10 rock songs that bands are ashamed of

‘Amsterdam’ – Van Halen

There was always a lot more going on on every single Van Halen record than the guitarist’s nimble fretwork. While Eddie could have easily pumped out a record of nothing but him jamming for an hour and still had one of the best records of his career, he didn’t want to spend his life playing for a bunch of musos everywhere he went. He wanted to write songs, but it normally took the frontmen of every era of the band to help turn his ideas into proper classics whenever they made a record.

Then again, by the time Sammy Hagar got to working on Balance, he and Eddie weren’t exactly on speaking terms. They all wanted the chance to get the record done and maybe squeak out a few singles, but compared to the massive hooks on ‘Can’t Stop Lovin’ You’, ‘Amsterdam’ was a trainwreck from the get-go. The song itself is nothing but a fun romp about ‘The Red Rocker’ going overseas and getting baked on as much weed as possible, but for a band where half of their members are from the Netherlands, making a song about getting baked in their homeland wasn’t exactly the best look.

Even though Eddie did eventually compromise, he wasn’t going to stand behind the lyrics for a second, later calling it one of the worst lyrics that he ever allowed to be on a Van Halen record. There are plenty of ways that the band could have celebrated Eddie and Alex’s homeland, but even if the riffs are still great, they deserved a lot better than making what amounts to a glorified Cheech and Chong song.

‘You’re Sixteen’ – Ringo Starr

You have to remember what Ringo Starr was up against when looking at his solo career. There was hardly anyone thinking that he would be the most popular Beatle when the Fab Four called it a day, but when Starr began outselling his old mates in the band, it felt like he might actually be able to become a superstar in his own right. But that also means playing the game to a certain degree, and not all of the moves that Starr made gave off that wholesome impression that he’s known for.

Ringo is still the best record that he ever made, but ‘You’re Sixteen’ is the kind of song that Starr should have run away from before drafting the first version of it. I understand that making songs that were a little bit statutory back in the day was accepted for some baffling reason, but even if there was some leeway in the age gap, the fact that Starr was quite literally double the age of the person that he’s singing about in this song is enough to make anyone else squirm in their seat a little bit.

To his credit, though, Starr has pulled back on it in recent years, even cheekily saying that he can’t play that song anymore and going so far as recording a tune on his latest album, Look Up, that sounds exactly like his old hit. That might be a strange way to rewrite one’s own history, but it’s better to have a traditional Ringo song in the set rather than something that makes everyone want to call up CPS.

All of ‘Cut the Crap’ – The Clash

The story of The Clash is still the great tragedy of punk rock. The sex Pistols were bound to flame out, and Ramones may have kept up their track record for years, but in a decade that was about to bend to MTV, The Clash should have been keeping punk alive before they let go of Mick Jones. In a perfect world, that’s where that story ends, but after Jones was let go, Cut the Crap reads like the kind of album that no one in the Clash circles want to address for as long as they live.

Then again, it’s hard to place too much of the blame on Joe Strummer or Paul Simonon. They may have wanted to keep the band going, but after cowering to whatever Bernie Rhodes wanted to do, all they were left with was a bunch of Clash fanboys filling Jones’s shoes and songs that sounded like they were first drafts of songs being hammered out on the cheapest drum machines that money could buy.

But the biggest tell that the band doesn’t consider this canon is their massive Sound System box set. The whole thing includes every single scrap of music that they worked on throughout their career, and yet it includes absolutely nothing from this album. Kudos to Strummer for contributing a song like ‘This is England’, but by and large, the band should have called it a day when they came off the road for Combat Rock.

‘Back to School’ – Deftones

Deftones weren’t the kind of band that was meant to have hits. They were a brilliant nu-metal outfit in an age when such bands were making fools of themselves, and even when they started to move out of their comfort zone, they were the ones showing hard rock fans things that no one thought they were capable of seeing. So how the hell did they end up making one of the biggest songs of their career off of a song that was intentionally designed to sound terrible?

No, really. ‘Back to School’ is definitely one of the biggest songs that the band ever made from a chart perspective, but if Chino Moreno had his way, the song would have never existed. The band had completed White Pony and were proud to have made a musical masterpiece, but after their higher-ups suggested that they make one more song to cash in on that Limp Bizkit money, Moreno just took the basis of the album closer ‘Pink Maggit’ and played it up like he was channelling his inner Jonathan Davis.

The whole thing was meant to be stupid, but after Moreno sent it in thinking it was a joke, the label wasn’t laughing. They figured this was their next hit, and suddenly, the music video shoots came out, and every copy of White Pony ended up having one blemish at the very beginning of the record. So while Moreno wasn’t the kind to follow trends, there’s a fine line between mocking the new school and compromising your sound. 

‘Jeremy’ – Pearl Jam

No one coming out of Seattle back in the 1990s was looking to get famous. The grunge revolution may have singlehandedly knocked everyone on their ass once ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, but even Kurt Cobain wasn’t looking to become a big star when he was first making Nevermind. The mainstream came to Seattle in many respects, but Pearl Jam had a lot more mixed feelings when they got their first real taste of fame on MTV.

Because when looking at the rest of Ten, ‘Jeremy’ is one of the most important songs they ever made. Eddie Vedder had really turned a corner with his songwriting, but after filming the graphic video for the song with a child actor simulating shooting himself, MTV’s strict restrictions on everything edited the whole thing in such a way that made it look like Jeremy ended up killing all of his classmates at the end of the song.

So even though the song sounded perfectly fine, the meaning of the song wasn’t theirs anymore. The video had kept them in hot water for years, but the biggest crime that the song committed was that it permanently damaged the band’s relationship with music videos. If they were going to make anything else going forward, it was going to be their vision, no matter how many frames the censors insisted on leaving out.

‘Big Man With a Gun’ – Nine Inch Nails

There isn’t a single soul on this Earth that should listen to The Downward Spiral expecting to hear some catchy tunes. Trent Reznor was making the most nihilistic rock album ever made when he went into the studio, and even if you have a strong tolerance for industrial music, there are parts of the record that feel closer to watching a suspenseful horror film than listening to music half the time. So naturally, the one part of the record that was played off as a joke was the one song that everyone got up in arms about. 

Reznor had already written ‘Big Man With a Gun’ as a mindless piss-take on gangsta rap music, but when people started to take every word seriously, everything blew out of proportion pretty quickly. It was bad enough that ‘Closer’ had to be heavily censored for MTV, but when the PMRC started talking about the demonic leanings of the record, it started to get far too dangerous for anyone to laugh at anymore. 

Looking back, even Reznor said that he would have rather swapped the song out for something else, but even in the context of the record, it wouldn’t have worked without having that shot of musical adrenaline. This is the tale of someone slowly losing all his grip on sanity, so having a song that’s all about playing into his nastiest desires needs to be there to appreciate songs like ‘A Warm Place’ and ‘Hurt’ later on.

‘I Don’t Want to Know’ – Fleetwood Mac

Nothing that Stevie Nicks ever sang for Fleetwood Mac was ever phoned in. There were times when she had to put her favourite band on the back burner for a little bit while she tended to her solo career, but it would have been impossible singing songs that didn’t move her in some way whenever she got behind the glass. It was all about songs that made her feel something whenever she sang them, but that doesn’t mean that she had to enjoy every single thing that came out of her mouth.

Half of Rumours was already a nightmare for her behind the scenes, but when she was told ‘I Don’t Want To Know’ was going to be on the record, her heart sank when she realised that ‘Silver Springs’ would have to become a B-side. As far as she could tell, this was the masterpiece that every other song was building to, and yet here she was singing along to an Everly Brothers-style harmony song that may as well have come off a completely different record.

While she did eventually get justice for ‘Silver Springs’ when it became a fixture of The Dance, that didn’t make the resentment towards ‘I Don’t Want To Know’ disappear. This was the first and only time that she was forced to record a song, and given what she had lost in the process, it’s no wonder that she started a solo career once her songs started getting pushed down again, one album later. 

‘Your Body is a Wonderland’ – John Mayer

The version of John Mayer that everyone loves to hate is a little bit complicated. Had people heard a lot of his songs back in the day, there’s a good chance that they would have taken one listen to ‘Daughters’ and written him off as the kind of sensitive songwriter that turns out to be a dick behind the scenes. And while you can feel any way you want about who he is as a person, if you’re judging him on ‘Your Body is a Wonderland’, you’re working from the absolute wrong perspective.

Rooms for Squares is a fairly solid pop-rock album with a bunch of stellar tunes, but ‘Your Body is a Wonderland’ is the absolute nadir of his catalogue that happens to be his biggest hit. Judging by what he does with the Grateful Dead and even on his later solo records, he definitely has a lot more chops than he’s given credit for, but you wouldn’t blame anyone for wanting to never buy an album from him again after hearing him say that phrase ‘bubblegum tongue’.

Then again, it’s refreshing to know that even he’s a bit tired of the tune as well, even going so far as to say during his concerts that he has to endure the song before getting back to the rest of the show. Every artist is going to have their favourite songs to play live and maybe a few undiscovered gems, but this is one of the few songs that’s actively drawing people away from a true guitar genius.

‘Freedom’ – Paul McCartney

By the 2000s, Paul McCartney could have pretty much done whatever he wanted as a solo artist. He had spent years as a member of Wings, carved out a nice, healthy set of solo hits, and even revisited his Beatles days with the Anthology series, so anything else would have been a perfect addition to his body of work. But in the age when everyone was suddenly becoming patriotic, Macca may have gone one step too far in the wrong direction when he made the song ‘Freedom’.

At the same time, can you really blame him? He was in New York on September 11th, 2001, and when he saw the carnage with his own eyes, he knew that he should do everything he could to help. A noble effort, for sure, but with only a half-decent chorus hook, ‘Freedom’ started to mean something different once the Iraq War started. Once President Bush started sending troops overseas, the dimwitted patriotic types started to co-opt the song to be an endorsement of their side, especially with the line ‘I will fight for the RIGHT to live in freedom.’

McCartney eventually did pull back on it and distance himself from the song altogether, but looking back, did he really need to say his position? Anyone with half a brain would have known that this was the last person that anyone would have guessed when writing a pro-war song, but it turns out that when the audience doesn’t manage to think that hard, things can get ugly pretty quickly. 

‘One in a Million’ – Guns N’ Roses

Judging a rock and roll band for being controversial is like getting mad at the dog for going after the mailman. Yeah, it might not be the best look in the world, but it’s second nature for any rock and roll band to want to rebel against the rules that everyone’s putting on them. Then again, there’s a method to knowing when to draw the line, and it turned out that Axl Rose had no idea what that line was when he started to speak his mind on a handful of Guns N’ Roses songs.

Appetite for Destruction already wasn’t earning many favours with the politically correct crowd when Rose was talking about blatant misogyny, but even if he was playing it off as a joke, ‘One in a Million’ is the kind of song that would have never been acceptable by any stretch. Rose may have been taking on a character when singing, but having him throw out blatant racist slurs and having overtly homosexual overtones is the kind of lyrics that would have made Slim Shady-era Eminem tell him to tone things down.

While Rose never seemed to apologise once for his actions, Slash has said numerous times that he didn’t like recording the song at all, especially since he’s half-black and his lead singer is starting to throw slurs around him. The band were always teetering on the edge of breaking up more than a few times, but even if it took them a few more years to implode, this was already a sign that all was not well behind the scenes.