Important Note: To ensure that the show is judged with a clear mind and the hatred isn't just a knee-jerk reaction, as well as to allow opinions to properly form, examples should not be added until at least one month has passed. This includes "sneaking" the entries onto the pages ahead of time by adding them and then just commenting them out.
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National Anthems
- "The Star-Spangled Banner" is widely considered one of the most difficult national anthems to sing. There are two reasons why: the song's tune was adapted from that of a drinking song
, and the lyrics came from a poem that wasn't meant to be sung. It's often a miracle when the singer doesn't find a way to mangle it, and it's perhaps notable that one of the most famous covers of it, Jimi Hendrix's version, omits the lyrics altogether. However, there are some that have utterly failed in their performances of it:- The National Anthem performance by Carl Lewis. This one got the crowd booing, something that even other horrendous renditions of the anthem don't tend to elicit. It's worth noting that he seemed fully aware of his sub-par performance however, saying "Uh oh!" after his voice cracked at one point and briefly interrupting with "I'll make up for it now!" towards the end, seeming to win back a few members of the crowd by belting out the last note successfully. The whole ordeal infamously sent Charley Steiner into a severe laughing fit when it was discussed on Sports Center (he even snarked that this version was written by "Francis Scott Off-Key").
- Roseanne Barr at a San Diego Padres game in 1990. Most thought she was trolling the audience, going by her spitting at the end and the fact that she seemed to be laughing her way through it. By the end, the booing drowns her out. The explanation that came later was that as she was on a pitcher's mound at a ball park, she was pretending to be a stereotypically crass old-fashioned baseball player complete with no nonathletic abilities and a penchant for chewing tobacco (thus the spit at the end). If it was meant as comedy, it didn't work thanks to Roseanne being tone deaf to the importance of the anthem as a ritual and to the veneration of baseball by fans separate from the shortcomings of players. (Why anyone booked Roseanne to sing, and whether they could have possibly expected a different result, is perhaps the real question.)
- Christina Aguilera has proven, twice, that the US National Anthem just isn't her bag:
- The first during the 2004 NBA All-Star Game had quite a disrespectful version to a large crowd which had, at its forefront, multiple visibly-displeased Army officials. She used the song as an excuse to show off. This is made worse by her slurred speech and her turning the American National Anthem into a pop R&B tune. Watch at your own risk, especially if you're American.
- She did more of the same during Super Bowl XLV. This time, she changed the melody to show off her pipes and botched some of the lyrics. It gets worse; through the whole thing, she sounded either gratingly off-key or borderline asthmatic. Here, have a listen.
- The first during the 2004 NBA All-Star Game had quite a disrespectful version to a large crowd which had, at its forefront, multiple visibly-displeased Army officials. She used the song as an excuse to show off. This is made worse by her slurred speech and her turning the American National Anthem into a pop R&B tune. Watch at your own risk
- John Michael Montgomery's 2005 performance at the Golden Corral 500 NASCAR race on March 20, 2005. He was off-key, stumbled over the words (he can even be seen looking at the words on the back of his security pass), and froze during an Air Force flyover at the last stanza. He also spent most of the performance staggering and swaying, and stumbled off the stage at the end, causing many to assume that he was drunk. The performance was so poorly received that the following week, Montgomery posted an apology on his website, stating that he was suffering from acoustic neuroma, a non-cancerous tumor on the nerve between his right ear and brain which affected his hearing and balance.
- None of any of these can hold a candle to Scott Stapp's insulting performance from 2006. Sorry, Scott, but Yarling was probably not the right direction.
- Before a nationally televised boxing match, R. Kelly was tasked with performing “The Star Spangled Banner”, and failed horribly. Not only did he butcher the anthem by turning it into an R&B tune, but he also made it even worse by trying to get the audience to clap their hands to the song. Needless to say, Kelly’s rendition did not win over many Americans.
- This one might not be a celebrity, but it's just as bad. At a televised police memorial service in Chattanooga, an officer named Ezra Harris tries to sing the Anthem and fails horribly. Not only does he bungle many of the lyrics, but he also fails to get the crucial rhythm of the third stanza correct.
- Alexis Normand's performance at the 2013 Memorial Cup goes beyond terrible. She forgot the anthem's lyrics after the third line, after which she just started making up noises that sound like words. Her bungling of the lyrics got so embarrassing that the Canadian crowd had to step in and finish the song for her. This is made even worse given that the side from Portland, Oregon that had over ten Americans in their lineup. Normand eventually apologized on Twitter, saying that she wished she spent more time learning the lyrics.
- Madison Rising, "America's Most Patriotic Rock Band". It has a Naval vet wrapping himself in an American flag, and the song arranged In the Style of Creed. They've performed it elsewhere, but its most infamous performance was at the NASCAR Nationwide Series' DRIVE4COPD 300 at Daytona in 2014; you could see the drivers had "what the hell am I listening to?" looks written on their faces.
- Fergie performed the anthem at the 2018 NBA All-Star Game, and it has to be heard to be believed. The most common description was that she sounded like a boozy lounge singer trying to show off her range, while many joked that it was part of a plot to get even the most diehard patriots to take the knee in protest. Many players were visibly shown trying their hardest not to laugh, like Draymond Green, and the performance was met with almost immediate infamy; Fergie herself later apologized for it.
- Chaka Khan's performance at the 2020 NBA All-Star Game spoiled the magic of the pre-game tributes for both the important people the league lost in January* and the city of Chicago with a bizarre rendition of the American National Anthem. She didn't even stay in tune for the anthem from the get-go. Her vocal inflections, be they mispronunciations or a failed attempt at showing off, only contributed to the mess. The players were all visibly having trouble keeping a straight face, and almost immediately afterwards the public unfavorably compared it to Fergie's attempt.
- Sailor Sabol's performance at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference is unspeakably off-key and atonal. She also changes keys throughout the song for some reason, as well as holding on the word "free" for a few seconds. The description of the video (which calls it an "unusual a cappella arrangement") says it all, and as with Chaka Kahn's performance, this was also compared to Fergie's attempt.
- The National Anthem performance by Carl Lewis.
- Canada's national anthem "O Canada", on the other hand, may be easier to sing (especially while sober), but even that doesn't stop some singers from gloriously fucking it up.
- When the Canadian Football League launched a brief, ill-fated expansion into the US in the mid-'90s, one of the "highlights" was when Dennis K. C. Parks, a Las Vegas lounge singer, was brought on at the last minute to perform "O Canada" to open a game between the Las Vegas Posse and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Having never heard the song performed live before, he sang it to the tune of "O Christmas Tree" and botched the lyrics, leading the owner of the Posse to publicly apologize to all Canadians and Vice President Al Gore (who was meeting with Prime Minister Jean Chretien at the time) to mention the incident during a speech. Parks did eventually redeem himself when he was invited to perform the anthem at a Hamilton Tiger-Cats game, where, having actually heard the song sung properly this time, he managed to nail it.
- In July 2017, Canadian singer Jocelyn Alice, known for her 2015 single "Jackpot", sang "O Canada" before the MLB All-Star Game in Miami, only for her rendition to be torn to shreds mid-performance. In addition to sounding strained, asthmatic and horribly off-key, Alice giggled during the line "God keep our land". The audience can be heard reacting and the players clearly look confused, and it's not hard to see why. The performance was lambasted on social media, and Alice has kept quiet during the blowback for obvious reasons.
- In 1992, Canadian rocker Tom Cochrane (famous for the hit song "Life is a Highway") was visibly nervous when performing "O Canada" at the 1992 World Series game. He stumbled over the line "From far and wide, O Canada, we stand on guard for thee", with it coming out "O Canada, we stand on guard...we stand on guard for thee..." Couple that with the Marine Corps accidentally flying the flag upside down and you have the makings of a memorable bad night.
- At the MLB All-Star Game in 2016, The Tenors performed the anthem themselves, with Remigio Pereira changing the line "With glowing hearts, we see thee rise, the true north strong and free" to "We're all brothers and sisters, all lives matter to the brave." The audience can be heard jeering in said clip, and the Tenors themselves have priceless reactions. Pereira was fired following this incident. He since has attempted damage control by claiming the changes were due to him disliking the French version of the line, which translates to "For your arm knows how to wield the sword, your arm knows how to carry the cross", and wanting to replace the violent lyrics with a message of peace and unity. That it wasn't the French version of the song he was singing went completely unexplained.
- When the Canadian Football League launched a brief, ill-fated expansion into the US in the mid-'90s, one of the "highlights" was when Dennis K. C. Parks, a Las Vegas lounge singer, was brought on at the last minute to perform "O Canada"
- Julio Preciado's performance of the Mexican National Anthem in the 2009 Caribbean Series baseball tournament. He sang the whole thing while being (apparently) drunk, since he forgot the lyrics of the anthem in the middle of the whole performance, mixed the rhythm with "The Star-Spangled Banner" at some point, and made up a few lines that are not in the anthem. Needless to say, people got really mad at him to the point that they booed him off the field, and he also earned himself a fine from the Mexican government for the perceived mockery on his performance.
Concert Tours
- Black Sabbath's tour in support of Seventh Star got off to a very bad start due to the performance given by then-lead singer Glenn Hughes. Contrary to popular belief, Glenn's awful vocals were not due to his substance abuse problems (lead guitarist Tony Iommi and the band's manager had been keeping a close watch on him to make sure he didn't do any cocaine), but because he'd suffered a broken nose after an altercation with the production manager. This left him croaking all of his vocals in the recordings that exist and he was replaced with Ray Gillen for the rest of the tour and ultimately fired from the band.
- On May 3, 1968, The Beach Boys began a concert tour in support of their album Friends. After a southern U.S. tour in April flopped due to the aftermath of the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, the Beach Boys decided to organize shows that would feature both a performance by the band and a half-hour lecture by Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on Transcendental Meditation. Yogi had gained celebrity status and a growing following thanks to a public endorsement by The Beatles, and his teachings also influenced several songs on the Friends album. But that's where the good vibrations ended...
- The first stop at the Washington Coliseum was plagued by poor acoustics, out-of-tune vocals, backup musicians who didn't have enough practice, and the crowd of 1,500 heckling the Maharishi's half of the show. The next day, a show at Queens' Singer Bowl was cancelled at the last minute after only selling 800 tickets out of 16,000 seats, and at the Iona College show, Mike Love had to walk up on stage to call out the audience's poor reception of the Maharishi (as if the downtime between the two segments hadn't sapped away their enthusiasm first). At the Spectrum in Philadelphia later that day, many audience members got the hint and started leaving after the Beach Boys were done.
- In terms of tickets sold versus venue size, a stop at Hartford's Bushnell Memorial Hall on the 5th was the most successful, but the next concert in Providence later that day, as well as the 24 remaining shows, were unexpectedly cancelled. The venue cited the Maharishi's commitment to a documentary being produced by Four Star Television, but the poor ticket sales didn't help matters much either: the band's fanbase wasn't that interested in seeing them as an opening act for a guru. The band's manager Nick Grillo cited the poor ticket sales, as well as the Maharishi's television deal and health, as factors. The tour, and the underwhelming commercial response to Friends, was seen as another example of the band's waning popularity in the late 1960s.
- The 1837-1838 Winter season at La Scala in Milan. There's a reason even Gioachino Rossini, despite being in town at the time, skipped out on two performances (as per his correspondences with Carlo Severini). Nearly everything staged between November and February was panned, and hard. Carlo Conti's opera Gli aragonesi in Napoli was performed on January the 9th, to such an extremely unhappy audience that all further performances were canceled. Saviero Mercadante's I briganti (in its Italian premiere) and Luigi Ricci's Il Nuovo Figaro (staged as Le Nozze di Figaro), fared only slightly better—the former was cancelled after four performances. Not even the ballets, such as Il castello di Lochleven by Giovanni Galzerani, got a warm reception, and during Ettore Fieramosca by Salvatore Taglioni, a dancer fell from the stage and died of his injuries.
- The 100% Silk 2016 West Coast Tour met with disaster two shows in, at the Ghost Ship in Oakland, California. The San Francisco Chronicle has a full breakdown here. The venue was a repurposed warehouse MacGyvered into a live/work space for artists. Owner Derick Almena had no permits, and forewent any form of fire safety; he even ignored formal citations and refused donations of fire extinguishers. The unsanctioned additions (including a second floor and the stairs leading to it) were largely made of wood, and there was a single, winding corridor leading to the one unblocked exit. This all meant that when a fire broke out on the first floor, people had seconds to act—it was already out of control (and nearly beyond escape) before many attendants even noticed. It ultimately destroyed the whole building; 36 people, including one of the touring acts, two of the supporters, and at least a third of the audience and other talent, died. Golden Donna, organizer and top-billed act, cancelled the entire tour. Almena stood trial for mass involuntary manslaughter, resulting in a hung jury, while associate Max Harris skirted jail time for the same.
- More broadly, the incident cast doubt on the fate of artists' collectives and jeopardized underground music shows across the US as cities took action regarding live/work spaces, live performances and fire safety. The local art world especially took a huge hit: bands dissolved with the loss of their members, labels collapsed for want of their owners, and other prominent figures were among the casualties. City officials also saw blowback over the fire; many blamed them for the ever-worsening conditions that resulted in people living there to begin with. Mayor Libby Schaaf's memorial speech was met with jeers.
- More broadly, the incident cast doubt
Televised Events
- Academy Awards Ceremonies
- In 1985, Broadway choreographer and All That Jazz star Ann Reinking performed an interpretive dance around "Against All Odds" by Phil Collins at the 57th Academy Awards, so what could go wrong? Well for starters, Phil Collins himself asked/inquired twice (once in writing) about performing the song! He was told they would prefer someone that was a member of the AMPAS to perform the song. Secondly, Reinking gave a mostly lip-synced vocal performance. Let's just say that in the context of this particular performance, Reinking was overwrought and phrased badly. It didn't help that Reinking already had a "character voice", which is not vocally appropriate for a song like "Against All Odds". In effect, Reinking took a powerful, moving ballad by Phil Collins and turned it into a soulless, camp rendition that bordered on parody.
- The 1989 Academy Awards was the first televised ceremony not to have a host, in favor of a gigantic all-star lineup of presenters and segment introducers (mostly paired off to boot, the total list can be found here) and even more stars in an opening sequence paying homage to The Golden Age of Hollywood. But producer Allan Carr, looking to restore his credibility after such flops as Can't Stop the Music and Grease 2, brought in the team behind the popular San Francisco satirical Camp revue Beach Blanket Babylon to create and design the 10+ minute sequence. Little-known actress Eileen Bowman portrayed Disney's Snow White having an adventure in a ridiculously glitzy old-time Hollywood, with its nadir coming when her "blind date" was revealed to be Rob Lowe — who had never done anything like this before, and it showed. From there, the pair launched into an awkwardly bowdlerised rewrite of "Proud Mary" (itself an anomaly among more appropriate songs like "I Only Have Eyes for You" and Jerry Herman's "Just Go to the Movies"). The audience rightfully hated it, critics tore it to shreds, several actors demanded apologies for being dragged into it, and Disney sued the Academy for using their version of Snow White without permission. Carr never worked as a Hollywood producer again and the career of Bowman (who recalls the events leading up to the fiasco here) never got off the ground. The upside of it all was that the Academy was so embarrassed by the public response to the ceremony, which otherwise had many charming and funny moments what with all those presenters, that one of the first things new producer Gil Cates did for the 1990 show was bring in Billy Crystal (who had killed introducing a tap-dancing montage) to host, starting his long and mostly-fondly-remembered run of host gigs. What Were They Thinking? The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History ranks the '89 opening number at #52, and the entire segment can be watched in all its unglory here.
- Sam Smith's notoriously awful performance at the 2016 Oscars, singing the Spectre theme song "The Writing's on The Wall," is often speculated to be their Creator Killer; it's really not hard to see why. In itself, the song was contentious enough—Smith's egotistic response to getting an Oscar for it (where they blithely referred to themselves as "the first gay man to win the Oscar" when they weren't even the first LGBTQ+ person to win in that category) didn't help. But, in this performance, they were hopelessly off key throughout. And off-beat, as well, by sometimes as far as a whole measure. Smith themselves admitted to absolutely despising "every minute of it" and has tried to keep it off the web the best they can—it's not even on their official YouTube channel. However, it can be viewed in its odium here.
- The MTV Video Music Awards can have some great performances, but there are a few that are just atrocious:
- Paula Abdul's performance at the 1991 edition, which was nearly a Creator Killer. During the post-Milli Vanilli scandal years, certain other big Pop stars tried to make it known that they weren't lip-syncing either. Abdul, who was accused of the same thing at the time after reportedly having a lawsuit thrown at her by a former backup singer of hers, tried to show everyone that she could sing and never lip-synced to anyone else's voice. Unfortunately, her live shaky vocals (due to the heavy dancing) failed to impress, as well as her unflattering outfit.
- Britney Spears' performance at the 2007 edition. She's lip-syncing, and this time it's obvious. Her dancing, once a trademark, is terribly choreographed - she moves as if she has crippling arthritis - and her expression of Dull Surprise makes her look positively robotic. It might have been better if she had foregone the dancing and sung for real. To top it off, Britney had recently shaved her head as part of an apparent nervous breakdown and completely ignored the advice of the show's stylists, opting to wear obvious and unflattering hair extensions.
- Miley Cyrus' performance at the 2013 edition. She sounded hideously off-key, like she was either high or out of breath, while going over the top with sexual imagery (appearing in a flesh-colored latex bikini, rubbing her ass on Robin Thicke, and waggling her tongue all over) in a transparent attempt to shock. Almost immediately, the performance was criticized and condemned from all quarters, with Rihanna and One Direction's unimpressed reaction in the audience going viral. note
- It's very, very easy to find horrible performances over the years at the Eurovision Song Contest, which is almost as beloved for its flops as it is for its successes. But sometimes, a song or a performance doesn't even rise to the heights of So Bad, It's Good.
- Prior to the 1984 contest, host country Luxembourg was one of the favorites to win with the song "100 d'amour," a catchy synth-pop song by young French singer Sophie Carle. Listening to the studio cut, you can kind of hear why. It wasn't the strongest year, so a song with some kind of contemporary sound was seen as having an edge. But then, the night of...hoo boy. Call it nerves, call it bizarre intonation, but Sophie Carle's live performance didn't even remotely stack up to the studio cut. Somehow, it still managed a 10th-place finish, but the contest performance probably kept Luxembourg from a possible top-five finish.
- Jemini's performance of "Cry Baby" at the 2003 contest is one of the few entries (especially in the post-1966 era of the competition) to ever receive nul points all around. While some attributed their failure to backlash against the UK for its support of the Iraq War, there's no getting around the fact that their performance was flat-out dreadful, with both of the duo's members being hideously out of tune. Shortly after, they were dropped from their label, and their album never materialized; they broke up the following year. What was odd was that while the song was clearly not going to keep the UK in the top ten after finishing joint-third the year before, their pre-Eurovision performances weren't that bad. But the night of, their monitors didn't work (some say it was merely a technical glitch, they suggested sabotage), meaning they couldn't hear themselves over the backing track. Singing onstage without an in-ear monitor is very difficult when the volume around you is so loud, and sadly, Jemini weren't quite adept enough to adjust. Thus, they started the song in a completely different key from the backing track, and it only got worse from there.
- In the years following "Cry Baby," the United Kingdom mostly kept a low profile at the contest, seeing any result not at the bottom of the table as a small victory. When Andy Abraham's "Even If" came last in 2008,note they decided to redouble their efforts and get an actual songwriter of some renown to pen their 2009 entry. The following year, Jade Ewen's "It's My Time," with music by Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Diane Warren, netted the United Kingdom a fifth-place finish, their best in seven years. The BBC took the wrong message away and assumed that the name wattage of the song's composer helped them out as opposed to the quality of the song itself, which led to them approaching Pete Waterman, of '80s hi-NRG giants Stock, Aitken, and Waterman, to co-write their 2010 entry. The result was 2010's "That Sounds Good to Me" by Josh Dubovie, a lamentably out-of-date song further hindered by poor vocals, lousy staging, and cheap production. It sent the UK right back to the bottom of the scoreboard, and apparently even Waterman was convinced the song would bomb. The UK didn't manage a top-ten finish until 2022 with "Space Man" by Sam Ryder placing 2nd (their second closest result being boy-band Blue with "I Can," which came eleventh in 2011), and have finished last twice more (with 2021's "Embers" by James Newman even ending the night with zero points from either the jury or the televote, the first time that's happened outright since 2015).
- In the years following "Cry Baby," the United Kingdom mostly kept a low profile at the contest, seeing any result not at the bottom of the table as a small victory. When Andy Abraham's "Even If" came last in 2008,note they decided to redouble their efforts and get an actual songwriter of some renown to pen their 2009 entry. The following year, Jade Ewen's "It's My Time," with music by Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Diane Warren, netted the United Kingdom a fifth-place finish, their best in seven years. The BBC took the wrong message away and assumed that the name wattage of the song's composer helped them out as opposed to the quality of the song itself, which led to them approaching Pete Waterman, of '80s hi-NRG giants Stock, Aitken, and Waterman, to co-write their 2010 entry. The result was 2010's "That Sounds Good to Me"
- Behold: "Celebrate" by Piero and the Music Stars, Switzerland's entry for 2004. Displaying the benefits of instituting a semi-final round almost immediately, this was an act that was simply not ready for prime time. The choreography was sloppy and still too frenetic for the singers to handle (notice how they're all out of breath after the dance break). Piero wasn't exactly a superstar performer, either, at one point hitting himself in the face with his own microphone. The song itself was vapid even by Eurovision standards, and this cocktail of problems resulted in Switzerland earning a nul points finish, which people didn't even think could happen in a semi-final.
- Sometimes, not even the halftime performers are safe. Madonna has become something of a joke in the modern day and age, and very few things seem to be a bigger indicator of that than her much-derided performance as the interval act at the 2019 contest in Tel Aviv. She sang an extremely out of touch rendition of "Like a Prayer" where every single line was out of tune and painfully off-key, in addition to looking visibly winded after every line. Not only was it extremely poorly received, but when the performance was uploaded to her YouTube channel, large chunks of it were cut out and it was pitch-corrected to shit - however, the evidence speaks for itself.
- Prior to the 1984 contest, host country Luxembourg was one of the favorites to win with the song "100 d'amour," a catchy synth-pop song by young French singer Sophie Carle. Listening to the studio cut
- Saturday Night Live is known for its musical guests. Some of them have delivered legendary performances on the show, others... have been legendarily bad.
- Ashlee Simpson's embarrassing debacle on the Season 30 episode hosted by Jude Law is one of the most infamous moments in the show's history, revealing to the world the ugly truth about her lip-syncing: As the band started playing "Autobiography," the vocal track of "Pieces of Me" (which she'd already ostensibly performed) played while she still had her microphone at her hip and her mouth closed. With no idea what to do, she danced an awkward jig and left the stage, ignoring the band's attempts at salvage as the show cut to commercial. She became a national laughingstock overnight; compounded with a disastrous performance at Orange Bowl a bit later, this cost her a musical career.
- Eminem's performance of "Just Lose It" on the Season 30 episode hosted by Kate Winslet was a prime demonstration of horrible. The lip-syncing was obvious, Eminem looked lifeless on stage, and at one point, he can be seen licking his lips while the track played on without him. The worst part? This was just one week after Ashlee Simpson's botched performance, so both he and the SNL producers should've known better.
- Lip-syncing would have been much preferable to Kanye West's performance of "Love Lockdown" (without Auto-Tune) on the season 34 Christmas episode hosted by Hugh Laurie. They should have just had Hugh sing.
- While a lovely studio singer, at the start of her career, Lana Del Rey had debilitating stage fright, which affected her live performances. What didn't help matters was that her appearance on SNL was one of her first major TV gigs. As a result, her rendition of her viral hit tune "Video Games" on the Season 37 episode hosted by Daniel Radcliffe, was painful to watch. She seemed to mumble most of the words and was constantly out of breath, and at times it almost sounded like she didn't even know the words to her own song. The performance gave her a bad rap and, despite being talented, for her detractors she has become most known for her bad SNL performance. In fact, SNL itself made fun of it on the next new episode (hosted by Channing Tatum with musical guest Bon Iver) by having Kristen Wiig as Lana Del Rey interrupt Weekend Update to talk about her horrible performance.
- The Season 40 episode hosted by Jim Carrey saw Iggy Azalea and MØ perform their hit "Beg For It". While Iggy was in her element, this was MØ's first televised live performance, and her inexperience combined with technical issues produced an utter disaster on her part. Her singing and dancing were badly out-of-step with the beat of the song, and she looked like she had a bad case of stage fright. She was so embarrassed by her performance that she publicly apologized for it.
- Ashlee Simpson's embarrassing debacle
- Every year, the Super Bowl halftime show serves as a platform for some of America's biggest pop musicians. Some artists have used the occasion to knock it out of the park... but others have sent their careers into a tailspin.
- In the early years of the Super Bowl, halftime was mainly a showcase for university marching bands and drill teams. That changed when Up With People, a '60s collective that formed to counter the anti-establishment views of the counterculture note , performed four halftime shows in 1976, '80, '82, and '86. As noted by Deadspin, they invented the modern Super Bowl halftime show that truly came into its own in The '90s... but they also brought with them their hyper-saccharine sensibilities, which by The '80s (and especially by 1986) were seen as embarrassing. These days, their performances are still a punchline that often get named as being among the worst Super Bowl halftime shows in history. They were memorably parodied on The Simpsons as "Hooray for Everything."
- The Black Eyed Peas' performance at the Super Bowl XLV halftime show in 2011. Their reliance on Auto-Tune translated terribly to a live concert event, as they delivered horribly off-key renditions of some of their most recent hits and performed stiff dance moves. Guest star Usher did his best to salvage it with his appearance for "OMG," as did Slash for a brief cover of "Sweet Child O'Mine," but Fergie cancelled out the latter by trying to imitate Axl Rose's voice at the expense of actually hitting the notes. The performance is often cited as a Creator Killer for the group, which saw The Black Eyed Peas' airplay and sales fall off dramatically in the weeks and months after before going on hiatus the following year.
- Maroon 5's performance at the Super Bowl LIII halftime show is remembered for being one of the safest halftime performances in history. The set was nothing more than a rundown of the band's top hits, complete with uninteresting pyrotechnics. Adam Levine gave an uneven vocal performance and seemed very uncomfortable trying to groove with the special guests, and him removing his tank top during "Moves Like Jagger" was seen by many as a tasteless nod to the notorious Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime that killed Janet Jackson's career. However, there was one moment that caused viewers to despise it. A bit of context: In honor of Stephen Hillenburg, who died of ALS three months prior, fans petitioned for "Sweet Victory" from the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Band Geeks" to be in the halftime show. The NFL acknowledged the campaign by showing an original animation of Squidward during the concert introducing "a true musical genius who needs no introduction"note , after which the first few seconds of the Signature Scene played... before a loud "It's lit!" interrupted it, and a simulated fireball barreled into the stadium on a badly rendered platform to introduce Travis Scott, who only performed "Sicko Mode" before getting pushed aside. Oh, and there was no mention of Hillenburg, confusing those who weren't aware of the campaign. Needless to say, the reception was overwhelmingly negative, with the SpongeBob Bait-and-Switch as the key point of contention. Combined with the game also being considered a letdownnote , LIII became the lowest-rated Super Bowl in a decade. The backlash from the performance alone slowed social media servers to a crawl, with Reddit and Twitter even experiencing server outages. YouTuber Gus Johnson uploaded a video lampooning the performance the same night, and AniMat talks about the whole disaster here.
- Even worse, Maroon 5 wasn't even the top choice to perform at the halftime show. Many acts like Rihanna, P!nk, and Migos were chosen, and all of them refused over either the NFL blacklisting Colin Kaepernick or the expectation that they would pay for part of the concert expenses (or a combination of the two). Maroon 5 was the only band willing to perform, controversy be damned. The performance also led to the NFL recruiting Jay-Z to help improve the halftime show's image for the following year. To Scott's credit, he agreed to appear in the show if the NFL agreed to help him donate half a million dollars to a social justice group, while Maroon 5 and their label joined the NFL in donating the same amount to the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America club, so at least there was some good that came from it.
- In the early years of the Super Bowl, halftime was mainly a showcase for university marching bands and drill teams. That changed when Up With People, a '60s collective that formed to counter the anti-establishment views of the counterculture note , performed four halftime shows in 1976, '80, '82, and '86. As noted
- After her aforementioned lip-sync botch on SNL, Ashlee Simpson got a shot at redemption at the Orange Bowl halftime show on January 4, 2005. This time, she was committed to proving that she could sing live. Unfortunately, this resulted in an utterly dreadful performance; her vocals are so hideously off-key that it's not clear if she's even trying to sing or just shouting the lyrics. When she's done, the entire stadium is booing, and a shout of "You suck!" can be heard from the crowd if you have very good ears (provided they hadn't self-destructed from being subjected to three minutes of terrible singing). It stood in sharp contrast to Kelly Clarkson's performance just before her, which earned plaudits despite being plagued by technical problems. Between the SNL performance and this one, Ashlee's once-promising pop music career imploded in an instant.
- Milli Vanilli's MTV performance at Lake Compounce in Bristol, CT practically confirmed the suspicion that neither Robert Pilatus nor Fabrice Morvan, ostensibly the only members, made any of the music themselves. Midway through the chorus of "Girl You Know It's True," the track skipped during a vocal part. Rob and Fab continued lip-syncing as if it were All Part of the Show, before giving up and fleeing the stage. Rob nearly quit on the spot—Downtown Julie Brown had to coax him back onto the stage to continue the concert. While it didn't expose the duo on its own, it became the beginning of the end for the pair's careers—not helped by their producer admitting they were fakes. Almost right away, Rob, Fab, and Arista Records got sued nearly 30 times total for fraud. They became the only band in history to have a Grammy withdrawn. And, not only did Arista drop them, but they deleted the master of the band's first album. Even after firing Rob and Fab, the group had to rebrand themselves entirely to so much as get an international release. And as for Rob and Fab themselves? Well, they attempted to redeem themselves by putting out their own songs, and went on The Arsenio Hall Show to prove their integrity. And sadly, this performance, of "We Can Get It On" (warning: low quality), was also not good: Fab was game but singing out of his range, while Rob looked - and very much sounded - way too nervous to give any kind of good performance here.
- New Order's infamous 1983 performance of "Blue Monday" on Top of the Pops. They were actually live in contrast with the usual practice of lip-syncing songs on the show. Due to the temperamental nature of early-80s synthesizers, the result was an off-kilter, out-of-tune mess.note According to a BBC documentary on Factory Records, U2 were also performing on the show and Bono told the members of New Order that he greatly respected them for their performance and that he wished his band had performed live. To which their manager Rob Gretton said "Well why the fuck didn't you then?"
- "United We Stand: What More Can I Give" in Washington, D.C. stands as concrete proof that benefit concerts can go wrong, even those dedicated to 9/11. Thanks to an inept sound crew, even after delaying the concert for over three hours, technical difficulties still plagued every set: mics gave off feedback on a regular basis, the visual presentation was loaded with bugs, and one performer's backing track just plain stopped mid-performance. Several of the sets had to be cut for time last-minute, some of which were outright omitted, and in several cases the performer never showed up. Many performers carelessly used the US flag as a stage prop, often desecrating it in the process; this flew in the face of the show's patriotic intent. Mariah Carey tactlessly used the concert to promote her terrible movie Glitter. The Backstreet Boys' set was the exact same one they did at the well-received Concert for New York City, which was done earlier that week, showing their lack of enthusiasm. Michael Jackson was the organizer and got top billing, and was supposed to end the concert, but all he did was a lip-synced version of "Man in the Mirror", followed by his participation in the group finale. To top it all off, this was being filmed for a later broadcast on ABC rather than being broadcast live, which meant the show was padded out even further by the recording of intros and outros for all the sets. Much of the crowd, including several performers, left well before the grand finale featuring Jackson and the remaining stars. Plus, due to an agreement with CBS for an upcoming 30th anniversary special note , Jackson was contractually required to be downplayed from the aired version, which led to said "Man in the Mirror" performance being cut. Salon and MTV provide the details.
- Shane MacGowan and Philomena Begley's 2019 performance of "Fairytale of New York" has gone down as one of the most infamously bad renditions of the song ever broadcast. MacGowan mumbles through the song due to his poor health, while Begley appears to not know the lyrics, as she trips through her lines and seemingly struggles to read from a teleprompter. And this was a pre-recorded performance, which could have been salvaged with a retake or some editing.
- The 1985 Live Aid concert is a legend in rock music history, best known for the performance by Queen which is typically regarded as the single greatest live performance ever, and featuring a hodgepodge of other fantastic performances. Unfortunately, one that didn't work out so well was the reunion for Led Zeppelin. It was the first time they'd performed since the death of John Bonham five years earlier, and it was immediately apparent just how rusty they were. Robert Plant's voice was noticeably hoarse,note Jimmy Page's guitar was out of tune, and the monitors were constantly malfunctioning with an obvious lack of rehearsal. Plant later described it as "a fucking atrocity," and Page threw particular shade at Phil Collins as one of the subbing drummers, saying he'd lied about knowing the songs and was just randomly bashing away. For his part, Collins said that partway through the performance he was seriously considering just walking off, but stuck it out because he knew that would become the whole story. The band have since done their best to scrub all existence of the set from memory to a similar extent as George Lucas and The Star Wars Holiday Special. It can be seen here.
- Meat Loaf's performance in the 2011 Australian Football League Grand Final (the Australian equivalent of the Super Bowl) pre-game has become iconic in Australia for all the wrong reasons, as it's more difficult to identify notes he sung in tune than out of tune.
- Mariah Carey's performance in Times Square for Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve 2016. It was plagued by technical difficulties that weren't picked up beforehand due to the lack of a soundcheck before the performance, which got bad enough that Mariah eventually gave up and ended the performance early. Afterwards, Mariah's team and Dick Clark Productions blamed each other for the debacle, with the former claiming that a broken earpiece prevented Mariah from singing along to the backing track, and the latter accusing Mariah of trying to lip-sync and skipping the soundcheck. Happily for Mariah, she was invited back the next year and turned in a much better performance.
- Elvis Presley's performance in Omaha, Nebraska on June 19, 1977, as shown in the posthumously-aired CBS special Elvis in Concert. Elvis' deteriorating health is evident throughout the performance with his obvious weight gain - particularly his extremely bloated face - and inability to remember the lyrics of many of the songs. He frequently exhibits difficulty controlling his tone and breath, and the special had to cut to audience interviews to spare viewers the sight of Elvis completely bungling the spoken word break on "Are You Lonesome Tonight".note Had Elvis still been alive to record another show after the next two months, CBS would likely never have aired the special in the first place. To this day the Presley estate refuses to allow the special to be re-aired or released.
- Tiny Tim's performance of the song "Because I Love You" with his first wife Miss Vicki on The Ed Sullivan Show is definitely one worth forgetting. Tiny himself gives a genuinely passionate and strong performance, showcasing his excellent lower range that often got overshadowed by his almost comical falsetto singing. Vicki, on the other hand is truly dreadful. It's clear that she simply can't sing, warbling in an incredibly high pitched, almost ear piercing whine as she awkwardly looks around the studio. Obviously she didn't sing professionally like Tiny did, but it really does make you wonder why she even agreed to go through with the performance if this was the best she could do.
- William Shatner covering Harry Chapin's "Taxi" on The Dinah Shore Show circa 1973 (yes, that's a timecode). Even by his standards, it's awful.
Individual Shows
- The 2016 Dimebash event saw Phil Anselmo's performances that night come off as absolutely embarrassing. Chief among them was a cover of "A New Level" with (among others) Robb Flynn, Rex Brown, and Dave Grohl that was preceded by obnoxious rambling from a clearly inebriated Phil. (Which was not restricted to that song alone; he probably spent more time going on drunken tangents than actually performing. To add insult to injury, Flynn and Brown were visibly irritated by the second minute in). Furthermore, he also blew his lines twice and made the whole band start over again, calling the crowd "a buncha pussies" after the first failed take. Phil also slurred his words when he was otherwise able to perform his parts and, much to Flynn's sheer disbelief, mouthed "white power" and gave the Hitler salute right there on stage during the first chorus. He went on to bungle "Ace of Spades", not so much singing as bellowing into the mic to the general tune of the song (complete with audible slurring) and capped it off with a drunken backwards stagger that nearly caused him to fall over until Grohl caught him. To finish off the night, he rambled for so long that Johnny Kelly actually took the microphone away from him; it was about a minute after that when he capped things with a shout of "White Power!" and a Nazi salute that Kelly awkwardly failed to cover up. Anselmo ruined not only the whole evening, but the audience's respect for him.
- Irish model-turned-journalist Amanda Brunker performed at Oxegen 2011 despite having absolutely zero musical experience. Listen and shudder as she murders U2's "With Or Without You". When interviewed after and asked how she got the gig (she was a standin for Jessie J, who had broken her leg), she answered that she had put in around 20 years of groundwork.
- A 2012 concert in Cyprus by British heavy metal band Cloven Hoof went belly-up when their frontman Russ North showed up too drunk to actually perform, repeatedly falling on his back, writhing and stumbling around aimlessly while screaming exaggerated falsettos. At one point, one angry audience member could be heard yelling "get off the stage, you fucking cunt!", and the band never performed with North again.
- Creed's December 2002 concert at the Allstate Arena, near Chicago. Scott Stapp's numerous substance abuse habits came to a head here - he showed up strung out of his mind, mumbled along to five or so songs, then decided to take a nap. When he realized he hadn't performed a full set, he showed up again, and continued singing - completely independent of the band - before passing out onstage. Unsurprisingly, it was a key contributor to Stapp and Creed's 2003 split-up (into a solo act and Alter Bridge, respectively) and got the band in a lot of legal trouble.
- This Dexys Midnight Runners concert features a performance of their smash hit "Come On Eileen" in which Kevin Rowland spends the entire song sounding completely out of breath and doesn't even come close to hitting any of the high notes with his voice constantly cracking. One particular moment that many commenters have pointed out happens 57 seconds in where Rowland sounds like he's in a great deal of pain attempting to hit a high note. It's worth noting that Rowland was (and generally still is) a solid live performer (for reference, here's a performance from the same year in which he sounds fine), so it's possible he may have been sick, burned out from touring or was simply just having an off day which caused his singing to be so subpar.
- The Faceless' June 10, 2018 headlining performance at Bay Area Death Fest. They turned up an hour after they were scheduled to perform... then took another hour to set up... then spent about twenty minutes trying to play around bandleader Michael Keene's drug-fueled stupor of a stage presence. In the end, they only got through four songs of what was billed as a full-album set. Their manager blamed the whole affair on van and computer problems—including, improbably enough, the actual performance—a lie which most saw through near-immediately. What's worse is they were scheduled right after The Zenith Passage, whose frontman left the Faceless earlier that year over Keene's heroin abuse, and who by all accounts brought the house down.
- Kingdom Come's performance at the 2022 Sweden Rock Festival, known by several as "the event's biggest fuckup." Kingdom Come hadn't played live in many years, and their act looked every second of it. Of particular note is drummer James Kottak, who was so bad at keeping tempo that everyone in the band had to individually come over and call him out on it mid-show. Only singer Keith St. John seemed to care, for what little that amounted to when he was spending whole songs with his microphone tangled on the stand. Johnny B. Frank, for example, did a bass solo after "Do You Like It" that vindicates every bassist joke ever told. The performance was disastrously received, from many musicians including guitarist Janne Stark, and many critics including Ultimate Guitar and Swedish website Rocknytt. The reunion tour this was meant to kick off was canceled, and besides a couple one-off shows, they haven't been heard of since. There's footage: hear "Shout it Out", "Do You Like It", and "Pushing Hard" as nobody has ever wanted to hear them.
- José Feliciano's performance of "Every Breath You Take" at the 2017 Polar Music Prize was met with widespread ridicule. While the rest of the performance replicated the original version, he attempted playing the song's guitar line in his own signature style, which simply didn't work. His playing was drastically out of sync with the song's rhythm, so much so broadcast of his guitar stopped after an awful solo. Infamously, shots of the audience showed Sting looking very uncomfortable during the performance.
- This 2014 performance by Guns 'n Roses of "Sweet Child o' Mine" is technically well-done, but Axl Rose himself sounds tired, out of breath, hoarse and, well, one could mistake it for some drunk grandfather doing the song for karaoke. If anything, he only got worse in 2022.
- Hole's June 2010 show at Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club was a sad parody of the chaotic, impulsive concerts the original lineup had built a name on. Courtney Love turned up an hour late and rasped her way through a setlist of butchered covers and at best half-remembered originals. The intervals were aimless and overly long—audience participation consisted of little more than protracted small talk. Courtney put more effort into performing to her on-stage assistant's cameraphone than to her audience, even lashing out at a crowd member who found this distracting. By the end, well over half the audience (and most of the band) had left, the crowd swearing and clutching their tickets in disgust.
- Also worth mentioning is a New York gig three months later. It seemingly sounds fine, but that's because the band is drowning out a bad Courtney performance, as neatly demonstrated by her isolated track released by the sound engineer (and the off-key anemic guitar wasn't a one-time occurrence that year, making one wonder how Courtney's struggling with a song that she'd be playing for over a decade).
- Also worth mentioning is a New York gig three months later. It seemingly sounds fine
- There have been some truly memorable impromptu live performances, such as The Beatles' 1969 rooftop concert and U2's mimicry of it for their "Where the Streets Have No Name" video. However, LA small-time Rap Rock band Imperial Stars' 2010 performance of "Traffic Jam 101" was not one of them. This band (whose original song is already awful) thought they would win fame, fortune, and attention to homeless children by setting up and performing right on 3 lanes of Los Angeles' busy 101 freeway. Instead, they "won" the wrath of the city's drivers as well as jail time and several viral videos of their "performance" on YouTube. It gained even more infamy after it was heavily mocked by comedian Joe Rogan during his 2012 performance at The Tabernacle.
- Puddle of Mudd's 2004 performance in Toledo, Ohio, where a very inebriated Wes Scantlin admitted only four songs in that he was too drunk to continue. As a result, his thoroughly pissed-off bandmates walked off the stage, leaving him to fend for himself. Too drunk to know to follow them, he remained on stage for another 30 minutes, where he drunkenly warbled random ad-libbed songs and insulted the crowd while throwing back bottles and other assorted projectiles that they had lobbed at him before finally staggering away, where he was arrested by the Toledo police for disorderly conduct. Additional charges were later filed after he repeatedly spat on the back windows of the cruiser that was transporting him to be booked. After being released on a $150 cash bond, he vowed to never play in Toledo again because he was "arrested for nothing", but it's likely that the incident probably made him a Persona Non Grata in the Toledo metro area anyways.
- 90's British reggae star Finley Quaye's unforgivably awful performance at the Convent Club in Woodchester in 2015. So bad, it gained the attention of British tabloids. Finley stood with his back to the crowd, refusing to look straight at them. For thirty minutes straight, all he did was lifelessly play a single three-chord progression (and occasionally noodle a bit) on a badly-tuned guitar. Meanwhile his backing band droned on, even more repetitively than him. The biggest cheer came when the promoter got on-stage to call off the show, launched into a "The Reason You Suck" Speech against Quaye, and sent the entire band off. He then apologized to the crowd directly and refunded all tickets.
- Hank Williams Jr. has a notorious 1992 concert at the Sandstone Amphitheater in Kansas City, Kansas where he showed up extremely drunk. Struggling to stand up and hold his guitar, he slurred incoherently through four or five songs, insulted the audience repeatedly with Cluster F Bombs, and staggered offstage after only 20 minutes, after which the audience began booing and throwing bottles at him. Ticketmaster and other venues ended up issuing refunds. He later issued an apology, but the damage had already been done. While it was not his first time showing up drunk to a concert (the Associated Press notes at least two incidents in 1989), nor was it an outright Creator Killer (Jr. continued to record and tour well into The New '10s), it was one of many incidents that colored his increasingly controversial career in the years to come.
- Amy Winehouse's 2011 concert in Belgrade, Serbia is painful to watch. By this point, Amy was a shadow of her former self due to her massive drug and alcohol addictions; this had been affecting her performances for a while but it truly hit its peak here. Amy spent most of the concert wandering around aimlessly and rarely went near her microphone. Whenever she did try to sing, her voice sounded tired and uneasy, and she'd only sing a few lines before giving up and letting her band continue on. There are points where you can see that she really was trying to sing as best she could (most notably in "Back to Black") but it's clear she'd deteriorated so far that she couldn't handle singing anymore. This would be her final performance, as she died from alcohol poisoning over a month later.
Other Examples
- Skeletons from the Opera Closet is a book about everything the operatic world doesn't want you to know - including a section on some of the worst operas ever written and another about the most unusual, if not the worst, ways operas have been performed.
- While there are a few entries in the "worst operas" section, "I Bombieri (Opera's Greatest Duds)", that aren't as horrible as the section says, most of them are downright bad. Adriana Lecouvreur by Francesco Cilea and Mitridate, re di Ponto by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (then aged 14) - lambasted respectively for historical inaccuracy and monotony - fall more under the So Bad, It's Good category, but Alfonso und Estrella by Franz Schubert is one of the prime examples why he never succeeded in the theater - it suffers from a repetitive libretto and indistinguishable music. (Far more divisive are Roger Sessions' Montezuma and Philip Glass' Akhnaten, two daunting historical epics with, shall we say, "challenging" musical styles infamous for opposite reasons; both avoid this list by virtue of their small but dedicated followings among fans of experimental classical music, however.)
- The winner of the "worst/weirdest performances" section, "Sweet Diva, Did You See That?", was the 1976 Bayreuth production of Der Ring des Niebelungen - or, as the German critics called it, the "Centennial Scandal" - that transferred the story to the Industrial Revolution, with the Rhinemaidens as prostitutes and the gods as capitalist fatcats, and was nearly booed off the stage by the outraged audience. Other such performances included Die Walküre as if Saturday Night Live had existed in 1970 and Die Frau ohne Schatten translated into Kabuki theater.
- The Deutsche Oper am Rhein's notorious 2013 production of Tannhäuser, which for incomprehensible reasons decided to set part of the opera in a Nazi extermination camp, including scenes of simulated rape, shooting and gassing. Following heckling and a mass walk-out on the first night, all further performances were given as unstaged concert ones.
- In 1998, after their legendary broadcaster Harry Caray passed away, the Chicago Cubs started using guest celebrities to lead the crowd in a singalong of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field. Caray sang the song in a gruff, eccentric manner that matched his offbeat personality, and the team decided to choose celebrities who would fit that style. As they found out, Caray is a difficult person to replace. Quite a few of those versions have been extremely bad - Mike Ditka's version was probably the first to gain infamy for its awfulness; Jeff Gordon, Tony Romo, and Denise Richards have also turned in horrendous renditions. Even being a professional musician doesn't guarantee you'll do a good version - Ozzy Osbourne's performance is one of the worst of the lot.
- In studio, Rex Viper, James Rolfe's 80s/90s video game/movie soundtrack coverband, is simply So Okay, It's Average. But on stage, it's clear how much studio magic it took to make them sound even that good. The lead singer's technique is awful—his range is limited, his pitch is worse, and he consistently sounds worse the longer a show goes. The lead guitarist is so inept that venue staff often turn him down at points—that he plays left-handed guitar with right-handed stringsnote is easily the least of his troubles. Even the drummer manages to be out-of-tune and overly repetitive. And as a group, they often drift out of time with Rolfe and one another. The live arrangements are barebone (even with the addition of a keyboard player) and their overall performances have absolutely no energy to them. Not helping this is their inability to work their amplifiers, resulting in an utterly anemic tone despite mountains of overdrive. Notably, they only perform at video game conventions, often with the con's MC having to act as their hype man. As they posted videos (not quality footage, either) on the Cinemassacre Clips channel, reaction from fans went from indifference to outright vitriol. On their official YouTube channel, all of their videos have more dislikes than likes, with them straight-up disabling their comments.
