You know what I’m talking about. Bands that you used to hear played constantly on every radio station and in every bar and college door room for months on end and now their very name invokes derisive comments from fans and critics alike. At one point, they may have even been considered the “next great…whoever.”
Note I’m not talking about bands you simply don’t like. So no “I hate Blink 182 because I hate pop-punk”. And no bands that always sucked. So no “I hate Europe” because no one ever liked “The Final Countdown”.
So I’ll start with the obvious ones:
Vanilla Ice - Don’t pretend you didn’t like Ice Ice Baby in the 80s. Everyone loved that song until he became a living joke. Now all of a sudden seven million copies of “To The Extreme” just disappeared. At one time Ice was the third highest selling white rapper, just behind the other two - Eminem and The Beastie Boys.
Hooty and the Blowfish - Cracked Rear View, is one of the best selling albums of all time, going platinum sixteen times. The band won the “Best New Artist” award at the 1996 Grammy Awards. And then like that, their particular brand of 90s jammy power pop Americana went out of style.
**Creed - 30 million albums sold and no one admits to liking Creed? Sure Scott Stapp’s special brand of post-grunge Christian rock was a bit over the top and pretentious. But any more so than the dozens of soundalike bands out there? Fortunately, now there’s Alter Bridge, for those people who thought Stapp wasn’t over the top enough.
**
Spin Doctors - Ah the fall of 1991. Freshman year of college. “Two Prices” and “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” playing from every dorm room, frat party and car stereo on campus. Kind of a Phish Lite, they briefly filled the Jam Band gap until Dave Mathews hit it big a few years later.
**Goo Goo Dolls **- With their inoffensive brand of Buffalo, NY rock, they somehow manage to offend everyone’s musical tastes.
What about Michael Jackson? Does he still have much of a following. At one point he was the king of the world. I think his antics have turned off just about everyone except his most die hard fans.
Evanescence, maybe? They took their 2nd album on a world tour, fer chrissakes. Now people are whining about Amy Lee being all angsty and shrill, and I’ve been known to sum up The Open Door as “I’m lying face-down at the bottom of a pool that I’ve filled with my own tears and blood, but everything’s okay because once I’m dead I’ll be with you forever.”
Limp Bizkit. limpbizkit. However Fred says it is now. They fell from favor seemingly overnight, to my joy.
The smooth r’n’b-lite genre represented by Boys II Men, Color Me Badd, etc., really seemed to fall out of favor with the general public, as well. It means I no longer have to hear things like “I Wanna Sex You Up,” but still seems a shame, since quite often the singers in these groups were quite good.
As was discussed in a thread I started six years ago, there are whole sub-categories of music that were once immensely popular but within a short time became almost universely hated and ridiculed. My pick is just about any Hair Metal band from the 80s (e.g., Cinderella, Poison, Ratt, Warrant, etc.). Those bands were all over the place until the Grunge/Alternative Revolution hit in the early 90s. Since then, mention of those groups–and the entire Hair Metal genre–only invokes snorts of snarky derision
I don’t know if he ever really fell that much out of favor. The only joke I’ve heard was in an episode of Futurama where someone told Fry that “Dave Matthews does not, in fact, rock.”
Ah, the good ole’ New Jack Swing days of 89-91. Riding around in my Mustang 4.0 (with the top rolled down so the wind can blow) thinking about whether I should spend my hard earned money on some parachute pants or a wicked flat top fade.
NDP - Dude, your thread is so old, half those bands are probably back IN style again.
Anyhow, I’m talking specific bands, not entire genres. Sure hairmetal has largely been a joke since 1991, but people don’t specifically hate on Motley Crue, Def Leppard or Bon Jovi.
**Limp Bizkit **is a good one. It’s like he was awesome and then everyone wanted to punch him.
They could be in both threads as they tend to embody all that people hate about Nu-Metal.
I’ll give** Nickelback** to **Revtim **.
And I’ll also throw in post dreadlocked goateed Adam Duritz Counting Crows.
Jane’s Addiction for me. Maybe more of a personal choice than a band who have fell from grace with fans of rock music at large.
You know when you first get an mp3 player with loads of storage and you just rip everything onto it, all your old stuff? And there’s one album that you just think what the fuck is this? Nothing’s Shocking by JA was this album for me. Sort of goes double for this band because they were worshipped by the UK music press - the quintissence of Californian rock with attitude and intelligence. Terribly, terribly dated. Perry Farrel sounds like the Lord of the Gay People fronting an especially lame LA wank band. Shrill, bombastic, overwrought garbage.
My vote for this is Metallica. A handful of great albums in the '80s have been completely obscured by the dreck that this band has been putting out since …And Justice For All. Their latest album was supposed to be a return to form but it was really just another pile of steaming crap. May they never pick up their instruments again.
I never liked Vanilla Ice–at least not his persona. I think that’s a matter of some people’s opinions growing more influential.
Goo Goo Dolls, Hooty and the Blowfish–I missed this period of pop.
**Creed **–I kind of like Creed, but I think, as with Vanilla, it’s a matter of the haters always having existed & eventually the act wearing thin on those who liked it at first blush.
