It’s an easy game. Every post ends with a musician/group, and the next poster says if they are overrated or underrated and explains why. For example, if the previous post ended with “Red Hot Chili Peppers” I would post:
Wildly overrated. Their early albums are OK. I can see why Blood Sugar Sex Magic sold well but I hate it. About the only song of theirs I can say I actively like is “Catholic School Girls Rule” and that is just a novelty.
The Rolling Stones
Over-rated, kinda by default. They can’t be under-rated. Their influence is felt everywhere, and for several brief, shining moments they were The Greatest Rock and Roll Band On Earth.
Pat Boone
Rolling stones are overrated, but just a bit. I think the mystique about those bad boys influences how people think of their music. They’re not bad, not by a long shot. And they sure know how to market themselves. But they’re not gods.
The Eurythmics.
I’ll answer this one because I really can’t speak much about Boone, just don’t know much about his work.
Slightly underrated. I think they are kind of the forgotton 80’s band, but their songs hold up pretty well and Lennox had an excellent voice, especially considering the genre.
The Killers
Definitely overrated. They might have been somewhat “alternative” 25 years ago.
R.E.M.
Overrated, mostly because they have had such a dip in quality since the mid 1990’s. I heard their new album is good, but they dipped very deeply into forgettable music.
OK, my turn.
Alice in Chains
Since nobody has taken on Pat Boone, I will:
VERY underrated. INCREDIBLY underrated.
Not mind you, because his music was great. It wasn’t. But people who weren’t around in the Fifties have no idea just how HUGE this guy was, in his prime. Only Elvis sold more records than Pat Boone in the Fifties.
And like him or not, he represented the first exposure to rock and roll for millions of Americans.
That makes him very important, even if he wasn’t good.
The Beach Boys (and Brian Wilson in particular)
Overrated. I love 'em, but when you get a reputation as a mad genius, it’s hard to be underrated.
Rufus Wainwright
Underrated. Every band with an electric guitar and a top-ten single these days is singing the minor-fourth harmonies that they explored and nailed. Their quiet songs (esp. Don’t Follow) are great. They make most of today’s Nu-Metal and Nu-Metal-derived-pop (I’m looking at you Nickelback) irrelevant, because nobody has managed to go beyond what they did.
If you believe Pet Sounds was the Platonic Ideal of The Album As Art Form, then overrated. I don’t - but I think their ability to make serious music while conforming to the tropes of surf music and still singing fantastic harmonies remains impressive to this day. It’s not just singing the notes; there’s tone-quality and blending that takes an incredible ear and a malleable voice… and all of them had the skill to blend it together. Wilson’s songwriting is solid. In my opinion he belongs in the top 100 but probably not the top 20. Paul Simon, for example, beats him in a walk.
How about Jerry Garcia?
Garcia was an amazing guitar player, who did not recieve the respect he should have, because so many wrote off the Grateful Dead as 60’s relics…
Too bad, but those who had the chance to see him play live, on a night when he was “on” (which admittedly became more infrequent towards the end of his life) will remember it fondly forever.
What about Mark Twain?
Speaking as a Dead Head…screamingly over-rated. Perfect music for an altered state, but straight? Not so much. Good music, for sure. Just not great. You really had to be there for Jerry and Co. to be in your pantheon of musical gods.
While I disagree with silenus, I certainly know that Garcia was the definition of “hit or miss” in live performance…
I didnt read carefully enough to see the game was only about musicians (as opposed to other types of artists) so instead of Twain, how about The Band?
Gotta say overrated, simply because so many quotes attributed to him may or may not have actually been someone else.
Roy Orbison
Probably a bit underrated by a public that knows precisely one of his songs. He was one of rock and roll’s first great singer/songwriters, and his voice still gives me chills.
Guns n’ Roses
Guns n’ Roses are neither overrated nor underrated. They were the last of a generation of traditional rock bands and they had lots of good songs for the short time that they were together.
Cyndi Lauper
Slightly underrrated.
She had a decent career outside of her one song. But there isn’t a soul in the world who hasn’t heard “Girls just wanna have fun”. She had more than just that song, but no one in the world is gonna know about it cuz they will automatically default to that.
Metallica
I find Metallica to be overrated. Yes, they had some rocking songs back in the day, and helped bring metal to the mainstream. But ugh they have sucked for a long time and Lars is a huge ass. I also think there are waaaaaaaaay better hard rock/metal bands out there.
Radiohead
I hate to be the turd in the punchbowl, but Radiohead is overrated. OK Computer was voted the best album of the last 20 years a couple years back, and it wouldn’t even crack my top 25. They are a good band, they are not a great band or a transcendent band or any of that.
The Clash
Interestingly enough, I find Metallica at this stage in the game to be slightly underrated, because their output over the last 10 years has been so atrocious that it has overshadowed the fact that these guys put out some of the finest hard rock ever crafted.
If it’s possible for “The Only Band That Matters” (according to Lester Bangs) to be underrated, The Clash are.
In a short (only five years with the real lineup) career, they cranked out an incredible amount of great music - five albums, including a double LP and a triple LP. Coming from a genre, punk rock, that was musically rather conservative and reactionary in spite of its radical image, The Clash bucked the trend and were utterly fearless musically. They could and did experiment with almost any modern musical style imaginable, including rock, reggae, ska, funk, disco, dub, rap and even spoken word over ambient backing music. You would almost have to look as far as The Beatles to find another popular rock band as eclectic.
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Led Zeppelin