We’ve all done stuff we’re unhappy with, but when you’re a musician, it usually means it’s heard by thousands or even millions of people – and once it’s out in the world, there’s no taking it back. Here are some of rock and metal’s finest taking a dump on the songs they wrote and wish they hadn’t.
Jonathan Davis (Korn)
“All In The Family [from 1998’s Follow The Leader] is the worst song ever. It’s horrible. We were all drunk in the studio and I was trying to rap. At the time, we were having a good time, but now I just cringe. I’ve got nothing against Fred [Durst, co-vocalist], it just sucks! We were out of our minds drunk! It shouldn’t have made the record.” (via Metal Hammer)
Lemmy
“I’m sick to death of Ace Of Spades now. We didn’t become fossilised after that record, you know, we’ve had quite a few good releases since then. But the fans want to hear it so we still play it every night. For myself, I’ve had enough of that song.” (via White Line Fever)
Kerry King (ex-Slayer)
“There’s a handful of songs in our history that I’m like, ‘Goddamn, I hate that song.’ Like, I fucking despise Desire and I hate Cleanse The Soul.” (via Rolling Stone)
Ronnie James Dio
[On 1983’s Rainbow In The Dark]: “It’s a song I really dislike. When it was finished, I announced to everyone that I was going to take a razor blade and cut the tape up. I went for the razor blade and they went, ‘No, no! Don’t!’ For me it was too poppy for the album [Holy Diver].”
Kurt Cobain (Nirvana)
“I can barely get through [Smells Like] Teen Spirit. I literally want to throw my guitar down and walk away. I can’t pretend to have a good time playing it.” (via Rolling Stone)
James Hetfield (Metallica)
[Before playing Ride The Lightning track Escape in 2012 for the very first time]: “A song that we never wanted to play live, ever, is now on the setlist. You can sing along if you want – it might help! No, don’t do it! Don’t do it, Lars! Are there any other songs left that we haven’t played?”
Robb Flynn (Machine Head)
“There are songs on every record of mine that I don’t like, even The Blackening. Slanderous sucks!” Machine Head’s Robb Flynn (via Metal Hammer)
Chino Moreno
[On Back To School (Mini Maggit)]: “I remember [the record label] sitting me down and pointing out Papa Roach and Linkin Park had sold six million albums while we hadn’t sold a tenth of that. To me, they were saying they wanted some rap-rock, and at the time I was already way over making music like that. My response was no way at first, and then they pointed out the chorus of Pink Maggit was so great, so they asked me to rewrite it as a three-minute song. They kept hounding me about it so I was like ‘Watch this,’ because formulaic songs are so easy to write.”
Shawn “Clown” Crahan
“[All Hope Is Gone is] my least favourite [Slipknot album]: no tension, no pain – just efficiency. Being able to go home, able to sleep, is not good, not for what we do.” (via Google Play)
Amy Lee (Evanscence)
“There have been times where I just hate My Immortal. You listen to your old stuff like, ‘Eurgh!’ I was 19 years old, and I didn’t even know what I was talking about, I was so dramatic! It’s like reading your diary. But I’m over it!” (via Music Week)
Joe Duplantier (Gojira)
[On Flying Whales] “It starts with a super-duper long intro that, honestly, if I’m going to listen to the song, I skip. It’s such a drag! It leads into that main riff, which dictates the tempo of the song. To this day, we don’t understand what’s so special about that riff […] Then the lyrics are like this crazy, mystical bum that lives in a cave and says, ‘Oh, I wanna reach the whales!’… When we play it every night, I’m wondering, ‘What’s up with this song? Why do people want to hear this song?’” (via Metal Hammer)
Paolo Gregoletto (Trivium)
[On The Rising] “What pisses me off about the song is that it kicked off another song [2006’s The Crusade album] that I liked way more, which was Broken One. We were at a weird point and, when we had the song Anthem written for The Crusade, everyone was really excited about the song. I think there was the suggestion of, ‘Hey, let’s have another song like that!’ There really wasn’t a cohesive idea of what the record was going to be.”
Dave Mustaine (Megadeth)
“Probably the dumbest song Megadeth ever did was Crush ’Em… We’d had huge success with our prior album [1997’s Cryptic Writings], big singles and all of that. That had never happened before. So we figured, why not give the label and our management more to work with, since the last one did so well on radio? That was a huge mistake… it didn’t work.” (via Noisecreep)
