Kid Rock's crude slurs, Jared Leto's strange "gifts", and Ted Nugent's eye-raising beliefs. This is just the tip of the iceberg on a list of musicians who really need to take a chill pill in the music biz!
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00:00Kid Rock's crude slurs, Jared Leto's strange gifs, and Ted Nugent's eye-raising beliefs
00:06— this is just the tip of the iceberg on a list of musicians who really need to take
00:11a chill pill in the music biz.
00:13How do you go from swoon-worthy sad boy to the veritable poster child of toxic masculinity?
00:18John Mayer pretty much wrote the playbook.
00:21It started with a string of high-profile relationships, and then him discussing those relationships
00:25in graphic detail, and then dropping a racist slur for good measure.
00:29Mayer's offenses have been widely publicized, largely because the women in his life got
00:33fed up with him.
00:34In 2010, the singer-songwriter used a Playboy interview as an opportunity to really go into
00:40detail about his time with Jessica Simpson.
00:42As he put it,
00:43"'Sexually, it was crazy.
00:45That's all I'll say.
00:46It was like napalm.
00:47Sexual napalm.'"
00:48Although Mayer eventually apologized for his comments, Simpson told Oprah Winfrey that
00:53she refused to forgive him.
00:54Soon thereafter, Taylor Swift released her breakup ballad, Dear John.
00:58She never said that the track was specifically about Mayer, but the lyrics were unnerving
01:02enough that he complained to Rolling Stone about them.
01:05He's since shed his Bachelor image, but only because he had to.
01:08As he put it on Instagram Live in 2018,
01:10"'I get rejected a lot, and I —'
01:12"'What do you mean now?
01:13Like, since you turned 41?'
01:14"'Well, no, since I became just, like, uh, PR poison.'"
01:17Hey, at least he's self-aware.
01:20Jared Leto
01:21Jared Leto has come a long way since his teen heartthrob days on My So-Called Life, but
01:24it hasn't all been pretty.
01:26Unfortunately, the 30 Seconds to Mars frontman has fielded sexual harassment allegations
01:30for decades.
01:31The oldest one can be traced back to 2005, when a then-33-year-old Leto was allegedly
01:36in New York City's Meatpacking District on the lookout for teenage models.
01:40In recent years, the likes of Dylan Sprouse and Guardians of the Galaxy director James
01:44Gunn have publicly accused him of similar behavior.
01:47And that's not even mentioning the stuff that Leto himself has admitted to.
01:51While promoting Suicide Squad back in 2016, the actor told E! that he sent his co-stars
01:56used condoms and anal beads.
01:58He also sent Viola Davis a bullet, which was threatening enough that she reportedly considered
02:02pulling out some pepper spray to use on him.
02:05This was supposedly all a matter of his method acting routine.
02:08Leto eventually claimed that his pranks were meant as a bit of a goof, and that most of
02:12the stories weren't really true.
02:14As he told Entertainment Weekly in 2021,
02:1699.9 percent of what people read is bulls—t.
02:20There was a time when Travis Scott was perhaps most famous as Kylie Jenner's baby daddy.
02:24He's since become a household name on his own merits, but not exactly for the right
02:28reasons.
02:29The most notorious moment came in November 2021, when at least 10 people died from injuries
02:33they sustained during his Astroworld festival in Houston.
02:37The rapper was accused of continuing to perform even after attendees sustained serious injuries.
02:42Footage of him doing the robot as paramedics were resuscitating fans certainly didn't help
02:46his case.
02:47And that wasn't the first time that Scott had faced legal trouble for similar incidents.
02:51A lawsuit had previously been filed accusing him of inciting a crowd into a frenzy during
02:56a 2017 concert prior to a man named Kyle Green being pushed from a balcony and becoming paralyzed.
03:02Scott also pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after encouraging people to rush the stage
03:06during a show in Arkansas.
03:08And his former manager Shane Morris has claimed that the rapper basically left him for dead
03:12in a recording studio while he was having a seizure.
03:15As he put it in a TikTok video,
03:17"'Travis Scott is the worst person I've worked with in my entire career in music.'"
03:22When David Crosby passed away in January 2023 at the age of 81, he left behind a vibrant
03:28musical legacy that included his solo career, his pioneering work with folk rock group The
03:32Byrds, and most famously, as one-quarter of the iconic supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash
03:37& Young.
03:38Crosby also spent decades embroiled in addiction, before a prison sentence and a liver transplant
03:43spurred him to clean up his act in the 80s.
03:46As an addict, he was notoriously difficult to deal with.
03:49Once he was sober, he was apparently still no picnic.
03:51At the time of Crosby's death, two CSNY members were no longer speaking with him.
03:56Neil Young cut off all contact after Crosby called Young's future wife, actress Daryl
04:00Hanna, a purely poisonous predator.
04:03And in 2016, Graham Nash told the Dutch magazine Lust for Life,
04:06"'I don't like David Crosby right now.
04:08He's been awful for me the last two years.
04:10Just f----- awful.'"
04:12But Crosby was apparently unaware about his reputation.
04:15In the 2019 documentary David Crosby, Remember My Name?, he revealed that one of his Byrds
04:19bandmates still held a grudge decades after he and the rest of the band unanimously fired
04:24Crosby.
04:25As he put it,
04:26"'Roger McQuinn hates my guts.'"
04:28Crosby offered a blunt assessment of why he was so universally disliked by those he worked
04:32with, by positing that he had a big ego and no brains.
04:37Morrissey burst onto the music scene in the early 80s as the frontman for The Smiths before
04:40embarking on a solo career.
04:42Over the years, he's made headlines for his insulting comments about various public figures.
04:47Regarding Elton John, he said,
04:48"'Nobody's interested.
04:50He should just go away.'"
04:51He also once called The Cure's Robert Smith a fat clown with makeup weeping over a guitar,
04:56and he referred to Live Aid founder Bob Geldof as a nauseating character.
05:00But perhaps none of Morrissey's controversial remarks were more incendiary than his views
05:04on immigrants.
05:05As he infamously opined to NME in 2007,
05:08"'England is a memory now.
05:10The gates are flooded, and anybody can have access to England and join in.'"
05:14After he was accused of racism, Morrissey responded with an interview on his website
05:18in which he said,
05:19"'But of course, we are all called racist now, and the word is actually meaningless.'"
05:23"'What is that?
05:25Who is this person?'
05:26Years later, Morrissey sued NME for libel, claiming that the interview was edited to
05:30make him appear racist.
05:32He subsequently issued an apology of sorts.
05:35Meanwhile, he's also supported a far-right British political party known for its anti-Muslim
05:39stance, described the Chinese as a subspecies, and defended both Harvey Weinstein and Kevin
05:44Spacey.
05:45Mike Love has been a member of the Beach Boys since the band's formation in 1961.
05:50In 2012, his reputation as a jerk was encapsulated by a Vice headline that read,
05:55"'Mike Love is kind of an a**hole.'"
05:57And as David Crosby once tweeted,
05:59Mike Love is, in the opinion of almost every musician I know, a s**thead, most assuredly
06:03has no talent at all, and, as you can probably tell, I just don't like him.
06:08Among the most egregious of Love's alleged misdeeds was suing his bandmate Brian Wilson
06:12for songwriting credit on Beach Boys hits, for which Love supposedly made minimal contributions.
06:17"'I don't like Mike Love at all.
06:19His attitude is too egotistical.
06:21You can't be around the guy.
06:23Five minutes around him is all I can take.'"
06:25And when the Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, he'd
06:29trash talk the likes of Billy Joel, Mick Jagger, and Elton John.
06:33But Love sees himself a little differently.
06:35As he put it to The Guardian in 2013,
06:37"'I think there are a lot of fallacies about me.'"
06:40The feud between squabbling brothers and Oasis bandmates, Liam and Noel Gallagher, is among
06:44the most legendary in music history.
06:46After the band broke up in 2009, Liam pointedly neglected to mention Noel while accepting
06:51an award on behalf of the band the following year.
06:54Even in a 2017 interview with The Independent, Noel blamed Liam for everything.
06:58As he put it,
06:59"'I never fought with Liam at all.
07:01Liam was fighting with himself.
07:02Right now, he is picking a fight with himself somewhere.
07:05I don't suffer fools in any f-----g sense at all, but I suffered him more than maybe I
07:09should have done.'"
07:10That opinion is certainly supported by the insulting things that Liam has said about
07:14various people.
07:15In 2013, for example, he called British pop star Robbie Williams a
07:18"'F----- that f----- idiot.'"
07:20He also reportedly ticked off Idris Elba during an encounter at the 2013 NME Awards,
07:25although Elba downplays reports that they nearly came to blows.
07:28But in an interview with GQ later that year, the actor declared,
07:31"'F----- that idiot.'"
07:33However, Elba and Liam seemed to be on good terms when they both appeared on The Graham
07:37Norton Show in 2017.
07:38"'Me and Liam have squared away.
07:40We had a little fallout.
07:41We only fought, like, only for 10 minutes, like.
07:43Yeah, because he threw my hat across the bar.
07:45No, you started.
07:46You got me at first.'"
07:47The bad blood between Pink Floyd's Roger Waters and his bandmates has been ongoing since he
07:52parted ways with the group in 1985.
07:54That was because Waters sued the other members over their continued use of the band's name,
07:58claiming that the group was, quote, "'a spent force' creatively."
08:01However, he did admit in a 2013 BBC interview that he'd since come to regret his actions.
08:07Decades later, Waters and Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour continue to hurl barbs at each
08:11other, with their spat reportedly getting in the way of a half-billion-dollar deal to
08:15sell the Pink Floyd catalog.
08:17As Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason observed to Rolling Stone,
08:20"'I think it's really disappointing that these rather elderly gentlemen are still at
08:24loggerheads.'"
08:25Waters has also taken serious heat for his controversial comments about Israel, as he
08:29equated the nation's treatment of Palestinians to the way Jews were treated in Nazi Germany.
08:33He invited more controversy for comments he made to the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung
08:38in 2023, when he pondered,
08:40"'Is Putin a bigger gangster than Joe Biden and all those in charge of American politics
08:44since World War II?'
08:46Kid Rock rocketed to stardom in the late 90s, after blending rock and rap in the hit single
08:51Ba Wa Ta Ba.
08:52Over the years, he's also earned a reputation for obnoxious comments and generally boorish
08:56behavior.
08:57In 2021, for example, he was captured on video delivering a rant that included a homophobic
09:02slur.
09:03A year earlier, he and professional golfer John Daly defiantly refused to wear face masks
09:08while attending a presidential debate during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
09:12Waters has also been accused of misogyny, particularly after suggesting that Taylor
09:15Swift's Democrat-leaning political views were spurred by her desire for movie stardom.
09:20And in an infamous onstage incident, Kid Rock drunkenly suggested that Oprah Winfrey and
09:25Joy Behar could perform a lewd act on him.
09:28Audience members called him a racist, a sentiment that wasn't exactly quelled when he defended
09:32his use of the Confederate flag in a 2008 interview with The Guardian.
09:36God forbid you say something a little bit wrong, you're racist, homophobic, Islamophobic,
09:40this that and the other.
09:41People need to calm down."
09:42In her memoir, Love, Pamela, Kid Rock's ex Pamela Anderson wrote that their marriage
09:47ended abruptly after they attended the premiere of the 2006 movie Borat.
09:51She made an appearance in the film, but hadn't told him because she wanted it to be a surprise.
09:55And it certainly was a surprise, as she wrote,
09:58"'He stormed out, calling me a whore and worse.'"
10:01Ted Nugent hit it big in the 70s, with a string of hard rock hits like Cat Scratch Fever
10:05and Strangleholds.
10:06But in recent years, his music has taken a backseat to his incendiary comments about
10:11a variety of hot-button issues.
10:13Nugent is a fervent supporter of the National Rifle Association, and one comment he made
10:17about school shootings really raised eyebrows.
10:20On Newsmax's The Joe Pag Show, the rocker blamed poor nutrition for America's epidemic
10:24of school shootings.
10:25As he put it,
10:26"'Check out what we are feeding our children, and you will find the answer to this calamity.'"
10:30Nugent is regularly mocked for his obnoxious comments, such as when he offered his conspiracy
10:34theory on the pandemic shutdown during a Facebook video in 2021, as he asked,
10:39"'Why weren't we shut down for COVID-1 through 18?'
10:43In general, Nugent is not shy about sharing his controversial political views.
10:47He reportedly called Barack Obama a piece of s----, and once declared on Facebook,
10:51"'Hillary Clinton hates everything good about America.'"
10:53However, Nugent's self-described patriotism is at odds with his past as a confessed draft
10:58dodger, as he admitted to High Times in 1977 that he stopped showering for a month and
11:03then defecated in his pants prior to his physical.