In April of 2016, the LAPD got a call about a burglary near the house of Puddle of Mudd frontman Wes Scantlin.
A car that was parked in Scantlin's driveway had allegedly been broken into. When police arrived, a panicked Scantlin ran into his house and refused to come outside.
What transpired was a tense two-hour standoff with police. An additional 30 officers were called to the scene, and they arrived in bulletproof vests, with rifles drawn, strapped for combat. Scantlin was eventually put in handcuffs and was led away with a wide-eyed grin plastered on his face.
The early-aughts grunge rocker, who turns 49 today, had already stacked up a unique rap sheet prior to the 2016 standoff. In 2007, at the apex of Puddle of Mudd's career, Scantlin was on a tour of Eric Presley's Kingsland house and jumped into his pool. "We were just being dumb little rock stars," Scantlin later said of the incident. He was banned from Kingsland for life.
A few years later, he was pursued by the IRS for an owed $60,000, and a couple of months later he was arrested again for cocaine possession and driving without a license. Not soon after, he was arrested again in 2012 for public intoxication on a flight to Los Angeles. Scantlin began screaming at the flight attendant for denying him booze and became so disorderly that the airplane was forced to make an emergency landing in Austin, Texas.
His bizarre antics didn't stop there, and his legal woes continued into 2013. In May of that year, he was arrested twice: once for outstanding warrants and again a few days later for shaking his ex-wife and dragging her by the arm. Then in July, Scantlin started up a chainsaw and began destroying his neighbor's lawn and was arrested for felony vandalism. Upon leaving the station the next day, he said that his neighbor vandalized his house and that he "had to take action."
A year later, after a massive onstage meltdown, Scantlin made national headlines for taking a joyride on a baggage carousel at Denver National Airport, which landed him behind bars once again. As his arrests continued to pile up, his career started to take a turn for the worst. Scantlin's continued drug abuse fueled his quick temper, and he soon had another massive meltdown during a Puddle of Mudd show in Arizona in 2015, smashing his guitar and drums to bits.
Puddle of Mudd Wes Scantlin meltdown-"He stole my funkin house"(1 -30-2016)www.youtube.com
His calamities were often triggered by fans' criticism or booing, as Scantlin regularly came under scrutiny for lip-syncing live performances. In 2015, the band was booed offstage during a show in Versailles, Ohio. Concert-goers said Scantlin was very drunk, "sat down often," and mimed his way through his set. The band deleted their Facebook page, and a few days later, Scantlin engaged in "a drunken 100 mph police chase" in Minnesota and was charged with DUI and fleeing police.
As his career as a rocker took a turn for the worst, his arrests for DUIs and drug possession continued to pile up, and onstage meltdowns became more frequent. He passed out during a show in Italy, took his shirt off, and pulled up a chair to rant during a concert in England. He accused a fan of "stealing his house" during a show in Ohio and fell on his drummer at a show in Wales. His bandmates soon quit.
It all seemed to come to a boiling point in 2016 when Scantlin rigged a fake explosive outside his West Hollywood home to "deter car thieves" that caused his entire neighborhood to be evacuated and for the bomb squad to be called. After the story broke, he dropped off the map and finally got sober, reemerging reunited with Puddle of Mudd in 2019 to release Welcome to Galvania, their first album in almost a decade. He announced he was five months sober. With that said, Scantlin recently came under scrutiny again– not for legal reasons or meltdowns, but for butchering a cover of Nirvana's "About a Girl," which, when all is said and done, might be a step in the right direction?
"Do you have any regrets?" interviewer Cathy Rankin asked Scantlin in April. "No. Nah-uh," he quickly replied. "A couple of bridges have been burned, but I think it's repairable." When asked how he will face the future, Scantlin laughed and said: "Keep cool, and don't go to the airport with a B.B. gun in your backpack."
Happy Birthday, Wes Scantlin!
Puddle Of Mudd - About A Girl (Trainwreck Nirvana Cover)www.youtube.com
So we can all agree that last night was an insufferable fever dream.
As I watched two disgruntled old white men hash out whether white supremacists have rights and whether my girlfriend gets to keep her health insurance, I found myself dissociating and was soon struck with a question that has since plagued me for the last 24 hours: Whatever happened to The Ataris?
It turns out, the "Boys of Summer" are very much still together, but in my search, I continued to delve back into the 2000s pop-punk catalog and, in turn, found myself fondly yearning for the high school days that included Scene Kids, the Lizzie Mcguire movie, and friendship bracelets. Here's a collection of the silly, nonsensical bands that soundtracked the 2000s. Hopefully, they can take you back to a simpler time and help you disengage from the hellscape that is our current existence.
Bowling For Soup
The fact that a doltish band like BFS achieved mainstream fame goes to show how asinine the early 2000s were. In the music video for "Girls All the Bad Guys Want," A window-shopping woman fondly watches the Texas quintet on TV as they sing puerile lyrics like, "She is watchin' wrestling, creamin' over tough guys, listening to rap metal." Bowling for Soup conveyed a specific frat boy energy that would have never taken off in 2020, but for a brief moment in the early aughts, goofy pop-punk groups like BFS thrived in the mainstream.
They're a band rank with teenage hormones and forever stuck in high school, so if the phrase "the whole damned world is just as obsessed with who's the best dressed and who's having sex" makes you feel something, BFS can scratch that angsty itch.
Simple Plan
Another lunatic pop-punk band that rose to prominence alongside BFS, Simple Plan presented themselves as goofy renegades, but their music was surprisingly candid in reflecting childhood hardships. Unlike BFS, the Canadian-rockers focused less on teenage hormones and more on just how being a kid can be absolutely miserable. "I'm Just a Kid," which soundtracked countless early aughts movies like Cheaper by the Dozen, was at one point the song for hormonal teens.
Not to mention their lyrics are still applicable to how we all feel in this current moment. "Maybe when the night is dead/I'll crawl into my bed/I'm staring at these four walls again/ I'll try to think about the last time/ I had a good time." Other tracks like "Welcome to My Life" and "Perfect" were just as helpful in navigating the frustrations of growing up, and revisiting them brings pangs of nostalgia with it.
Fountains of Wayne
While most people only know the NYC rockers for the charmingly lewd "Stacy's Mom," Fountains of Wayne actually offered a surprising amount of transparency with their garage power-pop. "Sink to the Bottom," while slightly derivative of a Weezer song, is a candid exploration of a toxic codependent relationship, which was a thing rarely dissected in the suppressed era of the 2000s. Other songs, such as the buoyant "Hey Julie," are just plain fun in their anti-corporate message: "Working all day for a mean little man, with a clip-on tie and a rub-on tan." The band is raucous and fun, and that's what makes it all the more heartbreaking that COVID and the "mean little man" in the White House took Fountain's Adam Schlesinger from us earlier this year.
The Click Five
It's sometimes hard to remember that The Click Five was a brief flash in the pan, but these Boston boys were the hottest pop group in the country for a split second. Their pop music was utterly innocuous, with themes that included heartbreak, infatuation, and more infatuation. After the success of their debut, Greetings From Imrie House, the band would quickly switch lead singers from Eric Dill to Kyle Patrick and release one more project before dissolving. But on the infectious "Just the Girl," it was nothing but good vibes.
Boys Like Girls
Another vapid Boston-based power pop group of the early aughts, Boys Like Girls emerged as indie sweethearts before completely selling out and going full pop on their sophomore effort, Love Drunk. But on their self-titled debut, and more specifically "The Great Escape," the quartet really makes the idea of #VanLife sound appealing. With a raucous chorus and a charismatic music video that shows a group of friends indulging in a last-minute road trip, Boys Like Girls was the soundtrack to spontaneity. When revisited in 2020, the idea of leaving our confined apartments for a new life elsewhere has never been so appealing.
Forever The Sickest Kids
While Forever the Sickest Kids garnered a more indie following, the pop-punk band focused solely on meshing pop-punk power chords with synthesizers and dancey beats. What resulted was a collection of rowdy pop songs that turned any moment into a dance party. On "Whoa Oh! (Me vs Everyone), the band's debut single, they touch on themes of isolation and how it feels to have the whole world against you: "I candy-coat and cover everything that I'm still hiding underneath," frontman Jonathan Cook belts. "It's been a long time, It's been a long time." That sentiment definitely remains true in 2020.
Singer-songwriter Seal (Henry Olusegun Adeola Samuel) arrives at the Los Angeles Premiere Of Netflix's 'The Harder They Fall' held at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall on October 13, 2021 in Los Angeles, California, United States.
Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
In 1995, Batman took on Harvey Dent and The Riddler to the soothing sound of Seal's "Kiss From a Rose."
It didn't quite happen like that; the track was actually used in a love scene between Nicole Kidman and Val Kilmer. But the song itself, which topped US charts on this day in 1995 (and in 1996 won three Grammys) remains a powerhouse.
But it's an easily abused powerhouse, as drunk frat bros have practically turned the song into a parody thanks to their late-night karaoke renditions. Written in 1987, several years before Seal's self-titled debut in 1991, Seal "threw the tape in the corner" after hearing the track. He felt it was corny and was embarrassed by it.
"To be honest, I was never really that proud of it," Seal later said of the track. It's true that referring to someone as "my power, my pleasure, my pain" is super cringe in 2020, but Seal did it with such sincerity that it inevitably resonated with millions of people. His voice was haunting and vulnerable, uplifting and forceful, and his cryptic mentions of a "greying tower" have led to years of speculation. "I thought it was crap," he told The Guardian.
Regardless of "Kiss From a Rose's" fame, Seal's voice is closely associated with some of pop's biggest songs. Not to mention he's frequently dabbled in techno and dance music, and some of his dopest tracks are ones crafted alongside European DJs. The point is: He's had a long and fruitful journey while maintaining relative anonymity, and here are just a few tracks that solidify Seal as one of the greatest pop stars ever.
Killer
Seal's sound, while inherently pop, always teetered toward European dance music, and that makes sense considering his first breakthrough moment came in 1990 when he collaborated with acid-house DJ Adamski. Soaked in pulsing thumps and gargled synths, "Killer" was a real banger in Europe's club scene and was described by Adamski to be "like the soundtrack to a movie murder scene."
The track's popularity would, unfortunately, sour the relationship between its two artists. The duo's record company wanted to promote the song as solely an Adamski record, even though Seal had sung and written the track. The two had a falling out shortly after.
Crazy
In 1991, Seal released "Crazy" as his official debut solo single. Inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, the song is a stirring combo of techno-pop with funk and soul that was rarely seen in 1990s American music. "I felt the cycle had reached its apex," Seal said of the two tragedies that birthed his hit song. "I felt the world changing, and I felt profound things happening." While not as successful as "Kiss From a Rose," "Crazy" still gave Seal a top 10 hit in both the UK and US.
Not to mention—Seal's drip in the song's music video was on point. The silver pendant draped around his neck? The black leather leotard + pants combo? The silky white hooded cape? The silver bits in his dreads? Seal established himself as a tastemaker both in fashion and pop music early on.
Love's Divine
Chances are you can hum at least a portion of "Love's Divine" without even knowing its origin. Off of Seal's nearly-perfect Seal IV, the song was a hefty love ballad with an equally cheesy music video, but it encompassed the suppressed romanticism of the early aughts so perfectly: when a man could chase down his fleeing ex in a cab and have it be seen as a romantic gesture rather than misogynistic harassment.
But as corny as the track is, "Love's Divine" exemplifies the amazing control Seal has over his voice. He flutters through the track's complex chorus in one easy breath, all while the piano and strings just lightly push him along but never overpower him. As corny as the track is, Seal made its sentiment sound nothing but sincere. Not to mention the song's video was the acting debut for future Bond girl Olga Kurylenko.
My Vision
In 2002 Seal once again teamed up with a budding house producer named Jakkata to curate another pulsating club hit. Titled "My Vision," the early-aughts house track builds on a piano sample from Shawshank Redemption, while Seal passionately croons about having a hot summer with his hot lover. The track was another top 10 hit for Seal in the UK and reached as high as number six.
Featuring an overly sultry voice-over and a splash of '80s flair, Jakatta's track is like its own time capsule, encapsulating the drama of the early-aughts with the brooding '90s energy of Seal. The end result is a track that still very much slaps on the dancefloor.
Fly Like An Eagle
While originally recorded by the Steve Miller Band 1976, Seal added his own twist to the pop hit two decades later for the Space Jam soundtrack with magnetic results. The funky remix was a hit and garnered the approval from Miller himself, who called the track "the best cover of the song he had heard."
As funkadelic as the song was and is, Seal was apparently furious when he later saw Bugs Bunny make an appearance in the single's music video. "He was furious," said Space Jam director Joe Pytka. "I said, 'What did you think? It's promotion for the movie.'"
Apparently, Seal never forgave the transgression. "He never forgave me, he actually never forgave me," said Pytka. "I ran into him once or twice after that, but he was kind of perturbed…" Regardless, the track is one of Seal's funkiest and resonates nostalgically for millennials everywhere.
I'm not talking about The Rolling Stones or Motley Crue. I'm talking about that clean-cut modern rock from the beginning of the 2000s, when every rock band that popped up appeared to be just carbon copies of Nickelback. Rock had been heading in a more commercial direction for a long time, but 2005's All the Right Reasons was a special kind of basic and propelled the genre into a bottomless pit it never really crawled out from.
Panned by critics nationwide, rock and roll traditionalists used All the Right Reasons to lament the death of their favorite genre, but regardless, the project went 7x platinum in Canada, and dominated American radio for the entire year with songs like "Rockstar" and "Photograph." The album was one of the best selling projects of 2015, and equally stale acts followed in Nickelback's steps, from Lifehouse and Rob Thomas to Trapt and a genuinely awful band called Silvertide.
But when Nickelback announced that they'd be releasing new music this past Friday (they ended up releasing a horrendous cover of The Charlie Daniel's Band's "The Devil Went Down To Georgia"), the internet roasted them non-stop, showing that perhaps we have turned a corner as a society and that the world's most loved and hated band is no more than a meme in 2020.
Still, whatever happened to those bands that followed Nickelback's lead? Sure, they all kind of sucked, but a lot of them were actuallybetter than the false prophet they blindly followed. Here are a few of those bands and what they're doing now.
Daughtry
Remember when Chris Daughtry was the most talked-about thing in music thanks to his surprise elimination from 2006's American Idol? He was a fan favorite, lauded for his belting technique and surprisingly versatile range. Within hours of his dismissal from American Idol, he was offered a frontman spot in the then-decently-relevant rock band Fuel. But Daughtry said nay and charted his own path. He soon formed his own band, and 2006's Daughtry became one of the most talked-about and fastest-selling rock albums in recent memory.
The project's lead single "It's Not Over" went platinum, pillaged every radio station, and snagged two Grammy nominations for "Best Rock Song" and "Best Rock Performance Given by a Duo or Group." The album itself was one of 2006's highest-selling efforts, but the critical response was mixed. Panned as "commercial" and "generic," Ken Barnes of USA Today referred to them as "FuelNickelStaindback," a fair assessment in hindsight. Remember that weird song they did about serial child abductors?
The band's sophomore effort Leave This Town would be even more popular, with their rock-ballad "Life After You," (a song Daughtry wrote with Chad Kroeger) once again dominating the charts and defining their legacy.
But slowly the band's popularity would disintegrate. Their third effort Break The Spell was their lowest charting album to date (despite being, actually, one of their best releases), and so their follow-up strove to be an album of pure pop-rock ballads to reignite their "Life After You" fanfare. 2013's Baptized, as a result, was the band's most cringe-worthy effort, with horrendous tracks like "Battleships" and "Waiting For Superman" forever sealing their fate as a corny, dated rock act.
As corny as they were, they're still better than Nickelback, because that Daughtry sure can sing.
3 Doors Down
Another vanilla rock effort of the early-aughts, the band's 2000 debut The Better Life remains their best selling record. It was one of 2000's best selling efforts and was certified 6x platinum in the United States. That's because "Kryptonite" was unlike anything they'd ever released before or ever would again. Featuring a splash of lo-fi, some hazy psychedelia on the vocals, and a driving chorus, the track remains a solid rock song.
But let's be honest, chances are that casual listeners knew that "Kryptonite" wasn't as prolific as their cheesy magnum opus "Here Without You." Released on their otherwise unmemorable sophomore effort Away From the Sun, the rock ballad represented a Nickelback-like shift the New York quartet would never bounce back from. Away From the Sun was significantly cleaner and more commercial than its predecessor, and "Here Without You" would become the perfect song to document the suppressed emotions of the early aughts.
Lyrics like "I'm here without you baby, but you're still with me in my dreams, and tonight girl, it's only you and me," would cause the group to be satirized for years to come. The group is still making music (they just released their sixth album back in 2016), but they have since dissolved into a watered-down rock act with nothing new to say.
With that said, "Kryptonite" very much still slaps, which I can't say for most of Nickelback's discography.
Staind
With a splash of Post-Grunge angst, Staind pretty much equated to a Nickelback with darker eyeliner.
Formed in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1995, the group's seven albums dabbled in nu-metal and grunge without ever losing that clean-cut commercial sound. "It's Been Awhile," and "Outside," the softest tracks off their 5x platinum sophomore album Break The Cycle, remain their most popular singles and transformed the band from a potential metal act into angsty post-grunge balladeers.
"So Far Away," another rock ballad, was by far the most popular single from the band's fourth (and surprisingly heavy) record, 14 Shades of Grey; and Chapter V, the band's most pop-focused, commercially accessible record, spawned three moderately successful singles, two of which were also ballads. While the band's mainstream status slowly started to fade after Chapter V's success, the group actually made some of their best music once the spotlight drifted away.
2008's Illusion of Progress was critically admired for its versatility as it incorporated blues, country, and fresh optimism. "Most of all, the music packs as much a punch as ever–and more variety," wrote The Boston Globe. "Staind sometimes departs from its rock-metal power ballads for tunes that suggest Pink Floyd...and even Brit band Oasis."
The band's final self-titled album came on the eve of an awkward break-up, but the record was obsessed with snapping necks, and in turn was the band's heaviest record to date, devoid of any cheesy ballads, and indicative of the superb metal band they could have been had fame not boxed them in.
With all that said, Aaron Lewis, who is now killing it as a country singer, was always a far better songwriter than Chad Kroeger. Traversing topics like mental illness, addiction, fatherhood, and finding one's self, Staind covered topics far darker than anything the suppressed 2000s was willing to discuss. Cheesy ballads aside, deep down the quartet always knew how to truly rock.
Theory of a Deadman
It's impossible to speak on Nickelback's legacy without talking about TOAD. As the first band to sign with Chad Kroeger's label 604 Records, Theory of a Deadman emerged with a self-titled debut that sounded so much like Nickelback that people actually thought it was a Chad Kroeger's side project. It might as well have been, 6 out of the 10 songs on TOADS debut were penned by Kroeger himself, and frontman Tyler Connolly had just as gruff a vocal style. "If we do, we do," Connolly told The Oklahoman when asked if he thinks his band sounds like Nickelback.
For their sophomore effort, the band sought to quell any comparisons to their label head, and for Gasoline they collaborated with Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde in the hopes of distinguishing themselves and creating a conceptual record that "would involve several guest players of Wylde's stature." But after the musicians had been assembled, the label "footed the bill," hoping the sessions would create a "batch of new songs." So TOAD headed back to the drawing board.
Still, Gasoline was more multifaceted than its predecessor and incorporated blues and country along with its post-grunge commercial sound, but the Nickelback comparisons remained. So for their third, and heaviest, record, TOAD creatively pushed themselves and created some memorable moments as a result.
"By the Way," which actually featured backing vocals from Chris Daughtry, was surprisingly heavy and satisfying, but ballads like "All or Nothing" and "Not Meant to Be" still reeked of Nickelback's cheesy ethos. But then came "Hate My Life," a disgruntled track about a blue collared grunt who hates, well, pretty much everything. The song was kitschy, but fun in a gross, misogynistic kind of way. The single was moderately successful, and the band had latched on to their niche.
Their fourth effort, "The Truth Is…" leaned fully into TOAD's new aesthetic of being the soundtrack to angry white trash. The album's lead single "Lowlife" is practically "Hate My Life" part 2, and the project's title track is an ode to crazy ex-girlfriends who lie about everything, driven solely by a quirky ukulele. Of course, making white trash music means you were inevitably going to be offensive:"I like her so much better when she's down on her knees," Connolly croons on "B*tch Came Back." "'Cause when she's in my face that's when I'm starting to see / That all my friends are laughing thinking that we be wrong / Well she's so f*cking stupid that she's singing along."
Of course, the vibe behind The Truth Is… never had any true staying power considering how derogatory it was, and it faded into obscurity as quickly as it emerged. So TOAD returned to alt-metal in 2014 and released Savages, their best and heaviest work. But the damage had already been done, and they still felt and sounded like a dated rock act of yesteryear. So they went pop with 2017's Wake Up Call and have since continued down that path to make more inspiring tunes.
"I think the #MeToo movement is so large and powerful," Connolly told Popdust in an exclusive interview, "and it's fantastic that women are gaining strength and [fighting] for equality. Being an all-male band, I think for us to support that is what we're looking to do." For that sentiment alone, they remain exponentially better than the band that birthed them.
