This may prove to be harder than the thread that spawned it, but who, in no particular order unless you care, are the five most overrated rock bands/musicians etc of all time? I’m not asking about the “worst” bands, I want the most overrated. The ones who get the praise and don’t deserve it. I’m talking about…
At least those are my first five.
Hmm…well my answers are subjective as hell, but I figure that my list - in no particular order - would be:
The Doors
The Sex Pistols
Bruce Springsteen
The Beach Boys
Grand Funk Railroad
1-5 The Rolling Stones. They have no equals. They are so overrated that they don’t deserve to be mentioned with other slightly overrated bands because the amount of suck that comes from the Stones is incomparable and the comparison would be unjust.
The Doors, The Stones, The Boss, Creedence, and Metallica.
[ol]
[li]Radiohead[/li][li]U2[/li][li]Pink Floyd[/li][li]Any Beatles after 1966[/li][li]Beck[/li][/ol]
Bonus points: Every single regurgiteen singer-songwriter pussy out there today, like Jason Mraz, Bright Eyes, and that utterly insufferable fuckwit, Ryan Adams. Crap, I could go all day!
Beatles
Elvis
U2
Led Zeppelin
The Rolling Stones
Though obviously I’m outvoted. Pink Floyd is about the only “famous” band that seems to have actually deserved their fame (for music) rather than being universally not-hatable/having a good stage show or what-have-you.
“Overrated” carries a distinct connotation of “Why are all these people going nuts over a band I can entirely live without?”, so with that disclaimer in mind, here’s my current top five, again in no particular order:
Chicago
Rush
Yes
Dave Matthews Band
Bruce Springsteen
Honorable mention for overratedness goes to, but is not limited to Kansas*, Styx, Supertramp, REO Speedwagon, any group or solo effort that featured a former Beatle (especially Wings), and Death Cab For Cutie. I would not have immediately thought of a couple of posters’ choices (U2 and Grand Funk Railroad) but on reflection they deserve consideration as well.
*Kansas may hold the record for most albums recorded by an inconsequential group. One would have been enough.
And here I am disagreeing.
The Doors
Led Zeppelin
Rush
Radiohead
Aerosmith
Radiohead
[del]Van Halen[/del] Aerosmith. Changed my mind because it’s been awhile since I’ve met a Van Halen “fan”, and Aerosmith is not as technically talented, so they are probably more overrated, even though I happen to like them more.
The Doors
The Rolling Stones
1. Tool - I was a big fan in my teens and still think they made some great music but the amount of worship they receive is just absurd. People are buying that douchebag’s wine now. Makes me want to gag.
Bwahahaha! And yet you’re a big fan of Rush and Styx, the very epitome of pretentious bands?
Aaand so it begins. I didn’t issue a fatwah against all you poor deluded souls that don’t recognise the monumental genius that is Springsteen, so let’s not start throwing insults around. Taste is taste. 
Wow, I’m not getting the hate for Floyd here. Pretentious? Roger sure as hell is, but the other guys never have been.
It won’t be all that long – soon the old Rock Gods will pass away, along with us geezers who got to see them in their prime. Future generations will have to settle for what came after. Too bad for them.
Just for the record I hate Pink Floyd too, it was a toss up between them and Fleetwood Mac on my orignal list. I don’t hate them because they’re pretentious though, I hate them because I think they wrote tepid boring music and have a marketing machine that perpetuates their myth that’s second only to the Dead.
Then again this isn’t a thread just to name five bands you don’t like. I could have added plenty others if that were the intention. As a matter of fact, I like Aerosmith, but they’re insanely overrated.
And I didn’t hammer anybody for the failure to recognize the genius that is The Doors, so suck on that for a while.
I’m not sure who is overrating Chicago (yes a fave band of mine in my teens, tho I don’t think much of them now), as they are almost universally remembered now as a whiny Muzak-worthy Peter Cetera vehicle. During their time tho they cranked out some good stuff in what was (until Terry Kath put a bullet through his head) a fairly fertile if uneven heyday.
I’m not sure if I’m ready to give this a shot, but here goes:
Tie, Nirvana and Pearl Jam. They had exactly 2 classic albums between them-maybe. And they eventually heralded the death of Alternative/Postpunk/New Wave (semantics shemantics) as a viable artistic form.
Beatles? My problem is that I can’t really view them objectively as I was hearing them from toddlerhood onwards (thanks to some next-door teens that I constantly hung out with), and they have their hooks deep in my subconscious. In their time they certainly were innovative, and the 60’s wouldn’t have been the same without them. But after Sgt. Pepper they wrote quite a bit of trite filler that I have very little use for; frankly I shudder at what kind of crap they would have turned out in the 70’s if they had stayed together.
Rush. Yeah I have a couple of their albums, but even the classic stuff (Permanent Waves & Moving Pictures) aren’t as good as everybody said they were. And no love from this quarter for their Ayn Rand fascinations.
The Doors. I got one of their Greatest Hits compilations, and after I listened to it after the 6th time or so, I was amazed at how unaffected I was (with the possible exception of The End). I can still listen to the Fab Four and quite a bit of their output can remain fresh despite 40 years of overexposure (ditto for the Who), but The Doors simply weren’t as deep as they liked to pretend they were.
Morrissey (and the Smiths). Yeah not overrated by the mainstream crowd, but in the 80’s I couldn’t grasp why every single alternative rag I read worshipped at the altar of this whiny bastard and his half-baked musical ideas.
What’s sad is that no bands since Nirvana come to mind as overrated-guess the marketplace is too fragmented now to warrant a single band to get tons of overhype.
I would also be tempted to put Pink Floyd up there, but I get the sense that they did something very special that I simply don’t respond to.