10 Greatest Diss Tracks In Rock Music History
When Rock Gets Salty.
When you're trying to write a song, inspiration can come from any place that you feel like. I mean, besides some bands' habits of writing all about the wonders of drug use, there are often real people that are behind some of the most classic tracks in history. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are all looked at in a positive light though.
Even though songwriting can be a positive experience, these are the kind of songs that are written more out of spite than anything else. From record label drama to the amount of saltiness in some of the jabs, these lyricists definitely had an axe to grind when they got to putting the pen to paper on these tracks. And it's not like some of the artists in question didn't catch wind of this either, with some of them even writing response songs back tearing their detractor through the mud.
Then again, is it really right to celebrate songs like this if they are openly trying to get you to hate on one side of the argument? Hell, as long as the music is good, we shouldn't really have anything to worry about. We will never run out of songs in rock that are about rising up against oppression. It never hurt anyone to get a little jaded every once in a while.
10. Starf***ers Inc. - Nine Inch Nails
Rock and roll is probably never going to run short on heartbreaker songs. We've had songs from the glory days of rock and roll about loving em and leaving em, some of them even called Heartbreaker no less. When you find yourself on the other end of the spectrum though, Trent Reznor showed us that things can turn ugly really quick.
During the period between working on the Downward Spiral and The Fragile, Reznor was actually in a short term relationship with Courtney Love, which ended pretty badly if the lyrics here are any indication. In this case, Trent isn't just mad that it's over...he's actively trying to drag Courtney's name through the mud. Though there were millions of people getting ready to call love the Yoko Ono of her generation, hearing Trent talk about her just trying to fake her way to the top is a little more harsh than your average breakup song.
And as if you needed it spelled out for you, just have to look at the music video for the song to get the full picture, which features an actress who's very clearly supposed to be Love playing up being as trashy as possible. Then again, this is one of the first (and certainly not the last) times Courtney Love has managed to have a harsh effect on the '90s rock scene.