U2, loved their earlier albums, I haven’t like anything since the Joshua Tree album. I got so sick of Joshua Tree and Bono’s huge ego is annoying.
Depeche Mode, loved everything up to avid including Violator. I didn’t like their ‘dark’ depressing late 1990s music and haven’t paid attention since.
I’m with you. They were one of my favorite bands through The Joshua Tree, which I still think is one of the most perfect albums of all time. I remember cutting school with about 50 classmates to see Rattle and Hum the day it came out. I walked in a true believer and walked out…not quite a heretic, but with seeds of doubt planted.
Even at age 15, I realized that there was a lot of ego-stroking bullshit in that movie, and that worse, the music just wasn’t that good. From the painful B.B. King duet, to the version of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” with the black gospel choir, to the “recording at Sun Studio through Elvis’ old mics” stunt, the whole thing just reeked of them finally believing their own press.
I’ve been increasingly done with them ever since, and whenever I chance to hear a new U2 song on the radio, my prejudices are confirmed. Whoever called them “Sting without the poetry” upthread is dead right.
Absolutely! He’s been such a jerk that it’s as if he’s been replaced by an evil robot from the future specifically to destroy his legacy, a la the second Bill and Ted movie.
He and/or his minions have been so obnoxious about deleting YouTube videos, one wonders if he’s worried that someone will discover that there are infants dancing around to Let’s Go Crazy who do a better job of bringing da funk than Prince can mange these days.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, U2 lost me at Achtung Baby.
Yeah, he/Smashing Pumpkins was my first thought. I lost track of caring about what he was up to sometime around Machina. I did kind of enjoy the Zwan album, though. Haven’t really listened to much but bits and pieces of his work since and have had no inclination to delve deeper. Don’t know what happened.
I’d agree with Pixies, but I refuse to consider their latest album part of their work. I’ve only heard two or three songs, and that’s all I need to hear. I want to pretend it doesn’t even exist.
And, of course, Metallica. It’s not like I was a huge metal head or anything, but I love their work up and through the “black” album. Yes, including that album. It was poppy and radio-friendly and all that, but it was still pretty damned good, if not “classic” Metallica. After that, ugh…
Sting is a good one - he’ll even tell you himself
And as also noted in that column, Paul Westerberg.
I think he has Steve Martin’s agent.
*De Niro has done some smelly ones, but every once in awhile you find flashes of greatness again. His cameo in American Hustle ***was chilling and wonderful.
**Paul McCartney **was a huge crush, as far as I was concerned he walked on water. But since about 1980 his work has been…familiar.
Steve Miller’s first two albums were great and his first five were pretty good. Since then, unadulterated crap.
If we are allowed to go back in time, honorable mention has to go to Edward Bulwer Lytton.
In his time, he was a Victorian Tom Clancy - one of the world’s best selling authors, but today he is, at best, only known for writing total dreck.
Music producer Dr. Luke. He produced most or all of the songs on Kesha’s albums, but his mistreatment of her has come to light in the last few months. His comments on her weight drove her to starve herself nearly to death; he gives her no control over what songs go on her albums; he takes credit for work that he barely even touches. It blew my mind to read some of the other comments he’s made to her; he’s just a total asshole. I’ve deleted all the songs he’s done with other singers (e.g., “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz, and a bunch of Katy Perry songs), and I’ll never voluntarily listen to any of them again.
Ted Nugent. Thread over.
I’ve known Ted was a complete douchebag from his heyday when I was working at Arrowhead Stadium and noticed that most of the speakers in his guitar rig were fake, empty boxes. And that he wore earplugs so he’d not be subjected to the same dangerous decibel levels we was subjecting his audience to. I loathe him for entirely non-political reasons, although the latter is arsenic frosting on a dog shit cake.
I just found out Kate Mulgrew narrated a movie which tries to debunk a heliocentric solar system. Man, did Captain Janeway drop off my Esteem-o-meter ™ fast…
I mostly agree with you, but I also quite like their latest album Death Magnetic. The way I see it, if it had been the first Metallica album I heard, I would still have ended up listening to a lot of Metallica. The stuff in between it and the Black album, not so much
Oh man, I forgot one: Red Hot Chili Peppers. You can even pinpoint the exact moment they started to go downhill. When “Under The Bridge” came out and was such a monster success, three things happened:
Maturing is the kiss of death for most rock bands, but it made RHCP particularly unlistenable to me. The only other band I can think of that matured in a similarly ugly fashion is Aerosmith, once they realized the BIG money was in recording power ballads written by outside songwriters and putting their daughters in their videos in rubber pants.
Either this is some kind of whoosh, or a complete mangling of Flatland 2, which according to Wikipedia
Almost impossible to watch, sad to say.
In fact, I can’t think of anything he has done since Scent of a Woman (including that stinker) that I could stand to watch.
Scent of a Woman just served to point out to me what a caricature of himself he has become.
HOO-AHH!
Puke!
I once met Gedy Lee and don’t even want to waste my time describing what a huge asshole he is. Trust me.
If you ever get the chance to work for him, just insist you get paid in advance and in full. What a cheap prick!
Johnny Depp. Nice mid-life crisis, dude.