Trivia / Korn

• Acclaimed Flop: Untouchables was their best-reviewed album until The Nothing, and even today is considered the band's creative peak, but it couldn't recoup its hefty price tag of $3 million (see Troubled Production), resulting in the label having to release an updated version a few weeks later and the band hastily recording Take a Look in The Mirror just to save a little face.
• Chart Displacement: Korn's only Top 40 hit, "Did My Time", isn't even close to being their signature. That would be "Freak on a Leash" (whose acoustic version peaked at #89).
• Creator Backlash: Several:
  • The entire band doesn't particularly like Take a Look in the Mirror and views it as a rush job that they threw together while on tour that tried too hard to be heavy. They don't hate it, but they have made it clear that it is their least favorite release. Head outright called it their weakest disc when he was originally in the band.
  • Davis has grown to dislike the third self-titled due to their experiences with Ross Robinson. While he still has a tremendous amount of respect for Robinson, his "warts and all" approach led to him doing things that outright pissed the band off that Davis felt weren't really necessary, namely making Davis' wife sit across from him while he tracked vocals for a song that was about her substance issues. It was that, coupled with various other things that sucked every last ounce of fun out of the recording process, that made Davis eventually come to view the album as a mistake. While Robinson's approach may have been the best thing for them in 1994, Davis concluded that by 2009, revisiting the past was not what they needed as a band. Ross himself has grown to regret the way he treated Davis in hindsight as well.
  • Davis also absolutely hated what the nu metal scene turned into once it got huge, as he saw it as a cesspool that had gone from being a safe haven for people like him who were victims of bullying, to being a playground for the bullies who tormented him when he was younger. He also hated how it had gone from being a creative genre with no rules to a derivative genre flooded with third-tier bands who were just chasing money and copying whatever was big at the moment, and by the time nu metal initially crashed and burned, he openly admitted that he wasn't even listening to anything new in the genre because he was so bored with it.
  • While "Here To Stay" from Untouchables is one of Korn's definitive songs, Munky personally isn't a fan of the follow-up singles from that album, "Thoughtless" and "Alone I Break". He considered "Thoughtless" more of an album track and wasn't strong enough to be a single, while "Alone I Break" was too different from their other songs to make an impact. It didn't help that "Alone" required him to use a 14-string guitar live, which with Korn's down-tuning make it difficult to keep the thing in tune.
  • In a retrospective review of Follow the Leader, Davis was not fond of "Cameltosis" (“What the fuck was I fucking thinking? I was 27. I was still really immature.”), while the majority of the band has expressed their hatred for "All in the Family" at various points, decrying it as a childish, idiotic, flagrantly homophobic novelty track that featured the exact kind of cringy bro attitude that they grew to hate in nu metal, and multiple parties have admitted that it was the product of the drunken and drug-addled whims that were actively beginning to tear the band apart.
• Creator Breakdown: Due to his heart-on-sleeve style of songwriting, a number of the band's albums are Jonathan Davis committing an emotional breakdown to tape: their self-titled debut is all about his experiences being bullied as a teenager and sexually abused as a child, while the deaths of his wife and mother inspired The Nothing. The songs "Starting Over" and "Hold On" in Untitled are also about him coping with his near-death experience from a blood disease.
• Development Hell: Korn Kovers was supposedly going to be released in 2005, but ultimately wasn't. As late as 2016, after the band went through some lineup changes, the band mentioned that they were still working on it. The Cover Album is supposed to include guest appearances from Xzibit, P. Exeter Blue I, and the now-late Chester Bennington. There is no word on how close to being finished it is.
• Enforced Method Acting: Reportedly, producer Ross Robinson went to great lengths to get Korn to "remember who they were" when recording their ninth album. This included measures ranging from aggressively taunting/berating the new drummer to make him play more passionately to bringing Jonathan Davis's wife and son into the studio and making them sit across from him while he recorded vocals. Even Davis's therapist got on Ross's case about this. While all involved parties were pleased with the results at the time, Davis went on record years later as having come to regret it; to paraphrase Davis, Robinson did Robinson stuff to the point where it sucked all the fun out of making the album.
• Fan Community Nicknames: In the early 2000s, fans were known as the "Korn Kamp" (named after a popular fansite).
• Hidden Depths: Head first got turned on to Christianity thanks to a pair of real estate partners he was investing with who happened to be Christians. Thanks to the investments paying off, Head was able to support himself just fine during his time away from the band.
• Hitless Hit Album: Korn has sold over 40 million albums worldwide, yet they barely scored a Top 40 hit in 2003 with a song that isn't close to being their signature. At the same time, most people have heard "Blind", "Freak On a Leash", "Got the Life", and "Falling Away from Me" despite their lack of official chart success.
• One-Hit Wonder: Technically, "Did My Time" was their only top 40 hit on the Hot 100, but they are one of the most well known rock bands of the 90's. Not to mention, "Did My Time" is certainly not their most famous song—that would probably be "Freak On a Leash."
• Promoted Fanboy: Corey Taylor stated in an interview that he was "blown away" by Korn in 1995 after seeing the music video for "Clown" on MTV and then seeing them live as an opening act for Megadeth. Since then, they've done shows together, became real-life friends, and over twenty years later, Taylor would be a guest feature in their song "A Different World".
• Rarely Performed Song: Outside of a handful of early concerts, the band refused to play "Daddy" live due to its deeply personal subject matter of Jonathan Davis' sexual abuse as a child. In 2015, Davis would relent and perform the song for a series of concerts commemorating the self-titled album's twentieth anniversary, since his abuser had died by then and thus he felt comfortable performing it.
• Referenced by...: In the TheOdd1sOut video "The Internet Changed Me", there's a poster featuring the cover art of Issues in the background at the 2:56 mark.
• Throw It In!: Occurs with the most frequency on their Ross Robinson-produced albums.
  • For example, on Korn there's the Studio Chatter noise before "Clown", and the Hidden Track after "Daddy" is a tape that Robinson found in an abandoned house, containing a Cluster F-Bomb-laden argument about installing an exhaust manifold on a Dodge Dart between a husband and wife.
  • Davis's Berserker Tears and primal screaming at the end of "Daddy" was completely real. The song is about how he was molested as a child, and the repressed memories came out in the recording, causing him to have a meltdown. The rest of the band can be heard trying awkwardly to keep up with him at the end, unaware that he wasn't just acting.
• Troubled Production: Untouchables was the first rock record recorded in 96 kHz digital sound, and producer Michael Beinhorn wanted to capture a sound unlike anything else before it. The band spent two months on capturing drum sounds alone (with forty-eight tracks!), and Beinhorn would outright cancel vocal sessions if he felt Jon's voice wasn't sounding right that particular day. He also insisted on re-recording all the guitars at the last minute after he found a better sound through the 96 kHz process, which the band had to admit did indeed sound better. The whole time this was going on, they were keeping their road crew on retainer, and they were apparently "partying harder than the band". Fieldy also admitted in his biography that his drug issues were getting bad enough the band was considering replacing him. Both he and Head would quit drugs after both their marriages fell apart. While the album was critically acclaimed and went platinum, the final price tag (both the recording and living expenses for their crew) of three million dollars ate into their profits somewhat, leading to the quick release of Take A Look in the Mirror the following year. Still, Jonathan Davis looks back on it as a positive experience.
  (On Beinhorn) "I wanted to fight this man. I wanted to punch him in his fucking face. But at the end, I just wanted to give him a big hug and say 'Thank you'."
• What Could Have Been:
  • Jonathan Davis was planning a video game called Pop Scars, a Fighting Game where you could play as not only Davis, but other rock star friends of his. Huge missed opportunity that we didn't get a video game where you could play as Marilyn Manson and beat the crap out of Fred Durst.
  • A Cover Album, entitled Korn Kovers, was in development in the late 2000s, but David Silveria's departure and other obstacles led to it getting shelved in 2010. While promoting The Serenity of Suffering, the band stated that they're planning to revisit the project sometime soon.
  • The band was originally supposed to duet with Metallica on their MTV Unplugged album, but Metallica was in the middle of production on Death Magnetic and Rick Rubin refused to let them leave. Korn was able to schedule The Cure as a last minute replacement.
  • The band was initially planning on writing and recording The Serenity of Suffering on 8-string guitars, but Davis reportedly shot the idea down because he thought it sounded too much like Meshuggah.
• Working Title: The original title of See You On the Other Side was set to be Souvenir of Sadness.
• Writer Revolt: The band had 10 songs ready to go for Take A Look in the Mirror, but both their label (Immortal/Epic) and management (The Firm) were pushing for a lead single in the vein of "Got The Life" or "Freak on a Leash". Korn resented having to dissect and analyze their own music for maximum radio play, so Jon started riffing on the lyric "Y'all want a single? SAY FUCK THAT! FUCK THAT! FUCK THAT!". The video for "Y'All Want A Single" would up the ante and take shots at music industry's business practices with an analysis on single formulas and some extra dirt on the industry strewn across the video. Take a Look in the Mirror would be Korn's final album for Immortal/Epic.

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