"Bad Reputation" is a song Joan Jett wrote while being rejected over and over by people in the music business, after realizing that she herself had gotten a bad reputation simply by being in her scandalously young former band, The Runaways. She and her producer, Kenny Laguna, were turned down so many times by record labels in the US, in fact, that they finally decided to take matters into their own hands to release her debut solo album.