Liquid Death Turns Internet Hate Into a Music Video Witch Hunt
Liquid Death's Greatest Hates, Vol. 3 is a 10-track album released in the United States on June 28, 2023, in which every lyric was taken verbatim from real negative comments posted about the brand on social media, accompanied by a music video depicting dancing Puritans burning a can of Liquid Death at the stake.
The campaign centres on the single "F**k Whoever Started This," featuring punk musician Frank Iero, and its accompanying official music video — the centrepiece of the wider Greatest Hates, Vol. 3 release. The album extends across streaming platforms including Spotify and Apple Music, and was made available as a limited-edition vinyl release through liquiddeath.com. The video, announced on X in summer 2023, dramatises the phenomenon of online hostility toward the brand by casting internet detractors as historical witch-hunters, staging a ceremonial burning of a Liquid Death can. The parody is explicit: the brand frames its haters not as a threat but as unwitting creative collaborators.
The project operates in the United States non-alcoholic drinks market, where Liquid Death has built a brand identity rooted in heavy-metal aesthetics and deliberate provocation. Greatest Hates, Vol. 3 is the third instalment of a recurring creative platform. The in-house team at Liquid Death developed the campaign without an external agency, drawing on an ensemble of cultural figures — among them Tony Hawk, Jason Ellis, Chris Cole, Toby Morse, Jen Razavi, Shapel Lacey, Tony Kanal, Tony Hajjar, Kayleigh Goldsworthy and Mark McGrath — to perform tracks built entirely from hate comments. Andy Pearson, VP of Creative at Liquid Death, confirmed the sourcing approach to The Drum on June 28, 2023: "Every single word was taken verbatim from real internet haters." The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 79 out of 100, reflecting strong creative originality and cultural relevance within the food and drink category.
Liquid Death occupies a structurally unusual position in the United States non-alcoholic drinks market. The brand sells still and sparkling water — a commodity product — at a premium price point, packaged in tallboy aluminium cans that signal beer rather than hydration. That positioning creates a reliable supply of online scepticism, which the Greatest Hates platform converts directly into content.
The strategic logic is self-reinforcing. Hate comments, once turned into album tracks, validate the brand's outsider identity while simultaneously neutralising negative sentiment. Andy Pearson stated in The Drum that Greatest Hates Vols. 1 and 2 were released almost three years before the June 28, 2023 launch of Vol. 3, establishing the format as a durable recurring platform rather than a one-off stunt. According to Contagious, the campaign was developed entirely by Liquid Death's in-house creative team, a structural choice that accelerates production and keeps creative risk-taking internal.
The competitive context sharpens the rationale. LaCroix holds approximately 20 percent of the United States sparkling-water market and Bubly holds approximately 18 percent, according to Custom Market Insights — both brands competing primarily on flavour range and distribution scale rather than cultural identity. Liquid Death's approach diverges entirely: the brand competes on mythology. According to Sacra, Liquid Death generated approximately 263 million dollars in retail sales in 2023 across around 113,000 retailers in the United States and United Kingdom, demonstrating that provocative brand-building translates into measurable commercial scale. The sparkling-water market in the United States is part of a global category that, according to Globe Newswire, was valued at approximately 38.13 billion dollars in 2023. Within that growing market, Liquid Death has made antagonism its most reliable acquisition tool, and Greatest Hates, Vol. 3 is the most elaborate expression of that strategy to date.
The music video for "F**k Whoever Started This" builds its satirical argument through period costume, choreography and visual effects. The execution places a can of Liquid Death water at the centre of a staged witch trial, surrounded by dancing Puritans enacting a ritual burning — a direct visual metaphor for the hysterical overreaction the brand attributes to its online critics.
The creative frame is deliberately anachronistic. Seventeenth-century Puritan iconography is set against an 1980s-styled musical arrangement, a tension the production sustains throughout the video. The album's broader aesthetic, as reported by Muse by Clio, positions all ten tracks within an eighties dance-pop register — a genre choice that amplifies the absurdity of lyrics drawn from modern social media hostility. The juxtaposition of archaic moral panic and contemporary internet anger is the joke, and the production design commits to it fully.
Frank Iero, the featured artist on the lead single, brings punk credibility that reinforces the brand's heavy-metal identity while introducing a different sonic texture to the album's pop-inflected production. The broader cast — including Tony Kanal, a founding member of No Doubt, and Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray — signals that the project operates at the intersection of nostalgia, genre play and genuine musical participation rather than mere celebrity endorsement. The Drum's Audrey Kemp reported that the video depicts the internet-haters-as-witch-hunters scenario in explicitly satirical terms, framing the brand as the accused innocent rather than the aggressor. Production credits for the "F**k Whoever Started This" music video beyond artist participation are not publicly documented. The VFX work supporting the stake-burning sequence represents a meaningful production investment for a campaign built around user-generated source material, reinforcing that Greatest Hates, Vol. 3 is a fully realised creative work rather than a reactive social content play.
No comprehensive third-party verified performance audit for the Greatest Hates, Vol. 3 campaign is publicly available. The data that is accessible from the Clapboard Ad Archive indicates the music video for "F**k Whoever Started This" recorded 62,701 views and 1,541 likes at the time of submission. These figures represent direct engagement with the video asset itself and do not capture streaming volume on Spotify or Apple Music, vinyl sales, or earned media reach generated by press coverage.
The structural effectiveness of the campaign rests on several compounding mechanisms. According to Wikipedia, by October 4, 2023, the three Greatest Hates albums collectively surpassed 800,000 streams across platforms — a cumulative figure that positions the series as a genuine music release rather than a marketing artefact. The platform's longevity across three volumes, spanning from May 2020 through June 2023, demonstrates sustained audience appetite and brand commitment to the format, as documented by Contagious.
The campaign also generates substantial earned media. Coverage from The Drum, Muse by Clio, Marketing Brew and Campaign Live extends the video's effective reach well beyond its direct view count. The limited-edition vinyl release creates a physical collectible that functions as a premium brand touchpoint, adding a commerce dimension to what is structurally a brand-building exercise. Within the United States food and drink advertising category, Greatest Hates, Vol. 3 demonstrates that a brand with a strong and consistent creative identity can extract commercial and cultural value from negative sentiment at scale. The Clapboard Score of 79 out of 100 reflects that assessment — recognising the campaign's creative ambition, cultural fluency and structural originality against the specific demands of the non-alcoholic drinks category.
Greatest Hates, Vol. 3 is a 10-track album released by Liquid Death in the United States on June 28, 2023. Every lyric was taken verbatim from real online hate comments about the brand, according to VP of Creative Andy Pearson speaking to The Drum. The album is available on Spotify, Apple Music and as a limited-edition vinyl.
Liquid Death recruited a broad roster of musicians and cultural figures for the album. Featured artists include Frank Iero, Tony Hawk, Jason Ellis, Chris Cole, Toby Morse, Jen Razavi, Tony Kanal, Tony Hajjar, Kayleigh Goldsworthy and Mark McGrath. Frank Iero performs on the lead single and music video, "F**k Whoever Started This," as documented by Muse by Clio.
The music video depicts dancing Puritans burning a can of Liquid Death at the stake. As reported by The Drum's Audrey Kemp, the video frames the brand's online critics as historical witch-hunters, staging a satirical witch-trial that positions Liquid Death as the falsely accused. The visual effects sequence supports the period-costume production design throughout.
Liquid Death released two earlier Greatest Hates albums before Vol. 3. According to Contagious, Vol. 1 launched in May 2020 as a death-metal album and Vol. 2 followed in November 2020 in a punk-rock style. Andy Pearson confirmed to The Drum that both predecessors were released almost three years before the June 2023 instalment.
According to Wikipedia, the three Greatest Hates albums collectively surpassed 800,000 streams by October 4, 2023. The music video for "F**k Whoever Started This" recorded 62,701 views and 1,541 likes at submission, per the Clapboard Ad Archive. No comprehensive third-party performance audit for Vol. 3 in isolation is publicly available.
Liquid Death's in-house creative team developed Greatest Hates, Vol. 3 without an external agency, according to Contagious. Andy Pearson, VP of Creative at Liquid Death, led the creative direction and confirmed the verbatim sourcing of lyrics from real internet hate comments in statements published by The Drum on June 28, 2023.
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