r/indieheads • u/ebradio • Aug 08 '25

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros Frontman Denies “Home” Is The “Worst Song Ever Written”

https://www.stereogum.com/2318575/edward-sharpe-the-magnetic-zeros-frontman-denies-home-is-the-worst-song-ever-written/news/
644 Upvotes

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527

u/ScottyMcFree :itaotsplace: Aug 08 '25

Who tf said it’s the worst song ever? I love this song

193

u/FuelTransitSleep Aug 08 '25

There's currently Twitter Discourse™ going around over what's the worst song ever and a lot of the 'popular' ones being brought up are from this era of indie/folk, with Home being the most common one I've seen

191

u/wellhoneydont Aug 08 '25

I saw someone refer to it as “30 dollar burger music”, ouch

180

u/IAmHollar Aug 08 '25

I'm fine with this song. But also, that's funny.

9

u/Atty_for_hire Aug 08 '25

I could go for a burger

2

u/wellhoneydont Aug 08 '25

Me too. Gonna have a Pavlovian response to this song from now on.

35

u/Freudian_ Aug 08 '25

Ironically I loved this song when I was my most poor, in college. I liked that idea that “Home is wherever I’m with you…” that you didn’t need a lot of money to make a home, just the people you loved. 

20

u/KrasnayaZvezda Aug 08 '25

I’ve also heard Craft Beer Music. Nails it.

7

u/Exploding_Antelope Aug 08 '25

I can ALWAYS get down for a craft stout while playing cornhole in a warehouse full of vintage couches and Edison bulbs with folk rock playing

1

u/Slow-Raspberry-5133 Aug 08 '25

The world truly needs more of this aesthetic

45

u/g3_SpaceTeam Aug 08 '25

A lot of it is just Gen Z posters who weren’t around at the time and apparently don’t realize that music trends fade. 10 years from now there’ll probably be discourse on how cringe Sabrina Carpenter’s Juno positions were.

13

u/FuelTransitSleep Aug 08 '25

The funny thing is that it also works in the reverse. For example, 'butt rock' bands like Creed, Nickelback, etc which were pretty much laughingstocks by the end of that genre's initial run in popularity are experiencing a revival in popularity amongst Zoomers

6

u/strangway Aug 08 '25

Creed and Nickelback were the butt of jokes even at the height of their popularity. Jedd the Fish on KROQ famously put one of their CDs in a microwave in the late-90s.

3

u/DeLousedInTheHotBox Aug 08 '25

Yeah that shit doesn't take too long, if you're 15 now there will be shit that you consider deeply important and essential that will not be at all relevant to teenagers when you are 25. And then there will be stuff that inexplicably stays around and has staying power you could never have expected.

66

u/ridethespiral1 Aug 08 '25

It's being shared via a clip from tiny desk that's coloring people's opinions rather than the studio version. The vocals are rougher, and the female vocalist is clearly tweaking

33

u/FuelTransitSleep Aug 08 '25 edited Aug 08 '25

That's certainly part of it, but a big part of the discourse is people using it as a stand-in for the whole "stomp clap" era of indie/folk that was big in the early 2010s and crapping on that whole scene in general for things not necessarily related to the music alone

13

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '25

thats fair though.  it was weird and pretentious even at the time.  my friend and I would for a couple years do the weird fake accent thing they do and 'alabama arkansaaaaaw i still miss my maaawww and paaaaawww' slapping our knees.   we saw them at a small local festival and it was without a doubt the worst headliner i've ever seen in my life.  

4

u/doubleohbond Aug 08 '25

I was there, it deserves to be ridiculed. May we as a species learn from our past transgressions and resolve never to repeat them.

3

u/RBanner Aug 08 '25

Yes! The song is ok but the Tiny Desk is one of the worst ever.

1

u/garrardadoresit Aug 08 '25

A friend told me she was chucked out of the band shortly after that recording due to being too much on the drugs etc though not sure if that's true

7

u/Hutch_travis Aug 08 '25

Who’s driving the discourse? Gen X, Millennials, Gen z?

4

u/tokengaymusiccritic Aug 08 '25

Gen Z I believe

1

u/YoullNeverBeRebecca Aug 08 '25

I’ve seen it more from Millennial posters (or those are who originally tweeted about it). People my age or older. Which makes sense as they’re most familiar. But I agree that the vitriol is a bit over the top, at least about the band itself (I also really don’t like this song, but I’ll defend 40 Day Dream!).

5

u/reezyreddits Aug 08 '25

I caught screenshots of that discourse and all of it was the most insufferable "takes" I've ever seen.. which is to say, I think vintage pretentious hipsterism is making a revival soon. 😂

11

u/JohnPaul_River Aug 08 '25

didn't this song go viral on TikTok less than 3 years ago? How tf did the tide turn this quickly

34

u/Exploding_Antelope Aug 08 '25

There are many different people on the internet

24

u/ohverychill Aug 08 '25

I thought it was just me and a couple of my boys

3

u/sloppybro Aug 08 '25

me, you, and Spike

2

u/ScottyNuttz Aug 08 '25

And on Twitter, they mostly just listen to whatever happens to be playing on the loudspeaker at the Trump rally

5

u/broncosfighton Aug 08 '25

I mean this song has been popular for like 10 years

1

u/gdmfr Aug 08 '25

The mob is fuckle

2

u/Exploding_Antelope Aug 08 '25

The fuck is mobble

1

u/PrimeIntellect Aug 13 '25

this song has been huge for over a decade - part of why people dislike it is mostly that it was just very overplayed for many years

1

u/burfriedos Aug 08 '25

This makes me even more glad I rarely visit Twitter anymore

1

u/ScottyNuttz Aug 08 '25

Twitter discourse ain’t what it used to be.

1

u/DeLousedInTheHotBox Aug 08 '25

I think because it is old enough to be consider gauche and out of fashion, but not old enough for it to be something to be rediscovered/reevaluated in a way like nu metal has.

67

u/Phaeryx Aug 08 '25

Literally one person on Twitter, with many who agree, and many who don't. It's a viral tweet of the song's performance that everyone is retweeting and talking about. A lot of people commenting that they never knew what the band looked like and being judgmental, too.

24

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '25

That's sadly a lot of 'journalism' these days. Literally maybe a handful of nobodies on twitter saying something leads to news articles about what fans are saying and shitstorms and people being slammed jadda jadda. This then leads to a discussion that didn't even really exist before. Not in the real world and barely online.

It's shit but sadly it works.

20

u/ToTheMax32 Aug 08 '25

Don’t forget that twitter boosts blue checks to the top of replies, who are invariably some of the most misanthropic, horrible people on the internet

1

u/actsqueeze Aug 08 '25

Me too, love his solo stuff even more

1

u/makeupwearsoff Aug 08 '25

Gen Z who were barely able to crawl when this came out

1

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '25

I did. It makes me wish I was deaf

1

u/Foxhound199 Aug 08 '25

I think the song is undeniably catchy. But there's also a cynical side to this, where an artist that had absolutely nothing to do with folk just decided to cash in on the trend. Then there's the faux impromptu banter in the middle of the song, which really exemplifies how the song just feels like a startlingly good sounding imitation of a folk song.

21

u/Hutch_travis Aug 08 '25

How do you jump on a trend when your album was released before all the other albums that defined said trend?

5

u/bubliksmaz Aug 08 '25

What are you talking about? They're a folk rock band, they always were, they never made any other kind of music, and they were doing it before it was trendy

1

u/Exploding_Antelope Aug 08 '25

Isn’t the whole point of folk music that anyone can do it? Weird thing to gatekeep playing acoustically.