Nu-metal and profanity are usually tied hand in hand with each other. Considering the genre is mostly about venting frustrations and anger with society, relationships, and being stabbed in the back, it’s not a surprise that using expletives is often an important way to convey those emotions (though it’s something that Linkin Park smartly avoided on their first two records). What is surprising, though, is just how much profanity is used by certain bands in the genre. While it’s not necessarily a benchmark for a band being objectively good or bad, the genre doesn’t always lend itself to being the most family-friendly genre of music for this reason.
Generally speaking, Limp Bizkit – one of the most prominent and commercially successful bands in the genre – is known for their excessive use of expletives. In fact, their song “Hot Dog”, the proper opening track of their 2000 album Chocolate Starfish, contains a startling amount of profanity. 46 uses of the word “fuck”, to be exact, in between references to Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails. One might think that, even in a genre like this, you can’t find a song with more profanity. Well, you’d be wrong (like this writer discovered when listening to the next song in the car recently).
“Y’all Want A Single”, a Korn song off their 2003 album Take A Look In The Mirror, does indeed have even more uses of the word. In fact, the song is found to have 65 instances of the use of the word “fuck” in a barely 3 minute runtime, but the excessive use of profanity belies the song’s actual message.
It’s even described in the video, where it’s a critique of the music industry. Notably, one of the graphics says “98% Of All #1 Singles Are Less Than 3 Minutes and 30 Seconds Long”, which is a thinly veiled criticism that longer songs can’t also be popular.
So, there’s your data for the day. There’s other songs that come somewhat close to the number of profanities that these two songs have (Dope’s “Die MF Die” is close), but especially for “Y’all Want A Single”, none that really come close to conveying the commodification of music as big business. It’s honestly pretty genius, if you ask us.
