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Beatles vs. Stones. Biggie vs. Tupac. Kanye vs. Taylor. Who do you choose? And what does that say about you? Actually, what do these endlessly argued-about pop music rivalries say about us? Music opinions bring out passionate debate in people, and music journalists/critics Steven Hyden and Jordan Runtagh know this firsthand. They’re both obsessed with the biggest (as well as the most obscure) rivalries in music history. Each week, they’ll break down the details of a different colorful feud, and attempt to figure out why many of our favorite pop and rock stars can’t seem to get along.

Rivals: Music's Greatest Feuds

Starting February 26th, join Steven Hyden and Jordan Runtagh as they explore the most notorious feuds in the music business.

 
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Introducing Rivals

Stevie and Lindsey started as bandmates and bedmates before their love curdled into the toxic-yet-kinky antipathy that inspired Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 classic Rumors. This episode of Rivals unpacks the storied love triangle (or is it a love quadrilateral?) within the band’s ranks, and the searing resentment that spurred the pair to create some of the greatest songs/hate-sex anthems in rock. After Stevie ousted Lindsey from Fleetwood Mac in 2018, it seemed like these two might go their own way for good — but can they really stay apart?

 
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Stevie Nicks vs. Lindsey Buckingham: Packing Up, Shacking Up

The two pop queens started off as friends, sharing sweet birthday tweets and cat photos. Things got a little weird when they shared a man — John Mayer — but a case of pilfered backing dancers in 2014 made them, in Taylor’s words, “straight-up enemies.” Taylor threw the first punch by alluding to Perry’s misdeeds in a highly publicized interview. Then she dropped the track “Bad Blood” and its big budget Superhero Mean Girls video. The war of words continued in songs, social media and the press for years until the two hugged it out in Taylor’s 2019 video for “You Need to Calm Down.” A truce was declared but, to quote Katy, is it ever really over?

 
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Taylor Swift vs. Katy Perry: Bad Blood

Elton and Billy’s parallel careers intersected with a long-running duets tour, but things went south after Billy abruptly backed out in 2010. Elton publicly blamed Billy’s alcoholism and criticized his lack of recent musical output. An irate Billy fired back by saying Elton’s latest albums were lackluster and dragged down his legacy. The public sniping ultimately died down but their feud highlighted the two paths available to Artists of a Certain Age: fall back on past glories or valiantly press on at the risk of artistic misfires. In other words, is it better to burn out or fade away?

 
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Elton John vs. Billy Joel: Piano Men

Though he’d achieved complete commercial domination with Thriller, the King of Pop spent much of the ‘80s looking over his shoulder at the Prince of Paisley Park. As far as MJ was concerned, the musical landscape was big enough for only one eccentric, androgynous, Midwest-raised genre-bending star with killer dance moves and a propensity for Xanadu-like private compounds. He even crafted “Bad” as a duet to serve as their on-mic showdown, but the Purple One turned him down. Over the years they duked it out in the charts, onstage, and even on the Ping-Pong table. The rivalry pushed them towards artistic greatness, but despite a begrudging mutual respect, the pair would never be simpatico.

 
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Michael Jackson vs. Prince: Who’s Bad?

When The Band first emerged in the late 1960s, they epitomized the era's hippie, back-to-the-land ethos. Every member was considered equal, and they played with an uncommon power and sensitivity as a leader-less ensemble on classics like "The Weight" and "Up On Cripple Creek." But as time wore on, and The Band got more successful, cracks in this foundation were caused by inequitable money distribution and petty arguments over attention. The central conflict was between Robbie Robertson, the guitarist and songwriter, and Levon Helm, the lead singer and soul of the group. After they broke up in 1976 with "The Last Waltz" concert, their spat became public, turning one of rock's greatest fairy tales into a sad cautionary tale about how commerce can really screw up art.

 
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Robbie Robertson vs. Levon Helm: Broken Band

At the height of Nirvana’s success in the early ‘90s, Kurt Cobain slammed fellow Seattle grunge gods Pearl Jam in the press, labeling them bandwagon-jumping “corporate puppets” who aped his band’s style in the vapid pursuit of fame. Eddie Vedder, a great admirer of Kurt’s, never retaliated publicly, but their relationship grew strained as Pearl Jam’s popularity eclipsed Nirvana’s. Before the two could settle their differences, Cobain took his own life — leaving Eddie to simultaneously mourn the loss of his hero and make sense of their complex, adversarial bond.

 
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Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam: Flannel Fight

At the heart of the Beach Boys, one of America's biggest bands ever, are two men: Brian Wilson and Mike Love. Brian is the songwriter and resident genius, and Mike is the cocksure frontman. For most of the 1960s, their partnership worked as the Beach Boys scored dozens of hits. But a conflict over the magnum opus "Pet Sounds" revealed that Brian was out to pursue high art at all costs, while Mike prefered to stick with "the formula." For the next 50 years, this battle has raged over what truly constitutes the "real" Beach Boys.

 
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Mike Love vs. Brian Wilson: Beach Brawl

Before they started their own successful bands, Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar were boyhood friends who formed a group called Uncle Tupelo in the 1980s. Uncle Tupelo wasn't all that famous or successful in their time, but historically they would prove hugely influential on a generation of alt-country acts. Farrar was the creatively dominant force in that band, but Tweedy quickly came into his own, which created tension that eventually boiled over. Even after the success of Tweedy's band Wilco and Farrar's band Son Volt, fans continue to debate over who was in the right.

 
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Jeff Tweedy vs. Jay Farrar: Alt-Country Conflict

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, country superstar Toby Keith released “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).” Some embraced the song as the perfect rallying cry for an angry and traumatized nation. Others felt it was a crude, hateful, jingoistic anthem about putting your boot in someone’s ass. Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks fell squarely in the latter camp, and denounced the hit tune in interviews. Months later, when the Dixie Chicks were blacklisted from the country music community following their onstage criticism of President Bush and the invasion of Iraq, Keith was quick to peg the band as unpatriotic traitors. Though they eventually buried the hatchet with Keith, the Dixie Chicks remain exiled from the country scene and their once-thriving career has never recovered. Their feud gets to the complicated truth of what happens when an artist publicly takes a political stance. 

 
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Toby Keith vs. the Dixie Chicks: Boot Battle

Guns N' Roses were the biggest rock band in the world by 1991 — but that didn’t mean they were impervious to criticism. Their double-barreled smash ‘Use Your Illusion’ featured the song “Get in the Ring,” in which the notoriously thin-skinned Axl Rose struck back against those he felt had wronged him in the press. The track is notable for its complete lack of ambiguity. He specifically names music journalists and challenges them to fight. But when they accept his challenge, Axl never shows. “Get in the Ring” crystalizes the dichotomy between the singer’s brawling bad boy reputation and his actual actions, and raises questions about how celebrities defend themselves against critics.

 
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Press Punks: Axl Rose vs. Everyone in "Get In The Ring"

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