5 of Music History’s Weirdest Supergroups
The best and brightest in a field always gravitate toward each other, whether that’s to smush genitals together or combine their powers to become something even greater. They also tend to be weird as hell, though, so sometimes, their collaborations only become something seriously strange.
SuperHeavy
Eurythmics keyboardist Dave Stewart got the idea for SuperHeavy “when he was in his house in the hills of Jamaica, above Saint Ann Parish, listening to three or four sound systems blasting at the same time, the music wafting into the air and blending together.” Not realizing this was unhinged behavior, he recruited Mick Jagger, R&B singer Joss Stone, reggae producer Damian Marley and Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman, and to his credit, the result does sound like someone is playing a bunch of different songs at once. Marley didn’t even seem to know how he got there, having been “pulled into SuperHeavy while recording with Nas in Henson Studios at the same time.” This isn’t a band. This is a sitcom.
Lulu
The idea of collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica isn’t all that bizarre on its face. Hell, teaming up with Marianne Faithfull was infinitely weirder. What’s eyebrow-raising is that the resulting double album was an interpretation of the work of 19th-century German playwright Frank Wedekind. Never heard of him? Yeah, no one has. The group’s most lasting cultural impact was the memes based on James Hetfield repeatedly screaming “I am the table!” in their first single.
Cage Against the Machine
Boy, the British public really hates The X-Factor. In 2009, they managed to listen to a nearly 20-year-old Rage Against the Machine song enough to block the show’s winner from going to number one that Christmas, so the next year, a group of musicians calling themselves Cage Against the Machine — including Pete Doherty, Billy Bragg and Imogen Heap — gathered to record a new song for the same purpose. Specifically, John Cage’s “4’3.”” You know, the one that explicitly requires its musicians to play nothing. They failed to take down Matt Cardle’s single, but they arguably succeeded at something way more important, i.e., promoting experimental music and chaos.
Class of ‘99
There was certainly a precedent for forming a jaw-dropping (and also Rage-related) supergroup to record one song for the most out-of-pocket reason. In (brace yourself) 1998, Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and of Jane’s Addiction, Porno for Pyros, and Collective Soul got together to record a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” for a movie soundtrack. That movie was The Faculty, a long forgotten remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers set in a millennial high school. It was written by Kevin Williamson. This is like getting John Williams to score Euphoria.
Tinted Windows
If you formed a supergroup by way of Mad Libs, you couldn’t come up with a less sensical combination than Tinted Windows, consisting of Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha, Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos, Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne and every great in-universe movie pop song, and Taylor Hanson. The worst part is that they were good. You just can’t go wrong with Schlesinger, or any of the rest of those guys. The fact that that video only has a little more than 100,000 views is a crime for which we would all have to pay, had Tinted Windows not died for our sins.
