Mötley Crüe Premiere New Song, “The Dirt (Est. 1981),” Featuring Machine Gun Kelly

Earlier this week, Netflix dropped the first trailer for their adaptation of Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt. And it looks pretty good! Trailers can be deceiving, sure… but still! I find this encouraging.

Unfortunately, Mötley Crüe themselves have dropped a new song, “The Dirt (Est. 1981),” and it stinks worse than Tommy Lee’s leather jockstrap at the end of a Crüe concert. When it was first announced that the track would feature a guest appearance by Machine Gun Kelly, who plays Lee in the film, I was immediately concerned, because Mötley Crüe have a terrible track record when it comes to trying to be hip and modern and trendy. Having heard the track now, however, I can say that Kelly is the least of its problems.

The most of its problems? Under normal circumstances, it might be the fact that the song is bland, or that the lyrics are distractingly silly (sometime after “Kickstart My Heart,” Nikki Sixx became obsessed with writing songs about how awesome Mötley Crüe are, presumably because he’s now been rich and famous for so long that he has nothing else to write about, and it always comes off as kinda lame). This being 2019, however, it’s that Vince Neil has apparently been replaced by a cyborg. Like, Phil Labonte heard this song was all, “Whoooaaaa, maybe ease up on the autotune, dudes!” I honestly find it hard to listen to; it’s grating on my ears.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy it more than I did:

Assuming you dug that, Mötley Crüe’s soundtrack for The Dirt comes out March 22, and can be pre-ordered here. The Dirt itself hits Netflix that very same day. The flick was directed by Jeff Tremaine (Jackass). In addition to Kelly, it stars Douglas Booth (Jupiter Ascending) as Nikki Sixx, Daniel Webber (The Punisher) as Vince Neil, Iwan Rheon (Game of Thrones) as Mick Mars, and Tony Cavalero (School of Rock) as Ozzy Osbourne.