While most beefs between musicians end up quickly squashed once the people involved
realize how childish they're acting, some feuds spiral completely out of control and
last forever.
Hey — musicians are a sensitive lot, so headline-making rivalries are to be expected
from time to time.
"Nobody can hear a G------ thing you say …" Sorry what?"
" ...now She won't repeat it."
Crank your drama-meter up to 11 because we're stage diving into some of modern music's most
petty squabbles.
Everybody in Van Halen vs. everybody in Van Halen
Van Halen's got a lot of bad blood for a band whose most clever song is about ice cream.
David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar regularly beef about who's the superior frontman.
Roth claims Hagar isn't "credible" enough and never sold as many albums.
Hagar claims Roth's voice isn't as good.
Meanwhile, Eddie Van Halen's apparently pissed at everybody.
"I was ready to…"
"It's like, all those years of… right there.
I said: 'if you ever speak to me like that again, you better be wearing a cup.'"
And it seems like everybody's pissed off at him too.
"There's so much anger I don't even want to run into him"
" eh, if I run into him I'd be like "ah Eddie how you doing?" big hugs and kisses, I don't
think it'd be like that right now."
Hagar blasted Eddie for claiming ex-bassist Michael Anthony couldn't play bass, by counterclaiming
that Eddie could barely play guitar anymore and it was impossible to sing along with him.
And then there's Roth, whom Eddie called an overgrown child he can't be friends with,
and whom he only works with because the fans want it.
Peace, love, and rock and roll: one out of three ain't bad, right?
Noel Gallagher vs. Liam Gallagher
Unless you're Cain and Abel, your sibling squabbles probably don't run as deep as they
do for Oasis' Noel and Liam Gallagher.
The two have apparently barely gotten along since childhood, making it a small miracle
they formed a band in the first place.
Within a few years, their infighting had overshadowed their music, with incidents like Liam hitting
Noel with a tambourine during a show, Liam accusing Noel of fathering a child outside
marriage, Liam regularly leaving during shows only to be found somewhere drinking instead
— you know, maybe we're starting to see who's the instigator here.
.....we don't like each other, man."
And by all accounts, Liam also started the 2009 blowup that led to Noel quitting the
band and the brothers finally splitting for good.
Apparently, Liam had canceled an important gig but managed to blame it on Noel.
Tempers flared, and Liam did the one thing you never do to a musician: he broke one of
Noel's guitars.
That did it, Noel quit that night, and the brothers have not been together since.
Morrissey vs. Robert Smith
Of all the things to fight about, you'd think "Best Sad '80s Singer Guy" would bottom out
the list.
And yet, Robert Smith of the Cure and Morrissey of The Smiths have been constantly swiping
at one another since the '80s.
It started when Morrissey was doing what he did best: insulting people.
When asked during an interview who he'd shoot with one bullet: Robert Smith or some other
guy, he answered "I'd line them up so that one bullet penetrated both simultaneously—Robert
Smith is a whingebag."
"Ooooooh."
Smith has also called Morrissey "a precious, miserable bastard … all the things people
think I am," and even
quipped,
"If Morrissey says not to eat meat, then I'll eat meat, that's how much I hate Morrissey."
The Smiths singer, meanwhile, has said The Cure gives "a new dimension to the word 'crap',"
and made it perfectly clear that he has never liked them.
Now, Morrissey doesn't like anybody or anything ...
"Among the many things that Morrissey has said on record he actually hates are, Elton
John, George Michael, Madonna, Vic Reeves, Bob Geldorf, Tony Wilson, Meat Eaters."
… but still!
With both sides publicly saying they'd happily put the other 6 feet under, don't expect a
conciliatory hug-and-cry session anytime soon.
Nas vs. Jay Z
The hip-hop beef has been embedded in the genre's marrow from the beginning and has
yielded some of its most thrilling moments.
Nas vs. Jay-Z is still the gold standard even Jay's mom had to step in when things got too
heated.
Some tame references on a few late '90s cuts notwithstanding, it was Jay dissecting Nas'
career with surgical precision on 2001's "The Takeover" that really set this lyrical death
match in motion.
The ball was in Nas' court, and Nas took the ball, doused it in lighter fluid, and shot
it out of a cannon.
His "Ether" dropped a few months later and was so devastating that the word "ether" has
become a shorthand term for having lyrically destroyed your rival on a track.
Some fans thought it was over then and there, but Jay decided to double down and get reckless.
He premiered "Supa Ugly" on Hot 97 FM and explicitly referenced having hooked up with
the mother of Nas' daughter.
Jay's mother was so appalled that she urged her son to apologize, which he later did.
Occasional shots were fired over the next few years, until they performed on stage together
during Jay's "I Declare War" concert in 2005 and publicly quashed this musician feud.
They've even recorded a couple tracks together since, tossing their differences overboard
and sailing that friendship all the way to the bank.
"How did the Jay-Z beef start?"
… "I'm really over that, man, y'know?"
Mariah Carey vs. Jennifer Lopez
The fact that this so-called feud is still being talked about is either a huge testament
to our tendency to make a whole lot of noise over a whole heap of nothing where celebrities
are concerned or an even bigger testament to Mariah Carey's Olympian capacity for throwing
shade.
In 2000, a German TV network asked Carey for her opinion on a few of her contemporaries.
She spoke very highly of Beyoncé, but when asked about J-Lo she simply smiled and replied
"I don't know her."
Ouch.
Carey's four little words provided enough meme fodder to keep gossip-lovers warm and
happy for many winters.
"There was the moment when you said, 'I don't know her.'"
"That was so long ago, I can't believe people still make such a big deal out of it."
J-Lo told Andy Cohen she harbored no ill will toward Carey in 2014 and hoped the feeling
was mutual.
"I don't have a feud against her at all.
I know from back in the day I've read things that she's said about me that were not the
greatest."
At the 2015 Billboard Music Awards, though, J-Lo was caught idly looking at her phone
during Carey's performance.
She claims that it was just sneaky editing and bad timing.
The whole thing wallowed in this sort of passive-aggressive nothingness until late 2017, when record label
owner Irv Gotti revealed the two had actually been pitted against each other behind the
scenes back in the early 2000s by one Tommy Mottola, a label exec and Carey's ex-husband.
"My, my the plot, like my gravy, thickens."
Kanye West vs. Taylor Swift
This feud between super stars all started, of course, with that infamous "Imma let you
finish" interruption during Taylor's acceptance speech at the 2009 VMAs.
"Yo, Taylor.
I'm really happy for you.
I'ma let you finish.
But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time."
What happened over the next eight-ish years was a noisy mish-mash of more award show drama,
lyrical pot-shots, and two or three planet-sized egos.
Following the outburst, Kanye was slammed by everyone from fellow rapper 50 Cent …
"I wish he would come take one of my awards so I could black his eye in front of everybody."
... to then-president Barack Obama …
"The young lady seems like a perfectly nice person.
She's getting her award.
What's he doing up there?
He's a jackass."
A brief apology tour followed, but then a year or so later he slowly started backpedaling
and trying to justify his actions.
Even so, they seemed to have buried the hatchet by 2015, when Taylor presented Yeezy with
the Vanguard Award at the VMAs that year.
"I'm really happy for you, and I'ma let you finish.
But Kanye West has had one of the greatest careers of all time."
But then Kanye dropped "Famous" in 2016, reigniting the feud and turning more than a few heads
with the line "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why?
I made that b*tch famous."
Taylor said she was shocked, but Kanye claimed to have gotten her blessing for the line beforehand.
She denied this, and wild speculation and bickering was rife until Kim Kardashian set
things straight on Snapchat, posting a partial recording of the phone conversation in which
Taylor's blessing had, in fact, been given.
Taylor shot back with some harsh words on "Look What You Made Me Do" in late 2017, so
just when this will all end is anyone's guess.
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