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Rush – Just a so-so band with a fanatical fan base. At best, they’re just another power trio, but for some reason people think they’re progressive rock (!) and deep writers.
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Steve Miller Band – starting with “The Joker” (their early stuff is pretty good), they never had a song that wasn’t stupid or stolen.
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Rod Stewart – a great singer who never knew how to choose a good song. He had a few good things over the years, but he’s wasted his talent singing crap.
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Weird Al Yankovic – It’s a sad commentary on the state of humorous music that his third-rate Mad Magazine imitation is considered so highly. He’s about as weird as white bread.
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Fleetwood Mac – the Stevie Nicks version, where they went from a tolerable blues band to just a bland.
The Doors
Bob Dylan
Led Zeppelin
Oasis
The Sex Pistols
U2
Van Halen
Beastie Boys
Jane’s Addiction
Dave Matthews Band
I can’t think of anyone…anyone more overrated than the White Stripes.
Beyond that…
Radiohead
Depeche Mode
Sex Pistols
The Doors
Steve Miller is the quintessential guy who thinks he’s the Epitome of Cool, while everyone else fully knows just how much of a dork he is.
The Stones (whom I kind of wished I could have squeezed onto my list) are slightly different, in that they posture themselves as rock’s Bad Boys, but just about everything post Brian Jones comes off as very self-consciously “Evol”.
The Mac 75-80 crafted some pretty good often intense stuff, but after that they certainly fit your description.
The Doors
Rush
The Eagles
Phish
Radiohead
Can we make this a top ten? I guess I just feel like ranting tonite, but I shouldn’t have forgotten the Eagles. Did they ever make one decent song which didn’t come across as transparently cloying? “Oh look at how decadent we all are!” Of all the bands listed so far they have always seemed the most “fake” (moreso than even the Stones).
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Nirvana. Far and away, no comparison, no competition. If Kurt Cobain hadn’t blown off his melon, today 99 out of 100 rock fans would guffaw at the idea Nirvana were geniuses. It’s interesting that Pearl Jam was mentioned with them; maybe you live Pearl Jam or maybe not, but at least to my ears they’re eight times the band.
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Grateful Dead. Maybe they were good if you were high.
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The Eagles
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The Doors. The Doors were actually a decent band, you know; they did some neat, innovative stuff, and played around with their sound. They were quite productive for a few years there, and have lots of catchy tunes. But man, people go fucking nuts over them, don’t they? It’s like Oliver Stone decided to make an epic movie about Men At Work or the Traveling Wilburies.
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Rush. And I’m Canadian, but come on. They’ve had one good song.
Overrated by whom?
I don’t mean to be snarky, but let’s put it this way: Leonard Cohen always makes critics’ Ten Best Lists. Music columnists usually praise him to the heavens. So, is he “overrated”? I guess… but since he’s hardly sold any records over the years and gets very little mainstream media exposure, it seems silly to call him “overrated.”
To use one of the OP’s examples… Fleetwood Mac has sold tens of millions of albums, has sold out hockey arenas all over the world, and gotten loads of radio airplay. So, are they “overrated”? How? Even the peoiple that like “Rumours” rarely rate it their favorite album. Fleetwood Mac is almost nobody’s favorite band- they’re just a LOT of people’s 20th favorite band! But do you see Lindsay Buckingham on magazine covers every week? Are they EVERYWHERE in the mass media? No. So, it’s hard to see how they’re overrated.
Does “overrated” mean anything more than “a lot of people like them, but I don’t”?
I cannot understand the resurgence and new adulation being given to these guys, so my list is composed of all hair bands. Hated 'em in the 80’s, hate 'em even more now:
- Van Halen
- Motley Crue
- Jon Bon Jovi
- Poison
- Def Leppard
Honorable metion: Metallica, because their first four albums were killer, but after they lost Cliff Burton, they went straight to sucky, pretentious overblown lameness and never recovered.
If I were actually talking about serious bands that people with taste respect, I’d say:
- The Doors
- The White Stripes
- Radiohead
- Sex Pistols
- Chicago/Foreigner/Boston/Journey ('cause they all sound like the same band anyway)
No, not really.
An Australian Rugby League magazine runs a poll every year amongst the professional players and used to ask among other things, “who is the most overrated player in the game?” The answer was always a player considered to be either the best player going around or a young future superstar. And who else could you vote for - the journeyman player that slogs his guts out with little media recognition but is loved by his team’s supporters? It has to be someone that lots of good judges think is great but you don’t. If you think that the player commonly regarded as the number one player in the game is actually number five then it’s him.
I believe that this question caused so much angst, with the poor bastard voted most overrated unable to work out that it was a foregone conclusion, that they stopped asking it.
And being as how music is music and what appeals to one audience is despised by another who cares who likes what. So most overrated, not rock though:
The Wiggles - crap music, crap delivery and what the hell do 5 year olds know.
- Clash. Great first album, but by “London Calling” they were just a blah pop band.
- REM. Muddy sounding music with muddled lyrics doesn’t make you “alternative”, it means you need a new producer.
- Radiohead. Everything since “OK Computer” is just Thom Yorke sighing over Casio beats. They’re as formulaic as teen pop.
- Springsteen. Outside of “Born in the USA”, it’s navel gazing music that doesn’t rock nearly as hard as it thinks it does. As far as the “voice of the working class” thing (1) nobody who’s actually working class actually listens to him (2) and acts from Bob Seger to Merle Haggard did it way better.
- U2. Gutless spirituality (for people afraid of religion), gutless social conciousness (is praising MLK that daring?), vanilla guitars. And critics never call them out for just repeating their early work on the last few albums.
No. In my list, I actually mention a band I like (Aerosmith’s early stuff) and I was considering putting Pearl Jam and quite possibly Nirvana on the list, both bands I like to varying degrees (although I prefer Nirvana.) “Overrated” means bands you think get more praise than they deserve. It could be bands you like; it could be bands you dislike. If you like the Beatles, but simply think they’re a strong pop band, nothing more, they’re overrated. Even the Pixies, one of my favorite bands of all time, sometimes verges for me on the cusp of “overrated.” They’re great, but I don’t think they’re quite Beatles great, even though I listen to them and own more albums by them than I do the Beatles.
Nirvana - like I intimated in that other thread, rehashed Pixies is not big or clever.
The Who - I’ve never seen the appeal. And Tommy sucked.
Pink Floyd - tedious old farts (and I like Tull!)
Queen - I like Queen well enough, no question, but based on that other thread, some people think they’re top 5 material, so “overrated” it is.
The Eagles - represent everything I hate about '70s American country-rock.
Don’t you think you’re giving the stones too much credit here? I mean come on, rating them 1, 2, 3, 4, AND 5? I mean damn.
I’ve always contended that the Eagles belonged more to country than to rock. And I’ve always thought that they were vastly overrated.
I’d have a hard time answering with just five bands/artists without sitting down for a couple of hours, and I just don’t feel like it right now. I do find it interesting that some of my favorite bands have made other people’s “overrated” list, though. I guess I’m showing my age (50).
- KMFDM Sucks
- Mott the Hoople
- Iron Butterfly
- Stryper
- Warrant
As someone who likes both, but prefers the Pixies by far (and I’m not going to dispute their overrated status), I don’t understand classifying Nirvana as “rehashed Pixies.” Yes, I know Kurt says self-effacingly that he was trying to copy the Pixies, but he missed by a country mile. About all they have in common is the occasional quietLOUDquiet. Song structure-wise, they were quite different–Nirvana was much more melodic and conventional. The overall sound was not very similar. Kurt’s guitar leads have very little in common with the jagged weirdness that came out of Joey Santiago’s fingers. If I heard Nirvana for the first time today, I doubt I could pick out the Pixies as an obvious influence on them. I would say the Pixies are more rehashed Pere Ubu than Nirvana rehashed Pixies.
Well for the 2nd time in this thread I feel compelled to defend a former favorite band of mine. Chicago sounded nothing like the other 3 bands-Foreigner was a cock rock band (or so they styled themselves) who eventually went mellow. Boston and Journey were hard rock bands who had, at least for awhile, some progressive pretensions. Chicago? A jazz-rock fusion band who occasionally rocked hard, typically were mellow, but had little in the way of testosterone-fueled cuts and only were progressive-ish for one album (II, a weak double). And again I don’t know who was overrating them, then or now.
What he said.
I dare say anyone who said “Springsteen” has never seen the Boss in concert. I’ve seen the Stones in concert, and that only confirmed what I already suspected: They are not that good.