It was one of 2009's catchiest hits. Now, it's been dubbed the 'worst song ever made.'

Yahoo

2 days ago

How Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros' biggest hit found itself in the crosshairs of social media.
A hodgepodge of hipsters in day-old clothes gathered closely together, playing obscure string and percussion instruments for a performance on NPR's Tiny Desk concert series. It was November 2009, and the band, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, was slowly tightening its chokehold on pop culture with its song 'Home.'
You know the tune. It opens with the syrupy-sweet line, 'Alabama, Arkansas, I do love my Ma and Pa / Not the way that I do love you.'
Fast forward to August 2025, a clip of that same performance by the 10-member band has been making the rounds on X, where a viral post called it the 'worst song ever made.' In fact, the whole genre of 'stomp clap hey' music, an indie-folk hybrid that was popular in the late 2000s and early 2010s, has also been called the worst of all time.
Characterized by cutesy lyrics, vintage instruments and dramatic choruses, stomp clap hey includes acts like Mumford & Sons, the Lumineers and Of Monsters and Men. Their sound is strategically quirky and invokes the feeling of a sing-along, inviting listeners to stomp and clap with them.
So why, all of a sudden, has it become stylish to disdain this micro-era of music?
'No cool factor'
Oversaturation may also have played a role in the growing ire for 'Home' in particular. It once felt like the song was everywhere, though it was never quite a hit beyond alternative radio. That might, in part, be because it appeared in so many commercials — even in recent years. We could never truly escape the band's clapping, shouting and whistling, their earnest warbling about how home isn't a place but a person. All that exposure might have made us resistant toward it, even though it's not old enough to buy itself a PBR.
Beckoned by the brewing controversy over his old song, Edward Sharpe bandleader Alex Ebert recently took to Instagram to refute that 'Home' is the worst song ever, crediting his group for inspiring the stomp-clap-hey genre. This week, he told Stereogum that he was used to criticism because 'the job of rock 'n' roll is to transform counterculture into culture,' but the 'vitriol that we got from the gatekeepers of cool' was unexpected.
'I was expecting a blowback, but I wasn't expecting, like, real anger,' he said of the initial critique his music received. 'And their anger was almost overridden by popular demand. I love this stomp clap genre, which is a great name for it. We're going to have to ironically reclaim the pejorative, as you do. But I realize it's a good little cathartic moment, and I love the discussion around it.'
Even in their prime, songs like the Lumineers' 'Ho Hey' and Of Monsters and Men's 'Little Talks' were mainstream but quirky. Jason Lipshutz, the executive director of music at Billboard, tells Yahoo that stomp-clap-hey bands had a ton of fans and plenty of big hits, but 'there was no cool factor.'
'They were perceived as very dorky at the time … there was a feeling of inauthenticity,' he says. 'They were kind of popular but easy to clown on — especially because they didn't ring true to actual, authentic folk artists.'
Though Mumford & Sons won Album of the Year at the Grammys in 2013, music critics were generally more fond of folk artists like Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes during that era. History is more kind to them because their songs were more lyrically complex and wistful compared to the 'forced anthemic songs of Mumford and the Lumineers,' Lipshutz says.
What sets stomp-clap-hey music apart from typical folk music is the fast-paced choruses and upbeat lyrics that follow the literal stomping and clapping. Nikki Camilleri, a music industry executive, tells Yahoo that 'indie-folk optimism' was at its most popular in the early 2010s, dominating commercials and music festival lineups.
'Now, with the internet in its cynical, irony-heavy era, that kind of earnest, campfire joy feels out of touch,' she says. 'People hear it and think of ad jingles, quirky rom-com montages, and a very specific millennial nostalgia that's easy to mock.'
Millennial cringe
Because of how quickly the trend cycle functions on TikTok, we're revisiting bygone eras before we're truly ready to appreciate them. It hasn't quite been long enough for us to associate these musical stylings with the warm and fuzzy feelings of nostalgia that we have for other millennial-dominated genres like recession pop or boy band music.
It doesn't help that, in our current algorithm-driven era on social media, negative posts are rewarded. Something about the best song of all time probably wouldn't have driven as much engagement on X. The fear of being perceived as 'cringe' has created an aversion to the earnestness that is all over songs like 'Home.'
But it's not just the algorithms. We're living in increasingly pessimistic times that are at odds with the crunchy positive vibes heard in tracks like 'Home,' 'Ophelia' and 'I Will Wait.' Music writer Grace Robins-Somerville tells Yahoo that stomp-clap-hey music is associated with 'Obama-era optimism that now feels cringe.' Even when totems of that era are romanticized, like Katy Perry's 'Firework' or Glee, they're still looked back at with mild disgust.
Though folk had a bit of a resurgence on the charts recently with singers like Noah Kahan and Hozier, who also embrace woodland hippie aesthetics, they stand apart from their stomp-clap-hey predecessors. For starters, they're sad. They're of the current yearning era: of men pining away for women and small towns, not hooting and hollering about love.
'They're a little bit more modern. The songwriting's a bit sharper,' Lipshutz says. 'I think if Noah Kahan was the Noah Kahan Band, and it was four guys with beards instead of one guy with long hair, he'd be treated differently — even if it was the exact same song.'
Burly singer-songwriter music is back on the charts and commanding crowds, but if the performers were standing in groups with banjos instead of alone with guitars, we'd probably find it less sincere. Maybe it's our resistance to optimism, or maybe it's just true.
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