Some thirteen years ago, I interviewed Tony Molina for this very blog, and when I came up with the idea for this new Worst Song series, he was high on my list of hopeful contributors. His discography runs deep, with a list of songwriting credits that must run into three figures, and as his quality has always run high, I was dying to know what he felt worst about. Tony has taken a strict anti-social media, anti-internet, anti-promotion stance for a few years now, and it was only him wanting to “own up to making bad music” (his words, not mine!) that he decided to participate. I do miss his online banter (he once described a Trump vs. Clinton presidential debate as “two fools who have never heard Excruciating Terror”), though I am thankful for his wonderful music and the inspiration to throw my phone in a lake, or at least turn my laptop off once in a while. His worst song can be found here.

YGR: Alright – so why is “No One Told He” your worst song?

TM: Before we get into that, we should start with that I got sober in August of 2022 and am still sober today, no alcohol, no drugs, and I even quit cigs in July of last year. I think this song was written in 2014 when my drinking took an ugly-ass turn, as it did all the time, progressively, until I quit. I was real faded and very sick in all aspects when this song came about. I think at the time in my barely-functioning, cooked-ass brain I thought I was doing some kind of ‘68 Beatles / George Harrison nod with this one. Now in 2026, I have the mental clarity to realize that this song is more of a nightmare early ’70s soft rock AM radio, Crosby Stills & Nash, barefoot-bearded guy, CIA plant, hanging in the Canyon asshole nightmare song from hell. Basically everything gross, swagless and bad is front and center in this song.

There’s a part in the Stooges doc where Iggy is talking about The Stooges being a direct response to the late ’60s hippie-lite, boardroom-created, sellout federal-agent music that “still smells”. This song is totally coming from those things Iggy and co. were railing against.

YGR: As a sober person, are you happier with your songwriting in general? Or is that not a significant influence in the quality of your work either way, and it just happened to take a wrong turn for you here?

TM: No, I made a lot of bad music in my drinking years, I just think this one is number one. One character defect I can tell you about is that when I was drinking, bad music would find its way into my life. There’s a lot of manipulating factors out there, if you go on the internet at any time there’s a million people on there trying to sell you objectively bad music and then trying to manipulate you into believing it is good. And then you got played! I think I just didn’t have the mental clarity or intuition or any real ability to know what was what back then. I quit social-media for good in 2016, so those two things – being offline and sobriety – restored my overall focus, taste, ability, work ethic, and I also got more serious about record collecting and digging deeper and educating myself on music more than making music myself, all those things times ten. It’s like night and day, the difference.

YGR: This feels like sage advice, no joke. Any tips for those who want to kick social media (or drugs) but don’t feel empowered enough to do so?

TM: I think the first thing is understanding that Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, the Spotify slimebag, Jack Dorsey, and any / all of these techie gentrifier colonizer pigs are true scum of the earth that do not have anyone’s best interest in mind. They one-hundred percent are trying to keep you addicted, manipulated and powerless, they will rob you of your dignity and integrity, strip you of your desire for honest and true self-expression, condition you to prioritize capital instead of the spiritual value of art. They will condition you to publicly log your character defects to the world, they will erase and wipe out real culture and replace it with swagless garbage, they will make your band suck ass and you will be spending your days thinking of ways to sell the shitty record you made to the public instead of writing real songs; they will sell you garbage and essentially give you brain disease for the rest of your natural life. Nobody needs it for anything, especially your band. I completely stay away from the internet and I’m doing better than ever – I even started a record label extremely recently (Olde Fade Productionz) with no social media or Bandcamp and the orders haven’t stopped coming in for weeks now. And I’m a cooked middle-aged dude at this point, I’m nothing special, so just like sobriety, if I can do it, anyone can. Only a manipulator who is trying to sway the narrative to get something from you is going to tell you otherwise.