THEIR music is an acquired taste, but their faded logo kicks ass when worn with a light cardigan, pashmina or shawl. These bands should have stuck to merch:
Metallica
To teenagers, this give vibes of being into some crazy shit. Skulls, demons, snakes, weird shamanic stuff, spunk on a slide: perfect for the teen trying to establish an edgelord persona. Or they would be if your driving instructor didn’t also wear a Metallica T-shirt and the subsequent conversation hadn’t exposed your ignorance.
The Stone Roses
As a band, they had one good album and even that goes on a bit. The T‑shirts, however, are superb. Both the one with the lemon and the one with the Jackson Pollock‑ish drip painting are only spoiled only by their association with drunk middle-aged Mancunians wearing bucket hats bellowing I Am The Resurrection to the whole beer garden.
Led Zeppelin
The Hindenburg disaster was a horrific tragedy but also spectacular and a bit Nazi, so morally that balances and there’s no issue putting it on a T-shirt. But in lionising the transgressive, thrilling Led Zep we forget the band were so into Lord of the Rings they wrote multiple songs about it. Hobbits aren’t cool.
Eminem
Very much a statement tee, the statement being ‘I am white and like hip hop’, but fair enough, people need to be warned. Eminem himself is well into middle-age, collaborating with Ed Sheeran, staying clean, an aging, jowly dad rapping Lose Yourself to festival audiences less enthusiastically than your dad rapping it on the school run.
Kiss
How Kiss sound versus how they look is one of music’s greatest disappointments. The Kabuki make‑up, the Hellraiser costumes, the satanic imagery, the middle-of-the-road soft rock they actually produce. They’re Slade with a better art department.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
T-shirts: still iconic. Band: what the f**k was that? Three moustachioed Scouse lads, two outrageous gay men, three singles all of which were massive hits to a frankly suspicious degree, then they vanish? Leaving only the contradictory instructions ‘Relax!’ and ‘War!’?
