Ok, so I’m going to come clean. My previous music article may have just been a cynical excuse to try and marry up my two loves of scientific skepticism and punk rock to crowbar a couple of bangers into the public consciousness. As penance for that indulgence, I took it upon myself to take a look over at the darker side of lyrical content in popular music and focus on the most egregious examples of pseudoscience and conspiratorial thinking that have tarnished the airwaves.
As before, there are some rules to follow: The music must be from a (reasonably) well known artist, so if your Uncle Frank plays bass for a local metal band called ‘The Big Lie’, or your neighbour’s daughter has the profile name ‘DJ Kemtrailz’ on Instagram, their content is not eligible I’m afraid.
Also out of the picture are known peddlers of pseudoscience who have decided to dabble in something else they’re not experts in. Unfortunately, that means that some absolute gems don’t make it in, like Natural News mouthpiece and self-described ‘Health Ranger’ Mike Adams’ attempt at rap in the late 2000s ‘Don’t Inject Me’ (for something more contemporary from Mike you can check out his beatbox-backed ramble ‘The Russians Did It’). There’s also a mysterious unnamed homeopath putting the grim into grime with ‘The Skeptics’ (Knuckle) Rap’, brought to my attention by fellow Skeptic writer Danny Chambers. We’re (mostly) staying away from religion too, which remains a useful rule of thumb.
There were also some notable near misses to the top ten: System of a Down’s ‘Science’ paints an unflattering picture of the achievements of science, and instead extolls the virtues of spiritualism, however without any clear statements from the writers, there’s some speculation that it is deliberately being presented from the perspective of a religious fundamentalist. On the highest shelf of musical credibility, some have pointed the finger towards Tool, with songs such as ‘Forty Six & 2’ and ‘Parabol(a)’, however their lyrical approach is deliberately ‘out there’, cryptic, and woven into a complex musical tapestry which makes for much post-bong hit over-analysis (check out Joe Rogan delving into Fibonacci sequence minutiae in the song ‘Lateralus’ for a prime example).
Muse’s Matt Bellamy has admitted to entertaining some conspiracy theories in the past, and frequently sails a close to the line with overtly dystopian themes is his music, lyrics and videos. Recent release ‘Compliance’ at first glance seems like it could be the more stylish product of a Van Morrison / Clapton collaboration (see below), with apparent allusions to lockdown protests, however Bellamy has since stated that the song was about new wars in Europe, and the promise of safety and reassurance sold to us by powerful entities during times of vulnerability.
Misplaced lines also don’t get an entire song on to the hit list: It has been well pointed out before that, contrary to Band Aid’s claim, there will absolutely be snow somewhere in Africa this Christmas. Skeptical community favourite Simon Singh has already clearly addressed Katie Melua’s Beijing bicycle blunder, and Eighties synth-driven massive-haired rockers Europe significantly miscalculated the distance of their trip to Venus too, but their Final Countdown doesn’t make into mine.
10: They Might Be Giants – Why Does the Sun Shine?
Ok, so technically it’s not their song, but They Might Be Giants’ ill-advised cover version of Hy Zaret’s 1959 release makes them the only band to appear on both my best-of and worst-of lists. The primary hook of the song is that the sun is “a mass of incandescent gas”, which unfortunately is not the case. Considering that TMBG have carved themselves a nice little niche as musical educators, it might have been expected that they would have checked their sources a little more thoroughly. Redemption was quick to come though, as after the inaccuracy was pointed out to them, they swiftly released correction track ‘Why Does the Sun Really Shine?’. Extra points as well for rhyming plasma with miasma.
9: Ozzy Osbourne – Scary Little Green Men
In terms of controversy, Ozzy’s dabbling with alien visitation conspiracies is pretty low on the list, and considering his well-known history chemically fueled journeys of the mind, it’s not entirely surprising that he’s taken to such (mostly) harmless speculation. Thankfully the list of people who take any of Ozzy’s lyrics seriously is negligible, and Ozzy himself doesn’t appear to spend any of his spare time or money furthering the cause of the less rational elements of the UFO community (see number 4 on the list for that).
8: Killing Joke – The Great Cull
For the unanointed, post-punk veterans Killing Joke came to the attention of many a young metalhead (including me) when Metallica covered one of their songs (The Wait) on their ‘Garage Days Re-Revisited’ EP in 1987. Cited as an influence for other alternative behemoths such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, and most notably industrial metal pioneers Nine Inch Nails, it’s particularly disappointing that they occasionally stray into dodgy territory. They might’ve got away with it as well, if it hadn’t been for that pesky internet.
The overpowering vocals of Jaz Coleman are hard to pick apart by ear, and act more like sonic roughcasting over the solid brickwork of the pounding rhythm section, but the lyrics are easily found online, and make for depressing reading. Any hopes of the song title being misleading are quickly dashed, as we quickly descend into accusations of eugenics and big pharma conspiracies – and our first sprinkling of Monsanto for good measure.
7: Neil Young – The Monsanto Years
While Killing Joke provide us with a light Monsanto garnish in a single song, the first of our trio of mid-table OK boomer-bait Neil Young waterboards us with an entire album. Of course, Young has already caught the attention of the Skeptics community with his ill-fated PonoPlayer project, so it’s not entirely surprising that he’s dipped his toes into a subject matter that is orders of magnitude more complicated and nuanced than you could possibly hope to boil down into a song. This may of course explain why he decided to devote an entire album to the subject, yet still fails to avoid tired anti-GMO tropes, or tease out the difference between the effects of poorly controlled capitalism from the scientific intricacies of modern-day large-scale agriculture. The title track plods along for more than seven and a half minutes, unfortunately allowing enough space to crowbar in God and the Bible to proceedings, further cementing its place in my Roundup. At best this should have been a (her)B-Side.
6: Van Morrison – As I Walked Out
Having worked hard to earn his reputation as one of the grumpiest men in music, and not so hard to achieve any scientific qualifications, it was almost inevitable that Van Morrison would enjoy the pandemic even less than most. Unfortunately, protest music packs less of a punch when delivered by jaded septuagenarian blues-rockers, particularly when they’re happy to eschew rhythm and melody to lazily deliver debunked conspiracy theories about COVID-19. This song formed part of a trio of ill-informed denialist fodder which proved to be his most worthless material since his admittedly hilarious contractual obligation album of 1968. Unsurprisingly, he also found time to collaborate with our number five artist on the same topic.
5: Eric Clapton – This Has Gotta Stop
Presumably spurred on by his collaboration with Van Morrison in 2020’s ‘Stand & Deliver’, where tarnishing the name of a classic Adam & the Ants song was the least of their crimes, Eric Clapton marked 2021 with an anti-lockdown song so bland he couldn’t even bring himself to utter a swearword on it. Propagating ‘BS’ seems to be his forte of late though, with a sad descent into full-blown vaccine conspiracist fueling a deeper dive into his past which unearthed some highly disturbing racism from the mid-70s. All this leaving his many fans no doubt wishing he’d live up to his nickname of Slowhand when it comes to penning new content.
4: Blink-182 – Aliens Exist
At the time of writing this article, founding member turned UFO ‘expert’ Tom DeLonge has just rejoined Blink-182 with plans for a new album and huge world tour. While this will no doubt keep him too busy for extracurricular extraterrestrial shenanigans, it’s highly likely that a reasonable chunk of his earnings will be funneled back towards his ‘To The Stars’ company, which has been responsible for much of the UFO news hitting the headlines in recent years. Strangely nestled amongst standard pop-punk themes of teen angst, relationships, and parties in 1999s multi-million selling ‘Enema of the State’ album, Aliens Exist is a catchy but stark reminder that Blink-182 lyrics should never be taken seriously.
3: Ian Brown – Little Seed Big Tree
Even though he’s from a different generation, former Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown is very much channeling Van Morrison / Eric Clapton energy with an ever-so-slightly more youthful vigour as he ups the ante from regular anti-lockdown sentiments to a host of related conspiratorial speculation. Masonic connections, microchips, 5G, psyops, and chemtrails all helping your way to victory on your pseudoscience bingo cards. Once again, the only consolation here is that Brown is well past his musical relevance sell-by date, as seen recently by his decision to turn his live performances into sub-par karaoke, so it’s really just another case of old man yells at cloud (albeit an allegedly geoengineered one).
2: B.o.B – Flatline
Possibly the worst thing about rapper B.o.B’s erroneous declaration that the earth is flat is that we all had to endure a series of increasingly smug rebuttals from Neil DeGrasse Tyson. His response to Tyson was of course in the form of a truly awful diss track in which he mixes in some tangential conspiracies, and a sizeable measure of antisemitism. He also launched a GoFundMe campaign to launch satellites in order to prove his case around the same time which was accused of being a scam. The GoFundMe is now no longer active, and the amount raised or what was done with it are now firmly hidden below the horizon. The song however, sadly lives on.
1: Insane Clown Posse – Miracles
Ok, so I did say no religion, but the overwhelming number of times this was mentioned when I broached the subject of a ‘worst of’ song list means it simply couldn’t be ignored. The success of Insane Clown Posse and loyalty of their hardcore fans (known as Juggalos) is certainly one of the great mysteries of our time. Any band that inspires such a sub-culture must be doing something right though, and clearly they’ve spoken to the disaffected in some way.
Considering the dark and violent nature of their early material, it came as a shock to the world when they revealed themselves to be Christians (although they have spoken out against the media who they claim overplayed the story).
Unfortunately, instead of a shared sense of awe and appreciation of the wonders of the universe, they were met with ridicule with the release of ‘Miracles’. The most charitable interpretation of the lyrics gets them a pass, however it does seem as if they’re simply listing a number of things with a perfectly natural explanation and passing them off as miracles. Their case really isn’t helped by the bludgeoning simplicity of the phrasing though, and the culmination of this is perhaps one of the most ridiculed lines in music “Fucking magnets, how do they work?”. Whatever their intentions, they’ve managed to score the top spot with an unforgettable anthem of willful ignorance.
This musical journey was considerably less enjoyable, but no less important than the last one. I’d like to thank those who contributed in various Facebook and Twitter threads to point me in the direction of these horrors.
As before, if you’ve any arguments come fight me on twitter, and if you want to add some more misdemeanours to my top ten then feel free to do so at this collaborative playlist on Spotify.
