Line #2 InsultBackfire/Music


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2	* Music/DaftPunk got its name from a review of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo's previous band Darlin', which the reviewer called their two songs "a daft punky thrash".
3	* Roland Orzabal composed "Fish Out of Water" as TheDissTrack to Curt Smith for quitting Music/TearsForFears, and the former describes some of the lyrics as "[[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ed2le7nXsAE4QYP?format=jpg&name=medium pure vitriol]]." Instead of being offended, Smith was actually flattered that Orzabal hated him ''that'' much and expressed it publicly through music. Smith considers it [[https://twitter.com/curtsmith/status/1240739321247744000 his favourite Tears for Fears song that didn't have his input.]]
4	-->'''Smith''': [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ed2le7nXsAE4QYP?format=jpg&name=medium It's a compliment, in some ways.]]\
5	'''Orzabal''': Absolutely, it means I cared deeply for him. ''(laughs)'' That's one way of interpreting it, anyway...
6	* After Music/TheYardbirds broke up, [[Music/TheWho Keith Moon]] told [[Music/LedZeppelin Jimmy Page]] that his new band was 'going to go down like a lead balloon.' The [[Music/LedZeppelin name of the band]] alone illustrates how spectacularly ''that'' insult failed.
7	* Hip hop example: In the song "Second Round K.O.," Canibus included in his disses of Music/LLCoolJ, "99% of your fans wear high heels." The intention was to insinuate that LL was not "hard" enough to appeal to men, but the impact is considerably weakened by the fact that the name "LL Cool J" stands for "'''L'''adies '''L'''ove '''Cool''' '''J'''ames." LL Cool J responded in the song "The Ripper Strikes Back" with the following lyric: "Ask Canibus, he ain't understandin' this/'Cause ninety-nine percent of his fans don't exist."
8	* A musical at Six Flags called "Love at First Fright" featuring an evil sorceress who wanted to hero's brain for her creation. At one point all the protagonists chorus, "WITCH!!" This is followed by a long beat, after which she gleefully replies, "Guilty!"
9	* ''[[http://www.helloween.org/music/lyrics/savage.html Savage]]'' by Music/{{Helloween}}:
10	--> They just call us savage
11	--> That's what I like to be
12	* A lot of critics -- including John Lennon, his former writing partner -- were fond of sneering that all Paul [=McCartney=] ever wrote were 'silly love songs'. In response, he wrote 'SillyLoveSongs', which acts as a cheerful affirmation of this:
13	--> Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs
14	--> And what's wrong with that?
15	--> I'd like to know
16	--> 'Cos here I go
17	--> Again!
18	* The band {{Music/Incubus}} does this in a creative way. When the band first became popular, a female music critic dismissed them as another splash in the pan NuMetal group who won't last long. Instead of being offended, the band wrote a hit song called "Just a Phase" and used the critical words she used in the article as lyrics to the song.
19	* Music/InsaneClownPosse:
20	--> Call me a psycho schizo freak...
21	--> and I'll call you by your name!
22	* [[Music/GunsNRoses Axl Rose]] once contemptuously referred to the Music/EaglesOfDeathMetal (who had opened for them in one of their pre-''Chinese Democracy'' tours) as the "Pigeons of S*** Metal". The band loved it so much that Jesse Hughes ''[[http://www.feelnumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/jesse_hughes_eagles_of_death_metal_pigeons_guns_n_roses.jpg got the phrase on a tattoo]]''[[note]]He hated it at first, but came around with time[[/note]], and they released a limited-print CoverAlbum with ''that exact name'' as its title.
23	* Those who play "[[Music/BruceSpringsteen Born in the USA]]" as anything but the protest song it was meant to be.
24	** Not as much of a protest song, but Music/EltonJohn brings us "Made In England", which many mistake for a pro-English anthem. However, the lyrics betray the negative aspect of England that a gay man growing up in 50s England would have experienced.
25	* The song "Yankee Doodle" is thought to have originated from British soldiers in the Colonial Army to mock the colonials. "Doodle" is thought to have originally meant a fool or simpleton. The verse "stuck a feather in his cap and called it Macaroni" mocks a foppish fashion at the time involving feather caps and tall wigs. Essentially the song paints a typical American as a backwoods hick with delusions of sophistication. The insulting meaning was [[GetTheeToANunnery quickly forgotten]] and it has become perhaps the most classic patriotic song outside of the national anthem.
26	* The song "American Woman" from Canadian band Music/TheGuessWho is a criticism of American politics, but many people think it's about the singer's interest in an American woman. Others knew the song's meaning and agreed with it and liked it for calling out America's foreign policies (this was during TheSixties when UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar was taking place and many young people were very unhappy with their government, to put it mildly).
27	* Music/TomLehrer's [[FootballFightSong fight song]] parody "Fight Fiercely, Harvard" is regularly performed by the Harvard marching band at football games. (And Lehrer himself liked to quote negative reviews on his album covers.) He even called one of his albums "An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer".
28	* The DoesNotUnderstandSarcasm variant is used in several of the Smothers Brothers' well-known routines.
29	* Music/FrankZappa wrote 1982's "Valley Girl" to mock the titular girls, going so far as to let his teenage daughter, Moon Unit, improvise the spoken word parts to insult schoolmates she didn't like. The song was responsible bringing the name and the slang to the masses, who rather than being insulted or joining the mockery, embraced both for the next decade.
30	* In the track "The Wrong Nigga to Fuck Wit", Music/IceCube lets out the line: "And you can NewJackSwing on my nuts!" in a diss at the musical style. Two years later, New Jack Swing group Tony! Toni! Toné! would sample the line in the song "If I Had No Loot".
31	* A critic attending a Music/MinorThreat concert dismissed the group as "muscle heads", meaning something along the lines of {{Dumb Jock}}s and/or {{Jerk Jock}}s. Ian [=MacKaye=] decided to turn it into a compliment by taking the phrase literally - a "muscle head" as in someone who is strong-minded and keeps themselves mentally sharp. Thus, he can be heard ad-libbing the lyric "flex your head!" in Minor Threat's cover version of [[{{Music/Wire}} "12XU"]], and the phrase was also used for a compilation issued by Dischord Records (co-owned by Minor Threat members [=MacKaye=] and Jeff Nelson)
32	* According to Music/DavidLeeRoth, he was once insulted by someone claiming he only wrote songs about "partying, sex and cars". Which made Dave realize he'd never written a song about a car, so he went and created "Panama", one of the biggest hits Music/VanHalen ever produced.
33	* After watching a Music/GratefulDead concert in 1984, journalist Alice Kahn wrote a review in which she called Jerry Garcia the "hippie abominable snowman". Garcia liked it enough to ask her to interview him in person.
34	* Someone called Hayley Williams, from {{Music/Paramore}}, a "tiny hot topic bitch" who "bossed around" the "cucks" in the band on Twitter. In response, Hayley changed her Twitter bio to "tiny hot topic bitch" and even partnered with Hot Topic to sell "tiny hot topic bitch" t-shirts and hoodies, with the proceeds going to the preservation of historic/independent rock venue in Nashville (Paramore's hometown).
35	* Music/{{Eminem}} incorporates a lot of this into his style, with his VillainProtagonist persona and his background in BattleRapping.
36	** In Eminem's DissTrack "Killshot", an AnswerSong to Music/MachineGunKelly, he flips around several of Kells's insults:
37	*** Kells attempts to cast Eminem as an old man soaking up attention past his prime, refusing to allow young rappers like him to compete or to speak to the young. Eminem agrees that he's way more popular and successful than Kells, remains the poet of choice for the world's angry ten-year-olds, and that no other rappers can measure up to him.
38	*** Kells jeers at Eminem for not going outside -- "''last time you saw 8 Mile was on a treadmill!''"[[note]]punning off the actual 8 Mile Road in Detroit for which the movie was named[[/note]]. Eminem happily replies that he was "''watching ''Film/EightMile'' on my [=NordicTrack=]''", reminding Kells he's a movie star with a premium home gym.
39	** "Rhyme Or Reason" contains a passage sampling a pastor saying "hip-hop is the devil's music!". Slim responds "''does that mean it belongs to me? A white-honkey-Devil with two horns that don't honk, but every time I speak, you hear a beep?''"
40	** Lord Jamar of the hip-hop group Brand Nubian described Eminem a "guest in the house of hip-hop" due to his race. In "Fall", Eminem responded by agreeing that hip-hop is the house "you own", but that he's going to make himself at home in it.
41	* One of ''[[{{Music/MGMT}} MGMT]]'''s better-known studio albums, ''Little Dark Age'', was explicitly meant to be a response to the 2016 Election in America. The title track was seized upon and subsequently used by a wide variety of people who the original writers would probably strongly disagree with, as a backing track for an explosion of counter-cultural memes. The title track was subsequently more strongly associated with counter-culture than with the actual band that wrote the song.
42	* HeavyMetal as a genre was dismissed as "Satan worship music". Years later.. there is BlackMetal, which has bands that are proud to be actual Satanists.

Context InsultBackfire / Music