Cruelty Rules – The 50 Best Artist Rants and Insults

1. Paul Weller on Freddie Mercury “He said he wanted to bring ballet to the working classes. What a cunt.”

2. Nick Cave on Red Hot Chili Peppers “I’m forever near a stereo saying, ‘What the fuck is this garbage?’ And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

3. Anton Newcombe on Eric Clapton “People talk about Eric Clapton. What has he ever done except throw his baby off a fuckin’ ledge and write a song about it?”

4. Eric Clapton on humans “England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don’t want fucking wogs living next to me with their standards. This is Great Britain, a white country, what is happening to us.”

5. Frank Sinatra on Elvis “It is the most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear.”

6. Lou Reed on the Beatles “No, no, I never liked the Beatles. I thought they were rubbish.”

7. David Lee Roth on Elvis Costello “Music journalists like Elvis Costello because music journalists look like Elvis Costello.”

8. Lou Reed on Frank Zappa “Zappa is probably the single most untalented person I’ve heard in my life. he’s a two-bit, pretentious, academic, and he can’t play rock ‘n’ roll, because he’s a loser. and that’s why he dresses up funny. He’s not happy with himself and I think he’s right.“

9. Noel Gallagher on Jack White “He looks like Zorro on doughnuts.”

10. Alan McGee on Coldplay “Coldplay are the dictionary definition of corporate rock. The singer is about as weird as Phil Collins. They are career rock personified. EMI should’ve signed Otis The Aadvark instead. At least he only sucks his thumb rather than corporate cock.”

11. Bono on Chris Martin “I think he’s that good a melodist, but he’s a wanker… Martin is obviously a completely dysfunctional character and a cretin.“

12. Boy George on Elton John “All that money, and he’s still got hair like a fucking dinner lady.”

13. Mark E Smith on Kate Bush “Who decided it was time to start liking her again? I never even liked her the first time round. It’s like all these radio DJs have been raiding their mam’s and dad’s record collections and decided that Kate Bush is suddenly cool again. But I’m not having it.“

14. Elvis Costello on Morrissey “Morrissey writes wonderful song titles, but sadly he often forgets to write the song.”

15. Robert Smith on Morrissey “If Morrissey says not to eat meat, then I’ll eat meat — that’s how much I hate Morrissey.”

16. Shane McGowan on Morrissey “If Morrissey’s a genius, then what he’s doing in a fucking pop-group?“

17. Noel Gallagher on Radiohead: “Making records should be fun. I remember seeing Radiohead on the cover of a magazine in the U.K. when ‘In Rainbows’ came out, and it said, ‘Radiohead: The Pain’. And I thought, ‘Won’t you fucking give it a rest, you bunch of moaning children?’ The pain? Of making an album? I don’t buy it. If you’re not having a laugh, then don’t do it.”

18. Iggy Pop on Led Zeppelin “American ‘music’ is mostly 60’s and 70’s rehash, esp. LED ZEPPELIN, who I never could stand in the first place. Also ‘folk-rock’ is back as alternative. Gimme a break. the bands dress this mess up in various hip clothes and ‘political’ postures to encode a ‘lock’ on social belonging which you can open by purchasing a combination of products, especially their own, none of them have fuck-all to say.”

19. Kurt Cobain on Guns N’ Roses “They’re really talentless people, and they write crap music, and they’re the most popular rock band on the earth right now. I can’t believe it.”

20. Wayne Coyne on Arcade Fire “I get really tired of their pompousness … We’ve played some shows with them and they really treat people like shit. People treat Arcade Fire like they’re the greatest thing ever and they get away with it… They have good tunes, but they’re pricks, so fuck ‘em.”

21. Noel Gallagher on Kaiser Chiefs “They play dress-up and sit on top of an apex of meaninglessness. They don’t mean anything to anybody apart from their fucking ugly girlfriends.”

22. Lou Reed on Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane “We had vast objections to the whole San Francisco scene. It’s just tedious, a lie, and untalented. They can’t play and they certainly can’t write. The Airplane, the Dead, all of them… I can get off understanding the kick it was to play Lovelight…. But they’re amateur…they can’t play. Jerry’s not a good guitar player. It’s a joke, and the Airplane is even worse, if that’s possible. It’s what people are settling for….they’re getting third-hand blues. It’s a fad…. People like Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, all those people are the most untalented bores that have ever lived. Just look at them – can you take Grace Slick seriously? It’s a joke. 

23. Mark E Smith on James Blunt “What’s Jamie Blunt or whatever his name is been saying? I thought he was a cock? He’s a so-called tank driver isn’t he? Is he the ‘So Beautiful’ bloke, the tank commander?“

24. Paul Weller on James Blunt “I’d rather eat my own shit than duet with him.“

25. Noel Gallagher On Thom Yorke “No matter how much you sit there twiddling, going, ‘We’re all doomed’, at the end of the day people will always want to hear you play ‘Creep’. Get over it.”

26. Metallica on Mötley Crüe “One time we saw some hookers but when we got closer we realised it was Mötley Crüe.“

27. Joanna Newsom on Lady Gaga “She’s Arty Spice“

28. Mark E Smith on Suede (after touring with them)
“Do you like any of the new bands who are calling you an influence?”
“Like who?”
“Well, like Suede.”
“Never heard of them.”

29. Noel Gallagher on Brian Wilson “Fuckin’ hell – I hate Brian Wilson! And you know what? If there’s a more overrated person in the music business than me, it’s that guy.”

30. Courtney Love “Don’t call your band Nine Inch Nails if you have got a three-inch one.“

31. Willie De Ville on Bruce Springsteen “Springsteen writes about cars, I write about my chick. Who the fuck cares about what gas pedal you’ve got in your car?“

32. Edwyn Collins on the Sex Pistols “I never really liked the Sex Pistols because they were a heavy metal band.“

33. Lou Reed on The Doors “They were just painfully stupid and pretentious, and they when they did try to get, in quotes, ‘arty,’ it was worse than stupid rock and roll. What I mean by ‘stupid,’ I mean, like, The Doors.”

34. Mark E Smith on Kojak “He’s a twat.”

35. Noel Gallagher on Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys: “I would rather drink petrol straight from the nozzle at a garage than listen to an interview with Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys.”

36. Lou Reed on Iggy Pop “David is simply a great guy, but Iggy is qute stupid. Very sweet, but incredibly stupid.“

37. Mark “E” Everett on The Beatles “John Lennon sings about peace because he’s a woman-beater. Hippies are so full of shit.”

38. Ian Brown on Bono “He’s such a fake, isn’t he? When he did Live Aid, which made them a worldwide group … he looked out and saw that black girl in the middle of all them people, and she’s from Hackney or something, and he was like, ‘Here’s a great shot for me around the world to show I’m Mr Africa.’ It’s like colonialist times with a big white hat.”

39. Elton John on Keith Richards “It’s like a monkey with arthritis, trying to go onstage and look young.”

40. Mark E Smith on Pavement “It’s just The Fall in 1985, isn’t it? They haven’t got an original idea in their heads.”

41. Noel Gallagher on Blur “I hate that Alex and Damon. I hope they catch Aids and die.”

42. Paul Weller on Sting “He’s a horrible man. Not my cup of tea at all. Fucking rubbish. No edge, no attitude, no nothing.”

43. Etta James On Beyoncé & Obama “You guys know your president, right? You know the one with the big ears? Wait a minute, he ain’t my president. He might be yours; he ain’t my president. But I tell you that woman he had singing for him, singing my song – she’s going to get her ass whipped. The great Beyoncé, like I said, she ain’t mine… I can’t stand Beyoncé. She has no business up there, singing up there on a big ol’ president day, gonna be singing my song that I’ve been singing forever.”

44. Johnny Rotten on Green Day “It is embarrassing, really. How many bands are out there like Green Day now? I look at them, and I just have to laugh.They’re coat hangers, you know, a turgid version of something that doesn’t actually belong to them.”

45. Iggy Pop on The Clash “I reacted to it better than I had to the hippie thing. As it developed, I couldn’t stand the sincere punks. I never believed them. Still don’t. Like the Clash were going to make the world politically correct for everybody’s benefit – but only if you kept buying Clash records. I never really went for the righteousness.

46. Noel Gallagher on Bono “Play One and shut the fuck up about Africa.”

47. Paul McCartney on John & Yoko “You and your Jap tart think you’re hot shit.”

48. Van Morrison on the Beatles “They were peripheral. If you had more knowledge about music, it didn’t really mean anything. To me, it was meaningless.”

49. William F. Buckley on the Beatles “Let me say it, as evidence of my final measure of devotion to the truth: The Beatles are not merely awful, I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful.They are so unbelievably horrible, so appalling unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music, even as the imposter popes went down in history as “anti-popes.” It helps a little bit to know that no one thinks they are more of a joke than the Beatles themselves, and one is relieved in supposing that they go to bed at night laughing at their utterly inexplicable success, if solemn at the thought that they must inhabit a world that features themselves.”

50. Liam Gallagher: needed his very own post