I am in no way a music buff, I don’t know a chord from a beat, so this list will probably be super brief in parts.
I actually don’t have a lot of favourite performers, it’s usually isolated to just one or two songs per artist, so all 10 listed below are listed because I listened to more than a couple of songs.
10
Seether is just such a good solid band that I started listening to, I can put them on in the background and just vibe. The lead singer has been through a ton of shit and he really puts max emotion into all of his tracks.
Goosebumps watching this again after a few years.
9
Oh boy. If this list was in the mid to late 2000s, U2 would probably be #1. I absolutely adored this band and got posters, albums etc and listened to them on repeat for a very long time. I don’t know what it was, but they really captivated me for a long time.
Their songs are so catchy, and they, much like Shinedown, rarely have a bad song. Unfortunately, I listened to them so much that I actually became permanently fatigued by their songs. I think that’s a next level of love, so it’s impossible for me skip them from my top 10.
8
I don’t know anyone that doesn’t like Eminem. I am not a fan of rap in the slightest, but he’s just something else. I learnt a lot of colourful language and some birds + bees from his tracks too while growing up 8D
7
I actually started listening to Metallica the “wrong” way. I started off with their critically worst album “St. Anger” and I fucking LOVED it. It was only uphill from there.
6
According to my Mum, during my early primary school days, I had a ritual:
- Eat Coco Pops
- Watch Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
- Watch Bohemian Rhapsody on tape
- Go to school
Apparently I did this nearly every morning for quite a while. In 2012 when the London Olympics happened, I had a blast from the past when I saw Freddie “perform” and started binging Queen for a very long time. Easily one of the best vocalists ever.
5
Someone once told me “Hey you should check this band out, they sound really close to AC/DC”. When a band’s vocals sound so close to something as big as AC/DC, especially from the same country, it’s gotta be good. Airbourne brings it, and they’re incredible.
4
Who doesn’t love Linkin Park? I remember first hearing them in the early-mid 2000s and being blown away, in fact whenever I think of 2000s music, Linkin Park is always forefront of my mind. I’d be listening to them on Winamp on repeat while playing games or making some some graphics for people. I’m actually a big fan of their new lead vocalist, nobody can ever replace Chester fully but Emily does an awesome job.
I’m a big fan of their lesser known songs like Blackout and When They Come For Me.
3
This band means a lot to me, because it really kept me focused during the darkest points in my life. I actually attribute a lot of positive thoughts on the world, and self improvement to listening to Shinedown endlessly for years. The only problem with this, is that listening to Shinedown these days often teleports my brain back to those days, which isn’t a fun place.
I don’t think they’ve released a bad song, especially their earlier stuff.
2
I watched for a couple of years when I was younger and quickly realised it was lame. Popularity and sympathy votes, with mostly shitty music. During college, some of my friends told me to watch it because a rock band was kicking ass. I had a look, and yeah, that sure was different than the usual spiel, in fact it was good… really good. They went onto win the Eurovision song contest with Hard Rock Hallelujah and it began a little following in my school.
As time went on, I started listening to more Lordi, until I kind of forgot about them. In 2022/2023 I went on a Lordi binge and found out that they made TONS of good shit since I stopped listening.
While writing this I’m noticing a common theme with my most favourite bands: Masks, anti-establishment and go fuck yourself LOL.
1
I’ve bundled Stone Sour and Slipknot together because they have the same vocalist and even the same guitarist. They are truly two different flavours of the same pop. When I was 13 I stumbled across the School of Rock movie, which totally changed my view on music… going from liking radio pop artists to immediately shifting entirely to rock in all varieties. It was at that moment I was like “AH, this is music. This is what I like.”. It was around this age I began my first job doing some basic reception work (For work experience), and I stumbled upon the radio station Kerrang. On their website they had pre-made playlists, and one of them caught my attention immediately for the first song it played: Slipknot – Duality. I couldn’t stop listening to it on repeat and rocking out in this empty building I was manning as a lonely 13 year old.
I began to listen to Kerrang a lot, and heard another band I really liked: Stone Sour. I had no idea they had the same vocalist, but in hindsight it was pretty obvious. In time I began to really love Stone Sour’s first album and a few Slipknot songs. As the years went on, I began listening to a lot more “chiller” rock, before coming back to it in the mid 2010s where I went on a huge Stone Sour and Slipknot binge. There’s just something about Corey’s vocals, his lyrics and the emotion he puts behind them. He can do it all from soft pop rock all the way to the most demonic sounding vocals.
In 2018, I broke up with my ex-wife and I had planned to go to see Stone Sour, which would’ve been my first concert ever. After the breakup, my confidence was really at an all time low, and I was really contemplating not going. Thankfully, I had the best friends who helped rebuild my confidence, and I just went for it. I travelled to Manchester on my own, queued up and honestly had one of the best experiences of my life… it was incredible. After something devastating like that, the best medicine is to let it out, and boy, did I ever that night.