Every band – even the best ones – have songs they wished they’d never made and in the case of Korn’s Jonathan Davis, his most egregious example involves one Fred Durst.
2021 might have been the year of the Limp Bizkit renaissance but decades ago, they weren’t so well-received. When Korn recruited their fellow nu metal star Durst to feature on a track for their 1998 album Follow the Leader, it didn’t turn out as planned.
“’All in the Family’ is the worst song ever,” Davis revealed to Metal Hammer. “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.”
Davis made sure to add that it wasn’t a personal issue. “I’ve got nothing against Fred, it just sucks!” he insisted. “We were out of our minds drunk! It shouldn’t have made the record.”
Not that it mattered anyway: Follow the Leader was a mighty success for Korn, becoming the biggest album of the band’s career. It reached number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 and the ARIA Album Chart, becoming certified five-times Platinum in their home country. Other huge singles like ‘Got the Life’ and ‘Freak on a Leash’ made up for the lesser-quality of the Durst collaboration.
Elsewhere in the interview, Davis discussed his frustration that he was blocked from performing the soundtrack to the 2003 vampire film Queen of the Damned. Instead, his vocals were re-recorded by Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, Disturbed’s David Draiman, and Static-X’s Wayne Statiuc. “Oh, that fucking pissed me off!” he said. “I was so fucking mad, like, ‘Are you kidding me? You know how hard I worked on this, right?’”
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Check out ‘All in the Family’ by Korn ft. Fred Durst:
