The 10 most pretentious decisions rock stars have ever made
The art of great rock music has never been about being a god among men. The only reason many people put artists on that high pedestal is because of some preconceived notion that they are above any analysis and are, therefore, untouchable no matter what they do. Once artists start believing their own hype, things start getting hard to stomach, and artists like Bono have made some of the biggest odes to self-righteousness in rock history.
That’s not to say that someone can’t be proud of their own work. It’s easy for anyone to look at all of the effort they put into their songs and think they’ve written a masterpiece, but the presentation usually goes from the usual pride to some of the most unintentionally hilarious moments that anyone has ever tried.
It’s one thing to just have a few tunes that are too self-congratulatory, but the worst moves ended up going the extra mile by trying to not only talk themselves as one of the biggest things in the world. No, that wasn’t good enough, so it was up to all of these artists to acknowledge that not only were they the best in the world, but all of their contemporaries were somehow inferior to them because they released something new or taking a bold stance on music.
All of their points may have been entirely valid, yet these artists forgot the crucial rule behind any great art somewhere along the line. It’s about the music before anything else, and while the music is undoubtedly a part of it, the accompanying albums and songs ended up getting swallowed up by certain people’s inability to shut their mouths.
10 most pretentious moves by rock stars:
10. Recording over his band – Billy Corgan
It’s never easy, in practical terms, to put together a strong sounding record. Any song can be great whenever a group plays live, but it takes a lot more effort to overdub all the guitars onto a track to make it sound finished or layer multiple vocal harmonies on top of each other. That procedure normally involves a lot of trust among bandmates, and Billy Corgan figured he’d cut out the middle man when working on Siamese Dream.
As much as the album is celebrated as a triumph for Smashing Pumpkins, it’s easy to call this a Billy Corgan solo record, considering he played over everyone’s parts. D’Arcy Wretsky and James Iha had played the entire track listing, only for them to be replaced with Corgan noodling because he obviously knew that whatever they played wouldn’t be nearly as good as what he heard in his head.
In fact, the only reason why Jimmy Chamberlain got away clean behind the drumkit was probably because he was far too much of a perfectionist about his instrument, therefore, Corgan didn’t have to worry about a note being out of place. Locking something onto the grid to get it right is totally fine, but many lines were crossed when it was decided that this was the only way to make the record sound as he invisaged.
9. Metal Machine Music – Lou Reed
Part of the beauty behind rock and roll is not having any rules to go along with a record. People can spend as much time as they want to peddle away at different tunes as long as the final result is how they feel when they decide to put the record out. And if Metal Machine Music was anything to go on, Lou Reed seemed to be mad at his label, good taste, and most specifically, you, the listener.
For as experimental as Reed claimed to be during his prime, making an entire double album experience of guitar feedback sounds like a middle finger to everyone wanting to hear something like ‘Walk On the Wild Side’. Compared to the poetic devices he used before, this felt like him throwing an entire mix in the trash and trying to convince people to believe he was really saying something amid the migraine-inducing noise.
Even more strange is the fact that the album had been remixed a few times over before this stage, meaning that some poor soul had to sit through hours upon hours of this feedback just to make it sound slightly more listenable. Reed was more than entitled to make whatever artistic venture suited him, but it takes a true fan to know the ins and outs of Metal Machine Music like the back of their hand.
8. Four copies of Zaireeka – Flaming Lips
Nothing that The Flaming Lips have ever released has followed convention. Although the art-pop band can be counted on to make some crazy psychedelic prog-leaning tracks, it’s an undertaking trying to understand what the hell they are getting at half the time. To make matters worse, the only way that people got the chance to listen to Zaireeka for a long time came down to how much they were willing to fork over for four records.
Being produced as a four-disc set, this should have been a massive prog undertaking that took four hours to finish, right? Oh, no. This album is the length of a regular record, except the band’s decision to press it onto four different discs with the intent of playing them at the same time is still one of the most baffling decisions anyone has ever made to publish a record.
Once the listener gets past the headache of setting everything up, the record doesn’t disappoint from a musical perspective, though it doesn’t help that it was already tainted by having to pay a massive price tag for less than an hour’s worth of music. All music is designed to be experienced in different ways, but if any listening session is automatically put in jeopardy if one CD player is broken, that’s never an encouraging sign.
7. Calling out other artists – Machine Gun Kelly
Rock and roll has never been lacking in its moments of gatekeeping. For every artist who is happy to talk about the universal appeal of their music, others will say that their art is intended for a specific audience and no one else should try to make anything even close to what they do. If there’s one person who shouldn’t have been allowed to make such bold claims, it’s Machine Gun Kelly.
Before he even started, the fact that he was even involved the rock conversation in the first place is somewhat strange. Eminem had so thoroughly assaulted him on ‘Killshot’ that he switched genres altogether, but the minute that he started gaining traction for records like Tickets to My Downfall, he immediately started putting his foot in his mouth by implying that musicians weren’t true rock stars if they didn’t look the part by wearing punk rock clothing.
That’s before getting into his spats with Slipknot, eventually calling out Corey Taylor for having to hide behind a mask to play, only for Taylor to show up with receipts saying that he was supposed to feature on the pop-punk transplant’s album before bailing. Considering he has only dug himself further into cringey behaviour in recent years, one can only sit and wonder what he’s going to say as he keeps walking ass over teakettle into the sunset.
6. The ‘Estranged’ music video – Guns N’ Roses
No rock star is immune to acting like a diva now and again. Once things start coming to you faster, it’s almost expected that some artists will be a little bit entitled to getting things done their own way or working with only the finest in their field to make something work. While it already made zero sense to see Guns N’ Roses growing up so quickly, the video for the song ‘Estranged’ is the equivalent of jumping the shark in music.
Or should I say dolphin in this case? The entire premise of the video cycle for Use Your Illusion was already overblown to begin with in ‘November Rain’, but ‘Estranged’ is a completely different animal. Despite showing footage of the group playing live interspersed with acting shots of Axl Rose, the biggest moment in the video involves Rose jumping off of a massive cruise ship, throwing himself in the water, and proceeding to swim with dolphins.
Unless I’m missing something here, the video’s message is that after being one of the most dangerous frontmen on the Sunset Strip, a rock star’s natural cycle of evolution is such that they will transition to playing stadiums before eventually becoming professional dolphin whisperers in later life. Either Rose has a different idea of what being a rock star entails, or he just had as much money as he wanted and decided to throw as much as he could onscreen.
5. Meatless shows – Morrissey
There’s a good chance that there could be an entire list of this nature going through every single thing that Morrissey has done. Shockingly, the former Smiths frontman once labelled Chinese people a “sub-species” because of their animal rights policies; he said he couldn’t understand how the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan spoke, and also wore a pin in support of the far-right political party, For Britain.
The countless controversial statements that he has offered up should have been our collective warning that someone like Kanye West could feasibly emerge someday. While it’s far from the most egregious thing he’s done by a long distance, and inoffensive in comparison with much of his conduct, his vegan tour riled up many fans.
First, that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with practising Morrissey’s dietary habits. All of us should be more caring to our fellow animals at any chance we can, but Morrissey’s decision to ensure that no venue that he played at contained any type of meat product was one step too far in the eyes of some.
It shouldn’t be shocking coming from the same person who wrote the song ‘Meat is Murder’, but given the tone that he had with everyone surrounding the issue, most would think that he hated the human race a lot more than he hated the abuse of animals. He has written classic songs, but his choice to insist on people adapting to his choice of food has never made fans want to eat a steak more in their lives.
4. Making the Kiss Coffin – Kiss
Any dyed-in-the-wool Kiss fan has bought into everything that the group has ever put out. Aside from building up a massive army of fans only rivalled by the Grateful Dead, Kiss were just as much businessmen as they are musicians, like when they included an actual toy gun with Love Gun and made four solo albums at the same time to be a completionist’s nightmare. Even when their fans started passing away, Gene Simmons made the ultimate package that gives new meaning to the phrase ‘ride-or-die’.
Just as they entered the 2000s, the latest invention was the Kiss Coffin that Simmons pioneered, with any member of the Kiss Army getting a chance to move into the afterlife in style. While they were already going overboard by making Kiss condoms, an open casket is the most extreme thing any group has ever done, landing in that weird dead zone where you’re not quite sure if it’s absolutely tasteless or a genuine gesture to the fans.
Bizarrely, a few of the items have actually been sold, most famously, Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell was buried in one of them after his tragic death in 2004. While it’s somewhat funny to have a literal ‘Demon’ on the coffin as a poor soul gets buried in the ground, but considering how Simmons can spin anything into cold, hard cash, it wouldn’t be shocking to have a Kiss-coated urn on the market soon as well.
3. The Rattle and Hum tour – U2
U2 had a habit of taking themselves a little bit too seriously as far back as their first few records. Boy may have been the only time they actually sounded naive since records like War and The Joshua Tree, while brilliant, still felt like the group saw themselves more like a musical religious cult than an actual band. And if you thought Bono had a Jesus complex before, we were just getting started before Rattle and Hum came out.
While the live album itself is a bit of a mixed listen, the movie has some of the most shameless rock and roll antics anyone has ever tried. We were never going to see the sex and drugs part of the musician lifestyle with the Irish singer, but we were given the news that Bono was “stealing” The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter’ back from Charles Manson and deciding that the lyrics to ‘All Along the Watchtower’ needed to be improved upon for their version of the tune.
Right about the time that Bono is caught in a striking silhouette during ‘MLK’ and has the footage of the civil rights icon plastered over top of him, it becomes easier to realise what this is. This isn’t the traditional rock and roll band. This is the version of the genre that’s normally drawn up by a kid in the eighth grade thinking about what a dangerous musician is supposed to be.
2. Remaking Dark Side of the Moon – Roger Waters
For most iconic artists, going back to an old album is always a bad idea. Most would argue that those albums are perfect just the way are, and having them restructured for a new audience is never a good option when the classics already exist. When artists have run out of new ideas, they will always crib from old ones, and Roger Waters is the most egregious example of cannibalising his own legacy.
While Waters already had some moments that are worthy of being on this list, like implying that he was Pink Floyd and deserved the rights to the name, his choice to remake Dark Side of the Moon has made some sections of the original difficult to listen to. Never mind the fact that he can’t hit the notes like he could in his prime, a lot of the remade tracks aren’t that great, either, especially when you’re expecting the massive vocal solo from ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ and getting nothing to replace it.
As if to add the cherry on top of this shit sundae, Waters’s spoken-word interludes between the solos are shooting for a foreboding dictator foreshadowing the future and come off more like a man shouting that ‘THE END IS NIGH’ in the middle of a tube station. Waters can do whatever he wants trying to recontextualise his place in rock history, but next time, please just leave Wish You Were Here alone.
1. The Napster fiasco – Lars Ulrich
It seemed like many music fans were waiting for the right opportunity to turn on Lars Ulrich. He had always been the brains behind Metallica, and given his less-than-stellar track record behind the drums and his snobby attitude towards marketing, he was a bit too far removed from the fan he had been before he got big. Once he started attacking the fans directly with Napster, though, fans took the gloves off and wiped their Metallica collections from their homes.
But, really, was Ulrich wrong in this scenario? He was talking about a real issue when it comes to musicians getting paid, and since ‘I Disappear’ was leaked on Napster for free, he was well within his rights to go to war over someone sharing his songs without asking. That’s not how it came across, with Ulrich looking more like a bully who ended up taking everyone’s stuff away from them rather than the actual concerned musician.
Now, look at where we ended up, with streaming dominating the cultural landscape and artists who can only hope to make pennies off of their records now that their entire catalogue can be pulled up with a few clicks on Spotify. The value of music is lower than ever at this point, and while Ulrich’s heart was in the right place, watching him take every wrong step in executing his plan made him the top public enemy among the rock community for many years.
