The BEST SONG to Introduce Someone to KORN, According to JONATHAN DAVIS

Summary

• Jonathan Davis picked ‘Freak on a Leash’ as the one Korn song to show a newcomer.
• He listed several albums first, including Korn, Follow the Leader, See You on the Other Side, and The Path of Totality.
• ‘Freak on a Leash’ has over 600 million Spotify streams and more than 350 million YouTube views.

So you want to introduce someone to Korn. Good luck. You’ve got nearly three decades’ worth of dreadlocks, detuned guitars, and unresolved childhood trauma to work with.

Picking one track to sum all that up is like choosing a single tattoo to represent a midlife crisis. There’s no right answer, only louder ones.

Still, someone had to try, and that someone was Jonathan Davis himself. The man in question, part frontman, part tortured soul, part occasional bagpipe enthusiast, sat down with Revolver for their Point of Entry series to pick a song that best introduces Korn to the uninitiated.

And in true Davis fashion, he didn’t pick just one. He took a scenic route through the band’s catalog first, because of course he did.

“There are so many different eras. I don’t know,” he starts, already sounding like a guy trying to order dinner after two edibles. “Definitely, I’d say to listen to the first album… then maybe Follow the Leader… then See You on the Other Side… Path of Totality with the DJs… The Nothing…”

Eventually, though, he cuts the wandering and lands on what we all knew was coming:

“One song? Probably ‘Freak on a Leash’. That’s the one everyone wants to hear anyway.”

Of course it is.

Released back in 1998 on their third album Follow the Leader, Freak on a Leash is the song that launched a thousand Hot Topics. It’s got all the Korn ingredients: creepy whispering, down-tuned misery, that patented “I’m about to explode” vocal twitch, and a music video that looked like MTV and Spawn had a fever dream together.

It’s been streamed over 600 million times on Spotify, because someone’s still chain-smoking resentment out there, and its animated/live-action video has pulled in more than 350 million views. Pretty good for a song with a scat breakdown.

And you know what? He’s right. It’s not their best song. It might not even be top five if we’re being picky. But it is the most Korn song, the full haunted-circus package.

If you play it for someone and they recoil, congrats, they’re not built for this band. If they lean in? Well, next up is Daddy, and good luck explaining that one.

So yeah. Freak on a Leash. Fine. 🤘

Still weird hearing it in a grocery store, though.

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