History TakeThat / Music

--> Yo que nunca compartí tu pose [[Music/TheRollingStones Stone]][[note]]I, who never shared your Stone pose[[/note]]

--> ''"You see, I'm not a man. I am the king of illusion. Really, may I be forgiven. I am the king, the king of fools. It is I, the master of fire, the game master, the world's master and see what I've done with it! A frozen Earth, a scorched Earth, men's Earth than men have forsaken! I am a man backed into a corner, like a mistake of nature. On this Earth, with no reason, I'm running in circles, running in circles. I am a man, fully aware of the horror of my condition. For my sentence, my punishment, I'm running in circles, running in circles..."''

* Zazie's song ''"Tout le monde"'' (''"Everyone"'') is about people's names, from all origins. The song itself is rather simple, since the lyrics are mainly a list of names, with the title of the song as the chorus (to be accurate, the chorus is ''"Tout le monde il est beau"'', which can be roughly translated as ''"Everyone is beautiful"''). The catch? One of the line of the song is ''"Quitte à faire de la peine à Jean-Marie"'' (''"Even if it saddens Jean-Marie"''). Jean-Marie Le Pen is a french right-wing and nationalist politician well-known for his racism. Thus, the song spreads a message of tolerance and takes a jab at Jean-Marie and (his) racism. The song ends with the following lyrics: ''"Tout le monde il est grand - Assez grand pour tout le monde"'' (''"The world is big - big enough for everyone"'').

* Music/WeirdAlYankovic mostly avoids TakeThat in his parodies, but there are a few exceptions. One of the reasons Al's songs are as good as they are is that indeed, most of the time they're not even a TakeThat; they tend to be sedtatements in their own right. Which is far, far more than most parodies we hear on the radio can say for themselves. Of course, Yankovic asks permission of the artists before he does parodies of their work, and his Take Thats are rather gentle compared to most of these examples.

* Music/WeirdAlYankovic mostly avoids TakeThat in his parodies, but there are a few exceptions. One of the reasons Al's songs are as good as they are is that indeed, most of the time they're not even a TakeThat; they tend to be statements in their own right. Which is far, far more than most parodies we hear on the radio can say for themselves. Of course, Yankovic asks permission of the artists before he does parodies of their work, and his Take Thats are rather gentle compared to most of these examples.

** ''Couch Potato'' is Al's rant against mediocre and poor tv shows to the tune of Eminem's ''Lose Yourself''. Shows lambasted include ''Series/TheKingOfQueens'' (which JumpedTheShark in the first minute) and [[Series/EverybodyLovesRaymond Everybody Tolerates Raymond]].

--> se intentaba con vos lavarnos cerebros[[note]]they tried with you ti brainwash us[[/note]]
--> Fuiste azota del jazz-rock[[note]]You were supporter of jazz-rock[[/note]]

--> Yo que nunca compartí tu pose Stone[[note]]I, who never shared your Stone pose[[/note]]

** "Swish Swish" (featuring Music/NickiMinaj) is widely seen as this towards Music/TaylorSwift's "Bad Blood", which was aimed towards Perry. So much that Swift's friend Ruby Rose (yes, the same Ruby Rose who appeared in ''Series/OrangeIsTheNewBlack'') was very pissed off.

** "And Your Bird Can Sing" from ''Music/{{Revolver|Beatles Album}}'' is frequently interpreted as a swipe at Music/TheRollingStones' Music/MickJagger, whose "bird" (girlfriend) at the time was singer Music/MarianneFaithfull.

* In a business-related TakeThat, Music/TheRollingStones once met a contractual obligation to a former record company by delivering an unreleasable song: "Cocksucker Blues".

* After Bianca Jagger urged her husband Mick of Music/TheRollingStones to move beyond music to more notable causes, such as political ones, and many journalists started criticising the Stones for being too shallow and simplistic, Jagger wrote ''It's Only Rock 'n' Roll'', in which he showed that the music he made was enough for him.

* Music/{{WASP}} dedicated their notoriously raunchy song "Harder Faster" to the [[MoralGuardians PMRC]], who declared them to be "sexual perverts".

* Music/{{Heart}}'s track "Barracuda" was a scathing dig at a rapacious former music company who, to boost sales with a bit of controversy, performed a BlackOp by spreading potentially libellous, damaging, and above all salacious rumours, that Ann and Nancy Wilson were not only gay, their particular form of lesbian preference involved getting off with each other. With people proving ready to believe this and adding imaginative bits of their own as the rumour spread, the humiliated singing sisters wrote and delivered the track as a scathing comeback on Mushroom Records's executives and marketeers who had originated the rumours in a cynical bid to sell more product.

** "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" from the following album, ''Music/{{Animals}}'', discusses three "pigs" which disgusted Music/RogerWaters. The third is explicit ("Hey you, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Whitehouse Whitehouse]]!"), the other two are rumoured to be a CorruptCorporateExecutive in general and UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher.

* {{Music/NOFX}}'s "Kill Rock Stars" is one towards [[Music/BikiniKill Kathleen Hanna]], painting her as a StrawFeminist, pointing out the irony that someone signed to a label called Kill Rock Stars could be described as a rock star, and mocking an incident in which Hanna was physically attacked by Music/CourtneyLove ("I wish I could have seen Courtney / demonstrate some real misogyny"). The last verse of "Deceptacon" by Hanna's post-Bikini Kill group Le Tigre is often seen as a response, alluding to the NOFX song "Linoleum":
-->You bought a new van
-->The first year of your band
-->You're cool and
-->I hardly want to say
-->"Not" because I'm so bored
-->That I'd be entertained even by a stupid fucking
-->Linoleum floor, linoleum floor,
-->Your lyrics are dumb like a linoleum floor
-->I'll walk on it
-->I'll walk all over you
** Decades later, NOFX would release "Linewleum", a new version of "Linoleum" with lyrics about deciding to retire "Linoleum" itself from live performances - as a backhanded compliment, the lyrics mention how "it's in the best Le Tigre song".

* Music/{{Nightwish}}[='=]s "Master Passion Greed" is a shot at the supposed greed of Music/TarjaTurunen's husband, Marco Cabuli, and his contribution to the process that led to Tarja's firing. "Bye Bye Beautiful" from the same album is a shot at Tarja herself, accusing her of not paying attention to the rest of the band.

* The song ''Jesus He Knows Me'' by Music/{{Genesis}}, is, essentially, one five-and-a-half-minutes long TakeThat against money-grubbing television evangelists.

* Surgical Meth Machine's "Unlistenable", where the lyrics are mainly Al Jourgensen doing a spoken word rant about the state of rock music today. Halfway through the song, Sam D'Ambruoso, the other half of the duo, starts asking him about specific bands; Music/IronMaiden, Music/LambOfGod, and {{Music/Nickelback}}, among others, all receive take thats. There are a couple hints that it's not meant to be taken all that seriously: first [[TakeThatMe Al insults his own band]], {{Music/Ministry}}, then the very last line is "{{Music/Devo}}?!? They fuckin' [[BaitAndSwitchComment rule!"]], which segues into the next track, a CoverVersion of Devo's "Gates Of Steel".

* Ray "Benzino" Scott's reign as editor-in-chief of ''The Source'', a popular hip-hop magazine, included many {{Take That}}s at Eminem and anyone even remotely associated with him. It all came to a head in early 2004 when one issue of the magazine included a sampler CD with old songs where Em made gratuitous use of the N-word, in an effort to turn public opinion against Em and toward Benzino as a "savior of hip-hop music". Didn't work out so well for him, as Benzino's rap career never took off, despite him pushing several of his [=CDs=] in the magazine. That, coupled with mismanaged money, controversial "5-mic" reviews for artists associated with him, and a series of tirades against other [=DJs=] led to his firing and subsequent banishment from the magazine. A TakeThat was later directed at ''him'', as the first issue of ''The Source'' under new editor-in-chief Jeremy Miller proudly declared itself "100% Benzino Free!"

** "Hooker with a Penis" from their album ''[=Æ=]nima'' is a brutally honest TakeThat toward hypocritical posers who think the band sold out to TheMan, pointing fingers at them for having grown commercially and taking a step further into capitalism with release of their album ''Undertow.'' Maynard James Keenan says to the kid that he's just a [[IncrediblyLamePun Tool]] for buying the very album the band put effort in to release it to an audience; if he's buying the album, then he's submitting to the very capitalism he's attempting to defect. This is one of the more explicit Tool songs in existence, explaining that "[[TakeThatAudience ...If I'm the man, then you're the man, and he's the man, as well, so you can point that fucking finger up your ass]]."

[[quoteright:206:[[ComicBook/SergioAragonesDestroysDC https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/take_that_michael_bolton_3.png]]]]

* There was a playful back-and-forth variant between Music/SteelyDan and Music/TheEagles. In the former's "Everything You Did," one lyric sarcastically states, "Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening". The latter's "Hotel California" returned the favor with the lyric "They stab it with their ''steely'' knives, but they just can't kill the beast".

** Mojo Nixon also recorded a song with the subtle title "[[Music/TheEagles Don Henley]] Must Die" ("...Don't let him get back together/With Glenn Frey!")

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* HardcorePunk group Poison Idea released an EP titled ''[[Music/MinorThreat Ian MacKaye]]'', where [[ContemptibleCover the cover image was a black and white photo of a man spreading his butt cheeks]] (albeit censored with black bars) - the idea being of course to depict [=MacKaye=] as a literal "asshole".

* In 1998, electronic music project Cex released its debut album, ''Cells''. Nine years later, Blaqk Audio, a side project of Davey Havok and Jade Puget of {{Music/AFI}} called their first album ''[=CexCells=]'' (later claiming to have never heard of the Cex album). Later in 2007, Cex released the EP ''Exotical Privates'', which had a ContemptibleCover consisting of the letters "AFI" tattooed on a scrotum.

** Eminem recorded "I Remember", which was a take that at former Music/HouseOfPain member Everlast for being mostly a singer on his "Whitey Ford Sings the Blues" album instead of the rapper from his House of Pain (and pre-House of Pain; he was a solo artist before he joined) days. This prompted Everlast to do a diss single about Eminem. Furthermore, there was one actually one diss single aimed at Eminem (I forget who the artists were) that even featured his own mother. It was later mentioned in his song "Cleaning Out the Closet".

** Eminem's album ''Encore'' has the song "Just Lose It", arguably a take that against ''himself''. True to form it includes an IncrediblyLamePun about Music/MichaelJackson, suitably {{Lampshaded}} in the very next line.

* Music/{{Cage}} accused Eminem of stealing his style, and Cage's debut featured numerous Take Thats directed at Em, including "Used to pistol-whip until Shady made it look pussy". Cage later said that his accusations didn't make any sense, considering that the two rappers started out at about the same time, and developed their styles separately in different rap scenes (New York and Detroit, respectably).

* Music/MyChemicalRomance frontrunner Gerard Way on the song "Vampire Money" in their album ''Music/DangerDaysTheTrueLivesOfTheFabulousKilljoys'', written in response to them rejecting an offer to write a song for the ''Literature/Twilight'' films:

* The music video for Ted Leo & The Pharmacist's "Bottled In Cork" music video mocks Music/GreenDay's ''Music/AmericanIdiot'' Broadway musical, set up with a pre-video skit in which a band meeting is interrupted by a man who convinces them to launch a musical based on their album that "cheapens what you do, embarrasses everyone involved", but will make them all rich. It can also be seen as just mocking rock musicals / {{Jukebox Musical}}s in general, but the set design, choreography, and costuming of the musical-within-a-music-video all look like a deliberately chintzy parody of ''American Idiot''. [[LyricsVideoMismatch The actual lyrics have absolutely nothing to do with Green Day or rock musicals, however]].

* After Music/JayZ was slated to headline the Glastonbury music festival, Music/{{Oasis}}' Noel Gallagher complained that "Glastonbury has a tradition of guitar music... I'm not having hip hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong." In response, Jay-Z opened his set by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9eT0LJ9vE4 walking onstage strumming a guitar and singing a hilariously off-key rendition of "Wonderwall" before launching into "99 Problems".]] Making this particular Take That especially ironic is the fact that the crowd seized on this as a big sing-along moment, turning a sly, ambiguously hostile retort against Gallagher into [[SugarWiki/AndTheFandomRejoiced a huge crowd-pleasing moment]]. Doubly ironic is that he managed to turn one of the original lyrics into a sarcastic swipe at Noel.

* After Music/JayZ was slated to headline the Glastonbury music festival, Music/{{Oasis}}' Noel Gallagher complained that "Glastonbury has a tradition of guitar music... I'm not having hip hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong." In response, Jay-Z opened his set by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9eT0LJ9vE4 walking onstage strumming a guitar and singing a hilariously off-key rendition of "Wonderwall" before launching into "99 Problems".]] Making this particular Take That especially ironic is the fact that the crowd seized on this as a big sing-along moment, turning a sly, ambiguously hostile retort against Gallagher into [[AndTheFandomRejoiced a huge crowd-pleasing moment]]. Doubly ironic is that he managed to turn one of the original lyrics into a sarcastic swipe at Noel.

* After Music/JayZ was slated to headline the Glastonbury music festival, Music/{{Oasis}}' Noel Gallagher complained that "Glastonbury has a tradition of guitar music... I'm not having hip hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong." In response, Jay-Z opened his set by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9eT0LJ9vE4 walking onstage strumming a guitar and singing a hilariously off-key rendition of "Wonderwall" before launching into "99 Problems".]] Making this particular Take That especially ironic is the fact that the crowd seized on this as a big sing-along moment, turning a sly, ambiguously hostile retort against Gallagher into [[WinTheCrowd a huge crowd-pleasing moment]]. Doubly ironic is that he managed to turn one of the original lyrics into a sarcastic swipe at Noel.