The bbc has polled music lovers far and wide to see what people think are the most overrated albums, here is what they have come up with
What’s the verdict?
I think meself that its a big bag of bollox, just because an album is massively overhyped doesn’t necessarily make it overrated musically. What say ye? Any albums on this list that make your blood boil with indignation?
I’ll concur with “Sgt. Pepper’s” on the list.
I don’t know how much I’d agree with the others, because I don’t know if they are even overrated. “The Queen is Dead”? I thought it was just your basic DOA 80s album that even Smiths fans didn’t dig. I could be wrong.
The trouble with the OP’s question, though it is interesting, is that there just aren’t too many albums that are hyped that high, and in the case of “Sgt. Pepper’s” and “Pet Sounds,” they can be hyped too high and still be decent music, not really in need of a debunking.
Bands, however, can be overrated for the long term.
And I just realized that we kinda said the same thing about hype.
So I guess my major point is that there are not too many individual albums that achieve level of overpraise that both is high and lasts.
The first thing I thought of when I saw the title was Sgt. Pepper. And it only came in seventh. I guess I’m getting old (but I wasn’t even born when it came out!! I swear!)
I dunno. I guess the validity of it is what’s meant by overrated. Overhyped has a lot to do with it. Those are all great albums. Nevermind is a great album and Greg Spellman can go bite himself. But Ewan Swain’s point that there was a lot of other good stuff going on at the time is valid…it just happened that Nirvana was the band the got latched on to. And actually, the same can be said for Sgt Pepper. The Beatles happened to be incredibly sucessful so when they were open to what was going on in music at the time and bringing it into the popular front , the album was signifigent. But they weren’t alone.
Hyped in terms of being good or signifigent…ok. Overhyped in terms of being claimed as a be all and end all…not good.
Don’t really have a comment on most of them, but “The Queen is Dead” is the second best Smith’s album after “Hatful of Hollow”.
And the “The Joshua Tree” is a fantastic album. If they wanted to slag U2 they should after been honest and said, “Anything after ‘Achtung Baby’ is pure unadulterated horse shit.”
As for “Nevermind the Bollocks”… well the entire point of the Sex Pistols and that album was to be overrated. It never was about the album but what it stood for at the time.
I disagree with Sgt. Pepper, but I’d gladly put the White Album in its spot.
Nilsson Schmilsson
Where’s the pukey smilie when you need it?
A few years ago I had a great “bar talk” conversation with a musician that I admire very much. I asked her the “Favorite Album” question. She said, with very little hesitation Nilsson Schmilsson.
Because I respect her so much as a musician, and because our tastes overlap so much otherwise, I went out and bought the album. Ugh! Yuck! Blech!
Don’t get me wrong, “Coconut” kicks ass- and I would never say it doesn’t- but the rest of the album made me want to puncture my eardrums.
Now the musician who recommended it was 13 years old when the album came out, whereas I was negative 4 years old. That may have something to do with it. We all have a special connection with the music that we listened to as teenagers.
Any Doper Nilsson Schmilsson fans wanna try to tell me what I’m missing???
The first thing I thought of was “OK Computer”.
Every time I put it on, I was like, “What the fuck?”
However, I forgot about it for a couple of years, and just this year I started putting it on again, and I found myself thinking, “this is pretty good.”
Well, well… I’m surprised to see several of my nominees on the list.
Mind you, it’s NOT that the albums in question are necessarily terrible. It’s just that critics have been singing their praises for so long, people who actually LISTEN to them often wonder, “What’s all the fuss about?”
“Pet Sounds” may well have been groundbreaking in 1966. It may have been extremely influential. But there’s more weak material on this album than on any previous Beach Boys album. Some of the experimental stuff is ridiculously dated or just plain boring. In 1966, it may have been a revelation, but todday, it’s just a so-so album with 4 GREAT songs and a lot of forgettable stuff.
I could write ALMOST exactly the same thing about “Sgt. Pepper.” There’s more weak material on that album than on any Beatles album save “Magical Mystery Tour.” And, really, in many ways it’s far LESS innovative than “Revolver.”
And I’m delighted to see Nirvana and Sex Pistols on the list. Nirvana had a few great songs- but just a few. ENough to make a superb “GReatest Hits” package, but not enough to make any one album a classic.
And the Sex Pistols… well, they pretty much just bit the big one. Hey, I like the idea of a loud, crude, sloppy, amateurish, energetic rock band as much as anyone… but these guys just plain sucked. Worse still, they were utter frauds: Sid Vicious wasn’t a sloppy, amateurish musician (Glen Matlock was), he was a NON-musician.
That list is severely hampered by the lack of “Dark Side of the Moon” and the inclusion of “The Queen is Dead” and “Never Mind the Bollocks”.
Good call MrD, I’d have expected Pink Floyd to have cleaned up here but it looks like they didn’t make it.
Stuff like Coldplay - X and Y, or The Libertines is clearly on there just because people are sick of those bands and their personalities always being hyped up in the media. I don’t think too many people are seriously thinking “Man, I have to disagree with the majority opinon here, Coldplay’s latest is substandard”, its more a question of “I’m sick of hearing that whiny-voiced get banging on about fairtrade coffee”. I wasn’t aware that anyone even rated the Libertines album in the first place, so its hard to see how it could be overrated.
One more point: we always have to ask what “overrated” means. Overrated by whom? How?
I mean, we can all point to albums that sold 10 or 20 million copies but that we don’t think were very good. If a Backstreet Boys album sold 20 million copies, would anyone say it’s “overrated”? No, not really, because even the kids who LOVED the Backstreet Boys weren’t claiming that their albums were works of art. “Saturday Night Fever” and “Frampton Comes Alive” sold a gazillion copies when I was in high school, and I don’t think highly of either album… but is either “overrated”? Again, not really. Millions of people enjoyed those records, but nobody treated them as masterpieces of music.
If “overrated” means “Albums That Always Appear on Every Critics’ Greatest Albums List But Really Suck,” well, there are loads of candidates. I think “Forever Changes” by Love was a rotten album. A really rotten album. And yet, without fail, it appears of critics’ Best Albums list.
So, is “Forever Changes” overrated? I guess… except that, since hardly anybody bought it, and it never gets played on the radio, it seems silly for me to spend a lot of time insulting Arthur Lee and Love.
When we complain about something being “overrated,” I wonder- do we really mean “Stuff That All My Friends and All the People in My Age and Social Circles Like Except Me”?
Kill Your Idols is out in paperback. I recommend checking it out from the library instead of buying it, though.
Another frickin’ list. Nothing like a list to get people all hot and bothered. TV Guide and all the music rags would be out of business without them.
Let’s start a thread: a list of the all-time most annoying lists.
Agreed 100%, with an exception made for the song Stay, the last brilliant U2 song.
Led Zepplin IV. Not even the 4th best Led Zepplin album.
If the Stones didn’t take the top 20 or so spots I question the validity of the list.
Music is so personal, lists only exist to start a discussion. Like this thread, I guess?
These lists are designed to get people talking. I’ve never even heard of the Libertines. I guess I’m supposed to go look them up now because they’re on some blinkin list, though.
Hard to argue with any of this. I learned about 40 years ago never to pay any attention to albums that critics were hyping or albums that sold tens of millions of copies. They might be good, they might even be great, but those were the rare exceptions.
Love’s Forever Changes is an example of an album that critics keep alive but that ordinary people wonder why. Van Dyke Parks is basically worthless, but his unlistenable Song Cycle makes bests charts and critics keep ejaculating over his lyrics for Brian Wilson, even though those lyrics are mostly proof for how incredibly much better a poet Jim Morrison was instead.
Sgt. Pepper’s was perfect for its time. Some days today I think it’s dismal, some days I think it’s brilliant, some days it’s in between. What is reality?
The Sex Pistols, though. I give thanks that the U.S. never really got more than a tiny tail edge of the Sex Pistols hurricane. They were third-rate even at the time. Maybe they were right for the atmosphere of working class Britain in 1976. I’ll never know. But musically they were more worthless than Celine Dion signing the greatest hits of Van Dyke Parks.
Here’s the Wiki list of bestselling albums, 56 albums that have sold more than 20 million copies. The list is mostly meaningless for 60s albums - can anyone really believe only two original Beatles albums have sold 20 million over the last 45 years? How many of the 56 are great? Maybe six.
Dark Side of the Moon is one of them, though.