The Stinkers

Our Three Worst Songs

Sometimes on social media we will say that some song of ours is terrible, and then some well-meaning person will swoop in and declare that they love it, that their child was born to it, that it was their first dance at their wedding, or whatever. Maybe they think we are sad and looking for reassurance. We are not. We do actually have some terrible songs. You, well-meaning persons, are simply wrong about the songs, you should not have subjected your new child or your spouse to them, and the world would be a much better place if the songs simply disappeared into a black hole and were erased from collective memory. We award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

So here are our three worst songs, in no particular order, because there is no sensible order in which you can place three steaming turds.

1. “Sons of Murphy”.
   

   This one is bad for so many reasons. In 2007 I was still slightly under the sway of that faux-Irish, fiddly-dee, “Oi loikes it at the poob” nonsense, and I somehow conceived this one. There is so much that is bad about it. The opening riff is stolen directly from Circle J’s great song “I’ll See You All In Hell”, and the rest of the song is dangerously close to a ripoff as well.
   
   But that’s just the first thing that’s wrong with it. The lyrics are truly terrible:
   
   When the day is tired and long
   It’s down to the pub where you belong
   We know you’re weary, tired and gone
   We are the sons of Murphy
   
   There’s a lot more of this. Jesus tap-dancing Christ. Rhyming “long” and “belong”? Then following that up with “Gone”? Why is the person “gone”? Where have they gone? What does that mean? If they're gone, then why are they here, in the stupid pub?
   
   And what is this concept, anyway? You’re tired because you had to work? WOW WHAT A STORY! So come and meet these three Irish-American assholes with an abusive alcoholic dad who are going to annoy everyone else by talking too loudly in the pub before they probably start rambling about QAnon after four points o’ guinnnisssh? Why is that a good idea? Why not just go home and pour yourself a nice bath?
   
   And the cherry on top of this turd? One of the verses isn’t even finished and I just go “arssha burrrsha something something” instead of singing actual words. Oh my god. Grade: F-. See me after class.

   

   
   

2. “Defiants”:
   
   Ok, look, good hardcore music is amazing. Like Minor Threat were so transcendently good that in listening to them I am sent into this trance filled with raw energy and power. So I thought, hey, we’re making a weird EP for no reason, let’s try to write a hardcore song for it.
   
   Right swell idea, bucko, except that you’re forgetting one thing, which is that 99% of hardcore is nowhere near as good as the good stuff, it lacks the innovative rhythm and lyrical genius of Minor Threat, it’s just some fella shouting over some angry chords. Making good hardcore is hard. Making mediocre hardcore (“Medio-Core”) is shockingly easy. And that’s what we did. We let the loud chords and the shouting convince us that we had a good song. We didn’t.
   
   This song features an unbelievably stupid repeating line that is hard to listen to: “Wild Humans on the Run”. This is actually an inside joke that is funny if you were in the van with us in England in 2009, but that is a vanishingly small group of people. When I hear it now all I hear is what it sounds like to everyone else, which is: silly nonsense.
   
   The repeating chorus line “We’re gonna break this city down” is so faux-punk pretentious hardcore trying-to-be-“smash it up” that it drives me crazy. The song’s only redeeming quality is that Chi Pig from SNFU shows up in the line:
   
   Chi is wasted
   
   We should have just written a four-second song called “Chi is Wasted”, sung that line once and peaced the heck out. Instead we followed that up with:
   
   Can you taste it?
   
   Fucking WHAT? Taste what? What are we tasting?? What is “it”? Chi? Fuck this song. Grade: J-, reported to the dean for possible expulsion.

   

3. “Leonard Cohen”
   
   Ok, this is back again to 2007, when we basically didn’t care about anything, certainly not the average quality of songs on an album. But that’s no excuse for this one. First off, it’s mostly ska. That’s not good. Again, a small amount of ska and ska-punk is phenomenal; The Specials and Op Ivy are obviously heroes, right? Right. But as with the previous song… if you’re not very good at writing ska you should probably not do it.
   
   Then there’s the title. We literally had no name for this song after recording.

   [Regular BAND]: Let’s go away and think about this for a bit so we can brainstorm a decent title.
   

   [The DREADNOUGHTS]: Ha ha, we’ve had 17 Steinlagers in the studio, and someone has suggested naming the song after the drummer’s cat. Ha ha. It is funny because we are drunk.

   And now I have to answer seven emails a year asking: “I know there must be a Cohen reference in here; I’m such a huge Leonard fan, can you tell me what the reference is to? Is it to Tower of Song?” No. No, it isn’t, the title is just what happens when you actually listen to that stupid little idiot that lives inside of you who suddenly becomes seventeen feet tall when you’re blitzed.
   
   This song has a decent little riff, if a little formulaic, and maybe the best bit is the bridge where I sing stuff like “Your life is empty and black”. But I ripped that progression off of a pop song my dad wrote in the 80s. That’s why it’s good. Everything else about the song is stupid. It appears to be about someone I didn’t like. No idea who that was. And then there’s that shit sandwich chorus:
   
   Gotta find a reason, gotta find a way
   Coming from the dockside, begging me to stray
   Real Irish whiskey's coming out to play
   [inaudible mumbling] and so I choose, and it's not you!
   
   AAAAAAAARGH. WHY???? WHY????? Again, what is this fucking concept…? “I don’t like you so I’m going to drink Bushmills with someone who hangs out by the pier?” How relatable!
   
   Grade: Z- - - - - times infinity, I sentence you to be eaten alive by crabs.
   

And there they are folks, our three worst songs! If you like any of them, that's fine, but just understand that your liking them is wrong.