7 Worst Rock Bands of the 2010's

It has been nearly a decade since I published my lists of the 7 worst rock bands of the 2000's and 1990's, and I am pleased to announce that I have spent the intervening years becoming older, wiser and only marginally less interested in complaining about music. This time around, we are moving into the 2010's: a decade in which rock music continued its gradual retreat from the center of popular culture while pop, hip-hop and electronic music happily took over what remained.

The 2010's gave us plenty of strange cultural landmarks: the rise of streaming services, grand cinematic universes, the continued existence of The Walking Dead, and an alarming number of songs designed specifically for truck commercials. More importantly, it gave us stomp-clap music, algorithmically polished indie pop, classic-rock cosplay and once-promising bands abandoning their identities in pursuit of whatever sound happened to be popular that year.

As always, not every band associated with these trends was terrible. Some were decent, some were genuinely great, and some released music that sounded capable of causing permanent structural damage to an Old Navy. So without any further delay, let us begin looking at seven of the absolute worst rock bands of the 2010's, starting with:

Panic! at the Disco

There was a time when Panic! at the Disco was an actual band.

I realize that statement sounds ridiculous now, like claiming Pizza Hut was once a place where people voluntarily sat down to eat, but it is true. There were multiple members, they wrote music together, and they occasionally stood in the same room without Brendon Urie absorbing them into his body like a Fremont Kirby.

The band’s 2005 debut, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, was messy, melodramatic and unmistakably juvenile, but it had personality. Pretty. Odd. dramatically changed direction, while Vices & Virtues managed to preserve enough of the group’s theatrical pop-rock identity to remain enjoyable.

Then everybody gradually disappeared.

By the time Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die! arrived, Panic! had begun transitioning away from its ornate pop-rock roots and toward glossy electronic pop. The album was inconsistent, but it still contained enough interesting ideas to suggest that the remaining musicians knew where they were going.

They did not.

Death of a Bachelor completed Panic!’s transformation into the Brendon Urie Variety Hour, starring Brendon Urie, featuring Brendon Urie, written by Brendon Urie and performed in front of several cardboard cutouts labeled “the rest of the band.” It was polished, loud and completely enamored with its frontman’s ability to sing approximately four octaves higher than any situation required. To Urie’s credit, he has an impressive voice. Unfortunately, he performs every note like he has just been informed that the winner receives ownership of Broadway.

And then came Pray for the Wicked. Released in 2018, the album sounds less like the work of a rock band and more like the soundtrack to a musical about a motivational speaker who becomes addicted to confetti. “High Hopes” is the obvious offender, a song engineered to follow graduation slideshows, insurance conventions and footage of professional athletes overcoming moderate hamstring discomfort until the end of time. “Hey Look Ma, I Made It” somehow feels even more irritating, partly because it turns celebrity disillusionment into something you would hear while waiting for an employee to demonstrate the newest Samsung refrigerator. Everything is enormous- the horns are enormous, the drums are enormous, Urie’s vocals are enormous. Every chorus arrives wearing a top hat, firing a T-shirt cannon and demanding a standing ovation before it has done anything. This is especially unfortunate if you are someone with earholes.. or Maude Flanders.

By the end of the decade, Panic! at the Disco had ceased functioning as a band and instead became a brand built around one extraordinarily energetic man’s inability to enter a room normally. Urie’s later public controversies and eventual online cancellation only made the whole production feel more dated. There is something almost appropriate about a project built entirely around one man’s charisma eventually discovering the risks of building an entire project around one man’s charisma. Panic! entered the decade as a damaged but recognizable band. It left as musical theater for people who believe subtlety is a tax bracket.

Imagine Dragons

Every decade needs a band that society collectively decides to punch. Coming out of the 2000's, that band was Nickelback. You could be discussing foreign policy, municipal zoning laws, or where the Phoenix Coyotes were going to play next year, and someone would eventually announce that Nickelback sucked. It was one of the few remaining issues capable of achieving bipartisan support.

During the 2010s, that responsibility passed to Imagine Dragons, and honestly, the backlash became excessive. Imagine Dragons are probably not as bad as the internet insists. Someday, perhaps 10 or 15 years from now, younger listeners will rediscover “It’s Time,” post videos titled “WAIT, WHY DID EVERYONE HATE THESE GUYS?” and begin rehabilitating the band’s reputation just as people eventually did with Nickelback.

But that day is not today.

Imagine Dragons arrived with a few tolerable qualities. “It’s Time” was catchy. “Demons” was dramatic without sounding completely deranged. Even “Radioactive,” before it was played often enough to qualify as an environmental contaminant, had a distinctive atmosphere. The problem was that “Radioactive” became successful, and the band apparently concluded that every future song needed to sound like a group of construction workers rhythmically dropping refrigerators down a staircase.

Producer Alex da Kid played a major role in establishing this sound: heavily compressed drums, electronic bass, dramatic silences, distorted vocals and choruses built to make inexpensive headphones believe they are under attack. At some point, the production stopped serving the songs and became the songs.

Imagine Dragons do not write verses so much as clear space for the next explosion. Dan Reynolds mutters something about pain, pressure, thunder, demons or being misunderstood, and then an entire marching band falls through the ceiling. Their music somehow incorporates rock, pop, hip-hop, electronic music, folk, alternative and inspirational corporate seminar audio without fully belonging to any of them. Imagine Dragons are every genre and no genre simultaneously. They are the musical equivalent of one of those restaurants with a forty-page menu that serves sushi, pizza, tacos and pancakes, ensuring none of them can possibly be good.

Imagine Dragons songs rarely feel written for ordinary human listening. They feel designed for trailers, championship montages, advertisements and scenes in which a movie character finally becomes confident enough to purchase a Jeep. Perhaps history will eventually treat the band more kindly. Nickelback survived its years as civilization’s designated target, and Imagine Dragons probably will too. But until that reevaluation arrives, someone must continue making fun of them. It is what the drums would have wanted.

Arctic Monkeys

Unlike most of the bands to come on this list, Arctic Monkeys were once exceptional. Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not remains one of the strongest rock debuts of its era. The songs were fast, observant and full of specific details about nightlife, class, boredom and young adulthood. Alex Turner delivered entire paragraphs before the guitars had time to catch up with him. Favourite Worst Nightmare was nearly as good. It was darker and tighter without sacrificing the nervous energy that made the band exciting. Arctic Monkeys sounded like four people desperately trying to finish every song before the venue’s owner shut off the electricity. Even Humbug and Suck It and See, while inconsistent, demonstrated a band willing to experiment without completely abandoning its identity.

Then came AM. To be clear, AM is not a terrible album. It contains several good songs, memorable riffs and some of the band’s strongest production. “Do I Wanna Know?” became enormous for a reason.

It also sounds like a car commercial.

Nearly every riff moves at the precise speed of a black luxury vehicle driving through an empty city at 2 AM. The drums begin, headlights appear around a corner, and Alex Turner stares into a rearview mirror while a deep voice whispers: “Introducing the all-new 2014 Jaguar F-Type. Desire has four wheels.”

“R U Mine?” sounds like a Dodge Charger doing donuts inside an aircraft hangar. “Arabella” sounds like an advertisement for cologne packaged inside a miniature gasoline can. “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?” sounds like a commercial reminding customers not to text while operating their new Lexus. The entire record smells faintly of leather upholstery. Its success also solidified Turner’s transformation from sharp Sheffield observer into a man who appears physically incapable of buttoning the top half of his shirt. His vocals slowed. His accent became increasingly theatrical. Every line began arriving with an invisible wink and enough hair product to damage local wildlife. Arctic Monkeys were no longer merely writing songs. They were manufacturing entrances.

Then came Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, an album about a luxury resort on the moon. I respect the ambition, following the biggest record of your career with a slow, piano-driven lounge album about lunar gentrification is certainly a choice. It is the sort of decision only a confident artist could make, or a man who had recently purchased a very expensive telescope and needed to justify it. The album has defenders, and it contains clever writing. Unfortunately, much of it sounds like a divorced magician performing beside the seafood buffet on an interplanetary cruise ship. The record is less a collection of songs than a seventy-minute hotel lobby in which every chair is shaped beautifully but none is comfortable.

What makes Arctic Monkeys’ inclusion painful is that the band never lost its talent. The musicians remain capable, Turner remains a gifted lyricist, and their later work is far more interesting than the average radio-rock album. But somewhere during AM, the band discovered how good it looked in slow motion. It has been posing for the commercial ever since.

Maroon 5

There is a popular narrative surrounding Maroon 5 that needs to be addressed. According to this version of history, Maroon 5 began as a fantastic rock band, released three classic albums and then tragically abandoned its artistic integrity to make disposable pop music.

I don't buy it. Maroon 5 absolutely became worse during the 2010's, but let us not exaggerate what was lost. Songs About Jane had several good singles. “This Love,” “Harder to Breathe” and “Sunday Morning” remain enjoyable songs. The band once had an identifiable funk-pop sound, actual guitar parts and the occasional appearance of something resembling chemistry. That does not mean early Maroon 5 was secretly the Beatles.

Much of the group’s older material already sounded like funk-rock that had been professionally sanitized for use inside an upscale dentist’s office. Adam Levine’s voice was always capable of making the word “baby” sound like a mosquito asking to borrow money. The band simply surrounded him with enough guitars to create the illusion of balance.

Then, everything changed when the fire nation attacked with “Moves Like Jagger.”

The song was enormously successful and taught Maroon 5 an important lesson: they did not need to sound like Maroon 5 anymore. In fact, they barely needed to sound like a band. Overexposed followed in 2012, beginning the group’s complete transformation into a delivery system for whichever pop trend had performed well during the previous fiscal quarter. Outside songwriters multiplied, electronic production took over and the guitars were quietly moved into storage beside a box labeled “integrity: do not open.” From that point forward, the other members of Maroon 5 seemed to exist primarily so Adam Levine would have people standing behind him in photographs. This is an impressive accomplishment because Maroon 5 has approximately 400 members, yet songs like “Girls Like You” and “Don’t Wanna Know” sound as though none of them were permitted within six miles of the recording studio.

By the end of the decade, Maroon 5 had become one of popular music’s most dependable punching bags. Some of that hatred was excessive, and Levine’s celebrity persona undoubtedly intensified it. Still, the band earned much of the criticism by becoming almost aggressively anonymous. They did not evolve into a different kind of group, they erased themselves until only Levine’s falsetto and a market-research department remained.

Maroon 5 was never as good as nostalgic listeners now claim, but it once sounded like five musicians making music. That number eventually fell to zero. Animals mals indeed.

Greta Van Fleet

Let us address the elephant in the room. Actually, based on the vocals, let us address the pterodactyl circling above the room. Greta Van Fleet sounds like Led Zeppelin. Everyone knows it. The band knows it. Your uncle who has not purchased a new album since 1987 knows it. Robert Plant presumably felt a disturbance in the universe the first time Josh Kiszka approached a microphone. The comparison is unavoidable, particularly on the band’s early material. The high-pitched vocals, blues-based guitar riffs, mystical lyrics and general presentation all seem designed to answer the question, “What if Led Zeppelin formed inside a Michigan Renaissance festival?”

Sounding like another band, though, is not automatically a crime. Rock history is full of artists borrowing from their predecessors, and Greta Van Fleet is hardly the first group to build a career from refurbished classic-rock materials. The larger problem becomes apparent once the Zeppelin comparison is removed. What remains is simply a band that performs nearly every component of that style less effectively.

The guitar riffs are less memorable. The songwriting is less dynamic. The rhythm section is less powerful. The production captures the clothing and furniture of 1970s rock without locating any of its danger. Jimmy Page’s riffs could sound mysterious, menacing, seductive or physically unstable. Greta Van Fleet’s guitars frequently sound like background music playing while someone shops for a leather vest. The band recreates classic rock as an aesthetic rather than an experience. It is less Led Zeppelin and more a Led Zeppelin-themed escape room.

Then there is Josh Kiszka. Kiszka possesses a naturally powerful voice, but he uses it like someone who discovered a smoke alarm could sing and immediately offered it a record contract. Every vocal line begins at maximum intensity. He does not build toward notes. He attacks them from above. Sometimes he sounds like Robert Plant stepping barefoot onto a Lego and other times he resembles a haunted Muppet attempting to summon rain. During particularly dramatic moments, he sounds like a teakettle being informed that its family has been kidnapped. The constant shrieking leaves the songs with nowhere to go. A vocalist cannot create a climax when every syllable sounds like the final transmission from a crashing aircraft. Even ordinary words become emergencies. Kiszka could sing a grocery list and make “whole-grain bread” sound like a prophecy delivered moments before the sun explodes.

The band has occasionally improved its songwriting and expanded beyond its earliest influences, but the fundamental problem remains. Greta Van Fleet wants to preserve the grandeur of classic rock while avoiding nearly everything that made classic rock feel dangerous or spontaneous. They are talented musicians recreating the sound of better musicians, fronted by a man who appears to be losing an argument with an eagle.

AJR

Ah, my beloved. In 2017, I named AJR’s The Click the worst album of the year and possibly the decade. But hey, I had several opinions that turned out to be wrong that year, like thinking the Washington Capitals would get swept by the Columbus Blue Jackets after going down 0-2. What happened next? Well, the Capitals went on to win their first ever Stanley Cup, and AJR became about as likable as John Tortorella.

AJR’s music sounds like it was written by three people locked inside a conference room with a ukulele, Sam Puckett's sound fx remote, and a whiteboard reading, “WHAT DO TEENAGERS WORRY ABOUT?” Every song begins with a subject that could potentially inspire something meaningful: insecurity, adulthood, creative pressure, social anxiety, family relationships or the fear of falling behind. AJR then examines that subject with all the depth of a novelty coffee mug.

Their lyrics repeatedly present ordinary observations as though the brothers have uncovered forbidden philosophical knowledge. Growing up is confusing, people sometimes pretend to be happy, success does not automatically solve insecurity, and your parents will eventually become older. These are perfectly reasonable themes. Unfortunately, AJR delivers them with the astonishment of three men who have just discovered that water becomes colder when placed inside a refrigerator.

The production makes everything worse. Songs suddenly introduce pitch-shifted vocals, cartoon sound effects, orchestral samples, trap percussion, horns, dubstep breakdowns and theatrical interludes, often within the same ninety seconds. It resembles Suno generating “quirky indie pop” after being trained exclusively on commercials for tablets marketed toward children. AJR wants desperately to appear unconventional, but its eccentricity feels meticulously calculated. Every unusual sound arrives with the subtlety of a child tugging on your sleeve and yelling, “Did you hear the weird thing we just did?”

At their best, AJR resembles a parody of overproduced indie pop. At their worst, they create music so aggressively whimsical that listening to it feels like being trapped inside a commercial where every object has googly eyes. What makes the band especially frustrating is that the members clearly possess musical ability. The arrangements are intricate, the production is technically accomplished and the choruses are engineered with tremendous precision. Unfortunately, that precision is used to create songs that sound like a TED Talk being interrupted by a kazoo solo.

AJR did not merely release some of the decade’s worst rock music. They created an entire universe in which every basic human emotion must be accompanied by a trumpet, a vocal sample and the sound of someone dropping silverware into a washing machine. Congratulations friendos, you made the list again. Honestly though, I don't' feel like going out on this limp limb.

Green Day

So I have praised this band in the past, and for good reason. At their best, Green Day were one of the sharpest, catchiest and most important rock bands of their generation. Dookie helped drag punk rock into the mainstream, Nimrod demonstrated far more range than the band was given credit for, and American Idiot transformed three aging punks from California into one of the biggest rock bands on the planet. Green Day were not merely good. For a while, they were great. That is precisely what makes their output during the 2010's so frustrating.

The warning signs appeared on 21st Century Breakdown. It was not a bad album, but it often sounded like Green Day attempting to recreate American Idiot with a larger budget, a longer runtime and fewer memorable ideas. Still, it contained enough strong material to suggest the band had another worthwhile record left in them. Instead, they released three.

The ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, ¡Tré! trilogy contains 37 songs, because Green Day apparently entered the studio with enough material for one decent album and responded by placing all of it into an industrial photocopier. The project was promoted as a return to direct, energetic rock after two ambitious concept albums. Unfortunately, the band also stripped away most of the urgency, personality and quality control. The guitars sound strangely clean and harmless, like punk rock performed with equipment rented from a children’s museum. Even the louder songs land with the impact of someone angrily closing a kitchen cabinet. Billie Joe Armstrong once sounded bratty, anxious, funny and genuinely dangerous. Throughout much of the trilogy, he sounds like a middle-aged man attempting to remember what irresponsibility felt like while checking the terms of his homeowner’s insurance.

¡Uno! is generally considered the strongest of the three, which is less an endorsement than an acknowledgment that somebody has to win a three-car collision. Then comes ¡Dos!, the supposedly dirtier garage-rock entry. It is certainly dirtier, although mostly in the way a gas-station restroom is dirtier. The album contains “Nightlife,” one of the most baffling songs Green Day has ever released. Imagine the band attempting to write seductive nightclub music after receiving all of its information about seduction from a novelty T-shirt sold at Spencer’s Gifts. By ¡Tré!, exhaustion has fully taken over. The album is less embarrassing than ¡Dos!, but it carries the drained energy of a party continuing several hours after everyone interesting has gone home.

The trilogy’s greatest accomplishment is making 37 songs feel simultaneously excessive and strangely empty. There are enough decent melodies scattered throughout the project to assemble one respectable Green Day album. Instead, the band released every idea it had, including several that should have remained inside Billie Joe Armstrong’s Notes app. What Green Day desperately needed was somebody in the studio willing to say no. No, this song does not need another chorus. No, we do not need three records. No, “Nightlife” cannot leave the building.

The band returned in 2016 with Revolution Radio, a record widely treated as a comeback. To be fair, it was an improvement. The guitars regained some weight, and “Bang Bang” demonstrated that Green Day could still generate energy when properly supervised. The album, however, also felt painfully safe. Much of Revolution Radio sounds like Green Day performing an officially licensed tribute to Green Day. The familiar chord progressions return. The political outrage returns. The emotional ballads return. Every component is technically present, but the sense of danger is gone.

This is ultimately why Green Day belongs at the end of this list. They are not the least talented band here. At their peak, Green Day were better than nearly every other artist discussed above. But few bands squandered more goodwill during the 2010's. Green Day entered the decade as rock royalty and spent much of it releasing deleted scenes from its own career. The trilogy proved the band could still write hooks but could no longer identify which ones deserved to be released. Revolution Radio proved it could still sound like Green Day but struggled to explain why anyone needed a newer version.

Green Day did not become terrible overnight. They simply released enough mediocre music to make listeners wonder whether greatness had quietly left the studio while everyone was recording album number 3.

In conclusion

The 2010's did not kill rock music, nor did these 7 bands. The genre had already begun losing its central position in popular culture, and plenty of artists continued making creative, challenging and exciting guitar music throughout the decade. Still, the bands above helped define several of rock’s least flattering tendencies.

Panic! at the Disco demonstrated how quickly a band can become one man’s personal awards-show medley. Imagine Dragons turned rock into motivational trailer audio. Arctic Monkeys discovered the luxury automobile market. Maroon 5 removed the remaining rock from pop-rock and then continued removing things until almost nothing remained. Greta Van Fleet recreated classic rock with all the danger of a museum gift shop. AJR converted basic emotional observations into musical presentations for a technology-company retreat. Green Day entered the decade as rock royalty, then released enough material to make quality control feel like a forgotten fourth member.

Some of these bands may eventually receive warmer reassessments. Time has a strange way of softening opinions, particularly after a younger generation develops nostalgia for music that once made everyone else violently change the radio station. Perhaps Imagine Dragons will become cool. Perhaps Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino will be regarded as a misunderstood masterpiece. Perhaps historians will discover that AJR’s production was actually an encrypted warning from the future.

Until then, these bands will remain monuments to a decade in which rock music tried desperately to reinvent itself, run away from itself, and sell us a vehicle and yell the word “THUNDER” at the same time.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Fall Out Boy, Mumford & Sons, Five Finger Death Punch, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Muse