5

Fleetwood Mac's Rumours Was Fueled By Illicit Sex And Revenge (And Cocaine)

Warner Bros. Records

Rumours by Fleetwood Mac was the best-selling album of 1977 -- a more innocent time, when "butts" wasn't the most common theme in pop music. Take for example "You Make Loving Fun," in which Fleetwood's Christine McVie sings about believing in miracles, the magic of love, and how fun it is to get screwed by the band's lighting director. OK, that last part wasn't so innocent -- especially to bassist John McVie, Christine's husband, who had to play this song every night, even after he realized it wasn't really about his wife's dog like she originally claimed.

4

Payin' Dues Is Nothing But Van Morrison Not Giving A Shit For 35 Minutes

Fruit Tree

In 1967, young Van Morrison was so excited to start his solo career away from Them (his previous band) that he forgot about the single most important part of show business: reading your damned contracts. Long story short, every time you hear "Brown Eyed Girl" in the background of some margarine commercial, someone who is not Van Morrison is getting paid. That his fans still relentlessly command him to sing it explains why his face now resembles that of a Koi carp who has forgotten to refill his Xanax prescription.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
"Oh, I've got a brown eye for you right here."

Warner Bros. stepped in and offered Morrison a better deal, but there was one little problem -- or rather, 31 little problems. Before he could move to less dickish pastures, Morrison was contractually obligated to record over 30 new songs for his then-current label, Bang Records. Just imagine: If he made songs at the same pace the Rolling Stones do today, he would have been stuck at Bang for the next 20 years.

However, there was no clause saying the songs had to be good, or even have lyrics that made sense. So Morrison grabbed an acoustic guitar, jumped in the recording booth, and, in a single afternoon, improvised 31 unforgettable classics. Like "Ring Worm" (about having to break the news to someone that they have ringworm):

3

Frank Sinatra Releases His Own Competing Albums To Screw With Capitol Records

Reprise Records

In the early '60s, Frank Sinatra decided he knew enough about music to not have anyone tell him what to do anymore. He proposed that his label, Capitol Records, open a micro label for him under their umbrella, which would have been beneficial for all involved. He'd have more artistic freedom and they'd get to continue basking in his awesomeness. When Capitol said no, Sinatra went ahead anyway and started his own independent label, named Reprise Records.

Reprise Records
It's safe to assume that it included blackjack, hookers, or possibly both.

The problem was that he still had a couple of years left on his contract with Capitol, so a spiteful Sinatra found himself in a sales battle with his own albums, and he intended to fight dirty. Over the following years, Ol' Blue Eyes would coincidentally double-release his own competing albums, clearly in order to cheat Capitol out of revenue. On the same month that Capitol released Sinatra's Come Swing With Me, Reprise released Sinatra's Swing Along with Me -- renamed Sinatra Swings when Capitol went "Really?" and sued. The Reprise version still beat Capitol in the charts.

Capitol Records, Reprise Records
Possibly because only one version looks like a sexual invitation.

2

The Sisters Of Mercy Pay Someone Else To Make Them A Half-Assed Album

Warner Music Group

The Sisters of Mercy are one of the most influential goth rock bands ever (they're the ones Simon Pegg won't shut up about in The World's End), but this entry isn't about them. No, this is about SSV-NSMABAAOTWMODAACOTIATW, the shit-covered phoenix that reluctantly rose from the Sisters' postmortem defecation for no other reason than to fulfill a legal requirement.

Universal Studios
The world will actually end before anybody obsesses over them.

1

The KLF Are Ordered To Destroy Their Albums, And Do It In The Most Insane Way Possible

KLF Communications

The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (JAMs), later/better known as the KLF, were one of the key founders of the British acid house movement, which in turn brought rave culture into the mainstream, which in turn provided Hollywood with background music for every movie hacking scene throughout the entire '90s. But while their music might have been acid, the JAMs themselves were 100-percent punk rock. To demonstrate, let's play you some ABBA:

Actually, that's a track from the JAMs' debut album 1987 (What The Fuck Is Going On?), which featured samples from ABBA's "Dancing Queen" -- and by "featured samples" we mean "took pretty much the entire song and gave it rap breaks." Since they had absolutely zero permission to use ABBA's music, this led to a particularly aggressive lawsuit from the Swedish pop legends, which resulted in the JAMs being ordered by the courts to destroy all the remaining albums.

However, the judge forgot a very important part of his sentencing: telling them not be dicks about it.

KLF Communications
"They look like reasonable young chaps. It'll be OK."

Naturally, the JAMs grabbed a (we're guessing very frightened) reporter from NME Magazine, took a boat to Sweden, and immediately headed to the ABBA headquarters to beg for forgiveness. There, they reportedly played the offending album in front the building Say Anything-style, hoping Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, and Anni-Frid would storm out and they would all start making out in the rain. When no one at the offices responded, the duo went out into the streets of Stockholm, found a tall blonde prostitute who they pretended was Agnetha Faltskog, and proceeded to gift her both a fake golden record and a fake apology -- which, seeing as they were in Sweden, is the kind of racism that would probably hold up in court.

Then, in their ultimate act of penance, they drove out to the countryside to cleanse their offending idols with fire. The resulting funeral pyre was photographed and used as the cover for their next album, Who Killed The JAMs?.

KLF Communications
Probably so they could write off the trip as a business expense.

The 1987 album was eventually re-released minus the offending samples, but with instructions in the liner notes on how cassette owners could add ABBA back into the mix. After that, the JAMs/KLF sort of mellowed out and took it easy. Just kidding. In 1992, they fired machine gun blanks at the Brit Awards audience, dropped a dead sheep outside the aftershow party, and then quit the music industry.

For more bizarre actions by musicians, check out The 6 Most (Certifiably) Insane Tales of Rock Star Behavior and The 7 Most Impossible Rock Stars to Deal With .

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