The 6 Most Atrocious Uses of Facial Hair in Music History

We hope you won't take it as innuendo when we say that Cracked is hard on mustaches. Facial hair isn't just a personal choice; we all have to look at it. Especially if you're performing on stage every night.

Therefore, Adam Brown and Kristi Harrison feel it is their responsibility to deconstruct what has to be some of the most atrocious facial hair in the music industry.

Adam: OK, so right off the bat, I'd like to protest. I thought we were discussing atrocious facial hair? The only thing atrocious about John Oates's mustache is that all of my past efforts to grow one of equal force and dominance have fallen miserably short. This is the mustache by which all other mustaches must measure themselves. If there was a Mt. Rushmore for upper lip hair excellence, which there totally should be, all four faces would be John Oates and they'd all look exactly like his does in that picture.

Kristi: First of all, if you have a mustache covering your whole upper lip, I'm just going to assume you have mouth herpes. There are at least five or six blistery lesions all up in that caterpillar, festering and loving their warm little hair home. That look in his eyes only confirms it for me.

His private eyes are watching my every move. He looks like he's trying to crawl into my head through my eye sockets and read all my deepest thoughts and emotions, then use them against me to make me do his will. And I can't go for that. No can do.

Even more disconcerting, though, is that the look in Oates's eyes is almost obscured by his brow-mustaches. Browstaches. Boom. I just made that up.

Adam: Well done. As for that look, that's a look that makes things happen. Exciting things. Fun things. Sex things. That look is equal parts come hither seduction glance and warning to all other males in the room that the alpha has arrived. As if any of us would need a look to know that. By the time you see that mustache, it's already too late. Whatever lady you're talking to at the time immediately becomes property of the Oates. Unless you seal the deal and get the hell out of there in the delay that exists between the moment his mustache walks through the door and when the rest of him follows about 35 minutes later. It's sort of like waiting for a train to pass.

You know what that train is hauling? Machismo. Don't act like you don't want to ride that train, Harrison.

Kristi: By the way, I have NO IDEA what John Oates sounds like. So I'm just going to assume he talks like a Mario Brother and goes around saying things like, "I'ma John Oatesa. I'ma gonna rape-a you in the bottom now."

Adam: OK, this is what I'm talking about. This? This is atrocious. This is a blight against the otherwise spotless Springsteen track record. This a chin vag on a man. And Bruce should know better. This is right up there with that time he decided to start monkeying around with synthesizers on the Born In the U.S.A. album. Except with pubes. On his face. Horrible decision.

Kristi: "I'm On Fire" was a good song and you'll never prove otherwise. What's tragic about this patch of soul is that it's marring someone who has otherwise aged astonishingly well.

This man is older than my father.

I'm thinking that this little tuft of awful is actually some kind of fuzzy fountain of youth, one that is powering Bruce's sculpted chest and shoulders and abs and back and legs and chest and abs and sculpted and all that I'm looking at in this picture right here. Like, maybe the hair follicles are drenched in some kind of baby collagen, and then they imbibe his chin nerves with babyness, which travels down to his firm body, but can't travel up. Because of gravity. Thus all the face crags. This theory is still a work in progress.

Adam: Seems plausible enough to me. But personally, I'd rather age like Mickey Rourke's face than resort to growing a goddamn soul patch to keep my youthful appearance.

And by the way, why is it that a soul patch just automatically makes a person seem a lot less trustworthy? There has never been a situation where seeing that little tuft of nasty on someone's chin has made me feel anything other than the need to pull a weapon of some sort. If Springsteen was here right now, I'd be all jittery like and have my hand on the gun I keep tucked in the waistband of my sweatpants at all times. I should really get a holster for that thing.

Adam: There is nothing about this facial hair fiasco that doesn't make me want to violently yank this dude to the ground. This must be the feeling a linebacker gets when he's chasing a running back with long stupid dreadlocks sticking out the back of his helmet. How could you resist? I don't think I could. I'm going to make a prediction right now: If I ever meet Scott Ian, I'm going to tackle him to the ground by the facial hair. And I concede that after pulling off this takedown I'd most assuredly be beaten within an inch of my life by angry roadies, but it would be worth it, though. So worth it. You know why?

Kristi: Because you like to wrestle boys?

Adam: Who doesn't? But also because this guy is a show off, that's why. And he can get away with it, because he's in a metal band. He's all "look at what I can do because I don't have a real job." This guy hates the little man, and he's mocking us with his shitty red goatee.

Kristi: I feel like he has a clown growing upside-down out of his face. The It clown. And I hate that clown. Like maybe he's going to open his mouth and bare 6,000 sharp little teeth that are going to claw out my soul and eat it. If I kept a dream diary it would be full of pictures of this clowngoat man gobbling my innards with his dagger teeth and then smirking about it. Like he's so cool. He's not so cool. He's a clowngoat.

Adam: Why would you post that picture? There could be kids reading.