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TerribleTim’s Terribly Good Music
You know that moment when you’re driving on the highway and notice that awful car accident on the side of the road? You want to look away, but you can’t help yourself from staring; you’re captivated by it all. That’s what it feels like to listen to TerribleTim. His music is so bad and generic, but this makes it stand out in a special way.
TerribleTim’s music is best described as music that your uncle who’s trying to relive his glory days decided to make in his garage. TerribleTims’s music — to put it simply — is pretty terrible: consisting of whiney vocals, poorly mixed instruments, and an overall incomplete sound. His music should be terrible but it’s not, and that’s the magic behind Timothy’s Terrible Tunes.
There isn’t much information about the brother-man himself, as he doesn’t have a huge following. He has two albums under the name TerribleTim, but all the information about these dates are hazy due to his low notoriety alongside a general feeling of disorganization that stays true with his music. From the information I could muster — mainly through interviews done by statenislander.org — Tim created his album Terribletim Spreads Love sometime in the 90s and released it in the mid to late 2000s. I was unable to find much information about his other album Hardcore Sick & Terrible, though, as it’s much less popular and a lot more obscure.
Unfortunately, after doing some digging around, I believe that TerribleTim had passed away around early February of this year. There is a video that acts as a tribute to his life as well as anecdotal evidence supporting this.
The video contains clips and images of Tim with a live version of his most popular song “BrothermanBill” being played over it. Tim was from Staten Island and was decently known around town there. In the interview conducted by statenislander.org back in July of 2020, they refer to Tim as a “beloved local legend” in the underground music scene, garnering a small but devoted fanbase for his tunes.
The album Terrible Tim Spreads Love has a great, energetic feel to it, and on that is what I’m going to focus. The way I would best describe the album is feeling like it belongs in a skateboarding video game, with a classic ‘I-just-made-this-with-a-couple-buddies-in-my-garage’ vibe. It has a familiar yet different feeling to it.
This album isn’t anything great or groundbreaking in all honesty, but that’s what makes it so interesting to me; it’s a fun and carefree album. My favorite tracks on this album are “Nitros Oxide”, “Drinking Beer”, “Terrible Farmer”, and not to forget his standout, most popular song “BrothermanBill.” They are all so enjoyable and easy to listen to you, so can see why Tim was seen as a local legend.
There are still bad songs on this album that can’t be ignored, and not in the way that they are so bad they’re good. More like bad as in these songs are just not that great. The number one song that comes to mind is “Marvin Weinberg” which just leaves a bad taste in my mouth — mainly due to the excessive use of the R-slur, which has not aged well in today’s social climate. The language in this song is straight-up unacceptable and inexcusable; when looked back upon, it is a great example of how we have progressed past this as a society.
Overall, TerribleTim isn’t anything to write home about at the end of the day, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t leave his mark with his songs. He did have a very dedicated fanbase that loved and adored him back in Staten Island. His most popular song “BrothermanBill” brought Tim and his music into the spotlight collecting a whopping 5 million views on youtube. Now was that popularity from his music being terrible or terribly good? I’ll ultimately leave that up to you to decide.
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