RECAP

A look at the lousy presents I got for my birthday before we move on to the crap-infested birthday cake…

#10: INXS had “Not Enough Time” to revive their careers.

#9: I am too sexy for “Deeply Dippy” and Right Said Fred.

#8: The only “Tears In Heaven” Eric Clapton caused are in regards to his terrible song.

#7: With their ugly breakup song, Queensryche caused “Another Rainy Night.”

#6: “God Gave Rock And Roll To You,” and took it away from KISS.

#5: Talking Heads are not allowed to play the “Sax and Violins” again.

#4: The B-52’s did not provide us with “Good Stuff.”

#3: “Roll The Bones” to dispose of Rush’s decomposed skeleton of a song.

#2: “Viva Las Vegas,” y vete ZZ Top.

#1

When I began this project, I came in expecting to hear certain styles.

As the year Nirvana exploded, I expected to hear lots of grunge as the genre became the new face of rock music.  Meanwhile, on the British side, I also expected to hear the neo-psychedelia of shoegazing, and the fading embers of Madchester.  But instead of hearing Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, or Helmet for this project, not to mention Suede, the Drop Nineteens, Ride, Pavement, or Spritualized, I was saddled with a boatload of over-the-hill bands and also-rans.  1992 was the year glam and hair metal were hanging on for dear life on the cliff of relevance, with only their pinky keeping them from a massive, Disney villain-esque fall into the inferno lying below.

For how much worse the old guard was in 1992 than the new wave, the worst song of the year had to go to a song that represented this decline.  A song that served as the definitive representation as to why hair metal had to go.  While “Cherry Pie” by Warrant has become known as the song that murdered hair metal, the genre went on for another two years, as I learned to my horror while working on this list.  This song was the final nail in the coffin.  And it came from a group that would flip a successful first decade as a band in the eighties… into an awful second act in the nineties.

Drum roll please.  The number one worst rock song of 1992 is…

“Let’s Get Rocked” – Def Leppard

Pop
#15 peak (May 9-16, 1992)
#98 year-end, 18 weeks on chart

Mainstream Rock
#1 peak (April 11, 1992)
#34 year-end, 13 weeks on chart

UK
#2 peak (April 4, 1992)
#24 year-end, 7 weeks on chart

Once again.  1992 was a horrible year for Def Leppard.

You’re probably thinking, “This song?  The first single Def Leppard released after releasing one of the biggest albums of all time?”  Considering that their eighties successes have lived on while their nineties songs have been all but forgotten regardless of how successful they were on the charts, you don’t even know.  “Let’s Get Rocked” can only be described as hot garbage, a mess that is both incredibly dated for 1992 and a song where I’m not sure what they were going for, or who it was for.  

After listening to some of their nineties songs for this countdown, I am starting to come up with the uncomfortable belief that Def Leppard was to the nineties what Chicago was to the eighties: a once-good band constantly embarrassing themselves with bloated, overproduced melodramatic fluff.  I understand this is quite the hot take since Def Leppard isn’t nearly as hated as Peter Cetera, but let’s go into the body of work.  Let’s be fair, Def Leppard do have good songs in their discography.  “Photograph,” their breakthrough hit from 1983’s Pyromania, defeats Weezer, takes down Ringo Starr, and easily dispatches Nickelback for the title of Best Song To Be Entitled “Photograph.”  And it is their best song in my opinion, a fluid combination of awesome guitar riffs and powerful melodies.  Def Leppard then survived drummer Rick Allen losing his left arm and followed up Pyromania with 1987’s Hysteria, their smash hit album that only sold about 20 million copies.  I will say that album has some good songs too, particularly “Pour Some Sugar On Me” and the title track.  They may not be my first songs I turn to when I want to rock out since hair metal is not my genre, but I have to respect them.  But then came 1992.  After surviving yet another tragedy when guitarist Steve Clark succumbed to drug and alcohol-induced respiratory failure at the age of 30, Def Leppard released their much-anticipated follow-up to Hysteria, entitled Adrenalize.  And after listening to the album’s first three singles for this project, I’m scared of listening to the rest of the album.  I don’t care that it sold seven million albums.  I already went over the second and third singles, “Make Love Like A Man” and “Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad,” on the dishonorable mentions.  But as bad as those songs were, this was the song I had my eye on from the beginning.  “Let’s Get Rocked” takes the flaws of “Make Love Like A Man” and cranks them up to unbearable levels.

Starting off with the music… the music is bland and boring.  At least remaining guitarist Phil Collen tried a little harder on this song, as proven by his fast guitar solo and several riffs he plays throughout the verses.  Too bad the vast majority of the song doesn’t show his skills.  The main riff of the song is a plodding, unimaginative four note riff that starts with a B flat note, before arpeggiating the F5 power chord.  I can play it with my eyes closed.  And the opening consists of Collen playing eighth notes on a single F note.  The remaining primary riffs that aren’t the main riff are your average, ordinary, everyday hair metal power chords.  Excuse me, I just plagiarized this song’s opening verse lyric.  I don’t care, because anyone could have written this.  Additionally, when Collen isn’t playing the main riff, the verses are bass and drum heavy, with Rick Savage’s bass alternating just two notes for much of the time.  I just love how all the effort went to about 30 seconds of this song, while the remaining 4 ½ minutes was just Def Leppard going, “Mike, can you make this sound huge to compensate for our lack of ideas?”

And then we get to the lyrics.  Sweet mercy, these lyrics.  After reading these lyrics several times, I have to ask who Def Leppard were entertaining besides themselves.  The lyrical theme lacks any sort of cohesion, to the point that it makes “Pour Some Sugar On Me” sound like a scholarly report on the human condition.

First off… frontman Joe Elliott has said that “Let’s Get Rocked” was inspired by Bart Simpson.  Yes, really.  Def Leppard have gone from one of the biggest albums of all time to turning to a bratty cartoon character for inspiration.  Somehow, this still isn’t the worst song to potentially involve Bart, since “Summer Of Love” exists.  But this idea was wrong.  So wrong.  And Def Leppard somehow got it wrong even more so than the last 24 seasons of The Simpsons have.

I’m your average ordinary everyday kid
Happy to do nothin’
In fact that’s what I did

Actually, if you pay attention to The Simpsons, Bart actually did quite a bit.  I’ll be going through the first few seasons, since I want to focus on when the show was good, and specifically the first three seasons, since this song came out near the end of the show’s third season, in a year where the show was reaching its creative peak.  In Season 1, he led an investigation to prove the real identity of the Krusty-impersonating thief of the Kwik-E-Mart.  In Season 2, he briefly became a local daredevil, and in season 3, he built and raced with a stock car.  Even in the non-plot specific episodes, he came up with ways to harass teachers and prank Moe in interesting ways, which wouldn’t have happened if he had just done nothing.  If you really want to go after a Simpsons character that does nothing, may I suggest Barney, the barfly who spends his entire life sitting at Moe’s bar and burping.

I got a million ways to make my day
But daddy don’t agree

I doubt it.  All Homer is going to do is sit on his butt and watch TV, and not hold Bart accountable.  Because… that’s been The Simpsons for its entire run, especially in the later episodes, where Homer has just become a completely unredeemable jerk.  Like, did you guys even watch the show?

(He said mow the lawn) Who me?
(Walk the dog) Not my style, man
(Take out the trash) No way
(Tidy your room) C’mon get real

I get that this song is supposed to be told from the perspective of Bart Simpson, but now it’s just descending to the point where it sounds like they’re approaching Aaron Lewis or Ivan Moody levels of complaining (I’ve already thrown shade at Simple Plan today, so it’s time to mix it up).  The protagonist’s life is so hard because he has to mow the lawn.  I get that this may be something you’re unrealistically upset about as a teenager, but it’s really hard to take it with a grain of salt when these childish rants are being spoken by a 32 year old man.  This song has just become about a multi-millionaire complaining about how he has to take out the trash.  Pathetic.

And now you’re probably asking me, “But Doctor, you’re ripping into Joe Elliott for not being Bart Simpson, but you’re okay with Rivers Cuomo complaining about not being famous enough to live in “Beverly Hills” when he was already famous!  Also, I love Pitchfork!”  And to that I say, screw you.  They are different.  The reason why “Beverly Hills” is nowhere near as bad as this song is because Rivers is playing a character he can conceivably play.  Yes, he may be saying how he doesn’t stand a chance to live in Beverly Hills when he was already famous, but Rivers was always playing a nerdy, pathetic character in his songs.  He was pathetic in my two favorite Weezer songs, “No One Else” and “The World Has Turned And Left Me Here,” because he was throwing out a woman he was truly in love with for a stupid reason.  He was pathetic on pretty much all of Pinkerton, where he settled for meaningless sex encounters instead of true love.  The songs where he sucks are the songs where he acts like he’s the coolest man alive, particularly on “Can’t Stop Partying.”  Joe Elliott, on the other hand, cannot play the character he’s playing.  Elliott had made a name with love songs or dirty sex songs, not songs where he imitates himself as a kid or a teenager.  And when Elliott puts on his snotty accent throughout the verse, it just brings to mind that this is the same guy who demanded that you “make love like a man.”  It’s embarrassing listening to him try to be a kid.  Also…

Get your butt right out of bed

Didn’t you mean “gluteus max?”

And speaking of which… the song just completely shifts gears in the second verse.

I’m your average ordinary everyday dude
Drivin’ with my baby
To get her in the mood

Umm… I thought this song was about Bart Simpson.  Why on earth are you switching gears to driving with your woman?  Oh, no.  Ohhhhhh noooooo……

Let’s get, let’s get, let’s get, let’s get rocked
Get on top baby

Let’s get, let’s get, let’s get, let’s get rocked
Love to rock your body baby

This song is about sex.

They literally spent a mere verse discussing what the song’s supposed to be about – poorly, I might add – and then just ran out of content until they just went to the most generic subject matter they could think of.  When I first heard the song title of “Let’s Get Rocked,” I figured the song was maybe a dumb song about rocking out.  You would think that with the advertised subject matter, as well as the second verse.  But upon looking closer at the lyrics, I realized that wasn’t the case.  All these topics were doing was serving as a smoke screen to veil the song’s real goal: scoring some gluteus max.  Sorry, I got a lot dumber during this worst list.  But really, what other meaning can you get out of “get on top, baby!” and “let’s go all the way?”  It’s been mined to death since Eric Carmen and the Raspberries got there first!

Why on earth did you just randomly switch the topic of the song so many times, in a song that’s supposed to have a cohesive theme?  What do the second verse and the final chorus have to do with the original thesis of a Simpsons-inspired brat?  Come to think of it… WHY ON EARTH IS THIS SONG INSPIRED BY A TEN YEAR OLD ENDING IN SEXUAL ACTIVITY?!  Ok, let’s be fair… I don’t think Def Leppard are like that.  The message I got here was they didn’t think this one through.

At the time of the song’s release, Joe Elliott went on record to defend the song against its critics by saying, “They just see this over-produced, big, massive sound. In fact, that was exactly what we were trying to achieve. Don’t knock us for it because that is what we want. If you don’t like it, that’s fair enough, but at least try to listen to it in the way that it’s been done.”  Well, Joe, I just listened to your song, and heard how it was done.  While the overproduction may have been intentional, on this song it sounded less like a band that was doing what made it special and more like a band cranking up the amps to shield the fact that I just heard a song whose sound screamed “eighties” in a year that also brought us “Even Flow” by Pearl Jam and “The Drowners” by Suede, both songs that ushered in a new era in rock music.  And I heard the lyrics for what they are.  They are: a ten year old complaining about things he’ll be embarrassed he complained about as an adult, a grumpy guy complaining about music that isn’t rock, and… sex.  Because why not.  “Let’s Get Rocked” is an empty shell of a song.

Now that my rant about the song’s lyrics is over, you may be asking yourself why this deserves the 1992 cone of shame.  As you may have read in the opening disclaimer for this entry, this song just barely scraped onto the Billboard year-end list, meaning that previous bloggers and Youtubers had a chance to critique this song.  Yet it hasn’t made or even been nominated for a single worst list yet in the Youtube and Internet blog reviewaverse, to my knowledge.  And for that matter, you may be asking how “Let’s Get Rocked” is worse than “Roll The Bones” and ZZ Top’s cover of “Viva Las Vegas,” songs that were both obviously bad in comparison.  Honestly, I could have given it to any of the three.  But for one, putting this song in the top slot was my first instinct, so there.  And also, I have this to say.

In my opinion, “Let’s Get Rocked” is the perfect representation of everything that was wrong about rock and alternative music in 1992.  As I’ve mentioned several times in this entry and throughout this worst list, there were plenty of rock songs that helped to revolutionize the genre and to redirect the course of rock music history.  But for every song that showed us that grunge (and for that matter, shoegazing, electronica, and Britpop) wasn’t a fluke, there was a dated hair metal or blues rock song that aged quicker than VHS tapes.  “Let’s Get Rocked,” like “Another Rainy Night” and “God Gave Rock And Roll To You II,” sounded like a band being dragged kicking and screaming from the room with its generic hair metal riffs and drum effects that quickly became passe when distorted guitars and punk attitude became the order of the day.  Like “Sax And Violins,” it is a song that doesn’t know what it wants to be lyrically.  For as bad as “Roll The Bones” was, at least it was enjoyably bad.  I’m pretty sure I’ll be going back to the song just to get a quick laugh out of “gonna kick some gluteus max” months from now.  And as bad as ZZ Top’s cover of “Viva Las Vegas” was, at least ZZ Top tried to remake the song in their image, to prevent it from being just a carbon copy of the original.  

All Def Leppard could show the world was just how much they had rusted in the five years between studio albums.  And knowing that their next album included the horrifically cheesy “When Love And Hate Collide,” it wasn’t going to get any better for them as the nineties moved on without them.  “Let’s Get Rocked” is the worst rock and alternative song of 1992.

SOURCES

Kara, Scott. “One Giant Leppard.” NZ Herald 29 October 2008. Web. 20 August 2022 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/one-giant-leppard/IHGMRPQ3SKGT5SCA5A52UFX7UI/?c_id=264&objectid=10539947&pnum=0.

Kielty, Martin. “When Def Leppard Beat The Grunge Clock With Adrenalize.” Ultimate Classic Rock 31 March 2017. Web. 20 August 2022 https://ultimateclassicrock.com/def-leppard-adrenalize/.

“Def Leppard: Let’s Get Rocked (Song Spotlight).” The Lep Report 9 May 2022. Web. 20 August 2022 https://www.defleppardreport.com/def-leppard-lets-get-rocked-single-anniversary-27-years-ago/.

IMAGE SOURCES

Single cover from Album Of The Year

GIF of dumpster fire from New York Magazine

Image of Dug from Imgflip

Image of Def Leppard from Louder

Image of ruined birthday cake from TripAdvisor