Today is not the friend who’ll tell you, “Stop, you’re embarrassing yourself.” It’s a television show hungry for ratings. Corey Feldman’s tragicomic appearance last month went instantly viral for its terribleness. The response was bad enough to make Feldman cry. Today invited him back anyway.
Feldman traded in his black hoodie for gold and white to perform another song called “Take a Stand” (no relation to Stand by Me). But first, he spoke to host Tamron Hall about just why he decided to return. Feldman made sure to note that singer-turned-acrobat Pink, Miley Cyrus, Ke$ha, and Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris all praised the performance. There was also the following exchange.
Hall: When did you realize that it was all noise and you needed to be true to you?
Feldman: A friend of mine who actually helped—he’s an investor of mine. His name is Brian McMullen and he was on the phone with me and I was all depressed and I was crying. And he said, “Think of it this way. When Kiss first started, when Eminem first started, when Nirvana first started, they all got hate. People were turning them off at the radio stations. People were walking off the dance floor at the clubs because it didn’t make sense to them at that time. But those all became amazing legends.” So just think of it that way.
As of October 13, Feldman is neither Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Tommy Thayer, Eric Singer, Ace Frehley, Peter Criss, Eric Carr, Vinnie Vincent, Mark St. John, Bruce Kulick, Eminem, Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, nor Krist Novoselic. Hall, being the benevolent soul that she is, didn’t have the heart to point any of this out. She didn’t prod him about his Angels, his backing band of “girls who are kind of lost and needed to find their way.” So now we have another Feldman performance, which you can view below. At one point, he pulls out an American flag, and unpatriotically misses his singing notes. It’s a mess, but thankfully for us, Today got what it wanted.
