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Some songs go beyond catchy tunes to explore humanity's darkest corners... Join us as we count down our picks for rock songs with the most disturbing lyrical content! Our countdown includes tracks from Metallica, Alice Cooper, Motörhead and more! What's your take on artists exploring taboo subjects?
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MusicTranscript
00:00Darkness!
00:01Envisioning me!
00:02All that I see!
00:03Absolute horror!
00:04I cannot live!
00:05I cannot die!
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo!
00:08And today, we're counting down our picks for those rock tunes that chose to walk down
00:13a dark, narrative path.
00:15On the third day he took me to the river…
00:20Number 10.
00:22Sex Type Thing — Stone Temple Pilots
00:24It can occasionally be a risk for a songwriter to compose lyrics from the perspective of
00:29a dark or villainous character.
00:38Take, for example, the critical backlash that initially affected Sex Type Thing by Stone
00:43Temple Pilots.
00:44Frontman Scott Weiland was accused by some journalists of glamorizing and glorifying sexual assault
00:50within the song's lyrics.
00:51I know you want what's on my mind.
00:54I know you like what's on my mind.
00:58This is despite the protagonist of Sex Type Thing existing as a creation separate from
01:03Weiland's own personal views on sexuality.
01:06It then becomes a slippery slope.
01:08Does an artist risk alienating certain sectors of their fanbase by taking such a risk?
01:14Or let the chips fall where they may in favor of exploring humanity's dark side?
01:18You wouldn't wanna have to hurt you too, hurt you too!
01:24Number 9.
01:25The End — The Doors
01:27Oh boy, your lover, it blows the end.
01:32There will probably never be any disassociating this classic track from The Doors from its
01:38inclusion on the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola's epic war film Apocalypse Now.
01:43The End is an epic slice of psychedelic era, while also making great use out of frontman Jim
01:49Morrison's penchant for poetry.
02:10The musical arrangements slither around like a snake before the end reaches a conflagratory conclusion, one where Morrison grunts and
02:19howls like a wild animal.
02:20It's during this ending coda where the singer recites an ode to Oedipus, juxtaposing the
02:25end of youth with matricidal lust and malicious intent.
02:30This is the end, my only friend, the end, it hurts to set you free.
02:41Number 8.
02:43A Little Piece of Heaven — Avenged Sevenfold
02:49The fourth LP from Avenged Sevenfold was notable for how the group decided to experiment with
02:55different sounds.
02:56A Little Piece of Heaven is a macabre operetta of murder and revenge, a twisted tale of love
03:02gone horribly wrong.
03:13The protagonist here not only does the unthinkable to his girlfriend after taking her life, the
03:18latter comes back from beyond to settle the score.
03:22Then, in a more perverse twist, both characters reconcile and start a killing spree of their own.
03:28Together, it was the sort of twisted, pitch-black humor that was part and parcel for a lot of
03:33the avenged Sevenfold experience.
03:35I know it's not your time, but bye-bye.
03:39Number 7.
03:40Where the Wild Roses Grow — Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
03:44They call me the wild road
03:51But my name was a nice day
03:56Why they call me, I do not know
04:01It's sort of difficult to narrow down a particular favorite from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' seemingly endless list
04:07of dark and depressing tunes.
04:09Where the Wild Roses Grow is taken from the group's ninth album, Murder Ballads.
04:14And it delivers exactly what's promised by that album title.
04:18When the second day he came with a single red rose
04:22He said, give me your loss and your sorrow
04:27The song features Cave and collaborator Kylie Minogue delivering the kind of old-fashioned murder ballad one might find within
04:33the annals of classic country music.
04:35A tale of courtship that turns into murder.
04:38A brutal killing with one chilling lyrical justification from its perpetrator.
04:43All beauty must die.
04:45On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow
04:49Number 6.
04:51D.O.A.
04:52Blood Rock
04:53Laying here, looking at the ceiling
05:00Someone lays a shit across my chest
05:05We don't normally associate the world of heavy and riff arena rock to feature songs this dark.
05:11Never mind ones that actually go on to become a hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
05:16D.O.A.
05:17Was taken from Blood Rock's second LP and almost immediately amps up the creep factor to 11.
05:25I remember
05:29The song is a real-time recollection of someone who is dying from injuries sustained in a plane crash.
05:36The protagonist describes the distant stare of his girlfriend and comments on his grave injuries.
05:42It's truly disturbing to hear death described in this manner, and Blood Rock gives it their all with both the
05:48music and lyrics.
05:50Frontman Jim Rutledge sounds legitimately on edge with performance, while the Hammond organ accompaniment feels intentionally like a funeral dirge.
06:00Life is flowing out my body
06:06Pain is flowing out with my blood
06:12Number 5.
06:14Dead Skin Mask
06:15Slayer
06:16The subject of serial killers is one that's never too far removed from the world of extreme underground heavy metal.
06:23Grace of skin with my fingertips
06:27The brush of dead coal flesh appeased me
06:32Provoking images, delicate features so smooth
06:35A pleasant fragrance in the light of the moon
06:39This went double for Slayer, who specialized in seeking out humanity's darkest and most depraved corners for their lyrical inspiration.
06:48Dead Skin Mask utilized Ed Gein, the butcher of Plainfield, as the subject for its lyrics.
06:53But it's not only the song's content that makes it feel dark.
06:57Empty eyes enslave the creation
07:01There's how Matt Polish, a friend of the group's, had his voice pitch-shifted higher to make it sound like
07:07a young child.
07:08The voice's haunting pleas to be led out of captivity just adds to how Dead Skin Mask captures the crimes
07:14of Ed Gein in such an effectively creepy manner.
07:17Dance with the dead in my dreams
07:21Listen to the hallowed screams
07:25Number 4.
07:26Revolution Blues
07:28Neil Young
07:29You never see us
07:31Cause we don't come around
07:33We got 25 rifles
07:37Just to keep the population down
07:41The death of Charles Manson in 2017 hasn't seemed to stop the tales that continue to be told or recalled
07:48from those who met the infamous criminal when he was alive.
07:52Neil Young's On the Beach album from 1974 is something of a cult piece, and features within its track listing
07:58a memory of Manson titled Revolution Blues.
08:01I hope you get the connection
08:03Cause I can't take the rejection
08:07I want to see you
08:09I just don't believe you
08:12Young was inspired to write the song after being introduced to Manson via The Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson.
08:17And the song directly references the troubled Laurel Canyon music scene that Manson so desperately wanted to join.
08:24The tune is an inspired one, musically, featuring upbeat drumming and great guitar soloing.
08:29While Young's occasionally violent lyrics cast a dark shadow back towards the summer of love.
08:35Well I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars
08:40But I hate them worse than lepers
08:43And I'll kill them in the car
08:46Number 3.
08:481.
08:49Metallica
08:50There's not much left in me
08:53Nothing is real but pain
08:55Now hold my breath as I wish for death
09:00Oh please God wake me
09:03I just went ahead and chopped off everything, oh God
09:07It's virtually impossible at this point to separate the intensely depressing music video from Metallica's one, their first, and the
09:16song's lyrical retelling of the 1971 film Johnny Got His Gun.
09:20This adaptation of the Dalton Trumbo novel is paid proper tribute by James Hetfield's lyrics, which describe the film's protagonist's
09:27existence within a living hell.
09:29Tie two sheets and make me pee
09:32Cut this life off from me
09:35Hold my breath as I wish more dear
09:39Oh please God wake me
09:43He's like a piece of meat that keeps on moving
09:48This victim of war has no arms, legs, or face
09:52He wants to die but cannot
09:54And nobody from the military or medical sectors will assist him in self-destruction
09:59Line my eyes past taking my sight
10:01Taking my speech
10:02Taking my hair rig
10:04Taking my arms
10:04Taking my legs
10:06Taking my soul
10:07Left me with life in hell
10:10It's a most morbid of cautionary tales, where there seems to be no hope, save oblivion
10:16Number 2
10:17I Love the Dead
10:19Alice Cooper
10:20It was on albums, like 1973's Billion Dollar Babies, where Alice Cooper's legacy as the king of shock rock was
10:27forged.
10:28I love the dead before they rise
10:30No farewells, no goodbyes
10:33I never even knew you're now rotting the face
10:38This was an album that closed with one of the Coop's all-time classically creepy tunes, I Love the Dead.
10:44This ode to love after death served as one of the cornerstones to Cooper's macabre stage show, and his band
10:50still regularly performs the song, at least in medley form to this day.
10:54I love the dead
10:59Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly enough, this wouldn't even be the last time Alice explored this sort of morbid
11:06material, since his classic,
11:08Welcome to My Nightmare LP from 75 contained yet another example, with Cold Ethel.
11:13While friends and lovers mourn your silly grave, I have other uses for you darling.
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11:381.
11:39Don't Let Daddy Kiss Me
11:40Motorhead
11:41Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead was a prolific songwriter who was able to write much more than just two-fisted heavy
11:49metal bangers.
11:50Don't Let Daddy Kiss Me was an effective yet lyrically horrifying example of how Lemmy was just as formidable at
11:57composing power ballads.
11:59Little girl sleeping in dreams of peace, mommy's been gone a long time.
12:06Daddy comes home and she still sleeps, waiting for the world's worst crime.
12:12The songwriter revealed in his autobiography, White Line Fever, how Don't Let Daddy Kiss Me was initially offered to both
12:19Joan Jett and Lita Ford.
12:21Lemmy's male narrator within the tune feels like he's justifiably casting judgment upon this most awful of crimes.
12:28And the song spares little details when it comes to what's happening to its poor little girl.
12:34Little girl lies by her daddy's side and she listens to him breathe.
12:41She knows there's something awful wrong that she's far too young to see.
12:48Don't Let Daddy Kiss Me is a song that, once heard, will never be forgotten.
12:53Don't Let Daddy Kiss Me
12:56What are your thoughts about artists' decisions to delve into the lyrical dark side?
13:02Let us know in the comments!
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