I could go on for most of the morning, but I’ll spare you. Here’s the top 5.
Eagles - Fucking Eagles! They’re just some of the lamest mellow rock/pop there ever was.
Journey - See above, Only more operatic. I am truly stunned that they made a comeback.
Elton John - See above, only more piano.
Kanye West - The best thing he ever did was sample a guy who sounded like Ray Charles. He’s a self-important hack, at best.
Wilco - My dislike is purely based on Jeff Tweedy’s singing. I’m not sure what it is about his voice, but it compels me to change the station.
First to call out the absolute suckitude for the music of, and “I don’t get it”-ness in regards to their popularity, of
AC/DC
And there are fans of this band who will earnestly claim that “rap isn’t music.” Uh… you’re an AC/DC fan! You obviously don’t know what the fuck music is!!
Thank you, OP, for letting me get that off my chest.
Also, I agree with Rush and Geddy Lee’s voice. :shudder:
I have given this lecture several times, but will give it again.
There are about 320 million people in the USA. Now, how many copies of Michael Jackson’s Thriller (a phenomenally successful album) were sold in the USA? Roughly 29 million copies.
In other words, the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of Americans didn’t buy Thriller, the most popular album in American history. Less than 10% of the population did. Which means (drum roll)…
There is absolutely NOTHING that “everybody” loves except you!
MOST people didn’t buy or like the debut Boston album. MOST people didn’t like or buy Fleetwood Mac’s ***Rumours. *** MOST people didn’t like or buy the Police’ ***Synchronicity. *** MOST people didn’t like or buy ***Sgt. Pepper. *** MOST people didn’t like or buy Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.
It may just SEEM as if everyone in your small circle of friends likes something except you, but that’s not at all the same thing.
If you just enjoy ranting baout how much a given band, book, movie or album sucks, go right ahead! Have fun! But you’re not a lone, bold iconoclast.
I understand the point you’re making, but at the same time it should be pointed out that a very large percentage of the 320 million people living in the USA buy no rock/pop albums whatsoever.
So wouldn’t a more realistic comparison be between the number of people who regularly buy rock/pop albums and those who have bought a given one? I’m not sure how that first figure would be arrived at, but the gap would be somewhat less dramatic if you did it this way.
Seems to me that “everybody” in the original topic sort of implies “everybody who cares about rock/pop music in the first place.”
When I listen to that song, the only effect it has on me is to remind me how bland and boring they’ve become since their heyday. Might as well be Maroon 5.
Queen: I know, it makes me terribly un-British but they made a living from writing horribly annoying football stadium chants. Their first album was great but after that, all downhill.
Rolling Stones: Their first few albums had a rough, blusey edge but then they started writing their own material.
Well, that, and if you’re a family of five, you 're presumably only buying one album, not five. 30 million sold in the US is close enough to “everybody likes it” for me.
You realize that makes no sense, right? There’s a ton of music I like, but don’t run out and buy because it’s on the radio all the time. I love Queen, don’t own any, I love the Beatles, don’t own any, I love Rumors, only just picked it up a few years ago. I do, however, own most Pink Floyd albums, but don’t care for at some of them.
Assuming I’m pretty normal, statistically, that throws your theory out the window.
Just because someone likes a band doesn’t mean they have to buy the album.
How many people say “I actually really like this song” when Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines comes on? How many of those people have paid money to hear the song. I haven’t.
FWIW, the boys in Rush don’t consider themselves to be “prog”. As Geddy put it, “We’re just a hard rock band.”
My list:
Pink Floyd: As a musician myself, I can recognize their talent. I just can’t listen to most of their music. I find it boring and depressing.
Led Zeppelin: Again, I admire their talent. I just don’t get the hype. Also, the drummer in my old band was a big LZ fan, and every time I’d mention Weird Al Yankovic he’d start into a rant about what a “rip-off artist” Al is. What, and Zep wasn’t? At least Al gets people’s permission to “rip them off”, and properly credits them afterward.
Garth Brooks: I don’t so much “hate” him, I just think his mega-success was unwarranted. I never felt like he was a “real” country singer; he was an unsuccessful rock singer who switched to country because it looked like he’d have a better shot there (of course, this is probably true of a whole lot of country stars in the last 20-odd years). He and Clint Black released their debut albums the same year. I bought both, and after repeated listenings to both, I concluded that Black was going to be the bigger star. Not only was he a “real” country singer, he also wrote every song himself (in fact, I think the only cover he ever recorded was “Desperado”, for an Eagles tribute album), and his songwriting was outstanding. Meanwhile, Brooks’ debut was a collection of mostly generic songs written by professional songwriters. Black’s album was superior in every way but one. That “one” was a song on Brooks’ album called “The Dance”. That one song was better than every other song on both albums, and that one song catapulted Brooks to superstardom. Black certainly continued with a long, successful career, but never reached Brooks’ level of mega-stardom.
ETA:
Oh yeah, Journey. Again, a bunch of talented guys. But when I was a teenager, my younger sister was really into their Escape album, and I had to listen to her playing “Open Arms” on the family stereo, over and over and over and over and …
This is borne out by the fact that, once he had established himself as a country music megastar, he took another stab at rock, in the form of his truly acrid “Chris Gaines” alter ego, he of the eyeliner, soul patch, and falsetto. One of the most embarrassing career missteps I can think of by a successful artist.
Bruce Springsteen–not that I actually hate his music, and I might well enjoy it very much if I saw him performing live. But the arrangements and instrumentation don’t really do it for me, because the band is just there to back him up. I’ll probably get pelted by (virtual) eggs or something, but I think Bob Seeger (sp?) does this sort of heart-of-blue-collar-America RnR much better.
The Clash.
Dylan. Voice of a generation, and all that, wrote some great songs to boot. But those songs almost always sound 100% better when covered by others.
If you think the adulation is bad these days, it’s even more painful when I think back to things I read many years ago when the Beatles still existed as a band. Going by some of the early critics, and the biographers who quoted them (e.g. Hunter Davies), it seemed that not only were their own songs the best ever, but their covers of R&B classics like “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Money” showed us all how those songs were done, baby!
I listen to NPR almost exclusively now but I occasionally try to listen to the local classic rock (oldies) station. There are three bands that cause me to immediately abandon that effort.
All three are due to overexposure.
Aerosmith. Can’t stand Tyler’s voice, even songs I used to like.
