10 Classic Songs About How The Music Industry Sucks

Record labels are usually about serving the bottom line. Even if you have something that you want to express, the suits could just as easily reject it and ask you to think of something that has some more hit potential. When you can’t think of anything, Alice in Chains found a cure…just write about not being able to think of anything.

During the recording of their self-titled record, Alice were told that they needed to fill out the track list with one more song, only to come up short of any good material to work with. Instead of writing a stereotypical Alice song, Nothin Song is practically a joke recording talking about how the band can’t think of anything, saying that the pressure sticks to you like peanut butter on your brain. Even though Alice still has that dark undercurrent to their music, you can hear them being tongue in cheek here, practically grinning through their teeth after being told to get back into the studio for what seems like the hundredth time for a song that they can’t be asked to care about.

While this might have been a contractual thing, it ended up being one of the final Alice songs with Layne Staley, as the band went on hiatus and would resurface as a new band after Staley’s passing in 2002. The self-titled record has a lot of darkness surrounding it, but it’s nice to hear that they were having fun toying with their bosses on this tune.