When it comes to diss tracks, the genres of rap and hip-hop dominate, with rap battles being a standard part of those musical cultures. But musicians from other genres do occasionally dip their toes into the musical fight. Here are the stories behind 10 savage songs from other genres—some of which you might not have even known were personal attacks.
Related: Top 10 ’90s Songs You Didn’t Realize Were So Heartbreaking
10 “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd
Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1974 hit song “Sweet Home Alabama” was written in response to Neil Young slandering the southern American states in his songs “Southern Man” and “Alabama.” Not only is the song a retaliation, but Young is even name-checked in the lyrics: “Well, I heard Mr. Young sing about her / Well, I heard ol’ Neil put her down.” Lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant later told Rolling Stone, “We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two.”
Instead of firing back, Neil Young actually admitted in his autobiography Waging Heavy Peace (2012) that “My own song ‘Alabama’ richly deserved the shot Lynyrd Skynyrd gave me with their great record. I don’t like my words when I listen to it. They are accusatory and condescending, not fully thought out, and too easy to misconstrue.”[1]
9 “Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to…)” by Queen
Freddie Mercury has pure venom in his voice when singing “Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to…)” from Queen’s 1975 album A Night at the Opera. Although who exactly the song is dedicated to isn’t mentioned in the lyrics, it’s known to be about Queen’s former manager, Norman Sheffield.
The opening lines are about Sheffield withholding money from the band: “You suck my blood like a leech / You break the law and you breach / Screw my brain ’til it hurts / You’ve taken all my money—you still want more.” Apparently, Roger Taylor was even told that he shouldn’t play his drums too vigorously because there wasn’t enough money to buy new drumsticks, yet Sheffield was being driven around in a limo.
Despite not being named, Sheffield was so angered by the lyrics that he sued Queen for defamation, a move which outed him as the target of the song. Sheffield has denied that he mistreated the band, telling his side of the story in his 2013 autobiography Life on Two Legs: Set the Record Straight.[2]
8 “Teenage Wildlife” by David Bowie
Although the target of David Bowie’s “Teenage Wildlife” (1980) isn’t certain, the general consensus is that it’s Gary Numan, with Bowie calling him “one of the new wave boys / Same old thing in brand new drag.” This speculation was partly fueled by an interview Bowie gave at the time where he criticized the younger musician: “What Numan did he did excellently but in repetition, in the same information coming over again and again, once you’ve heard one piece.”
Numan was aware of Bowie’s animosity toward him, saying in an interview with Uncut that he was booted from the Kenny Everett show at Bowie’s request. “I think he saw people like me as little upstarts,” Numan commented. For Bowie’s part, he never acknowledged the song as being about Numan, instead saying, “I guess it would be addressed to a mythical teenage brother if I had one, or maybe my latter-day adolescent self, trying to correct those things one thinks one’s done wrong.”[3]
7 “Cry Me a River” by Justin Timberlake
For years, it was assumed—but not confirmed—that Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” (2002) was about the breakdown of his relationship with Britney Spears, with the song pinning the blame on her for cheating: “You don’t have to say, what you did / I already know, I found out from him.” It wasn’t until 2011 that Timbaland, one of the song’s producers, finally confirmed that Spears was indeed the target of the track.
Spears may have responded with her 2003 single “Everytime,” but she then overtly commented on their breakup and Timberlake’s song in her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me. She admits to once kissing choreographer Wade Robson but writes that Timberlake had already cheated on her multiple times. “There were a couple of times during our relationship when I knew Justin had cheated on me,” she explains, before saying that she let it go “because I was so infatuated and so in love.”[4]
6 “Bad Blood” by Taylor Swift
In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, Taylor Swift said that “Bad Blood” was about a fellow female artist. She didn’t name names but said that they became enemies after the singer “basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me.” The day after, Swift’s one-time friend Katy Perry tweeted, “Watch out for the Regina George in sheep’s clothing…,” leading to obvious speculation that she was the target of the diss track.
The two traded veiled barbs in interviews, and then in 2017, Perry seemed to drop her own diss track, “Swish Swish,” which included pointed lyrics such as “A tiger don’t lose no sleep / Don’t need opinions / From a shellfish or a sheep.” Soon afterward, while on James Corden’s Late Late Show, Perry gave more details about the beef, saying it was because three of Swift’s backup dancers left her tour to work with Perry instead.
By 2019, the two stars had made up and left their drama in the past, with the pair publicly reconciling on social media and even sharing a hug in the music video for Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down.”[5]
5 “Rockin’ the Suburbs” by Ben Folds
Thanks to its parody styling, Ben Folds’s “Rockin’ the Suburbs” doesn’t have the mean personal edge of most diss tracks. The satirical song takes aim at the angry rock music made by bands like Korn and Rage Against the Machine, opening with the lyrics, “Let me tell y’all what it’s like / Being male, middle-class, and white / It’s a bitch if you don’t believe / Listen up to my new CD.”
Folds said that he was “taking the piss of the whole scene” and that he decided not to namedrop in the lyrics because “it wasn’t as funny when I directed it at somebody.” There are some visual references in the song’s music video, though. At one point, he mimics Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst by wearing his trademark New York Yankees cap—backward, of course. At the end of the video, there’s also a clear nod to Korn’s music video for “Freak on a Leash,” with Folds playing in front of a hole-punched black background that allows light to dramatically stream through.[6]
4 “Hollaback Girl” by Gwen Stefani
Courtney Love has inspired her fair share of diss tracks, from “I’ll Stick Around” by Foo Fighters to “Starf*ckers, Inc.” by Nine Inch Nails. But the highest charting song about the grunge singer is Gwen Stefani’s No. 1 hit “Hollaback Girl” (2005). Although Stefani didn’t mention Love’s name, in an NME interview shortly afterward, she said, “Someone one time called me a cheerleader, negatively, and I’ve never been a cheerleader. So I was, like, ‘OK, f*ck you. You want me to be a cheerleader? Well, I will be one then. And I’ll rule the whole world, just you watch me.’”
Just one year earlier, in an interview with Seventeen magazine, Love commented, “Being famous is just like being in high school. But I’m not interested in being the cheerleader. I’m not interested in being Gwen Stefani. She’s the cheerleader, and I’m out in the smoker shed.” In a nod to this comment, the lyrics and music video of “Hollaback Girl” lean into high school imagery.[7]
3 “How Do You Sleep?” by John Lennon
After the breakup of The Beatles, the former band members traded numerous diss tracks. One of the first was George Harrison’s “Wah-Wah” (1970), which reflected on the tensions between Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Paul and Linda McCartney’s 1971 album Ram also included multiple swipes at Lennon and Yoko Ono. In 1984, McCartney admitted that “Too Many People” was written because Lennon had “been doing a lot of preaching, and it got up my nose a little bit.”
Although the digs aren’t particularly pointed, Lennon picked up on them and decided to write a far more obvious diss track with “How Do You Sleep?” The lyrics sharply comment on McCartney associating with sycophants (“You live with straights who tell you you was king”) and not having written anything good since their 1965 hit “Yesterday” (“The only thing you done was yesterday”). Lennon even makes reference to the conspiracy theory that McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced with a lookalike: “Those freaks was right when they said you was dead.” Damn![8]
2 “Get in the Ring” by Guns N’ Roses
When Guns N’ Roses were penning “Get in the Ring,” they decided to namedrop as hard as humanely possible. The song is an attack on music critics, but instead of merely leaving it at “all you punks in the press, that want to start sh*t by printing lies instead of the things we said,” Axl Rose also listed specific people. “Andy Secher at Hit Parader, Circus magazine, Mick Wall at Kerrang!, Bob Guccione Jr. at Spin.”
The bad blood between the band and journalists was sparked when Guns N’ Roses started demanding creative control over interviews. The media turned on them, with Guccione printing that the band was “drug-addicted, paranoid, homophobic, racist, xenophobic, ruthless, violent, a threat to the liberty of the press, and a pain in the ass to almost everyone.” After the release of “Get in the Ring,” Guccione happily accepted the challenge of a physical fight, but Axl backed down.[9]
1 “Obsessed” by Mariah Carey
The feud between Mariah Carey and Eminem started with his insistence that they briefly dated in 2001, which Carey says is a lie. They traded minor musical jabs shortly afterward, but things didn’t really heat up until Eminem released “Bagpipes from Baghdad” in 2009, which included lines such as “Mariah, what’s ever happened to us, why did we have to break up?”
Just one month later, Mariah released her own diss track, “Obsessed,” which was accompanied by a music video of the pop star being stalked by an Eminem lookalike—with the addition of a goatee—played by herself. Both Carey and Nick Cannon, her then-husband, denied that the stalker was styled to look like Eminem, with Carey saying, “All the speculation about who I’m playing in the video, it’s not accurate.” And Cannon claimed the song was inspired by a line from Mean Girls (2004).
However, the rapper clearly saw the connection, responding with “The Warning,” where he says, “I’m obsessed now, oh gee / Is that supposed to be me in the video with the goatee? / Wow Mariah, didn’t expect ya to go balls out.”[10]