The 14 Worst Supergroups, Cast Ensembles and Collaborations of All Time
You may think it’s cute, but NFL players only shuffle like that when they’re distressed.
Damnocracy
A band based on TV ratings and wordplay is doomed to fail from the start. The short-lived VH1 show Supergroup stuffed Sebastian Bach, Jason Bonham, Scott Ian, Ted Nugent and Evan Seinfeld into a Las Vegas mansion. They produced seven episodes of television and exactly zero albums, despite staying together for four years.
Andrew W.K. x Glenn Beck
The rock-n-roller had a radio show on the perpetual fascist pedophile apologist’s radio network in 2015. Their little odd couple routine was intended partly to highlight conversations between folks with opposing viewpoints, and partly to launder TheBlaze’s dogshit reputation.
‘The Counselor’
Written by Cormac McCarthy. Directed by Ridley Scott. Starring Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt. This is 2013 pop culture in a bottle, but they made Diaz hump a windshield and dumped it all down the drain. Rotten Tomatoes calls it “a wordy and clumsy suspense thriller that’s mercilessly short on suspense or thrills.”
¥$
It’s hard to imagine a worse year to team up with Kanye West than 2024, from a creative integrity standpoint. But Ty Dolla $ign did just that, putting out two albums under their “The Artist Formally Known As Prince”-ass symbolic moniker. The albums were somehow both delayed and undercooked.
‘Rat Race’
Today, a room with Whoopi Goldberg, John Cleese and Mr. Bean would need to be cleared out Fukushima-style, with aging Boomers doing the heavy lifting because the damage to their cells wouldn’t kick in until after they were dead. But in 2001, this was an all-star team of comedians (and they still blew it).
‘Imagine’
Two dozen celebrities were complicit, but it was Gal Gadot’s idea. She said she saw COVID spreading across Europe before it made landfall in the U.S. and enlisted Kristen Wiig to help her gather the most insufferable popular people on the planet and sing John Lennon’s “Imagine” to help the poors heal, or whatever.
‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’
This 1965 movie featured a star-studded cast of literal dozens of Hollywood darlings, from John Wayne to Ed Wynn to Angela Lansbury to Charlton Heston. But it was a decidedly un-groovy, 199-minute series of tales from the Bible.
‘O.C. and Stiggs’
What’s the opposite of The Bible? National Lampoon. This 1987 romp (citation needed) was based on a series of vignettes from the Lampoon, and featured some of the top stars and comedians of the day (Dennis Hopper, Jane Curtin) as well as up-and-coming big-timers (Cynthia Nixon, John Cryer), but failed to differentiate itself from the disgusting ‘80s sex comedies it set out to satirize.
Tinted Windows
What do you get when you combine the Smashing Pumpkins, Hanson, Fountains of Wayne, Cheap Trick and The Lemonheads? One album, a handful of shows and one 2021 reunion to honor Adam Schlesinger.
‘Rock of Ages’
It’s a real monkey’s paw situation: You can have Alec Baldwin, Bryan Cranston, Will Forte and Tom Cruise together in one movie… but they’re going to sing. Oh, you want Tobey Maguire? Certainly! But he’ll be producing.
‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’
BandAid, the supergroup of largely British and Irish stars, arranged a song that would solve famine in Ethiopia. The lyrics are pretty condescending and stereotypical. To that end, NME summed it up perfectly: “Millions of dead stars write and perform rotten record for the right reasons.” Somehow, a 2014 version updated for the Ebola crisis made things even worse.
‘Movie 43’
Perhaps the most compelling evidence yet for the existence of the Epstein list. It took an army of top-tier writers, directors and editors to put together essentially a gross-out sketch show featuring the biggest stars 2013 could muster up: Anna Faris, Gerard Butler, Hugh Jackman, Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, Kate Winslet, Seann William Scott… Why did everyone agree to this?!?! Gere at least had the foresight to try to wriggle out of his contract during the decade it took to bring this monster to fruition.
The Super Bowl Shuffle
The original iteration, with the 1985 Chicago Bears singing and dancing uncharacteristically, was cute in its own way. But it doomed us to a lifetime of awful parodies, like Jimmy Fallon doing the “Pro Bowl Shuffle” in 2011 and SNL doing the “Establishment Shuffle” featuring the major players of the 2016 GOP primaries.
‘Cats’
This movie was such a clusterfuck, it united critics in demanding to see both Taylor Swift’s and James Corden’s buttholes.
