragedy these days. Although the band should have logically called it a day after Combat Rock, Strummer’s insistence on carrying on without Mick Jones was one of the single worst decisions in punk history, turning in one lacklustre track after another on Cut the Crap. While the album may have been aptly titled, the sounds of ‘We Are the Clash’ are practically spit in the face to anyone who ever had faith in the band.
Containing some of the most confusing lyrics to make it on a Clash album, the song sounds way too happy paired with Strummer’s pissed-off voice. After being known as one of the only bands that mattered, this is what they have to show for that title now: making the kind of music that feels like it should be part of a cheap variety show that plays in the middle of the afternoon.
Then again, maybe that frustration from Strummer is actually an artistic choice. Maybe as he was recording this, he saw the error of his ways about letting Jones go. The Clash may have been a mindset in the eyes of many fans, but even the hardcore punk faithful could tell these guys were far from the band that wrote ‘White Riot’.
‘Short People’ – Randy Newman
There haven’t been many other artists who have used sarcasm quite like Randy Newman. While he has provided the soundtrack to many Disney fans’ childhoods with his contributions to Toy Story and Monsters Inc, the real ethos of his early career was about making the kind of songs that raised a few eyebrows if you weren’t listening carefully. And given a lyric like ‘Short People’, it’s no wonder why some of his more diminutive fans got a bit worked-up.
Sung from the perspective of “a maniac”, the issue arose when many people thought it was sung from the perspective of Randy Newman. They seemed to think that he had, for some reason, become the first songwriter or perhaps simply human to develop a prejudice against smaller people. In the process, he highlighted how insane any sort of prejudice is.
The nature of his satire meant he knew that a few slings and arrows might come his way, but the backlash far outstripped what he expected. In fact, he even received death threats, all of this for a point about prejudice that was simply too clever for some fans to grasp.
‘My World’ – Guns N’ Roses
From the minute Guns N’ Roses became famous, Axl Rose had an axe to grind. While everyone may have loved Appetite for Destruction, Rose wanted to bury the album that made them stars, electing to make the next album a lot more ambitious than anything that came before. That meant more extravagant, more ballad-heavy, and for the purposes of messing with people’s heads, more industrial.
Right as the final strains of ‘Don’t Cry’ are fading out and audiences are left on a high note on Use Your Illusion, ‘My World’ comes on with one of the worst industrial beats known to man. While Rose may have had a passing interest in artists like Ministry or Nine Inch Nails, the entire song feels like a cruel joke played on the audience, as if you’re thrown into the mind of a serial killer after being lulled back down to sleep.
Adding insult to injury, this is how the band closed out their epic double album, only for the band to make a covers album and fizzle out only a few years later. The classic lineup was dead and gone, and their final statement to the world is the kind of tough-guy posturing that got old the minute that most people graduated middle school.
‘Big Man A Gun’ – Nine Inch Nails
Trent Reznor always had something bigger when working on most of Nine Inch Nails’s work. Throughout his time as the main songwriter, Reznor had a vision of the band to be a hybrid of the kind of caustic industrial music that he loved and the kind of melodic pop that might be able to be featured on the radio. While The Downward Spiral wasn’t concerned with being the best new album of 1994, ‘Big Man With a Gun’ was a little more disgusting than what fans probably expected.
Considering how much went into the story behind the album, it feels like Reznor is continuously trying to sink further and further into his own head. After reaching the point of no return halfway through the record, though, ‘Big Man With a Gun’ was a mean-spirited way of Reznor to make fun of the kind of gangsta-rap lyrics clogging up the charts at the time, doing his warped impression of what an industrial version of Dr Dre sounded like.
Even though the song is funny, once you know the context, there’s a good chance millions of fans did not and were extremely confused about why Reznor suddenly lost his touch out of nowhere. The Downward Spiral may remain a dark masterpiece, but when it’s not being an album, Reznor was more interested in making edgy drek like this.
‘Digsy’s Dinner’ – Oasis
During Oasis’ prime, they were always going to talk about how they were the greatest band in the world. Although there are more than a few people who might disagree, the Gallagher brothers had no problem strutting around the stage as if they had made songs that would make Lennon, Bowie, and Bolan blush in equal measure. Many of those songs may have gone down in history now, but ‘Digsy’s Dinner’ was the kind of song that was doomed from the jump.
Since Definitely Maybe showed the band at their most feral, this borderline novelty song is the kind of track that shouldn’t be in the same area code as every other track. Not even the band felt that strongly about it, with Liam later saying that he would sing any Oasis song in their catalogue with the exception of this one.
What makes it even worse is where it appears in the context of the album, practically introducing ‘Slide Away’ as the album’s grand finale. ‘Digsy’s Dinner’ might not be the worst thing in the world, but when it’s put next to a song that stands as one of the best tracks they ever made, that’s when fans start asking questions.
‘Unconsciousness Rules’ – George Harrison
After The Beatles, it didn’t feel like George Harrison wanted to be a pop star anymore. He may have shattered everyone’s expectations once he released his groundbreaking album All Things Must Pass, but most of his personal philosophy was about moving away from the mindless power pop that he had built himself on at the beginning of his career. When his label decided that he needed that kind of hit single again for Somewhere in England, Harrison lashed out in anger on ‘Unconsciousness Rules’.
Since he already had an album ready to go, Harrison was told that he had to go back to the drawing board, thinking that the best way to write a hit was to make it about relationships between kids. Gradually entering his 30s, Harrison made this song specifically to criticise the kind of fans who bought into his mindless pop songs in the first place, thinking that all they want to do is go to discotheques and rot their brain.
That would only be a bad omen of what was to come, as other songs like ‘Teardrops’ ended up sounding like the kind of 1980s trash cobbled together by old men in tight suits in a business meeting. ‘Unconsciousness Rules’ may have been born out of anger, but no rock legend has ever looked like a curmudgeon quicker than Harrison did.
‘Stupid Mop’ – Pearl Jam
Eddie Vedder never intended for Pearl Jam to do what they did. As much as he may have liked the idea of people relating to his music, the idea of people treating him like the next coming of Jim Morrison became far too much for him to take in half the time. Vedder needed to lose his edge, and the ending of Vitalogy was designed to shake some of the dead meat off their fanbase.
Taking full control of the studio, Vedder wanted to create Pearl Jam’s equivalent of an art-rock project, making songs that made fans wonder whether they bought the right band’s album or not like on ‘Tremor Christ’. Although ‘Bugs’ may be the more laughably terrible song, ‘Stupid Mop’ is the kind of song that feels more like an experiment than a fleshed-out track.
Coming after the stellar album closer ‘Immortality’, this is the grunge-flavoured answer to The Beatles’ ‘Revolution 9’, taken from different sound effects to create the most dissonant piece of noise ever to arrive on a Pearl Jam record. ‘Bugs’ might do its torturous job relatively quickly, but having to draw this out for eight whole minutes was enough for most people to check out well before the album was finished.
‘Illegal Alien’ – Genesis
There’s a case to be made that Genesis started pissing their fans off the moment Peter Gabriel left. Since he was the face of the band and the main lyricist behind every record, having Phil Collins step up and steer the band towards pop seemed like a huge step backwards for those who preferred the classic Genesis sound. If fans were already suspect of pop hits like ‘Follow You Follow Me’, they were not ready for the uncomfortable racism going on in ‘Illegal Alien’.
While the band’s self-titled album is actually a decent slice of pop-flavoured prog rock from the 1980s, ‘Illegal Alien’ is the kind of song that should have been thrown in the trash in its first draft. Compared to the moody songs on the rest of the project, this sounds like a borderline comedy song with a tasteless sense of humour, especially when the video shows the band in full ‘illegal alien’ regalia.
It could be forgiven that the band was in their pop period, but even Collins’s solo career had better hits than this, sounding like it should be part of some terrible sitcom that doesn’t even make it past the pilot episode. Genesis still had enough pop clout to recover on Invisible Touch, but how the hell are you supposed to win back the international market when you’re singing about them like this?
‘In Bloom’ – Nirvana
Kurt Cobain always had a complicated relationship with fame. While he may have run towards being a star with every song he wrote, he was also more than happy to drag pop music through the mud and even take the piss out of his own pop-flavoured hits. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ may have kicked down the doors for Nirvana, but ‘In Bloom’ was Cobain’s way of covering his tracks when it came to his own fans.
When looking at the lyrics, the chorus is all about the kind of fans that only look at bands at the surface level without thinking of what they’re saying. With every line, Cobain is practically grinning through his teeth as he talks about every fan that he doesn’t want, painting the picture of the alpha male who loves nothing more than to shoot his gun and sing along to rock and roll.
What’s even more hilarious is how Cobain’s song became a self-fulfilling prophecy, with millions of jocks showing up to their shows afterwards after threatening to kick their ass for even listening to their brand of rock and roll. Years have gone by since Cobain’s words, and even more sorry saps have been left not knowing what it means for decades.
