Mötley Crüe has just released the Cancelled EP. The three-song effort contains the title track, the band’s cover version of the Beastie Boys‘ classic (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!) (listen here) and Dogs Of War (here), which was made available in April. All three songs were recorded in April 2023 with longtime producer Bob Rock.
“It was really great getting in the studio and working on some tracks together,” Mötley Crüe offered in a joint statement. “What started out as a couple demo ideas turned into this EP produced by Bob Rock. We look forward to getting back into the studio again soon and writing more new music, as well.”
You can hear the Cancelled title track below. Also available, is a guitar playthrough of the song, by John 5.
Drummer Tommy Lee told Bill Maher‘s Club Random podcast last year that he and his bandmates felt inspired to write a song called Cancelled because they were surprised it never happened to them.
“There was this article that was like, ‘How did Mötley Crüe ever not get cancelled?'” he said. “And we were like, ‘F-ck, we’ve gotta write a song about that because we didn’t ever get it.’ We snuck in under the whatever threshold, wherever that was, where we got away with f-cking murder.”
The Cancelled EP was made available via Mötley Crüe‘s new deal with Nashville’s Big Machine Records.
8 Responses
I listened to the first two minutes of the song Canceled. Then I proceeded to cancel my listening experience.
I knew the cancelation (yes, I choose to spell this way) jokes would be coming soon enough, bravo for being the first. I do think, it’s a marginal improvement. from Dogs of War.
I agree, it’s better than those other 2 songs (eye roll) John 5 is smokin’ on this one! However, no matter how good J5 is, without Mr. Mars it just isn’t Motley Crue! When they “Cancelled” Mars, they cancelled the Crue!
I first listened to this song on Saturday afternoon. Strangely, the time was 13.13pm.
M is the 13th letter of the alphabet. A gentleman by the name of Robert Alan Deal has ’13 13′ tattooed on his knuckles – Robert Alan Deal is of course known to the world as Mick Mars. Looking at the time again and listening to the song, I realised that ’13 13′ is what this song is missing.
Now, obviously, John 5 isn’t Mick. John 5 is a very good guitarist, and he can turn his hand to most genres. But Motley Crue, for years, had a sound that was, I suppose, identifiable. That sound was Mick Mars. I think that if this didn’t have the name Motley Crue on it, like with Dogs of War, it would have been viewed a little differently. Of course they won’t change their name now ( like they didn’t in 1994 with John Corabi – which was a very good record) but Mick is also never going to return.
So where does that leave things? Well, we either take on board what the band is now doing or we leave it alone. Personally, I don’t think what I’ve heard sounds anything like Motley Crue. Bands can and will change their direction and it can go one of two ways: Either up or down. Time will tell which direction this new direction will take them. I don’t see any point in hating on a band who change direction, if you like it, you like it – if you don’t you don’t.
At the end of the day, does anybody really think that any band is going to care? As Gene Simmons pointed out on many occasions: “It’s called the music business for a reason.”
That is what it is – it’s just business.
There is only one man who can slide right in with Motley Crue and admirably fill the shoes of one Mick Mars. And that man is the amazing John Sykes!!’
More gold stars for RPS… 🙂 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I really wish they would stop. John 5 is awesome, and he doesn’t need MC. It’d be one thing if MC were good. They are not.
it’s a clever ditty…the intro is too long…shave off the first 40 seconds…go right into deep dish verse….no, then this weird chorus…the problem with modern songs…..it’s all over the place…I lost interest…the lead guitar sounds like an afterthought…the outro is weird……..did a computer help write this song?