Arguably Canada’s worst export, Nickelback have never really had the people’s support. At a time where it’s cool to hate them, even the Queensland police joined in saying that they are “wanted for crimes against music” before their Brisbane show in 2015. No one would ever think that there could be a replacement for the hatred we all have for the group, but it turns out, thanks to the presidential election there is one man who has stepped up to the plate; Donald Trump.
According to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, new polling from the Public Policy Polling (PPP) hilariously showed that everyones favourite Republican candidate Donald Trump is actually hated more than Nickelback, as well as lice, hipsters, root canals and traffic jams. But wait, wait, he does beat cockroaches and haemorrhoids – but only just, “It’s narrow, but a win is a win.” Once again amusingly, when women are asked the same question, they actually prefer cockroaches and hemorrhoids to Trump. Now that’s saying something.
To add fuel to the fire, we’ve even seen the YG and Nipsey Hussle track F-ck Donald Trump start to blow up, and this isn’t too much of a surprise thanks to Trump’s extremely sexist, misogynistic and racist opinions, echoing that of Hitler. Just remember, the people prefer this to Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB0DU4DoPP4
Image: The Federalist
There is constant discussion about how we need to change the inherently misogynistic nature of the music industry. Women (and I of course include non-binary women, though I don’t profess to speak on their behalf) are violently assaulted for simply existing within a cis-male-dominated space; women are omitted from festival line ups; women are harassed when they dare to speak out; women are sexually objectified and harassed while they dare to be creative; above all, women are continuously let down by a system set up to protect men and money above all else.
Still, talking about what needs to change is only one part of important work that needs to be carried out. Especially when misogyny is ingrained not only in the culture, but in the very words we sing along to. So much of our popular music, both contemporary and of eras passed and still celebrated, is rife with dangerous, damaging lyrics which perpetuate certain ideas about women, and its high time we decide that it simply isn’t good enough.
Recently here in Australia, we’ve seen a number of tours cancelled after campaigns took aim at barring certain artists including Tyler, The Creator, from entering the country due to their lyrical content. Action Bronson faced a similar situation in Canada. Chris Brown‘s Australian tour was also cancelled on account of both his lyrics and his criminal history. While we’re not here to defend Chirs Brown, it was increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that at the same time all this discussion about whether he should be able to tour here given his history was occurring, bands like Maroon 5, who have equally damaging lyrical content but occupy a different genre (pop), were free to tour and play to audiences here.
To that end, we present to you four different songs that aren’t hip-hop or R&B and discuss why they too, are problematic.
alt-j – Breezeblocks
Don’t let Joe Newman‘s near incomprehensible drawl fool you, alt-j are not only one of the most utterly boring bands put up on a pedestal they don’t deserve simply because they’re sort of strange and “indie”, but they have some disturbing and sexually violent lyrics. Breezeblocks, as far as anyone can tell, is about a man not wanting his girlfriend to leave and promptly deciding that killing her is his only option. The imagery in the song is all together uncomfortable, but the prize goes to the very opening line: “She may contain the urge to run away/But hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVeMiVU77wo
Paramore, Misery Business
For what it’s worth, Paramore front-woman Hayley Williams herself has stated how uncomfortable she is now with this song. In Misery Business, Williams’ describes another young girl as being a whore while simultaneously stealing her boyfriend as a way to prove she is a better kind of person. Bizarre. Williams has long been a champion of women in pop-punk, certainly a male-dominated space, and it’s easy to forget that she was a teenager when she wrote this song. “Misery Business is not a set of lyrics that I relate to as a 26 year old woman. I haven’t related to it in a very long time. Those words were written when I was 17… admittedly, from a very narrow-minded perspective.” Still, it’s interesting that this song was the one chosen to play on triple j on International Women’s Day last week following CHVRCHES’ Lauren Mayberry‘s glowing introduction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCyGvGEtOwc
Beatles, Run For Your Life
The argument about whether or not Chris Brown should be allowed in Australia was heavily centred upon his past relationship with singer Rihanna, which saw Brown charged with assault after she ended up in hospital at his hands. What many people seem to forget is that John Lennon, one of the most revered songwriters in history, had his own history of domestic violence. Both his first wife Cynthia and his second, Yoko Ono, were victims of his violence and despite later saying that he regretted writing it, this song is a disturbing reminder that his rage ran deep. “I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man.” Adapted from an Elvis song, it further proves that misogyny does not simply exist in one genre of music, despite many people arguing they don’t like hip-hop because it degrades women. Lennon followed it up later in his career with the apologetic Jealous Guy, but it seems kind of a wash to simply brush things off with “I’m just a jealous guy.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmCkQeijCIw
Nickelback, Follow You Home
Ask any women travelling home alone from a gig at night how she feels and chances are, she’ll say something like “on edge”. Maybe she’ll tell you about how she only walks down certain streets. How she carries her keys as a weapon. How she didn’t wear the shoes she wanted to in case she needed to run from someone. Being followed home is a very real, very threatening experience. This song plays on that and makes it all the more unsettling. Chad Kroeger paints himself as someone who is devoted, someone who will withstand whatever this woman throws at him. “You can scream profanity/Leave me here to die alone but/I’ll still follow you home.” However, he’s also very aware of the hell he’s putting his partner through as he adds “And pray I’m never coming back.” Because when she’s screaming at you to leave her alone, its because she wants you to leave her the fuck alone. It isn’t devotion, what it is, is stalking. If we’re being honest, Nickelback could have actually made up this entire list, they’ve got scores of songs that demonstrate all the different kinds of problems they seem to have with women. Maybe they’ll appear on the next one…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prfi7KkF6OQ
Inspired by the now defunct blog Misogynistic Lyrics that aren’t Rap
I was already in the foulest of moods today, and then I heard Rihanna‘s latest spite shit on the very notion of good taste:
It’s a miserable little ditty about a bitch who owes Rihanna money (and had better have it). The trap beat and overall sound of the song are abysmal enough as it is (and it hurts me to say that because it was produced by none other than Kanye West) but it’s the lyrics that take the cake. Such insightful musings including:
‘Turn up to Rihanna while the whole club fucking wasted’
‘Don’t act like you forgot, I call the shots shots shots’
‘Who y’all think y’all frontin’ on’
And, of course, ‘Bra, bra, bra’, because sound effects are lyrics now. As expected, she sounds like the most uncouth kind of Maury Povich guest imaginable.
I find it grossly unfair that this woman can be worth 90 million dollars and a global superstar and still be permitted, nay, encouraged, to release godawful, poorly-written crap like this. To enrage myself further I decided to take a look at the shitty, shitty lyrics of some other inexplicably famous artists.
The only stipulations here were that the song must be from a platinum-selling artist from the 21st century and meet one or more of the criteria of being nonsensically stupid, cringe-inducingly cheesy or horrifyingly offensive The results were blinding and full of reaction gifs.
5. Beyoncé – Run The World (Girls)
Cheers Bey, I’d spent countless hours wondering just who runs this little old world of ours before you let me know that it is, in fact, girls. Girls run this motha (x4).
What’s really going on at the United Nations
When your chorus and half of your song is a variation of the same terrible line repeated over and over again, it doesn’t strengthen the message behind it, it just makes you look like a lazy shit. Your inexplicably tangential verses don’t save this monstrosity either, whether you’re rambling about being from Houston, working 9 to 5 (spare me) and:
‘I think I need a barber, none of these niggas can fade me’
Your lyrics are worse than that dad-est of dad jokes, Beyoncé. Cut the shit.
4: Ed Sheeran – Wake Me Up
I’ve made no secret of my distaste for every single thing Ed Sheeran has ever done, and this vomity little love song my girlfriend no doubt loves is one of those things. Some of the more egregious lyrical skidmarks are:
‘Would you make me a cup of tea, to open my eyes in the right way?’
You can just open your eyes, Ed. You don’t need a cup of tea to do that. Nobody does. In truth, only a British man would include lyrics about being made cups of tea in a love ballad. Prince Charles and Camilla might be getting their weird royal fuck on to that but I can guarantee you nobody else is.
You’re welcome for that terrifying image.
‘And I know you love Shrek, cause we’ve watched it 12 times’
That’s entirely more than the recommended dosage of Shrek, Ed. You’re a grown-ass man and that’s a ridiculous movie about a giant green ogre and his African-American donkey that you’ve spent an inordinately creepy level of time watching. There are other movies out there that aren’t Shrek, thousands of them. You need to get out of the house.
There’s no soul behind those dead eyes.
The rest of the song is a similarly shoddily-written little stroll along the line between being disgustingly romantic (‘Cause maybe you’re loveable. And maybe you’re my snowflake’) and irritatingly quirky (‘And if your DVD breaks today, you should’ve got a VCR. Because I’ve never owned a Blue ray, true say’).
You’re fooling nobody, Edward, you’re just a terrible songwriter.
3: Nickelback – Something In Your Mouth
Look, I hate Nickelback as much as the next man, but at least they usually peddle in inoffensive albeit bland corporate wuss rock and-
Oh.
Gotcha.
I’ll spare you the verses, which are a lengthy and lecherous description of some poor woman Chad Kroeger has spotted in a drinking establishment, and skip straight to the seedy, seedy chorus.
‘(you naughty thing)
Your ripping up the dance floor honey
(you naughty women)
You shake your ass around for everyone
(your such a mover)
I love the way you dance with anybody
(the way you swing)
And tease them all by sucking on your thumb
Your so much cooler when you never pull it out
Cause you look so much cuter with something in your mouth’
It’s dicks. It’s dicks you’re talking about, isn’t it Nickelback?
It’s a small miracle that women even talk to the members of Nickelback with their profound lack of both talent and dress sense, that they can be this outrageously misogynistic in return is mind-fuck baffling.
2: Metallica – Purify
Purify comes from Metallica‘s St. Anger album, a maligned piece of shit completely eschewing guitar solos and anything cool made when they were all in therapy and, by God, is it fucking awful. You can almost hear what’s left of James Hetfield’s mind committing seppuku with a rubber chicken while shrieking at the moon.
Pictured: All of the crazy
‘Tear it down
Strip the layers off
My turpentine’
That’s the opening three lines. Not even a minute in and he’s used the line ‘my turpentine’. It gets worse.
‘Ghost white
Ultra clean
Wanna be skeleton
Clear eyes
Diamond eyes
Strip the past of mine
My sweet turpentine’
I don’t know what this is supposed to be about, but keep in mind the stupidly loud nu-metal guitars and Hetfield straight screaming gibberish like ‘wanna be skeleton’ and it’s even more ridiculous. This goes on for an entirely unneccessary five minutes and fourteen seconds, not without the cherry on top of this clusterfuck cake:
‘ I can find the dirt on anything’
Early 00s-Metallica everybody; heavy metal NapiSan.
1. Pitbull: Various
This fucking guy:
The Grand Wizard of godawful lyrics, nobody will make you facepalm faster or harder than Mr. Worldwide. The man is a moron, and his Eurodisco shit rap is of the stupidest caliber. You are scientifically guaranteed (probably) to lose one IQ point for every syllable of Pitbull lyrics.
Whether it’s rhyming the word Kodak with Kodak (Kodak hilariously filing for bankruptcy a year later), alleging that his adulterous exploits are some misogynistically biblical combination of Tiger Woods and Jesse James
I know you want me
Or, in a feat of insensitive fuckfacery without rival, announcing his ambition to pour so much vodka into whatever salty, godless little club he and T-Pain are presently occupying that it becomes flooded like post-Katrina New Orleans. You know, just that natural disaster that killed over a thousand people.
Keep it classy, you raging dickhead.
At least he reveals his back up plan to his fans, in the highly unlikely event that his record label is anything but a success:
“Label flop but Pit won’t stop
Got her in the cockpit playin’ with his (como?)
Now watch him make a movie like Alfred Hitchcock”
I don’t ever want to witness Pitbull’s directorial debut, which would probably be an hour and a half of sexual assault innuendo disguised as product placement and dick metaphors spliced in with closeups of his soul patch. That there is a market for this man’s music is a global travesty.
What a fantastic year 2014 has been for terrible music. Triple J have put out their list of best albums yesterday, but we find ‘Worst Of’ lists to be infinitely more fun, so we here at Howl And Echoes would like to present our inaugural Album Anti-Awards for 2014!
Our lucky winners include:
The Tylenol ‘Cure For Insomnia’ Award
Coldplay – Ghost Stories
‘Coldplay are boring’ jokes are as old as Yellow, I know, but if they’re going to keep putting out musical sleeping pills like they have once again with Ghost Stories then I’m going to keep making them. Not one track on here is exciting in the slightest. Fitting that it’s called Ghost Stories, because I’m pretty sure we could get Chris Martin declared legally dead after this piss poor effort.
Furthermore, when Sticky Fingers walked through downtown Newtown for Australia Street, it was cool. When these assholes shamelessly ripped them off for A Sky Full Of Stars, with their lame-as-fuck fans filming the whole thing on their fucking smartphones like a bunch of pre-teen twats, it was a floating joke.
The Soulja Boy Award for Shittiest Contribution to Hip Hop
Riff Raff – Neon Icon
Riff Raff is an amalgam of burning garbage and bad facial hair. Open this album up to have your olfactory senses impossibly assaulted by the distinct smell of a trailer park. I can’t verify this with 100% certainty, but I have it on good authority that for every copy of Neon Icon sold, an endangered panda was punched in the face.
Sweet fuck on a crust, Riff Raff sings with the sweet, slithery lilt of somebody who masturbates in public and he raps like he’s reciting your order at a McDonalds drive thru. If you bought this album you are telling the world that there is a good chance that you are poorly educated. Enjoy this GIF of his internationally-televised humiliation:
The 2014-15 Philadelphia 76ers award for Worst Output by a Group
5 Seconds Of Summer – 5 Seconds Of Summer
This is ear-scaldingly bad boy band music. 5 Seconds Of Summer create music to initiate a gag reflex to.Their vanilla-ness makes their forefathers in groups like Boyzone and Westlife look like a bunch of Hells Angels by comparison and the irritating way they abbreviate their name to 5SOS and cite people like Blink-182 as an influence when clearly their influences were just monkey shit and the lost souls of 12-year-old girls is especially grating.
This was Australia’s completely unnecessary, shit-haircutted answer to One Direction, scorch the Earth if they ever get anywhere near that level.
The Scott Stapp Award for Biggest Affront to Rock and Roll:
Nickelback – No Fixed Address
I don’t know what’s more annoying, the fact that Nickelback were pretentious enough to name this album No Fixed Address as though they’re some ‘children of the Earth’ motherfuckers or that they aren’t actually homeless and broke like their rivals for ‘most talentless people to ever pick up guitars’, Creed.
Edge Of A Revolution is Nickelback’s neckbearded attempt at writing an anti-establishment song and it’s so unintentionally funny you might break a rib laughing. The whole album is icepick lobotomy level dumb, because their fans are all shameless morons and are somehow that easily impressed. They should stop loving Nickelback and start loving themselves, shit.
The Michael Richards Award for “Biggest Fall From Grace”
Robin Thicke – Paula
Last year Robin Thicke gave us a terrible song with date rape lyrics and also Emily Ratajkowski from atop Pharrell Williams’ shoulders and people loved him for it. This year he gave us his first album post-divorce and named it after his ex-wife in what may be the least efficient way to get yourself a restraining order. Also, you can rearrange the entire track list to make perhaps the creepiest stalk-iest, threaten-iest letter ever, here look:
Worst Album by a Female Artist:
Taylor Swift – 1989
1989 was regarded as Taylor Swift’s departure from country pop into just regular pop, the difference between the two probably like comparing two puddles of urine to see which one contains less sexually transmittable diseases per square inch. She could have called this album Pumpkin Spice Latte Roshe Run Butterfly Tattoo and nobody would have batted a fake eyelash.
From the incessant whine that is Blank Space to the pantomime twerking nightmare of Shake It Off, this entire album was so fucking boring, so fucking terrible, and yet pretty much the majority of the female population continue to eat her shit up like it’s Froot Loops and MD. Inexplicable. Not even God can help you if you’re a fan of Taylor Swift in 2014.
Worst Album by a Male Artist:
Ed Sheeran – X
Apparently this album is called ‘X’ but pronounced ‘Multiply’. To that end, I propose that ‘Ed Sheeran’ now be pronounced ‘Utter shitbag’ for such pretentious assfacery. The fact that Ed is a soulless ginger aside, have you ever heard something as interminably bland as this album?
It’s like eating cardboard cereal with water instead of milk, for fuck sake. Don’t was apparently not everybody’s simultaneous reaction to Ed Sheeran announcing this album, but about Taylor Swift. If they ever reconcile their differences and collaborate for a joint album I will put my hand up for a rocket ride directly into the sun, just to be sure that monstrosity couldn’t ever hurt me.
Worst Album of 2014
U2 – Songs Of Innocence
Fuck you, Bono. Fuck you, the rest of U2. And fuck you, Apple, for giving my iTunes the digital equivalent of a surprise prostate examination and then leaving the rubber glove in there in the form of U2’s clownfuck dreadful free album. An album that every person on the planet with iTunes suddenly found in their library, regardless of whether they wanted it, and which IS STILL JUST SITTING THERE LIKE A SMUG PRICK BECAUSE I CAN’T GET RID OF IT NO MATTER HOW HARD I TRY!
Understandably, a lot of people were as pissed as I am. Apple then put their pathetic spin on the whole farce, claiming that 81 million people had ‘experienced’ U2’s new album, which was about as impressive as claiming that they were responsible for 81 million people experiencing the human papillomavirus.
Make no mistake about it, there is a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for people who pull the kind of dick move Apple did on consumers in foisting this album upon us, but the fact that U2 did so and simultaneously used the good name of Joey Ramone, an old school punk who would have exactly zero time for this kind of commercialistic bullshit, is what makes me the angriest.
And fuck me if Rolling Stone didn’t give it five stars and lose any and all respect from me.
God is dead.