If you’ve been listening to music for a long time, and you wonder if there’s nothing new for you to listen to, I’d like to introduce you the degeneracy of music. Not degeneracy as in swearing, sexual themes - because I don’t like listening to that kind of music - but in terms of how low can you set the bar in terms of music.

Seriously, where did you get this idea from?

Thank this Aussie guy name Wade aka Dankpods. One thing he does in his drum stream is “ruin people’s day with meme music with low quality instruments”. My favourite drum video from him is when he decided to use stop signs and hub caps as cymbals for a drum set. It’s such a great video!

Jokes aside, he’s an incredible drummer who is able to use low quality instruments to produce a quality streaming service, which makes him so entertaining to watch! He was so good, T-Pain raided his channel on Twitch and had quite a laugh watching how he chucked terrible cymbals across the room, and played in such an entertaining manner.

On a more personal note, I have a habit of overanalysing music content over and over- a useful trait for when you’re transcribing or trying to gather inspiration for your personal content, but terrible when you want to just enjoy music, so to find a list like this is quite refreshing. On the plus side, I don’t have to find music content with bad music with swearing just to get a laugh.

However, as I was researching more about these songs, there is a surprising amount of history that goes behind the music, or the artist. Nobody makes terrible stuff for nothing.

Inspired by this, I created a list of music you can just laugh at, pull a prank in your party by sneaking this into their playlist, or just cheer up whenever you’re having a bad day.

Rock N Roll McDonalds- Wesley Willis

Wesley Willis’ terrible singing, honest lyrics about how he feels about McDonalds’, and that ridiculously long instrumental section in the middle sold it for me. Recommended by Wade (aka Dankpods, The Drum Thing, Garbage Time on YT), it really captures the essence of “meme music”. This song has really gotten me through some tough times when I first came to the UK.

However, when you dive into the details, Wesley Willis’ story is one of tragedy and pain. He grew up in foster care, and was later diagnosed as a schizophrenic in 1989. Later on, he was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) in late 2002. He swore a lot as a way to “chase the demons away” while dealing with schizophrenia, but he dreamed of being a rocker on stage, even forming a punk band at one point.

The thumbnail you see? He drew it himself. He was quite the artist, drawing buses, skyscrapers and fast-food outlets.

His songs often followed a formula: repetitive keyboard backing, spoken or semi-sung vocals (often nasal, off-tune intentionally or as effect), and ending with the phrase:

“Rock over London, rock on Chicago,” followed by a corporate-style slogan - in this song, he used Wheaties, Breakfast of Champions.

In our current world where music has to be as polished as a golden statue, Wesley Willis is a powerful example of how any music can still carry meaning, identity and style — even if it doesn’t conform to “typical” musical rules.

(P.S this is one of the only songs I can find where he doesn't have swearing in it)

To learn more about him, watch the video here:

Also sprach Zarathustra- Portsmouth Sinfonia

What happens when you get non-musicians to join your orchestra, and professional musicians to try instruments you’re not comfortable with? This caravan of beautiful garbage. This orchestra was an experiment on the accessibility of music.

However, what struck me about this experiment is that the musicians were not trying to intentionally sound bad- they were actually doing their best despite their lack of skills. By the end of the experiment, it broke barriers between what people thought classical music should be - elitist, professional, perfect - when music should be about connecting people together.

If you’re interested in finding out more, read this for more details:

Bodies (Drowning Pool) Kids’ Edition - @thereiruinedit

What if someone took your favourite song, put it through AI, and made a kids version of a song about catharsis, rebellion, rebellion and individuality? It’s the equivalent of discovering that children songs, but when you analyse the lyrics, it’s actually pretty horrifying. For example? Rock-a-by baby on the treetop.

Literally, it’s describing the event when a baby falls out of a treetop cradle when the wind blows — in other words, a child’s fall and possible death.

Luckily, this song I’ve recommended doesn’t have those themes.

The creator of @thereiruinedit, Dustin Ballard, used AI to modify his voice to sound like certain characters, and the process of how he gets to that point is more sophisticated than people give credit for. He still has to sing while impersonate the singer, play the instruments used in his silly videos, then he edits the videos to make the edit quite convincing. I have seen AI being used for entertainment purposes - often for satire - but his workflow is quite impressive.

As a bonus, this music doesn’t sound as terrible like the other ones, doesn't really have any deep messages, but flats out

Recently he gave a TED talk on his entire process, but quite an in depth and fresh perspective on the term “AI Music”. If you’d like to watch it, you can click on the Youtube link here:

Here’s his instagram if you want to find his stupid but beautiful content:

In conclusion….. don’t take music too seriously.

Striving for perfection in the musician world makes us who we are, but even the best need a break sometimes. When it becomes a job, listening to music could inevitably become a chore, and takes the fun out of enjoying the very thing that lead us into the profession in the first place.

Never forget that at the end of the day, music should entertain you in a variety of ways.

Let’s engage in a discussion about your terrible music! Or if I made any errors in my facts, reply to this email, or any other topics is worthy of discussing in the newsletter, I would love to hear from you!

Sincerely,

Daniel Bryan