Board 8 > Johnbobb ranks 113 User-nominated Villain Songs [TOP 10]

(+) Yeah! (+)

Ha I did think it was funny that was nominated along with what I nominated, really really great song and yea he super sells it

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Glad to see Kick it Up a Notch make it so far! The singing is definitely some of Starkid's best. I love Dylan's final human meeaaaaaaat, it still gives me chills!

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4. Stan
Source: Eminem
Villain: Stan
Nominator: Player 0
Favorite lyric: I can relate to what you're saying in your songs / So when I have a shitty day, I drift away and put 'em on / 'Cause I don't really got shit else so that shit helps when I'm depressed / I even got a tattoo of your name across the chest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU9DzMhdeEo

Villainy: 9
Characterization: 10
Melody: 9
Total: 28/30

I remember being a white suburban middle schooler first discovering rap music, and then hearing this song. I don't think I even knew how to react to this. It felt so personal and heavy in a way I wasn't used to hearing in any of the music I'd listened to. Again, I was a middle schooler, so this was like the new level of deep. I really give Player 0 props for nominating this, because it's not one I would've even thought about. Part of that is because it's hard to think of Stan as a villain. His story is sad. He's clearly obsessed to the point of madness, though it's also obvious he's not entirely mentally stable. The best thing this song does is present a full, detailed picture of who Stan is and how he's driven toward the climax of the song, and what makes this more powerful is that we get all of it directly from Stan's own words, only learning as much as he's willing to tell. He writes about being abandoned by his abusive father, the suicide of a close friend, his relationship with his pregnant girlfriend, his self-harm, and most of all his obsession with Eminem and constant justification for why he hasn't gotten a letter back. Then we get the climax, and goddamn if it wasn't hard to decide how "villainous" this is. Stan locks his pregnant girlfriend in the trunk, gets drunk and drives his car off a bridge. And part of me wants to rate the action lower because Stan very, very clearly isn't mentally clear here, but he also goes into the specific desire to make her suffocate to "suffer more" before she dies. Mental disorder just isn't enough to stop that from being one of the most villainous mindsets on this list. I think the weakest part of the song is the final verse from Eminem himself, which is something that really went down for me over time. He uses it to justify himself, give bad, shallow advice, joke about the self harm, and eventually come to his realization of what's happened, and it kinda works but not quite. Still, overall one of the best things Eminem has done, and one of the darkest songs on this list.


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The final three songs come tomorrow!

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Aww yeah top 3.

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Wow I honestly didn't think mine would beat Stan, that's wild

Eminem has gotten a little meh over the last decade but Stan is still pretty damn great especially for its time

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I'm torn on Hellfire. It's a great song featuring the wonderful voice of Tony Jay, but I hate the change Disney made to the ending of the story. Sure, the novel's ending doesn't make for a happy ending, but the movie's ending message seemed like a "know your place" more than anything.

I knew I wanted one of my four to be a concept song, and was pretty happy with my choice! Didn't think it would get much in Villainy when I'm the Bad Guy is about destroying the galaxy, but I guess killing intent and mental state matter as much as the physical scale of destruction here.

Hellfire's still alive, so all my hopes are riding on that one now!

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PIayer_0 posted...

Didn't think it would get much in Villainy when I'm the Bad Guy is about destroying the galaxy, but I guess killing intent and mental state matter as much as the physical scale of destruction here.

Yup!

So while the scale of destruction is definitely taken into account, someone who is say trying to make a difficult decision which could result in a lot of death will most likely score far below someone killing one person purely for sadistic thrill

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I was rooting for Run for Your Life but thought it stood no chance. I was wrong!

Was hoping stan would get first now that it got this far. But top 5 is still a great run for an interesting choice!

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3. Run for Your Life
Source: clipping.
Villain: La Chat, the killer, the murderer, the bitch they love to hate
Nominator: Bane
Favorite lyric: Shiver all up in the bones, the body feelin' crazy / Face is streaked with tears and dirt, the vision goin' hazy / Fuck it, it's too dark to see, cannot cry and can't be weak / It's a code of honor, gotta keep it gangster in the streets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aibv56K7y8A

Villainy: 10
Characterization: 9
Melody: 10
Total: 29/30

Fun fact: clipping.'s "There Existed an Addiction to Blood" was my favorite album released last year. I was worried to, after how good "Splendor & Misery" I really wondered if they'd be able to followup, but they did, going from isolated in space sci-fi to horror packed full of creeping threats around every corner of the city. That's what makes Run For Your Life such a damn good villain song. There are three verses, and the villain herself doesn't appear until the third aside from single lines of "You ain't scared, is ya?" in the chorus. The first two verses are just Daveed narrating the story of the unnamed victim (told in second person POV so that the listener feels like the victim) desperately running for their life after stealing from a sadistic gangster. Before she even shows up, we've already got a clear picture of her as a dark, looming shadow approaching from the uncaring streets, and just when the we've found a hiding place, "far in the distance creepin' up is that underground music." Fucking chills. The scene is very reminiscent to Omar Little whistling down the street in The Wire. Then La Chat arrives in Verse 3, and all hope for survival is gone as we get a gruesome, disgusting description from her perspective of the victim being slaughtered in all sorts of terrible ways. For my money Daveed Diggs is the best rapper working today.

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Johnbobb posted...

clipping.'s "There Existed an Addiction to Blood" was my favorite album released last year

Wow I lucked out huh! Yea it's super fuckin good, and I love that it's a genuine horrorcore album that doesn't have to rely on cheap shock value. And one of my favorite things about this song in particular is the beat, in the first 2 verses it's playing from actual passing cars which blows me mind. And then in the chorus and the final verse with La Chat it kicks into full to really make it hit.

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2. Waiting for the Worms
Source: Pink Floyd's The Wall
Villain: Pink (sort of)
Nominator: Uglyface2
Favorite lyric: Goodbye, cruel world, it's over / Walk on by

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeICC5SFpP0

Villainy: 9
Characterization: 10
Melody: 10
Total: 29/30

Fun fact: The Wall is my favorite album of all time. Either Uglyface2 knows me really well or got really lucky with this pick, because almost any song from this fucking masterpiece of an album was getting an easy 10/10 melody score. Fun fact #2: When I had the idea to allow nominations for songs that weren't from a piece of media, one of the first ones I thought of was In The Flesh, the song that plays two songs earlier on this same album (yeah I know they would still qualify for songs from media because there was indeed a movie but that's not important).
Ideally the entirety of In The Flesh/Run Like Hell/Waiting for the Worms could be nominated as a single song because they're essentially the "fascist dream" part of the album. That also makes it super hard to rank the song for villainy. For context, Pink is hopped up on drugs and slipping into delusion after building "The Wall" inside his mind, a metaphorical separation of himself from the outside world. In this dream, he fights to maintain sanity while a deep part of his psyche manifests as Dictator Pink, a Hitler-like fascist ruler who hollers over Pink's thoughts with screams about rounding up the gays and blacks and jews, with many allegories made to the British Union of Fascists from the 1930s. The characterization of the entire album is incredible, but that especially goes through here, with Pink's mind essentially split into multiple battling beings, one trying to cause chaos and bloodshed, one urging him to "follow the worms" and essentially stop resisting the creeping psychosis, and the third just lost in the madness, saying "you cannot reach me now." As far as villainy, it's difficult, because the Hitlery dictator that wants to basically commit genocide is definitely a 10, but he's also just a figment of Pink's broken mind that Pink himself is trying to deal with. This is ultimately what knocks the score down to just 29/30, just falling short of the crown.

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Bane_Of_Despair posted...

And one of my favorite things about this song in particular is the beat, in the first 2 verses it's playing from actual passing cars which blows me mind.

Oooh, I did actually want to mention that and forgot to in my write-up. The beat composed from the cars just adds to the tension so incredibly, it's really just something to behold.

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1. Hellfire
Source: Hunchback of Notre Dame
Villain: Judge Claude Frollo
Nominator: Great Paul
Favorite lyric: Hellfire, Dark fire / Now gypsy, it's your turn / Choose me or your pyre / Be mine or you will burn!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3NoDEu7kpg

Villainy:10
Characterization: 10
Melody: 10
Total: 30/30

Yup, I'm sure this can't be that much of a surprise, because for my money I'm not sure there's even a better villain song out there. This is everything a villain song should be and more. It's probably the darkest song to ever appear in a Disney film. Let's start with the simple. Tony Jay knocks it out of the fucking park here. His voice bellows with hatred and lust, with the instrumentals ramping up behind him as he descends further into evil, with everything coming together on a final "BURN" that just sends chills down my spine every single time.

Then let's look at the characterization. Without ever having seen the Hunchback of Notre Dame, this song tells you right off the bat that Frollo is a holy man praying to his god for help, but then immediately makes it clear that this isn't the fragile moment it's being made out to be as Frollo immediately talks down on the "common, vulgar, weak, licentious crowd." It goes into his desire for a girl he's seen dancing, which goes against his role as the holy judge set out to rid the city of gypsies. He immediately blames her for seducing him and refuses to accept responsibility, and seems genuinely in fear of hell should his desire not be quelled. This man who is self-defined entirely by his holiness is now genuinely worried about his immortal soul, and in a powerful moment, makes the choice to choose his lust and hatred over his faith.

Then there's the villainy, and holy shit is this motherfucker evil. The line that I think best defines this song comes just before the final segment: "Destroy Esmeralda and let her taste the fires of hell / Or else let her be mine and mine alone." Frollo essentially decides that if Esmerelda is unwilling to be his lover, he will kill her and send her straight to hell. Holy shit, dude. And then as he thinks his oppurtunity is escaping, he threatens to "burn down all of Paris" just to pursue her, fully willing to destroy her entire community along the way. In a very brief moment of weakness, he mutters "God have mercy on me," the final evidence that he knows fully well that the path he has chosen to go down is one that will ultimately send him to hell, and yet he chooses it anyway.

Goddamn what a song.

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I'm not sure why I never looked into Daveed Diggs' stuff outside of Hamilton, but I guess I need to change that, huh?

Thanks for the topic series, very fun to follow.

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Really glad to see this at #1. It was definitely the first song that came to mind when I read the title of your nomination topic. Great list overall and I'd definitely be in support for another villain song topic if you were to do it again.

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Judge Claude Frollo longed to purge the world of vice and sin
And he saw corruption everywhere, except within
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I enjoyed following the topic. When the nominations were going on nothing really occurred to me, but if this was run again I would definitely have some nominations this time.

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Fun Fact: For whatever reason, Disney doesn't consider Hellfire to be a standalone song. On the soundtrack it's officially "Heaven's Light/Hellfire":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYleCKxV_WA

(This is not an argument against Hellfire being nominated by itself, more petty complaining about a specific Disney trivia game that I always fail at because it wants the official title of the song and I never remember it because wh0 ever remembers Quasimodo's portion of the song?

...that 0 was a typo, but I'm keeping it.)

More seriously: Congratulations on finishing the ranking! Fun topic, would participate again.
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Yeah, I guess they did that for the album since they transition into each other during the film.

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Hellfire's a great winner

This ranking was a blast, I'd love to see a sequel!

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It was a fun topic, and thats a pretty good number one.

My definitive villain song was always Be Prepared, but I realized I liked Hellfire way better when I went through some of the top 20 list. Hail Frollo!

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Thanks for following along! This ranking was a lot of fun to do, and there was a ton of good stuff I discovered from it. By the way @TheArkOfTurus I've listened to the first half of that Ayreon album and it's excellent so far. Definitely a lot of stuff that surprised me, even though I knew pretty early on Hellfire was probably going to win the whole thing. I definitely plan to run this again eventually, so it's exciting to see people already interested in the sequel.

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TheArkOfTurus posted...

I'm not sure why I never looked into Daveed Diggs' stuff outside of Hamilton, but I guess I need to change that, huh?

Definitely! clipping is so good. It's Daveed's skill from Hamilton with some excellent, dark, and creative beats behind him.

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Great albeit somewhat predictable winner (but I mean c'mon there is a reason for that).

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Great project and write-ups, that was a ton of fun to read along with.

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The winner was never really in question, but thanks for doing this project, it was a lot of fun!

It was a lucky pick. As it happens, disc 2 of The Wall has been stuck in my cars CD player for years and I have no way of getting it out.

What can I say about Hellfire that I havent already? Tony Jay was one of the greats.

clipping. is amazing and i need to remember to listen to more than just the same two clipping songs over and over most of the time

also lol of course hellfire won i don't know why i didn't predict it from the start
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Toxtricity posted...

clipping. is amazing and i need to remember to listen to more than just the same two clipping songs over and over most of the time

Story 2 is really good, though!

In hindsight sad I didn't nominate Alive (Jekyll and Hyde). Ah well, maybe next time if something like this ever happens again.


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Cool project! Didn't seem nominations, but this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGYLIlCQWtw probably would've been my pick (though I guess it wouldn't score super great on the villainy part?). Interesting to see songs ranked 'objectively' like this.
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sergiocornaga posted...

Story 2 is really good, though!

Probably my favorite clipping song tbh

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Johnbobb posted...

By the way @TheArkOfTurus I've listened to the first half of that Ayreon album and it's excellent so far.

Glad to hear it! I ended up getting Addiction to Blood, and... yeah, I really should have listened to this earlier. I love it (although I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be getting out of Piano Burning.) I'll have to grab their other albums.

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Another thing about Hellfire is that the interruption isn't from a comic relief side character to defuse the tension, and actually helps the song. The guard interrupts Frollo in universe, which you can see from his shock when the door knocks, and his news that Esmeralda has escaped advances Frollo's character further on his path to villainy.

Anyway, this topic was a lot of fun, and I've already been thinking of nominations in case there's a sequel!

Finally caught up really enjoyed this. Thanks for doing it.