Make it Stop: A Bad Music Podcast

FINALLY, after a long hiatus (sorry Stoppies!) we are thrilled/enraged to bring you a truly confounding episode of Make it Stop, where our intrepid hosts engage in the critical work of unraveling the Mars Volta's deeply ill conceived 9th studio album, Lucro Sucio; Los Ojos Del Vacio. Joining us to wade through the murky depths is perpetual pod bestie Ben Stein, who shares Mike's love for the often...

Howdy folks, we're back back back again with another WRETCH-rospective of a classic and beloved act, documenting and dissecting the 10 worst Queen tracks ever recorded. We're not gonna lie Stoppies, this was a tough one - not because their catalogue is overripe with audio atrocities but because with Freddie Mercury on vocals, Brian May on guitar, and Roger Taylor on drums (sorry to the oft-forgott...

Feeling futuristic? Horny and confused? Are your circuits overloaded with indie electro-clash posturing, fembot fantasies, and the desperate clang of a pop star perpetually trying to reboot her identity to decidedly mixed results? This week, we plug into Bionic, Christina Aguilera’s glittery, glitchy, seemingly cursed attempt at beating Lady Gaga in the art pop culture wars of the early 2010s. Joi...

How are you feeling, Stoppies? A little aggrieved? A tad perturbed? Are you ready to get REAL about your DEFIANT opinions on the woke mind virus, how doctors are evil pill pushers, and why Jon Stewart doesn't send you cute little videos on your birthday anymore? This week we cover the precipitous fall of once beloved Cookie Monster-voiced ska dad Dicky Barrett of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, who t...

Stoppies, are you ready to go to MOUND TOWN? Are you ready to don your trueys, blast some longhorns and hole up with your weird friends in an abandoned shack in the woods to make autotuned nightmare trap about paint by number horror tropes all encased in a thick glue of glitchy witch hop freak shit? Well WE ARE! Our first episode back and we're keeping it in the family with true blue besties Brian...

Get ready for the hilarious return of the Make It Stop podcast! Hosts Heather and Mike Dunn are back starting April 15th, delivering funny music commentary and scathing critiques of the worst music out there. If you love podcasts that break down bad music with sharp opinions and hot takes, especially focusing on recent releases, Make It Stop is your destination. Expect new episodes packed with bad...

Have you got our latest podcast project? It's time for even MORE of that Van you love to hate, because we're deep diving into round 2 of this miserable musical end of life crisis. Joining us this round is comedian and "famous coward" Mark Gallagher, known for his hilarious character work and his deep, deep appreciation of ornery out of touch white rock stars with God complexes and a chip on their...

Welcome Back, Stoppies! We're officially rounding the corner on a whole 100 episodes and 5 seasons of musical masochism, so thank you for your patience in advance for what will likely be a much more relaxed release schedule this time around. As punishment for our tardiness we kick off the "fun" by attempting to tackle cantankerous Celtic crooner Van Morrison's Latest Record Project Volume 1. An al...

Alright stoppies, it's the moment you've all been waiting for - a knock down, drag out deathmatch between two deeply embarrassing teenage genres of the late 90s: Nu Metal vs. 3rd Wave Ska. Nu Metal Mike vs. Perpetual Ska Kid Heather battle it out with fan of both genres and very funny comedian Ethan Marsh reffing to make sure there's no wallet chain yanking or funny trombone stuff going on, keepin...

MMM MMMM MMMM...nah. The world was briefly captivated in the early 90s by Brad Roberts' low, smoldering baritone and his band of eccentric Canadian rockers the Crash Test Dummies. The one hit hit hard, but after a string of sloppy follow ups, the Dummies were in the doldrums by the time 1999's Give Yourself A Hand rolled around. To switch things up they decided to have Roberts sing in a falsetto a...

We're killing our Idols this week as we surf the circuits of cyber hell with none other than Billy Idol, who in 1993 was an aging "punk" desperately clinging to relevance while soaked in a haze of club drugs and heroin. But the drug called The Internet became the most addictive of all as he lazily skimmed Neuromancer and decided he was the ultimate authority on the emergent cyberpunk culture, to t...

We're reaching, and retching this week as we take a deep dive into Jack White's version of a musical midlife crisis, 2018's Boarding House Reach. Vocoder, hot topic spoken word poetry and RAPPING all make an appearance on this bloated collection of song stems, incoherent rambles, and riffless meandering sonic slogs that sound like the last gasps of a former musical genius. Most damning of all is t...

All bad things must come to an end, and so we must say goodbye to this year's M-M-M-M-MARCH BADNESS. But before we can finally rid ourselves of this curse, a winner must be crowned. It's a true Cinderella Story this year, as the 6 seed Twenty One Pilots defied all odds, making it all the way to the finals to take on the 1 seed Chainsmokers. It's Blurryface vs Memories... Do Not Open, two albums co...

It's a bad, bad world Stoppies, and tonight's gonna be a long night as we go head to head with some of the most godawful garbage we've ever had to haul on this dumb, tragic show. Longtime besties and very funny friends Brian and Julez hold our hands as we wade through the muck of the legendarily insufferable Will.i.am whose dumb dumb drivel about girls' Donques nearly drives us off a cliff, but wi...

Things are heating up as March Badness moves into the S-S-SEMI FINALS. Rippity rappity reggaety rockity 311 adds dubstep and Imagine Dragons-style indie to their bloated repertoir on 2019's Voyager, and that album goes head to head with the massively maligned one seed Chainsmokers' dashed off and cast aside nothing-album Sick Boy (2018). It is a HEATED battle this week, Stoppies, as we are joined...

On Make it Stop we continue to hone in on a central thesis of bad music - that no matter the genre, no matter the age or era, all bad music begins to flow together into the same swirling cesspool of shit. Nowhere is this more apparent than in tonight's episode of March Badness pitting whiny wine mom fantasy husband Pat Monahan and his band Train against nu-indie-rap-emo-Christian-rock disasters Tw...

It's that time yet again, Stoppies. M-M-M-MARCH B-B-B-BADNESSSSSSSS. Our annual tournament to determine the worst of the worst is back, and it's time for six elite-level awful musical acts to duke it out for the trophy (we should have a trophy, huh). The first match of the Preliminary Round pits Western Mass's own constipated sad dads Staind against the funkiest white boys from Nebraska, 311. As t...

They were the only band that mattered, but by 1985 they were in tatters. The Clash's swan song Cut The Crap is infamous in the music world, regarded by some as the worst album ever made. Having split with co-frontman and primary songwriter Mick Jones, Joe Strummer soldiered on with a few savvy studio musicians and his egomaniacal manager Bernard Rhodes. Together they set out to prove that they did...

In 1994 three meth addled young punks from Oakland released an album that changed the musical landscape for decades, building the bridge that shepherded California pop punk from the fringes to the mainstream. 26 years and 10 albums later as, presumably, meth addled old punks, they released an album that changed nothing but the minds of longtime fans holding out one last hope for a return to form,...

It's Black History Month, which means it's the perfect time for another round of Eviscerating White Nonsense with returning white rapper roundup participant VQ of BLOWW and Boston comedian Izzy Da Rosa. The object of our ire this time is of course the ultimate Great White Embarassment Vanilla Ice and his 1992 follow up to his megahit debut album, the incredibly misinformed and extremely poorly exe...

Things get spicy on this week's Make It Stop as Heather and Mike are joined by veritable hardcore legend Kira Roessler (Black Flag, Dos, Awkward) and local up-and-coming musician Sophia Belle (Home Despot) to discuss The Stooges' 35-years-in-the-making fourth album The Weirdness (2007). As Heather, Mike and Sophia do their best to malign Iggy Pop and his history-making and genre-defining band for...

2020 is coming to an end, may it rot and burn in hell, and as expected an unimaginably awful year brought us a slew of unimaginably awful albums. Mike and Heather can barely keep it together as they lament the slow death of culture and the creeping Post Malone-ification of all music. Everything sucks and it's going to suck forever. Genres become meaningless as all music melts into one big endless...

Stoppies, we know you know what Christmas is all about - materialist accumulation, wealth hoarding, Judeo-Christian values, heteronormative baking rituals, duck sex, beards. Thank the Christian God that we found an album that perfectly embodies that spirit. This Holiday Season we're talking about Duck Dynasty's 2013 Christmas Cash-in album Duck The Halls, and we're diving right in while our little...

We're riding the honky tonk high speed rail all the way to the bank this week with the be-flannelled, bud' chuggin' y'all boys of Florida Georgia Line and their 2019 bro-country daggum opus "Can't Say I Ain't Country". Actual Country Gal Jeanne "Susie Newsie" Mansfield of BLOWW regales us with badass backwoods tales of burning couches and shooting flaming arrows in rural Missouri while jammin' to...

Due to KOVID-19, Heather and Mike won't be getting uncomfortably drunk around their families this Thanksgiving, so instead they've decided to get uncomfortably drunk together over Zoom. To make it a family affair they're joined by Alex Dunn (Mike's Brother), and Brian Melanson (Heather's Pretend Dad). It's time for a tWiSteD Turkey Day 'cause we're feasting on a veritable KORNUKOPIA. The Blackout...