Fandom Enraging Misconception / Music

---

• Never, ever make the common-but-ignorant (and for musicians, Berserk Button) error of using "crescendo" when what you mean is "climax", e.g. the egregious "It rose to a crescendo". NO. That is WRONG. And a musician within earshot may well give you a Dope Slap for it (verbal or physical, depending on said musician's genre). Crescendo^note  Italian: "I wax, I grow greater" refers to the process of getting louder - which may, but doesn't have to, culminate in a climax (it could instead fall away in a decrescendo.) Ravel's well-known Boléro is one great twenty-minute crescendo. For you rock fans, "Stairway to Heaven" is pretty much one as well.
  • In a similar vein, telling someone who is speaking loudly to bring it down an octave, is incorrect. That would be telling them to speak at a lower pitch, not a lower volume.
  • Rhythm and tempo are not the same thing, although they are related. In simple terms rhythm is the timing of when notes are played or not played. Tempo is the speed. Both have further nuances.
• Marilyn Manson is a band, and the lead singer's stage name (not even his parents still call him Brian Hugh Warner, and he does not answer to it, so you don't get to call him that). They are not "devil worshippers", Marilyn Manson (the man) did not have any ribs removed, he wasn't on The Wonder Years, he isn't dead, and he doesn't ever kill animals on stage. ^note  The one time someone suggested in an interview that he hurt a cat, he shot them down and told them that he likes cats, and in fact he has a pet cat (formerly two, but his ex-wife took one in the divorce) named Lily White. Oh, and all of the band is male. Even if Twiggy Ramirez doesn't always look it. Although the fandom generally doesn't mind if you think that Twiggy and Manson are together, because a fair portion of them agree. Also, their second LP is Antichrist Superstar. Not "Anti-Christ Superstar" or "Anti Christ Superstar" or "Anti Christ Super Star". Blaming either the man or the band for the Columbine massacre is a surefire way to be flamed to oblivion. In fact: the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre hated his music (their favorite band was Rammstein).
• That famous Lynyrd Skynyrd song with the long guitar solo? It's called "Free Bird", not "Freebird". Diehard Skynyrd fans WILL correct you. Also don't spell their name as Leonard
• Luca Turilli's first album is King of the Nordic Twilight. The tenth track on said album is "Kings of the Nordic Twilight". Remember this if you do not wish to be set on fire.
• Quiet Riot's song "Metal Health (Bang Your Head)", or "Bang Your Head (Metal Health)". Calling it just "Bang Your Head" is Tempting Fate.
• Do NOT pronounce Yoshiki Hayashi's name as "Yosheekee." Even if the mainstream media almost always does this unless the reporter is Japanese, and even if he tends to ignore it. The best pronunciation for most native English speakers is "Yosh'ki" or "Yoshkey." Neither are perfect Japanese pronunciation, but both are far closer to correct than "Yosheekee."
• Electronic music misconceptions that irk people involved in it and its fans:
  • Just because synthesizers are electronic, doesn't mean they're computers. Many are purely analog (save for maybe the patch memory and/or the MIDI interface, if any), and early Moog modulars don't even have circuit boards.
  • And just because you've seen a synthesizer play by itself, doesn't mean all of them do that all the time, controlled by some Artificial Intelligence or something.
  • Not all electronic music was made with or entirely inside an actual computer, much less by a computer. A great deal of it was made before computers could do that, let alone in that quality. And when Peter Zinovieff of Electronic Music Studios became the very first private person to own a computer, Wendy Carlos' fully-electronic Switched-On Bach had already been released. Electronic musicians who use hardware to make their music will take offense to the assumption that everyone, themselves included, has just clicked their music together on their PC.
  • Not every electronic musical instrument out there is a Moog. Not even most of them or all the older ones. Some big names in electronic music have never used a Moog for quite a while or at all.
  • If you don't want to be branded a clueless amateur, check the pronunciations of "Moog", "Buchla", "Serge", "Synclavier", "Cwejman" and the like before saying these names in the presence of other synth geeks. If you don't, consider yourself lucky if you just start a debate about the correct pronunciation.
  • Calling all Electronic Music "techno" will earn you death in some circles. It's only swift if you're lucky.
  • Likewise, dubstep is now the new "techno", becoming more mis-associated with any electronic music that uses harsh leads and drops. The genre itself is also an example of a Broken Base by classifying music under this term. It originally described electronic music that contained elements of garage, 2-step, and dub, hence the name. Dubstep's association with huge drops and wobbly bass came later, when it somehow crossed over with the drum & bass scene. However, in practical terms, it can all be called dubstep in certain contexts. Just don't tell people at the Dubstep Forum (or other diehards of older styles), how Skrillex makes awesome dubstep.
  • Electronic music was not invented in the 21st century. Or in The '90s. In fact, not in The '70s either.
  • Calling all electronic music with a four-to-the-floor beat "disco" will reveal that you're trolling intentionally.
  • Calling all pre-1990 electronic music without a four-to-the-floor beat "New Age" or even "meditational music" will draw upon you the hatred of many a fan of the respective musicians and groups.
  • Calling an electronic music event a "rave" around EDM enthusiasts, particularly those who dislike the term's connotation with illegal drugs, is a very bad idea. And for that matter, do not insinuate that all EDM parties/events/etc are drug-fueled orgies of debauchery and the music is meaningless.
  • Don't refer to any electronic musician you come across as a DJ. Some have been around since times when DJs actually only put other people's records on their turntables.
  • Eurobeat:
    • It is not J-Pop or otherwise a Japanese-origin music genre, and Eurobeat fans will be blunt about pointing this out. As the genre implies, it's European, more specifically with Italian roots. And while there's a fair number of Japanese musicians who produce Eurobeat, most of the songs you see on Super Eurobeat compilations (the most common and commercially-successful avenue of the genre) are not by Japanese musicians, but Italian ones. The reasons for this misassumption are twofold: Eurobeat is far more popular in Japan than in Europe (to the point where the aforementioned Super Eurobeat albums full of Italian-made music are released in Japan only), and Eurobeat music is prominently featured in the original Initial D anime adaptation and in Initial D Arcade Stage. Nonetheless, it doesn't stop Eurobeat fans from being tired of having to give the same history lesson again and again.
    • Tag a song's artist as "Initial D" rather than the correct artist name at your own peril. Similarly, saying that eurobeat was made for Initial D will earn you some annoyed stares from Eurobeat enthusiasts, who will point out that while there are certainly a lot of songs that mention the series in awareness of the Song Association, the genre in general wasn't made for Initial D and predates it by at least a decade.
• Phil Collins was not a founding member of Genesis (the band having released two albums and going through three drummers before hiring him); claim otherwise around Genesis fans, and prepare to get laughed out of the room.
• Don't ever refer to Lana Del Rey as Lana Del Ray. The Lana fandom will tear you apart if you do and you will have the label as a Ray for a really long time.
• Ghost:
  • Their name is Ghost, not Ghosts.
  • They are a band, not a solo act. The Nameless Ghouls are absolutely part of the band.
  • They are not a Goth band, Nu Metal, Black Metal or Death Metal.
  • Referring to their succession of Papas Emeritus as "all the same guy with different masks" will get you, at best, rolled eyes.
  • Referring to any Papa Emeritus's masks as "face paint".
  • Any suggestion that Ghost is tied to LeVayen Satanism or the Satanic Temple, or is part of any serious movement to promote Satan worship.
  • Contrarily, suggesting that the band isn't Satanic at all.
• Pink Floyd:
  • Refer to the band as "he" and prepare to be laughed at. This was actually referenced in their song "Have a Cigar" from the album Wish You Were Here (1975):
    Oh, by the way, which one's Pink?
  • Saying your favorite song is "Dark Side of the Moon" will most likely make the fan you're talking to Facepalm. There is no actual song with that title. The penultimate song of the album, called "Brain Damage", contains the line "I'll see you on the Dark Side of the Moon" and is often played together on the radio with the following song named Eclipse, leading some people to believe that it's one self-titled song. Or they might be talking about the singles from the album (Money, Time or Us And Them).
  • There is no song called "The Wall" on the album of that name. The song in question is called "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)", and shares its names with two other songs (Parts 1 and 3, natch). It's also often played with "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" attached to the beginning, and playing the former without the latter can result in casual fans asking "Why did it start in the middle?"
  • Whatever you do, don't call them a "stoner band". While their music is known for being rather trippy and psychedelic, essentially none of their songs are about drugs. And while some of their members had a few dalliances with mind-altering substances over the years (most infamously Syd Barrett), their overall drug use was about average for a rock band in the '60s and '70s. The common stereotype that Pink Floyd fans are avid marijuana users is just that: a stereotype.
• Even though it's impossible for two people to agree on what emo is, if you call a band emo and it isn't, you're bound to catch hell for it, especially among fans of older/underground emo. Special mention goes to My Chemical Romance (who the mainstream considers the codifier for Emo); the fanbase and the band itself are less than happy about the implication they are comprised of Straw Nihilist Emo Teens (Gerard Way has had a major rant about this). In reality they're pretty much the opposite, albeit in a very dark way.
• Queen
  • There are many fans who do not like Freddie Mercury's first name being spelled with a Y at the end.^note  His birth name was Farrokh Bulsara, so to some people it doesn't matter. The reactions will range from a gentle "*Freddie, please" to flaming you from heaven to earth.
  • Calling Freddie Mercury gay will undoubtedly lead to legions of fans correcting you that he was bisexual. It's best not to talk about his sexuality or the circumstances that led to his death, either.
• If you're discussing Mozart with any serious classical fan, don't make the mistake of mentioning how Salieri poisoned him. Amadeus plays quite fast and loose with historical fact; it was never intended to be a Mozart biopic so much as just the film of Shaffer's play. No reputable Mozart scholar out there thinks Salieri poisoned him or plotted against him; in fact, the two men actually got along quite well (save for a brief dispute arising from an alleged attempt by Salieri to sabotage The Marriage of Figaro) and greatly respected each other. Salieri also had nothing to do with either the commission or the completion of Mozart's Requiem. He also was not the talentless hack portrayed in the movie. In fact, he taught Beethoven and Schubert and was one of the most successful composers of his time (even if his popularity died down after his death).
• Fans of Muse have sometimes been critical of the name being written as "MUSE" just because the logo is all caps.
  • Ditto Rush.
• Melvins fans will get angry if you refer to them as a grunge band.
• Many fans of Alice in Chains don't like seeing the band described as grunge.
• Don't call into a classic rock station and request "The Who's Teenage Wasteland". Not only will they not play it, but they may come to your house and work you over. The title is "Baba O'Riley."^note There is a song called "Teenage Wasteland" which shares some lyrics with "Baba O'Riley" but it's a much more obscure Pete Townshend solo song. Expect a similar response if you ask for the theme song to CSI. ^note "Who are You" for the original set in Vegas, "Won't Be Fooled Again" for Miami, the aforementioned "Baba O'Riley" for New York.
  • Similarly, do not call and request Van Halen's "Señorita". The song you want to hear is called "Little Guitars".
  • And if the station actually plays some classic '90s alt-rock, you'll sound like an idiot requesting the Offspring's "Keep 'Em Separated" when you really want to hear "Come Out and Play".
• Crosby, Stills & Nash performed at Woodstock, but the song "Woodstock" was not part of their set ... since Joni Mitchell didn't write it until after the show. Keep that in mind when discussing the festival.
• The genre is called "Country Music" or "country"; it hasn't been "country western" since the 1960s. Using the "western" tag automatically identifies you as a non-fan, and is nothing short of a Berserk Button for fans of the genre.
• It's Mötley Crüe, not Motley Crue. The dots are important. However, most English (North America and the UK) computer keyboards don't have an umlaut function, and not too many people know the "alt + numberpad combo = special character" feature; several North American keyboards, especially on laptops, don't even have numberpads. So this is considered at least somewhat forgivable. Since they're ëxtränëöüs ümläüts that were basically chosen because the band liked the way they looked in "Löwenbräu", this comes across to non-fans as a bit precious.
  • German does have three umlauts on the keyboard, but it also has pronunciations for them. However, that does not mean that you, as a native German speaker, should actually pronounce the umlauts as such when saying the band's name. Being ridiculed is the best that could happen to you. (The same applies to any other band with at least one Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut in its name.)
• Disturbed
  • Some people think "Down with the Sickness" is simply called "Sickness" (possibly with a "the" added) or "the monkey staccato song". Disturbed fans aren't happy about it.
  • Also, the final track on the same album is "Meaning of Life" despite many who might claim it's called "Psycho".
  • Another track in that record is called "Voices", not "Are You Breathing?".
  • "Conflict", also from The Sickness, is sometimes referred to as "Enemy".
• Eve of Destiny are Goth. Not Visual Kei. This point is nowhere near as trivial as it seems. Anyone who calls EoD visual runs a significant risk of being shot down and stamped on by an indignant fan/fans. It doesn't help that having EoD's genre mistaken in this manner has become something of a Berserk Button for frontman Haruhiko Ash, to the point where he has severed ties with promoters who sold Eve of Destiny as a Visual band.
• Many fans of Canadian band The Tragically Hip can be quite hostile towards people who the drop "The" from the band's name — or don't capitalize it.
• Led Zeppelin has a few:
  • Led Zeppelin is a band — not a solo artist. Saying "Yes, I like him" will mark you as a poseur by hardcore fans.
  • Led Zeppelin's fourth album does not have a title. Call it "the fourth album" or "the untitled album", and you should be fine. In some circles, calling it "Led Zeppelin IV" or "Four Symbols" will give you away as only a casual fan. Call it "the Hermit Album," "the one with 'Stairway to Heaven'" or "Zoso" and you will be held beneath contempt. Casual fans might take a bit of ribbing if they say "Zo-so" instead of 'Page's Symbol.'
• Naming John Williams as your favorite "modern music" composer is likely to get you dissed by most serious classical music fans on its own. Same with Danny Elfman, or Andrew Lloyd Webber, or any modern film/Broadway composer, but John Williams is a huge Berserk Button since so much of his music is heavily influenced by, if not directly copied from, older works.
• Likewise with confusing the "classical-crossover" genre (i.e., people who blend classical music with pop genres, like Vanessa Mae) with "contemporary classical music" (i.e. music by modern-day classical composers, like Steve Reich, Pierre Boulez, Philip Glass, etc).
• If you refer to a well-known song, especially one involved in Memetic Mutation, by its catchiest lyric, there is a very good chance someone will swoop in and insist you refer to it by the "proper title", which is usually much less known and thus does a poorer job of conveying which song you're talking about.
• Metallica
  • Spelling the band's name as "Mettalica" won't get a nice reaction.
  • Or writing it as "MetallicA", just because the logo draws the bordering letters bigger.
  • Also, whatever you do, do NOT refer to the Load and ReLoad albums as "metal." Some also make this case against St. Anger, even though metal is probably the genre it best fits into (whether it's good metal is another matter, of course...)..
• Referring to any member of the Backstreet Boys except Kevin Richardson as a "former Backstreet Boy" is an instant Berserk Button trigger for BSB fans.
• Never EVER wonder out loud how many bass drums Iron Maiden's Nicko McBrain uses while drumming. The answer is one.
• DragonForce's famed song from Guitar Hero is "Through the Fire and Flames". "Through the Fire and the Flames" is a lyric from said song. Also, ZP was ZP's actual first name, not initials.
• On the Band Geek side: Gorramnit, people, trumpets are NOT the awesome ones with the slides!!
• Calling every wind instrument a "horn," calling saxophones brass instruments (despite being made of brass, they're actually woodwinds), or confusing a Sousaphone with a tuba.
• Drum corps do not have woodwinds, so please don't call them "bands".
• Not every bowed instrument is a violin.
• Don't call a lyre a harp and vice versa.
• The Beatles
  • It's BEATLES, not "Beetles"!
  • If you don't know who wrote the song, you probably shouldn't guess. Saying something like "I love 'Here Comes the Sun'! It's my favorite song by Lennon"^note  George Harrison wrote it (or any other song with the incorrect songwriter) could earn you ridicule from a die-hard fan (to give an example, even Frank Sinatra never heard the end of it after he called George Harrison's "Something" his "favorite Lennon-McCartney song"). Likewise with who sings it; while their Liverpool accents might make them all sound the same to more casual fans, hardcore Beatlemaniacs usually have no trouble telling their voices apart.
  • Saying with a straight face that Yoko was the sole cause of the break-up of The Beatles. At the very least, it will expose you as a newbie or casual Beatles fan, someone who hasn't spent a lot of time diving into their history. If you had, you would know it's clear that, while John focusing more on his relationship with Yoko and bringing her into the studio certainly exacerbated things, the biggest culprits were money problems, particularly the disagreement over whether Lee Eastman or Allen Klein should handle their finances, the death of unifying manager Brian Epstein, and the ever-common "Creative Differences".
  • Implying that John was the sole creative force behind the band, or the "smart one." This will almost certainly earn you grief from fans pointing out that while John was certainly extremely talented and witty, Paul was responsible for classics like "Eleanor Rigby," "Penny Lane," "Hey Jude" and "Let it Be," as well as being the catalyst for the Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road albums and being proficient at bass, piano, guitar and drums. He also engineered many of the "experimental" recording techniques. And then there's the fact that George's fascination with Indian music dictated the group's many dalliances with that genre.
  • Stating that Ringo was a bad drummer because his parts aren't technically difficult to play. Ironically it's usually non-drummers who say this. Professional percussionists, in contrast, have frequently expressed admiration for Ringo's near-flawless timekeeping and imaginative use of the drums to influence the mood of a song.
    • Additionally, believing that John actually said that Ringo "wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles" will pretty consistently earn you ridicule from the fanbase. ^note  The phrase was originally attributed to British comedian Jasper Carrott (who used the phrase in 1983) before it was later revealed that the phrase was first used in the BBC radio show Radio Active in 1981.
  • Do not call the Beatles a Boy Band. You can usually get away with calling their early years this because, well, screaming girls and all. But call their post-Rubber Soul albums this and you guaranteed to get your head smacked in.
• Do not ever call the group Gorillaz "Gorillas", or even worse, "The Gorillas".
• Calling Richard Wagner a Nazi or his music "Nazi music". While he was a virulent anti-Semite and his music was beloved by and used as propaganda by the Nazis, Wagner himself died six years before Hitler was even born. There was no way he could ever have been a Nazi. (The Nazi stuff, and how much Wagner's anti-Semitism influenced his music tends to be controversial territory among Wagnerian opera lovers anyway, so they are touchy about it.) Also, don't confuse Valkyries with Vikings, whatever you do. Friedrich Nietzsche, who had been anti-Semitic himself before he reformed and had been Wagner's friend, eventually renounced him as well.
  "Wagner contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick."
• Rammstein:
  • Do not call the band Nazis or fascists. Not only will you mark yourself as an idiot who can't even go and look up the lyrics if you don't speak German, but one who also is likely just racist towards Germans in general. Especially because they're rather more conventional left-wingers (although most of their songs are apolitical), which is quite different from Nazis, who would typically fall under the lowest quadrant of the political spectrum. Oh, and don't mispronounce the band's name, the fangirls and David Lynch will rip your limbs off.
  • The title of the fifth track from Mutter (which Sabaton covered) is not "Bang Bang", it's "Feuer frei!" (German for "fire at will").
• Also related to the above, do NOT imply that 311 is affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan (K is the eleventh letter of the alphabet, 3 Ks, get it?). The band's normally laid-back fanbase will tear you a new one.
• Rap in general: Don't insinuate that all rap music is "gangsta" rap and bitches-and-whores rap.
• Don't be surprised when someone bursts into a tirade that Hip-Hop and Rap are completely and entirely different forms of music that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The usual distinction? Hip-Hop is whatever that person happens to like, whereas Rap is whatever they don't like. In other words, Hip-Hop is the good stuff, while Rap is the bad stuff. Or the other way around, depending. For the record, the actual distinction is a technical one: rapping is something someone does with their mouth. Hip-hop is a genre of music. They are often paired (rapping over hip-hop beats), but you can have rap without hip-hop (a capella or rap vocals over another genre like rock) and you can have hip-hop without rap (instrumental tracks, or singing instead of rapping over hip-hop beats).
• The name of R.E.M.'s 1986 studio album is Lifes Rich Pageant, with no apostrophe. The missing apostrophe came from one of Michael Stipe's notorious typing errors, and the band decided to run with it instead of correct it, thus making the "incorrect" version the official title.
• When listening to Yuki Kajiura's music, saying that it's in a familiar language will get you a facepalm. It's her own made up language. And don't ask for a translation either, because the individual words don't actually mean anything. It's essentially just gibberish. Even worse than asking is answering the question with "it's in English/Japanese/Latin/any combination thereof". Dozens of angry Kajiura fans will rush to correct you.
• Vocaloid:
  • Like Touhou Project, there's the classic "what anime is this from?" The Vocaloids are just characters on the software's packaging, and don't come from an anime. Composers and artists are expected to come up with their own personalities for the characters, and having an official anime or any other kind of canon would make this harder. At this point, though, it's happened so many times (both intentionally and not) that it's usually just laughed off.
  • Referring to the characters as a "band" or "holograms". This will make fans assume you're too clueless to know that the concerts are only a tiny part of the fandom, and gullible enough to believe that the characters' concert appearances are actually holograms (they're just projections on a transparent screen, but at some point a news article wrongly called them "holograms" and the misconception stuck).
  • Don't tag your Vocaloid songs such that only the Vocaloid's name is in the "artist" field, or refer to a song as being made by a Vocaloid and not a producer (for example: saying "'World Is Mine' by Hatsune Miku" instead of "'World Is Mine' by supercell"). Many Vocaloid fans who follow their favorite Vocaloid producers' works don't take kindly to this practice.
  • The famous song Senbonzakura was originally composed by KurousaP (aka WhiteFlame) in 2011 and sung by Hatsune Miku. Claiming that it was created by Wagakki Band (known for being Vocaloid fans and covering numerous songs) or that it is actually an old folk song will enrage many fans - it looks like you're trying to take away the merit of the creator just because you're prejudiced against the software and the community.
  • The Evillious Chronicles have their own set of berserk buttons due to their continuity and narrative:
    • Some of the songs are based off the Seven Deadly Sins. However, "The Last Revolver" is not the Wrath song. This became Hilarious in Hindsight when it turned out that the song actually was about the Wrath sinner. It's still not the Wrath song, but it is much closer to it than fans had initially thought.
    • Yes, there is A LOT more story to it than just Story of Evil.
    • No, characters names are not Kaito, Meiko, Luka etc.
    • And God forbid you to say that in Re:Birthday, characters were reborn as Vocaloids! If you do, Conchita will eat you! (No, not that one.)
• Utau: Do not refer to Yokune Ruko as explicitly female, as they are a Hermaphrodite that is stated to be only 10% female.
  • Don't refer to any well-known UTAU as a "Vocaloid" either.
• One Direction:
  • Never refer to Louis Tomlinson as "Louie" or pronounce his name like "Lewis," or you will get torn apart by thousands of Directioners.
  • The conventional shorthand acronym for One Direction is 1D, not OD.
• Screamo in general:
  • Referring to metal as "screamo" will often get very angry responses, regardless of whether you were intentionally doing it to annoy them or whether you were saying it out of ignorance or stupidity.
  • Better yet, call a post-hardcore or metalcore band "screamo" in front of a fan of actual screamo. That skinny dude with the glasses in the City of Caterpillar shirt? Yeah, he's probably going to try beating you to death.
  • Whatever you do, don't confuse "skramz" with the second-wave bands labelled "screamo" in the popular imagination either.
• John Stump's "Faerie's Aire/Death Waltz" has absolutely nothing to do with "U.N. Owen Was Her?", and attributing Death Waltz to ZUN does not go over well with Touhou fans in the know or John Stump fans. It's a commonly made mistake and the more people try to clear it up, the more people get confused from the mention of both of them in the same sentence.
• Jethro Tull is a band. Their lead singer and flutist is Ian Anderson. Get it straight. ^{Historical note} There was a man named Jethro Tull in Real Life - an 18th-century agricultural reformer, whom the band was named after.
• Don't say that the The Protomen are a cover band, or confuse them with The Megas.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic:
  • It's "YANK-oh-VICK", not "YANK-oh-VITCH". And his last name doesn't have an "h" on the end, either.
  • The name of his parody of Avril Lavigne's song "Complicated" is called "A Complicated Song", NOT "Constipated".
  • And for that matter never EVER credit him for any novelty song he didn't write, especially if it's profane, or about drug/alcohol use, or sex (Weird Al keeps his humor rather clean, PG at worst). This is a double berserk button to both his fans and those of the artists who actually did those.
  • Don't ask why he only does parodies and not original songs. He does do original songs, usually between a third and two-thirds of the tracks on any given album, and often some of the best ones.
  • And, by the way, he is NOT related to "America's Polka King" Frankie Yankovic (though the two did meet each other), so don't ask.
• Doctor Steel:
  • He is not copying Dr. Horrible. He did the look first.
  • Or Dr. Venture, for that matter.
• Green Day:
  • The band's name is TWO words, not one.
  • Slightly more minor; calling them emo. They're pop-punk, though some magazines like Rolling Stone still call them straight-up punk.
  • Do not make a joke on October 1st about waking up Billie Joe Armstrong or you will have hordes of fans telling you that the song is about his father's death.
• Sunn O))) is not pronounced "sunno". It's just "sun".
• Since Zedd began dating Selena Gomez, many media outlets have been calling him DJ Zedd, which fans do not like.
• Nirvana fans don't really like it when people say that Kurt Cobain's death wasn't suicide. They ESPECIALLY hate it when they say that Courtney Love was the one who killed him.
• It's probably not a good idea to refer to Post-Grunge bands like Creed, Nickelback, 3 Doors Down, and Daughtry as actual Grunge in the presence of a grunge fan. You might be able to get away with referring to the Foo Fighters as one, due to their origin and that they're not considered to be "corporate-friendly" pop sellouts by anyone.
• Don't refer to Joni Mitchell as a folk singer.
• Don't tell a fan of film, video game, and TV music that it's not "real" music.
• Music tagging:
  • Regarding game music: Don't tag your music with the name of the game or the developer in the "artist" field. If the developer is a single person who worked on both the game and the music (including many Doujin Soft creators such as ZUN), you're forgiven.
  • On Last.fm, putting the wrong kind of data in the wrong fields in general is a major source of grief amongst users and staff, as precisely tagging your listened-to tracks is very important on a site that tracks listening statistics.
• Do not spell Charli XCX with an "e" ("Charlie XCX"), or you will be laughed at.
• Do not compare Marmozets to Paramore. It's certain to start a war online, and for good reason — The two bands have nothing in common except that they're both fronted by women. Marmozets is much heavier, while Paramore barely counts as rock these days.
• Don't even think about saying that Volbeat was named after a Pokémon. The band predates Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire by two years.
• During Blondie's peak period of popularity, fans got very upset with casual fans and other people assuming that "Blondie" was the lead singer Debbie Harry and that she was a solo artist. There were even T-shirts with the slogan "BLONDIE IS A GROUP".
• Similar to the Blondie example above, Mazzy Star is a band. The lead singer is Hope Sandoval.
• Rush:
  • Their drummer's last name is pronounced "peert," NOT "pert." In the words of Geddy Lee, take the word "ear" and put a "P" in front of it and a "t" at the end.
  • The song "YYZ" is pronounced "why-why-ZED," not "why-why-ZEE." They're Canadian.
• Many Fall Out Boy fans will get upset if you refer to Pete Wentz as their frontman. He is their bassist, and Patrick Stump is the actual leader of the group.
• If you're around a classical music enthusiast, please don't get "symphony" and "orchestra" confused. A symphony is a piece of music, and an orchestra is the group of people playing the music. It does not help that there are a lot of orchestras that have the words "Symphony Orchestra" or just "Symphony" in their names.
• Sabaton:
  • Much like Rammstein above: Don't call them Nazis, even if their customary opening track "Ghost Division" is about Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division (the next track after that on The Art of War is about Polish troops fighting a Last Stand against the Germans earlier in the war). They write songs about history, and have many more songs openly condemning the Nazis than could be possibly misconstrued as supporting them. One YouTuber, Piscator, started making lyric videos of their songs because he was tired of hearing this.
  • A meme developed on this since the song "The Last Stand" came out on the album of same name in 2016: "'THE LAST STAND' IS NOT ABOUT THE CRUSADES!" To explain, the refrain^note For the grace, for the might of our Lord / For the home of the holy / For the faith, for the way of the sword / Gave their lives so boldly /For the grace, for the might of our Lord / In the name of His glory / For the faith, for the way of the sword /Come and tell their story again sounds like it could be about the Crusades, but the verses are clearly about the Stand of the Swiss Guard against a Protestant army during the sack of Rome in 1527. Expect to be stomped on if you say anything resembling "Deus vult"^note "God wills it" in Latin, a historical Crusader slogan which has lately been appropriated by white supremacist and/or Christian extremist groups in response to it.
• The sole guy shown on several AC/DC album covers is Angus Young, their lead guitar player. If you say that's whichever singer the band had at the time, you lose immediately.
• Motörhead:
  • No, their music is not Heavy Metal. It is rock & roll.
  • Also, just like with Mötley Crüe: Native German speakers had better refrain from pronouncing the Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut like an actual umlaut.
• Suzi Quatro is neither a Brit nor a Glam Rock musician (the latter often implying the former). She's an American, and she plays rock & roll.
• Yes, Meat Loaf's song titles tend to be on the long side, but don't ever shorten them. If "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" is too long for you, abbreviate it: "IDAFLBIWDT". Meat Loaf fans will understand. It is, however, not "I'd Do Anything For Love".
  • Also, it's Meat Loaf, not Meatloaf. Also, Meat Loaf is technically a "band" with only one official member, though for all intents and purposes it's basically a solo act. Regardless, don't refer to Meat Loaf as "them" unless you want to be ridiculed.
• Jean-Michel Jarre:
  • Mispronunciations and even more so misspellings of the man's name make many fans want to give the culprits intensive foreign language courses. It is not pronounced "Gene", "John", "Mitchell", "Michael" or "Jarray", nor is it spelled "Michael" or "Michelle".
  • Jarre's first wife is none of your freaking business. In fact, his fandom is about his music and his concerts and his social engagement and such and not about his private life.
  • Jarre's career was not financed by his daddy, the Hollywood composer Maurice Jarre! The two didn't have any contact from when Jean-Michel was three years old to the 21st century. He earned the rather small budget for Oxygène by making a movie soundtrack in 1973, by recording music for commercials, by writing and producing for other French singers (which he continued even when he was a big name himself) and by releasing a few singles under various pseudonyms. The money for Jarre's own studio in Croissy where Equinoxe was made came from Oxygène's massive success.
  • Naming Jarre's numbered pieces of music only by the album names and without the numbers will annoy Jarre fans to no end. "Oxygène" can refer to any one of at least 20 pieces of music (although it probably refers to "Oxygène 4"). You're free to leave out "Part", though, also because it's now used by the fans for subparts within the numbered parts. Whether "Oxygène 3" refers to the album or to the piece on Oxygène becomes clear with the context anyway.
  • There is no "Sixth Rendez-vous". It's "Last Rendez-vous" or "Ron's Piece".
  • Another good way to tick off Jarre fans used to be claiming that his concerts were all playback and miming. This ended rather abruptly in 2005 when the Space Of Freedom concert actually turned out to be quite obviously and blatantly miming to pre-recorded music, down to the orchestra that was itself inaudible. Further examination of his earlier concerts revealed that the shows after the Concerts In China weren't much different (justified with the big shows because syncing the massive light show with the music required absolutely reliable music, so what the audience heard was a few parts played live plus remixes of the original studio versions that couldn't possibly have been recreated identically live). All this changed with Jarre's smaller gigs from 2007 to 2011 which were played live as far as possible. Now do not claim that they were mimed, too!
  • If you think that Rod Stewart had the biggest concert audience ever in Rio de Janeiro, keep it to yourself when encountering Jarre fans. They don't take challenging his (meanwhile officially recognized, albeit by a narrow margin) Moscow world record kindly. The same goes for Floydians or Roger Waters fans who think that Water's performance of The Wall in Berlin was the biggest concert ever by physical dimensions: You won't be able to convince a Jarre fan that it was larger overall than Jarre's humongous one-off shows such as Rendez-vous Houston or Paris La Défense.
  • Jarre has never collaborated with Vangelis or Mike Oldfield. Whichever YouTube video or whichever shady CD album or MP3 download suggests otherwise is a ruse and actually made by neither of them. So don't claim it's legit.
  • Also, talking about Jarre's instruments is quite a minefield in a fandom with such a high density of people who know their ways around synthesizers.
    Oxygène wasn't recorded with Moogs; Jarre bought his first Moog some eight years later.
    None of his albums were made completely with analog machines, not even Oxygène, so don't say that.
    Also, his 2008 to 2011 tours didn't feature an all-analog, all-vintage instrument rig. The RMI Harmonic Synthesizer is vintage, but half-digital. Synths such as the Moog Little Phatty or the Macbeth M3X are analog, but rather new. And the Nord Leads are neither.
    Jarre's trademark strings weren't even made on a synthesizer at all, but on an electronic organ.
    Just because you only know Roland drum machines, doesn't mean that these were used on Oxygène and Équinoxe. That wasn't a TR-808 (when that one came out, Jarre had already completed Magnetic Fields). No, not a CR-78 either. It was a Korg MiniPops-7.
    You may shrug this off, but the electronic musicians and synthesizer anoraks whom you're bound to encounter in the Jarre fan community take this seriously.
• Speaking of Jarre: He did not compose "Pop Corn". Nor is it a Hot Butter original. It was written and originally recorded by Gershon Kingsley, then Covered Up by Stan Free as Hot Butter. Granted, Jarre then covered the Hot Butter version as early as 1972, but even he did so under the moniker of Pop Corn Orchestra, one of his many pseudonyms.
• If you absolutely want to become the Matt Bianco fans' laughing stock, say that Matt Bianco is a singer. Just for the record: It's the name of a group and not that of any individual in it. Besides, what about the songs that were clearly sung by a woman?
• As far as My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan music is concerned: "Discord" by The Living Tombstone is not the original, no matter how much more popular it is! It's a Covered Up version of an original written and performed by Odyssey Eurobeat a.k.a. Eurobeat Brony. The singer in both versions is actually Odyssey himself.
• With BTS being a Korean boyband from a small idol company, there are layers upon layers of prejudice that fans constantly have to correct, such as:
  • Any assumptions based on Girl-Show Ghetto: that they're only popular because of their looks or social media, that they're only liked for their looks and their work has no depth whatsoever, or that their fanbase is made exclusively of teenage girls and fans of One Direction who jumped ship during their hiatus. There are fans of all ages, genders and music tastes, and the main reason they cite for liking BTS is their music, lyrics and message.
  • Saying that they're puppets exploited by their company and that they have no creative input in their content. They're an unusual example of an idol group that has had creative control over their music since even before debut (with the only direction given by their CEO being "tell your own stories", making a point of not controlling them), and with things such as training schedules being self-imposed. Here's an archive of all the producing/songwriting credits for each one of the members.
  • Conflating them with the rest of the Korean idol industry and the Hallyu phenomenon - that is, treating them as nothing more than a government strategy to promote Korean media or values, or (especially recently), dragging them into narratives about the "dark side of Kpop" (such as videos or articles with BTS on the thumbnail), when they're one of the exceptions. Not only do they come from a small company, having to fight tooth-and-nail to achieve even a small amount of success, but their work has consistently criticized Korean society and dealt with topics that are stigmatized in the country, such as mental health. Moreover, their audience overseas was already established before they started actively promoting in the West, being more an accidental product of their work (which happened to resonate with a Western audience) than a pre-planned goal - making a point of not making an English album or otherwise devaluing their integrity solely for charts.
  • The belief (more widespread in the West) that they lip-sync in live performances despite ample evidence to the contrary. Even Variety magazine accused them of lip-syncing in their Saturday Night Live appearance, giving credit for doing "all the work" to back-up singer and "Boy With Luv" co-writer Melanie Fontana, who vehemently denied those claims. BTS is, in fact, one of the few Korean idol groups who always sing live even while doing complex choreography, and they have repeatedly been shown training hard to be able to do so (Burn the Stage being a big example); Suga famously stopped rapping mid-verse while looking at the camera to show it was live in their 2017 SBS year-end show performance.
  • Accusing them of having gone through plastic surgery (or worse, being surgery "addicts") solely based on the fact that they're Korean and/or rumors created and spread by anti-fans. Some fans even have counter-proof in the form of pictures of the members as children/teenagers on hand, just in case.
• Taylor Swift:
  • Many, many fans of hers are utterly sick of the claims that Taylor "only writes breakup songs." Not only is it a bit of a Double Standard — seeing as how almost every singer ever puts out a few breakup songs, but no one seems to mind when they do it — it's also blatantly not true. She has a lot of songs about breakups, yes, but a quick look at her discography shows it's nowhere near her only topic.
  • Another enraging one of these to the fandom to dismiss either her or them as silly teenagers over a decade into her career. She's in her early 30s now and her fanbase, while still containing teenagers, is mostly 20 & 30 somethings. When she endorsed Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterm elections, she and her fans were dismissed by a couple of people because to quote former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, "13-year-olds can't vote". People quickly jumped on it as patronizing and sexist as her fanbase has never really been 13-year-olds and certainly wasn't at that point.
• Nine Inch Nails: Saying that Johnny Cash wrote "Hurt" and Trent Reznor covered it rather than vice versa will get you mocked by the NIN fandom. Although even Reznor said it was Cash's song now, he still didn't write it.
  • Also, Nine Inch Nails is not a band. It's the stage name of singer/songwriter Trent Reznor. If you refer to Nine Inch Nails as "they", prepare to be ridiculed.
    • This became subverted when Atticus Ross joined as a second member in 2016.
  • Their (possibly) most famous song is called "Closer", NOT "Fuck You Like an Animal" or "I Wanna Fuck You Like an Animal".
• Goths hate it when people refer to goth as a fashion subculture. Though pop culture thinks that goth is a "look", most goths believe that it's simply a moniker for Goth Rock fans (but not Gothic Metal, which is a completely unrelated genre). If you dress in black but don't like goth rock, you're not goth. You can also be goth without "dressing goth" as long as you like goth rock.
  • Similarly, Goths are NOT fans of having their music mistaken for black metal or emo. Goth rock as a genre is melodic post-punk and alternative rock without screaming or Satanism. Darkwave is more varied and occasionally crosses over with heavier genres, but usually is fairly low on the Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness.
• Evanescence is not Symphonic Metal, Power Metal, Emo Music, Goth Rock, Gothic Metal, or Nu Metal.
• Like many other examples, Steely Dan and Jamiroquai are both bands, not people. On the other hand, Five For Fighting and Owl City, among others, are not bands, but rather odd stage names of solo artists.
  • Owl City is a band, but with only one official member.
• Don't refer to Darius Rucker as Hootie. There is no one named Hootie in the band, and name came from the nicknames of two of their college friends. Asking which one is Hootie will likely get you mocked.
• Fans of the band Stratovarius will not take it kindly if you pronounce it "Strato-various". The "var" in the band's name rhymes with "car".
• Machinae Supremacy: It's pronounced "Machine Supremacy", okay? Not "Mack-in-aye" or "Mack-in-ay" or "Mash-in-ay" or any permutation you can think of.
• Ayreon is not a band, it's a musical project by Arjen Anthony Lucassen (and not the only one either). Saying a song is "by Ayreon" is inviting misfortune. The correct form is "from Ayreon".
  • It's also best to avoid calling it a rock opera. It actually uses several (often wildly) different styles of music, only a small amount of which could possibly be considered rock.
  • From The Human Equation album: The character's name is Agony, not Pain. Even though the song that introduces him is called "Day Three: Pain" and begins each verse with the character saying "I am pain."
• Eurovision Song Contest:
  • Any kind of generalizations about what a "typical" Eurovision song is can draw plenty of frustrated reactions. Similarly, the dichotomy between fans of slower, more intimate songs (such as Salvador Sobral's "Amar pelos dois" or Duncan Laurence's "Arcade") versus fans of upbeat pop songs and the novelty acts Eurovision is infamous for (such as Eleni Foureira's "Fuego" or Verka Serduchka's "Dancing Lasha Tumbai") causes plenty of tension on its own. What they will both unite on is dismissing anyone who says Eurovision is just the novelty acts, as even the fans of upbeat entries feel that putting all the songs in the same character is a demerit to the legitimacy of those songs when they're generally well-produced and staged.
  • Greek and Cypriot fans don't like people pointing out their usual exchanging of top marks. Maybe they do do it every year, regardless of the songs' actual merits, but (in their eyes) so do plenty of other voting blocs, and they don't understand why fans single them out in particular besides the fact that they've been doing it the longest.
  • Casual British Eurovision viewers are quick to state that the only reason the United Kingdom has done as badly as it has in recent years is because Europe hates them due to Brexit, and even if they sent a superstar like Ed Sheeran or Adele, they would still flop. This is incredibly frustrating to dedicated British fans who want to see an improvement in their entries, since they see wallowing in this attitude as opposed to acknowledging the songs' general lack of quality as the key reason for the British entries not improving, and overall shows a complete lack of understanding of how the contest works. They know recent history (such as with Jade Ewen in 2009 and Blue in 2011) has shown the UK can get a decent result if they put the effort in, as opposed to throwing their hands in the air and saying they should just withdraw when another forgettable song fails to leave an impression.
  • A national final not swinging the way fans want it to can turn the comment sections of fansites into huge shitshows, especially if it's at the hands of an international jury.
• Don't ever imply that The Monkees were a fake band who only fronted for session artists. You will get a long, long lecture on the musical careers of Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork, and a recounting of how the band actually had to fight to play on their own albums. ^note The truth of the matter is that all four members were musically inclined, with Tork and Nesmith being professional musicians. However Don Kirschner hired them just to be the band's front man and did want to use session musicians to craft the actual album tracks. This enraged the band so much that in one heated argument, Nesmith punched a hole in a wall. In the end, Kirschner was fired and The Monkees were given much more creative freedom. Now they did use the songs provided them by Boyce and Hart, Carole King and others, because if the greatest songwriters of their generation were giving them material, who were they to refuse?
• It's Dream Theater, not Dream Theatre.
• Nightwish fans will get upset if you spell the band's name as Night Wish. It's one word.
  • Former lead singer Tarja Turunen's first name is pronounced Tar-ya, not Tar-ja.
  • If you're around fans of the band, don't say that you like the song "I Wish I Had an Angel". The song is called "Wish I Had an Angel", with no "I" at the start.
  • Misspelling second lead singer Anette Olzon's first name as Annette will also likely not do you any favours. Also, her name is pronounced "Ah-net-uh", not "A-net".
  • Their seventh album is called Imaginaerum, pronounced "Imaginarium". Mispronouncing or misspelling it will make fans angry with you. (Originally the album was going to be titled Imaginarium, but the band changed the spelling in order to avoid people confusing it with other things of that name.)
• Do not misattribute songs by Inner Circle—most famous for "Bad Boys" (which you might recognize for its use as the theme song to COPS) and "Sweat (A La La La La Long)"—to Bob Marley and the Wailers. They may both be Jamaican Reggae bands, but calling Inner Circle songs "Bob Marley songs" will get backlash. The fact that Marley has many classic songs under his belt ("Get Up, Stand Up", "I Shot the Sheriff", "Three Little Birds", "Buffalo Soldier", etc.), while those outside Inner Circle's most dedicated fans usually only recognize "Bad Boys" and "Sweat" (both of whom were written after Marley's death in 1981), doesn't exactly help matters in this context.
• Don't assume that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture was written in 1812, or even worse, that it's about the War of 1812.
• When discussing art songs a.k.a. lieder by classical composers such as Franz Schubert, Hugo Wolf, etc., Apollo help you if you pronounce "lied"/"lieder" as "lahyd"^note Phonetic spelling of the English word "lied", a deceptive false statement. It is a German word in this context, and is pronounced "leed"/"lee-duhr" in accordance with German rules of pronunciation.
• Do not spell MF DOOM's name as "MF Doom". This is a very common mistake and is the way his name is spelled on Wikipedia, but it can still piss some fans off.
• "Kill the Poor" by Dead Kennedys is a scathing satire of those among the elite who advocate killing the poor as the ideal solution to ending poverty. Dead Kennedys themselves do not advocate such a cruel "solution". This is a particularly enraging Poe's Law misconception for fans because of incidents back in The '80s where neo-Nazis turned up at Dead Kennedys' concerts as a result of missing the song's satirical nature, much to the anger of both fans and the band members.
• VNV Nation is not German, nor is it a band. It's the musical project of an Irish singer/songwriter.
• For the love of God, it's Sonata Arctica. Don't spell or pronounce it Sonata Artica unless you want to piss off fans of the band.
• Putting a "the" in front of band names where it shouldn't be, or omitting it where it should, is a good way to piss off fans of said band. For example, it's just Eagles, not The Eagles. It's Barenaked Ladies, not The Barenaked Ladies (and "Barenaked" is one word, not two). However, it is The Tragically Hip, not simply Tragically Hip, and the "The" is always capitalised (so it is always written as "The Tragically Hip", never "the Tragically Hip"). Remember this if you want to keep your life around fans of these bands.
• Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. is not a patriotic song. It is supposed to be a criticism of how Vietnam veterans were treated. This misconception has often been carried over to newcomers who think Bruce is an overly patriotic all-American figure, to the frustration of fans and the artist himself. Because of how prevalent the misunderstanding is, Springsteen now plays the song as a somber acoustic number instead of its bombastic studio arrangement.
• Don't call Cascada a "she" to their fans. Cascada is the name of a group and not the stage name of Natalie Horler.
• Eminem:
  • If you refer to him as "Slim Shady" as if it's just a nickname for the rapper (a la calling Lil Wayne "Tunechi"), you will be laughed at — Slim Shady is a Villain Protagonist character who Eminem plays in (many of) his songs. But if you want to really wind Stands up, take one of the more button-pushing Slim Shady songs (the usual favourite is "Criminal") and claim it represents Eminem's literal real-life beliefs about gay people (rather than being, again, the satirical words of a Heroic Comedic Sociopath character).
  • Claiming all Eminem does is Misogyny Songs about his hatred of his mother and wife (he's certainly done a few, but they are not nearly the majority of his body of work — plus, they're earnest attempts to describe an abusive situation, rather than him just dragging women for the sake of it).
  • Claiming Eminem "just raps fast" or that his fans only consider him a great rapper because he's fast. The speed rap style he's used has only been on a handful of songs, and only for short passages within them; people who consider Eminem a great vocalist view the fast rap as a footnote, and are far more likely to point to things like his vowel manipulation, his palette of different voices and flows, his dramatic use of pitch and cadence, the clarity of his diction and his ability to act out the emotions in his lyrics.
• Averted with Pantera as not listing their glam era albums is flattering to the large part of the fandom, due to Canon Discontinuity and Fanon Discontinuity being in effect simultaneously (plus, listing pre-CfH works can piss many of the band's fandoms).
  • Played straight if you consider them Death Metal, however.
• The pronunciation of INXS is "in-excess" not "inks".
• Fans of The Cranberries groan in frustration when people associate the song "Zombie" with literal zombies, an error that has led many people (and even Spotify) to put it on Halloween playlists. It's actually a War Is Hell song, which was inspired by an IRA bombing that killed two children during The Troubles, and has nothing to do with the undead.
• Metalheads will destroy you if you say Heavy Metal bands are "Satan worshippers", as the media often attacked the genre just because Satanic themes were simply used as a shock value.
  • Averted with several Black Metal bands such as Gorgoroth, as black metal fans would consider it as a compliment. In fact, saying that black metal is not satanic is actually seen as insulting to the genre's fandom, in which case is an example of Inverted Trope.
• t.A.T.u.: The two members are not lesbians, they are portrayed as one in the All The Things She Said (Ya Soshla s Uma) music video.
• Lukas Graham is the name of the band. The singer's name is Lukas Forchammer

---