Nu metal pioneers Korn have successfully carved out their own niche for nearly 30 years in addition to earning two Grammy Awards and selling some 40 million records in the process. The band has numerous standout tracks from 14 studio records, but there’s one in particular that singer Jonathan Davis is having none of these days. In a new interview with Metal Hammer, Davis named the band’s 1998 single “All In The Family” as “the worst song ever.” Limp Bizkit vocalist Fred Durst guests on the track, but Davis said the band recorded it drunk. “All In The Family’ is the worst song ever,” Davis said. “It’s horrible. We were all drunk in the studio and I was trying to rap. At the time, we were having a good time, but now I just cringe. I’ve got nothing against Fred, it just sucks! We were out of our minds drunk! It shouldn’t have made the record.”
The song comes from Korn’s “Follow the Leader” album which had five singles in all, the most notable probably being “Got the Life” and “Freak on a Leash.” The album peaked at No. 1 on four charts and is the band’s most commercially successful album selling more than 5 million copies.
That’s all fine and well for Davis, who loves the album, just not that song. “It is the dumbest f*cking track Korn ever did,” he told Vice. “That is what drugs and alcohol will do to a motherf*cker.” He further elaborated on “Follow the Leader”: “It was insane, brother. Making that record, for one, almost killed me. Our booze and alcohol budget … like, we spent $60,000 on alcohol to make that record. (Laughs) Last record of me getting f*cked up, and it was insane. First we started out and wrote “Freak on a Leash” and “Got the Life” and all this other stuff in a rehearsal studio in Gardenia or some sh*t like that. We did it all ourselves, and we had all these producers come in trying to sell us sh*t, and we ended up going with Steve Thompson. We picked him because he actually did his homework and came into the studio with a couple cases of Coors Light. And because he did that, he got the job. (Laughs) Eventually we got in the studio with Steve, and he’s a great guy but it just wasn’t working out. So we had the engineer Toby Wright come in and he got us through everything. It was also the first record without (producer) Ross (Robinson). Like, that record would’ve never been made without Ross. He’s into that guttural and emotional real sh*t. I love it too and I appreciate it, but it was time for us to do different types of songs. And it paid off, man. It worked.”
