AFI
Cake
Maroon 5
Eminem
I seriously cannot comprehend, in the most remote sense, how anyone can like this stuff. But hey, that’s just me.
They are on some radio stations ALL the TIME. Classic rock dreck, mostly, but I don’t get to pick the station they play at the gym, or in certain bars/restaurants. I hear them on a regular basis by accident and it makes me grind my teeth. Ditto Foreigner, Journey, and Bon Jovi, other cheesy bands that I can’t understand why they haven’t faded from the public consciousness. But they haven’t because DJs still play them, and there’s some retro love for them them among younger people who like classic rock. Some students sang “You Give Love a Bad Name” at the talent show this year and brought down the house. Grrr. So, IMO, any popularity they still have is overrating them because I wish they’d just go away.
Hey don’t blame the DJs. They get their list from the station’s Producer.
At one point I though it would cool top be a DJ, a la Johnny Fever. Now I realize you sit in the same chair and play the same song’s you’ve heard 10,00 times. Blech.
Obviously, we need to bring science and objectivity into this discussion.
To that end, I suggest evaluating overratedness with the aid of a systematic scale I have devised - the B.R.I., or Buyers Remorse Index.
Lately I’ve been patronizing a lot of stores that sell used records, cassette tapes and CDs, looking to populate my Ipod with cheap and even good music.
Based on the thousands of albums I’ve gone through, often at grave risk to my mental well-being, a number of groups are over-represented. Logically, this is because the owners of these albums have realized, if belatedly, that they are a bunch of overrated crap and are unloading them for whatever cash secondhand albums bring.
Thus, we see a gazillion Kansas and Supertramp albums in the record bins, not to mention contributions by assorted other “artists” on posters’ lists. Some of the groups commonly listed as overrated by contrast have low B.R.I.s - Led Zeppelin for instance (relatively few Led Zep used albums are available seeing as how many were sold), which leads an unbiased observer to question whether they are truly overrated.
Of course, use of the B.R.I. to determine overratedness becomes less accurate as you go back further in time to vintage performers. In my area alone there are, by actual count, 427,516 Barbra Streisand albums on the shelves of stores selling secondhand music. This may partly be explained by buyer’s remorse, but seeing as how the fan base is aging, the B.R.I. counts are likely due at least in part to albums falling into the hands of heirs who are not enamored of Barbra.
In order:
KISS
The Rolling Stones
Bon Jovi
The Doors
The Eagles
Led Zeppelin - Technically good, but not nearly as good as their reputation. Stole every riff they ever recorded. They deserve to be on this list just for “Stairway To Heaven”, possibly the most overrated single song ever.
Eagles - I agree with the person who said they were absent any sense of danger. Recorded “Peaceful, Easy Feeling”, maybe the wimpiest song ever recorded by a rock band.
Grateful Dead - When everyone says “you had to be there”, you probably didn’t have to be there.
Rolling Stones - Longevity does not equal quality. Took a blues approach that was cool - once upon a time - but have plowed it into the ground for over 40 years. “Angie” is the epitome of everything wrong with their style.
Wilco - I’ve posted on them before. They are a current critical darling that I. Just. Do. Not. Get.
Special Mention: **Steve Miller Band **- I hate them too much to actually overrate them, but they deserve special scorn for “The Joker”, the worst song ever.
If we can expand our definitions a bit, and include some solo artists, I’d like to nominate Elvis as the most overrated artist of all time. If I have to choose 4 others, here’s my list.
Elvis
The Rolling Stones
Bob Dylan
Aerosmith
Red Hot Chili Peppers
If Bob Dylan actually could sing, would it have been a perfect 10?
Naw, that song is great, love the harmony. The Eagles aren’t supposed to be macho rock, they’re lite country rock at best. I love rocking out to Metallica or Godsmack, but The Eagles music has it’s place too.
Hey, to each his own. To me, Peaceful, Easy Feeling is the perfect song to listen to while putting on a hairpiece.
Not that I do that (either put on a hairpiece or listen to the song).
Cake? I can see how people would dislike them; they do have a very acquired sound, after all. But overrated? Hell I’d be lucky to name ten people I know that have ever even heard of them. (And at least a third of them have only heard the name becaue I’ve mentioned it to them.) Who are these people who extoll the virtues of Cake?
I don’t necessarily think as a band they’re overrated, but I’m with you on “Stairway to Heaven.” That song is nowhere near as good as its reputation. Same with Skynard’s “Freebird,” although I can’t tell how much praise for that song is genuine, and how much is ironic.
It’s also easy to substitute the words “Evil Greasy Squealing” which toughens the song up a bit.
Well, at least we’re seeing some artists who’ve gotten a lot of media coverage, perhaps more exposure than they warranted.
I concede, IF I didn’t love the Beatles, I’d think they were way overrated, too. In the Sixties, you couldn’t escape from them. Even now, their songs are everywhere, there are Beatle retrospectives practically every other day, and it gets to be a bit much. I love the Beatles, and even I get tired of seeing yet another critics “Ten Greatest Albums” lists with “Sgt. Pepper” (their worst album, in my opinion) invariably on top.
So yeah, I’d understand someone calling the Beatles overrated, even though I don’t agree.
Same with Dylan. Same with Elvis. They’ve become such icons that, if you DON’T love them, you could start to feel that they’re being forced down your throat.
But way too many of the artists here just don’t get that kind of media attention. An Eighties hair band you disliked when you were in high school (Poison? Ratt? Warrant? Winger?) is NOT overrated. Awful, maybe, but not overrated.
Is Jon Bon Jovi “overrated”? How? Has he won dozens of Grammies? Is he in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Is he on magazine covers every week? Are his songs played on the radio around the clock? No! If you don’t like him, he’s fairly easy to avoid.
Same goes for MOST of the acts I’ve seen named here.
I’m beginning to think “overrated” has a specific meaning. It means “Stuff all my friends liked when I was in high school/college that I never liked, which made me feel uncool, which STILL pisses me off decades later.”
To use a few non-musical examples: I was a nerdy white male teen back in the Seventies. It SEEMED as if everybody I knew was a Monty Python freak, that everyone I knew went around quoting their sketches. If I hadn’t liked a lot of Python’s work, I’d have been absolutely SICK of them in no time.
So, were they “overrated”? Eric Idle would laugh at that idea. He’d probably say, “I WISH! If only we had been! We were NEVER that popular. If we had been, I wouldn’t have to appear in crap like ‘Casper’ to pay my bills. We never made more than a pittance, even in our prime. All we had was a small, fanatical cult following.”
And I think that’s where a lot of the outrage on this board comes from. If all your friends were part of a small fanatical cult (for Python, for “Star Trek,” for Rush, for ANYTHING) and you weren’t, you felt alienated. And all these years later, many of you are just as angry about that as you were then.
Well said. I still think the Doors are hugely overrated, but see your point.
In my opinion, “overrated” means undeserving of the accolades a band has received and/or the success they’ve enjoyed. Everyone has different criteria; that happens to be mine.
To answer your questions:
- No, but who has?
- Not yet.
- Only George W. Bush and Michael Jordan have had that honor. But he’s certainly been on enough.
- On classic rock stations, most definitely. Which makes him tough to avoid if that’s the genre you like to listen to.
That being said, Bon Jovi is at the very top of my list, followed by:
Journey
Sammy Hagar (solo and Van Halen)
Metallica
Genesis (post-Gabriel)
How do RHCP hang on to this rocker image? Name their hits over the past ten years, and I think it will be hard to come up with one that’s even up-tempo. It’s not slumming in the lilting breezyness anymore, it’s their residence.
The Doors
Velvet Underground
Sonic Youth
Metallica
The Beatles
You aren’t the only one that can’t stand Bon Jovi. If I never heard Bon jovi again for the rest of my life I’d die happier than I would otherwise. Problem is my wife loves Bon Jovi. If she plays it at home i’ll leave the house or lock myself in the back room.
This weekend we took a trip to Rotensberg and unfortunately “Dead or Alive” got downloaded on my iPod from a various artists CD I must have loaded. I almost ripped the thing from my dashboardand threw it out of the window of my car. Seriously I would not let my wife listen to it with me in the car. (and since she refuses to learn how to drive a manual transmission I have to do all of the driving. )We have wildly different tastes in music, but really, hers sucks. She’ll scroll through things like Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Cranberries, XTC etc…to get to a Bon Jovi song. I had to make a new rule in the car…she’s not allowed to touch my iPod anymore.
I never understood the whole dead thing. I had a friend that loved 'em. he spent a year following them around. He once put a Grateful dead sticker on the window of my car. I made him scrub it off and i punched him the stomach.
When Garcia died he was all sad and stuff. I laughed in his face. He’s still pissed about that, but i don’t care because the grateful dead really did kinda suck unless you were really high.