This is a silly question that I keep thinking about when I've got nothing else on my mind. Who is the worst musician to become reasonably famous or successful as a musician? Some examples and caveats inside.
I'm a hobby guitarist. I have minimal physical talent actually fingering chords and strumming strings, but thanks to some study of music theory both in school and afterwards, it's conceivable that I could write a pretty good song and then just not be able to play it well. It seems like this is something that could have happened to someone else in history. Or alternatively, maybe someone has a friend who's a talented songwriter/musician and needed a bassist for their band or something.
I think Meg White is the person who originally inspired the question. Her technique is pretty basic, but I can't tell if that's because she's only capable of basic playing, or if that's just what songs are asking of her. Sid Vicious is another example, I guess. He wasn't asked to join the band because of his bass playing, to be sure.
I'm only looking for people who are recognized as musicians. That is, no already-famous people who decide they want to be musicians too. And no intentionally-bad novelty acts, either. (I'm including the Shaggs here, because even though I don't think they were intentionally bad, everyone else who has ever encountered the Shaggs regards them as such.) Basically, people who are sincerely trying to be professional musicians despite their limitations.
I'll specify I'm not looking for entire acts, just individual players. I imagine it would be difficult for an entire act of completely incompetent musicians to get a record deal without some other hook, so I'm thinking situations like "this band's guitarist and bassist are good, but their drummer just can't keep time".
For technical purposes, I'll limit the scope to conventional instruments: guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, brass, woodwinds, strings, etc. No vocals or electronic stuff. There are just too many vocal styles and edge cases arising from those. Like the rapper Mase, who really just mumble-talks in rhymes. Is he actually using his voice as an instrument in the way Celine Dion does? It's not an argument I'm interested in having. And electronic stuff - sampling, drum machine programming, "production", etc. - again, too complicated to get into. Obviously requires a skill set, but it's a different skill set, and so I'm limiting the scope to keep things manageable. I don't really want this to turn into a debate about whether "knob twiddling" is music or not, so I'm excluding it.
I'll define "famous" as either having a video shown on MTV (you know, back when they did that), having a major label record deal, or having either a single or album on a Billboard chart. This excludes a lot of indie bands, Norwegian black metal, your neighbors' garage band, etc., and it's also pretty US-centric, but I'm looking for a certain level of recognition. I want people I'm likely to have already heard of, not some random guy who was in Mayhem for three weeks back in '92. |
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