Indie-Folk and the “worst song of all time”
In recent years, thanks to the popularity of rankings and printing lists and social media, iThe title of “Worst song/album” or “Best Album/Song” It is periodically attributed to several to different songs and genres, especially by limiting itself to a period or to a genre. The question is complicated when adding “of all time”: The rankings are at the same time fun and impossible, they work to attract attention, they are based on the impact and historical relevance of a song or a disc, but also above all on a question of gusti, especially when they are negative.
In the last few days the indie folk genre has returned to the center of the discussions on X (ex Twitter) after a user published A short video with a fragment of “Home” by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, accompanied by the comment “The worst song never written”. Thousands of comments of comments and opinions and the question taken from prestigious newspapers, commentators and creators who threw themselves on the trend. Finally a comment by the singer and frontman of the band Alex Ebert.
“Home”, published in 2009 and contained in the album “Up from Below”, is the most representative song of the band: it has beyond A billion streams on Spotify. As Anthony Fantano correctly reconstructs – the best known musical critic on social media – is One of the inspirations of the genre “Stomp Clap”, made even more popular by Lumineers, of Monters and Men and Mumford and Sons: choirs, hands and feet beats and a folk-pop aesthetic who came out of the Indie to get to the standings, fishing with full hands from previous traditions, and which has been at the center of periodic criticism and parodies for some time, like this by the Comucco Kyle Gordon
Even Fantano does not skimp with the genre, but claims that the controversy on “Home” as a worst song of all time is “too dramatic”; It should also be said that the song often reappears on social media in a very positive way thanks to A video of a memorable performance at the Tiny Desk Concert in NPR which is periodically reconciled.
The frontman and main author of the band, Alex Ebert, replied with a video on his Instagram profile, openly defending the song:
“Is it a question that I often asked myself: ‘Home’ is a beautiful song? One thing I forgot to say is that my father recently, who is 90 years old, asked me to play ‘Home’ for his birthday. He begged me as if his life depended on this, so I had to satisfy him. There was a piano in the restaurant, so I played it like this, inner agreements, only me on the piano in a restaurant in a restaurant at a restaurant at a restaurant. To find a recording, but it has become my favorite version of the song.
Ebert claimed the role of the band in defining that sound, claiming that Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros were in advance, so much so that the Lumineers chose their producer and that some subsequent bands had approached so much “home” that “We almost sued “to the of Monsters and Men”.
