Behind Mötley Crüe’s “Cancelled,” an Expectedly Questionable Track About Online Cancel Culture

The rise of “cancel culture” has led to countless celebrities ironically using their international platforms to opine about said platforms shrinking, and it appears that Mötley Crüe has thrown their hat into the ring, too. The rock band’s title track off their October 2024 release, “Cancelled,” is exactly what you might expect: cringey, yes, but definitely on-brand.

Mötley Crüe began working on their EP in April 2023 with producer Bob Rock. The band took a flexible approach to their 2024 release, opting for working on individual songs as opposed to putting pressure on themselves to finish a whole album. Unsurprisingly, the band imbued that no-rules approach to their questionable lead single.

Behind Mötley Crüe’s “Cancelled”

Mötley Crüe has quite the reputation for wild antics, both as a collective and as individuals. Despite their decades of chaotic rock star behavior, the “Girls, Girls, Girls” band has seemingly avoided any significant hits to their career within the context of “cancel culture.” In a 2023 episode of Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast, drummer Tommy Lee revealed how this inspired their EP. 

“We were inspired by the rest of the world and things and places like anybody else,” Lee said. “There was this article. It was like, ‘How did Mötley Crüe ever not get cancelled?’ That was the headline. We were like, ‘F***. We got to write a song about that because we didn’t ever get it.”

Lee continued, “We snuck in under whatever threshold, wherever that was, where we got away with f***ing murder.” The band’s anti-ode to cancel culture opens their 2024 EP, followed by another original, “Dogs of War,” and a Beastie Boys cover, “Fight for Your Right.”

The Song Is As Ironic As It Is Cringey

Sonically speaking, Mötley Crüe’s “Cancelled” is on par with their previous work: driving drums, riff-heavy guitars, and Vince Neil’s distinct rock ‘n’ roll vocal delivery. Lyrically and socially speaking, the EP opener is an ironic testament to cancel culture’s pervasiveness.

The “irony,” of course, comes from the fact that Mötley Crüe is about as far off from cancellation as a band who ascended to fame in the 1980s could hope. With an upcoming Las Vegas residency in the works, lyrics like Speak your mind. You might get cancelled. Call me trash; burn down my castle, seem to fall flat. After all, Mötley Crüe has made an entire career of speaking their mind. A Las Vegas residency hardly seems like a burning castle.

The rest of the song doesn’t get much better, from its one-line reference to the January 2021 insurrection at the Capitol to a questionable line about sitting in a “supermodel sandwich.” She said, ‘Yes,’ then they arrest me, Neil sings. The song’s bridge, Everybody wants to make you, build you up, and break you down, seems no less out-of-touch coming from a band that has enjoyed global fame for four decades.

Ironic or cringey lyrics aside, “Cancelled” will more than likely find its way on Mötley Crüe’s upcoming setlists, which guitarist Nikki Sixx told Miami’s WSVN-TV will be full of “deeper tracks, some B tracks, maybe some reimagined tracks would be fun for us.”

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