\u201cShe was a malignant narcissist,\u201d Barron said Sunday of his late stepmom. \u201cI don\u2019t know if she ever heard the song.\u201d<\/p>\n
The upbeat tune reached No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100, thanks to frequent radio play and a bouncy, colorful music video. But the lyrics were more serious than fans realized.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeen a whole lot easier since the bitch is gone \/ Little Miss, Little Miss, Little Miss can\u2019t be wrong,\u201d Barron sings. \u201cI hope them cigarettes are gonna make you cough \/ I hope you hear this song and it pissed you off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barron has previously spoken about the song, noting that most listeners assumed it was about an ex-girlfriend named Heather.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople always think it\u2019s about an ex of mine but it\u2019s actually about my dad\u2019s ex, who I grew up with. She was actually a malignant narcissist, if that rings a bell. She was a really rough person to grow up with and she said I was going to be a guitar-playing janitor,\u201d Barron explained to American Songwriter<\/a> in 2020.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is actually a tweet<\/a> about this that blew up a little while ago (in 2019). I was looking through Twitter and someone said something like, \u2018My English teacher said I\u2019d never be a writer and now I have a book in The New York Times.\u2019 And I was like, \u201cMy stepmom said I was going to be a guitar-playing janitor \u2013 nothing wrong with that \u2013 and live in the basement of my high school and play guitar for the rats and I wrote a song about her and it\u2019s called \u2018Little Miss Can\u2019t Be Wrong\u2019 and it\u2019s been played on the radio three billion times!\u201d<\/p>\n Barron told American Songwriter that the last time he saw his stepmother was when he moved to New York City \u201cwith Blues Traveler<\/a>\u201d in the late \u201880s. (Barron and singer John Popper previously performed together in a band called Trucking Company.) He vividly remembers her screaming at him to get out, saying he was going to \u201cdie in a gutter.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was heavy, man. It was really heavy,\u201d Barron said. \u201cI think that one of the ironic twists of \u201990s music history was, you know, to some people who only know \u201cLittle Miss Can\u2019t Be Wrong\u201d or \u201cTwo Princes,\u201d we\u2019re sort of remembered as like this kind of emotionally lightweight, fluffy band. Especially in contrast to the other music that was going on, like grunge.”<\/p>\n \u201cBut if you look at my lyrics and you look at the Spin Doctors, we\u2019ve got stuff that\u2019s just as heavy as Nirvana and Pearl Jam… it\u2019s happy music with kind of dark lyrics.\u201d<\/p>\n Barron clarified on Threads Monday that he doesn\u2019t want fans to assume he\u2019s suggesting all stepmothers are wicked or evil.<\/p>\n \u201cIn all of the grand panoply of human relations, stepmoms have maybe the hardest job there is,\u201d Barron wrote<\/a>. \u201cMy dad remarried and I have stepmom now who is awesome. My wife is a stepmom to our daughter. I don\u2019t know where we\u2019d be without them. There\u2019s a lot of great step parents out there and they get a bad rap.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI just wanted to say that because there\u2019s a lot of great stepmom\u2019s out there including my stepmom and my wife. My late stepdad was pretty great too.\u201d<\/p>\n The Spin Doctors are an alternative rock band known for their mix of pop, funk and jam music on hits like \u201cTwo Princes,\u201d \u201cLittle Miss Can\u2019t Be Wrong\u201d and \u201cJimmy Olsen\u2019s Blues.\u201d The group sold more than 10 million copies of their 1991 debut album \u201cPocket Full of Kryptonite,\u201d and released their first new album<\/a> in 12 years in 2025.<\/p>\n Barron, who also made headlines last year when he said he had been \u201chigh 24\/7\u2033 for 16 years, is gearing up to go on tour this summer. The Spin Doctors, Blues Traveler and Gin Blossoms<\/a> tour dates include Upstate New York concerts on July 30 at the Broadview Stage at SPAC (Saratoga Performing Arts Center) in Saratoga Springs, Aug. 9 at CMAC in Canandaigua, and Aug. 18 at the Erie County Fair in Hamburg, N.Y.<\/p>\n Tickets for the SPAC and CMAC concerts are on sale via Ticketmaster<\/a>, Vivid Seats<\/a> and StubHub<\/a>. Tickets for the Erie County Fair show will go on sale at a later date.<\/p>\n Watch the music video for \u201cLittle Miss Can\u2019t Be Wrong\u201d:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A popular \u201990s rock singer has revealed who inspired one of his band\u2019s hit songs. Spin Doctors frontman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":["post-446653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Spin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Q4IT4YI4RJAA3NKVPQXHGJ2NUQ.jpg\")
Spin Doctors singer Chris Barron performs at the New York State Fair on Sept. 3, 2017. (Warren Linhart | NYS Fair)NYS FAIR<\/p>\n