You could make your own list of The Top 20 Worst Bands of [not necessarily] All Time but why would you? As most bands on this list are/were hugely popular, what’s the underlying message of such an exercise? You like these bands? Well, aren't you a stupid @#$%er?
We can thank the once free and now deceased publication the LA Weekly for this exercise in self-important and bloviated wanking. This absolutely pointless exercise in futility was published in Los Angeles in 2012. But here’s what we need to remember, as Tim Minchin says:
Let’s lead by being for things, not against things.
I realize this negates most social media culture, but wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Once, blues artists would tout their own mythic qualities, as Muddy Waters famously does in Mannish Boy (1955):
The line I shoot/And will never miss/When I make love to a girl/She can't resist
All you little girls/Sittin' out at that line/I can make love to you, honey, in five minutes time
It was still a time when the gains or attention given on others didn’t intimidate or threaten. This, of course, was lost in the more recent era of hip hop when hater-ing anthems and dis tracks have become all too common. Apparently, Eminem has a long history of going after Diddy. Rather brave give what we now know.
Here, Google AI offers a brief survey of others:
Early punk had its moments. Sex Pistols often slagged arena bands of their era in interviews, like Led Zeppelin, calling them dinosaurs. A charge, we’d later come to know from the dinosaurs themselves, that had a stinging effect. German band KMFDM was thought to be an acronym for Kill Mother F**king Depache Mode but that turned out to be wishful thinking—it actually was from the German, loosely translated as “no pity for the majority.” An artist going by the moniker Mojo Nixon (Neill Kirby McMillan Jr., 1957-2024) had made something of a career out of lampooning contemporary celebrities including this pointed slapper, Don Henley must Die (1990).
Compared to the later era of dis tracks, Mojo was practically affectionate:
(Debt to Samuel Jackson for post title.)
