The “piece of sh*t” pop song Ween hated more than any other
As half of the wacky experimental rock duo Ween, Mickey Melchionodo Jr (better known as Dean Ween) brought a fine-tuned virtuosity on vocals and lead guitar.
Grooving into the late 1980s alternative rock scene, he and his bandmate Aaron Freeman (aka Gene Ween) fused together a myriad of guitar rock influences with their soon-to-be signature sene of humour. Never ones to take themselves too goddamn seriously, the duo balanced their goofy personas with impressive craftsmanship, becoming a formidable act among their grunge and indie rock peers.
In 1993, Ween were approaching the end of their “lo-fi period”. Fresh off the success of their major label debut, 1992’s Pure Guava, Dean and Gene became somewhat of MTV darlings, with their highest charting single, ‘Push Th’ Little Daisies’, garnering significant airplay (amplified with a Beavis and Butthead cameo). In a parallel universe, 4 Non Blondes burst out of San Francisco with ‘What’s Up?’, a near-inescapable hit that dominated the rock charts. Written by the band’s vocalist, Linda Perry, the song became a neo-hippie anthem in the midst of 1990s pop-rock. However, their overnight sensationalism did not find a fan in their contemporaries, Ween.
Speaking with The AV Club’s ‘Hate Song’ column in 2013, Dean vehemently expressed his disdain for ‘What’s Up?’, naming it the one song he hates most in the world. While unable to pinpoint the exact moment he first heard the song, Dean recalls, “I remember hearing it and thinking, ‘This is the most obnoxious fucking hollering I’ve ever heard in my life.’” He then makes a slight misogynistic turn, with a mention of Perry. “I could envision the horrible, horrible female that was singing it,” he says, “and I knew that it was gonna be a hit, just by how bad I hated it. I knew that it was going to be played for years by every fucking bad girl band that came through my local bar, and sung on every karaoke night for the rest of time.”
Dean then goes on to reflect on seeing the music video for the first time, nowhere near mincing his criticism: “The people that I imagined would be so loathsome as to make such a piece of shit song looked identical to what I imagined them to be in my mind.” He goes so far as to claim that if he hears ‘What’s Up?’ in public, he’ll ask for it to be turned off, citing the “over-singing, awful lyrics and the guitar” as the sources of his hatred. Veering towards the hyperbolic, he says, “Everything about the song is so awful that if I sat down and tried to write the worst song ever, I couldn’t even make it 10% of the reality of how awful that song is.”
When asked about the mirrored successes of ‘Push Th’ Little Daisies’ and ‘What’s Up?’, with both gaining attention in the alternative circuit, Dean is quick to deny any connections between the two. “We weren’t competing with anybody,” he asserts. “If you compared the level of commercial success we had with ‘Push Th’ Little Daisies’ to that, I don’t think they’re even on the same radar. I can’t write music bad enough to be that popular.”
‘What’s Up?’ is, admittedly, one of the most annoying one-hit wonders in rock history, having a sort of earworm effect that reverberates in your subconscious, unwillingly, for days. However, Dean’s melodramatic hatred of the song is quite ironic. Ween, despite their joint talent, have become one of the most polarising acts in alternative culture, primarily for their comical personas and lyricism.
One would imagine that if any musician were to understand subjectivity, it would be someone like him. Yet, his criticism of 4 Non Blondes is a glaring example of subjectivity’s lacking, from both a fan’s and an artist’s perspective.
