10 Perfect Songs From Terrible Bands

In the wake of Kurt Cobain's death, the stench of post grunge lasted a lot longer than most people wanted to. The old guard of the genre may have had great bands like Pearl Jam tapping into something real, but the next generation had to settle for acts like Candlebox who just couldn't seem to capture the magic in the same way. Once you get enough sales though, the label will want anyone who can yarl on their roster, and the world was given the horrors of Wes Scantlin.

Granted, Come Clean seemed designed to piss off a portion of the rock fanbase, with Wes pulling heavily from the post grunge scene and actually getting the seal of approval from Fred Durst before he even got signed. Before we witnessed songs like She Hates Me climb the charts and the most wretched cover of Nirvana's About A Girl ever put to tape, Control is the best foot forward that the band could have hoped for, having a meaty detuned guitar riff to tie everything together and Wes actually sounding angry over everything else, sounding like he's seething behind the microphone.

As much as a song like Blurry may have had better writing than a song like this, this feels more indicative of what Puddle of Mudd sounded like before they got signed, standing somewhere between the dirty sounds of grunge and adding a little bit of a metal edge into things. For all of the auditory mud that we've had to sit through, it's nice to take a look at the original clean slate when the band actually sounded like they were trying.