The hard rock record Corey Taylor called “one of the worst albums of all time”
Corey Taylor has had a baffling career. Not content with fronting Slipknot, arguably the 21st century’s most successful metal band, he’s also dipped his toe into everything from acting to British light entertainment. He is, after all, the only person ever to headline Download and appear on Beritain’s gentle banter mainstay, QI. However, of all his side hustles, the one he appears most passionate about is writing. He wrote a column for a rock magazine for a decade and a half and published four extravagantly titled books between 2010 and 2017.
Looking through those books, one thing that becomes clear is that Corey Taylor has a lot that he wants to get off his chest. Maybe that’s not too difficult to believe, considering he made a career bellowing “people equal shit” at thousands upon thousands of people. However, one would assume that would be cathartic enough, and you wouldn’t have to follow it up with a book called You’re Making Me Hate You.
Clearly, that’s not the case. Taylor has enough bile to go around that a career fronting Slipknot and Stone Sour just doesn’t cut it. Given any opportunity, he will spout off about most things with an almost uncomfortable degree of relish and, knowing this, the YouTube channel Kilpop brought him on board for their Name That Tune show. This leads to the slightly uncomfortable sight of Taylor and host Carlota Gonzalez driving through Los Angeles, seeing which embarrassing chart hits of today and yesterday Taylor can name.
As bits of content go, it’s standard fare. A truly depressing amount of “cultural critique” from the world of heavy metal boils down to a bunch of scrubs in Machine Head t-shirts pointing and laughing at pop culture that was not made for them or ever intended to be consumed by them. Right off the bat, the video starts with a skin-crawling bit of discrediting of the late, great Sinéad O’Connor, effortlessly showcasing we’re in for a wild ride.
Credit where credit’s due, though, it’s not just things that aren’t metal that get his ire. An extended monologue slagging off “millennials” for not “earning” their music becomes a trip through the first albums that Corey bought as a kid. After some metal classics like Somewhere in Time and Powerslave by Iron Maiden, along with Mötley Crüe’s delightfully boneheaded Girls, Girls, Girls, he gets to the real target of his ire, QR3 by Quiet Riot. A band noteworthy for giving the world Randy Rhoads and literally nothing else.
After an extended bit about cassette trading and taping off the radio, a notion that apparently doesn’t feel at odds with his previous notion of having to earn music instead of streaming it, he says he got the record “because I didn’t know any better, y’know?” He then dubs it “one of the worst albums of all time” with the exception of the record’s lead single ‘The Wild And The Young.’ For all his smug, dad-rock posturing, there is something universal about that. It’s clear that Taylor views this with the same shame that my generation views buying a Pigeon Detectives record.
We’ve all been there. In the early days of getting into the music that defines us, we’re all still naïve enough to fall for record labels trying to cash in on a fad with the most embarrassing bollocks around. Make no mistake, most of Taylor’s work outside of Slipknot is this brand of cringing couture, but it’s at least an honest brand of cringe that all of us have fallen into. Maybe someday he’ll move on from it, too.
