20 Bands That Everyone Loves To Hate

Mariel Loveland | August 6, 2018 1:33 pm

Maybe it’s musical Stockholm Syndrome (which research has proven exists) or obnoxious frat boy behavior that makes us roll our eyes. Maybe they’re just too easy to tease or too banal to fully love. Still, there’s no denying the Billboard charts are home to a litany of acts we love to hate. We may try to conceal our Spotify playlists, but we can’t deny we know all the words to these artists’ biggest hits. From Nickelback to Train, these bands seemingly have millions of fans while having no fans at all.

One band is so widely hated that Vice sent a reporter to one of their concerts just to figure out who the heck listens to them.

Smash Mouth

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Image Credit: Bob Berg / Contributor

The onslaught of “All Star” memes that popped up online in recent years is a true testament to the song’s infectious melody – so why does Smash Mouth get all the hate? Somewhere between the first Shrek Soundtrack and singer Steve Harwell’s appearance on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Smash Mouth became a love-to-hate-it internet joke. Or maybe it had something to do with Harwell binge-eating boiled eggs for charity with Guy Fieri. Or maybe it’s the spiky hair and short-sleeve button-ups donned decades after they personified mainstream rock. Fortunately, the band never took themselves very seriously (if you couldn’t already tell by their lyrics).

“We have never taken ourselves that seriously,” bassist Paul Delisle told Inverse. “We like the attention, so even though it’s a bit of a goof, it usually centers around our song ‘All Star’ and it still sells weekly like mad. So we take the bad with the good and fully embrace the meme aspect.”