Most overrated musical act of all time?

[sLiPpY]

Lady Gag Gag

Who in the hell listens to that crap?

 

[KDude]

she's rad, dude

 

[miss fortune]

her songs get stuck in my head

 

[Nonsensical]

I can't stand Coldplay, Radiohead, or Dave Matthews.

I kind of see them as a bunch of trendy hipsters at the forefront of the yuppie movements, which are pretty lame and fake if you want to know the truth. That stuff was cool before it became maint stream and gathered a crowd.

Radiohead is too pretentious and tried way too hard to be an abstract musical canvas, but it just sounds like over done crap.

Coldplay is annoying. enough said. same with the people who listen to them.

Dave Matthews isn't as bad as the former two, but with his annoying voice and the crowd it draws, it's too washed up.

 

[EffEmDoubleyou]

I would like to add Wilco and Vampire Weekend to my previous nominations.

 

[lunalum]

Lady Gaga started out cool, until she fully realized that she could use below-average songs, add the craziest outfits ever and some murder and people would be 'going Gaga' over it (pun intended )
So yeah, she is overrated for now.

 

[KDude]

the most overrated band to me is pink floyd.. especially within the context of someone telling me how "deep" they are if you listen to the wall while watching fantasia or whatever along those lines.

they were kind of cool with syd barrett though.

 

[miss fortune]

the man was actually talking about how overrated pink floyd is yesterday!

I'd say Justin Timberlake is overrated...

 

[simulatedworld]

I'm starting to recognize how pointless this thread is. Every post is just "ZOMG THIS ARTIST DOESN'T MEET MY PERSONAL EXPECTATIONS FOR WHAT GOOD MUSIC SHOULD BE LOL"

which is pretty meaningless. If you're going to critique music, do it as objectively as you can by comparing the artist to other artists in a similar genre during a similar time period.

Frankly, most of you have a very parochial mold for what characteristics you expect "good music" to have and so you end up dismissing the vast majority of music by judging it in terms of some other genre that you like better. If you assume that all good music is supposed to sound like Lynyrd Skynyrd, of course Radiohead doesn't interest you. That doesn't make them bad; it makes you ignorant for saying so.

If you simply don't enjoy an entire genre, your opinion that x prominent artist from that genre is "overrated" or "bad" is just utterly meaningless, because you don't like that genre in the first place and so you have no idea how to evaluate the performance in meaningful terms.

It's like hearing 15 year old metalheads ramble on about how much the Beatles suck because when they listen to music they're looking for one very specific set of characteristics (in this case, fast, technically difficult, aggressive playing, chunky modern production EQd toward drums and guitars, and dark/menacing lyrics) and everything else just gets labeled "bad" because they don't understand how to judge a piece of music in the context of its own genre.

Not fitting your genre preferences doesn't make music bad. Stacking up poorly next to other artists in the same genre from the same time period in terms of objective critique does...if I hear another ISFP whine that "Radiohead sucks" for reasons that boil down to "they don't sound like AC/DC", I'm going to stab someone in the fucking eye.

"I listened to the whole Radiohead record, but I couldn't find one rockin' pentatonic blues riff, super cranked reverb-soaked arena drum beat, rippin' 128th note shred solo or lyric about gettin' drunk and lovin' my girl in my new '68 Chevy! This band SUCKS!" fucking

/rant

 

[wolfy]

Radiohead really seems to appeal to Ns.

INTPs love Radiohead and Tool. I still try to get into Tool, but I don't see the greatness.

Fair enough, I prefer Tool.

Unless there is some reason you can tie it to you can't say that certain types have an innate ability to appreciate certain types of music and some don't. All you can say is that there is a tendency for whatever reason.

There were a lot of intuitives in the thread that also said Radiohead is overrated. I thought playing the sensing card was a cheap shot. That kind of thing gets on my nerves.

 

[KDude]

Every post is just "ZOMG THIS ARTIST DOESN'T MEET MY PERSONAL EXPECTATIONS FOR WHAT GOOD MUSIC SHOULD BE LOL"

for the record, i said nothing about radiohead myself... umm, or whatever you're upset about.


but i can't believe you're expecting objectivity(?) here.

so what. people are biased.. ain't no thing

edit: for record, i like the first album and the bends. why? probably cuz i'm biased too. i'm a guitar player/tend to gravitate towards that.. i think they rocked out more on those two...and were more guitar centric. maybe a little more condensed/anthemic/pop oriented as well.

 

[EffEmDoubleyou]

Radiohead is empirically awesome, so if you say they're overrated, then your opinion is objectively wrong. In an effort to prove this, I've worked out a theory that can make you wrong regarding a matter of opinion.

Fixed.

 

[Asterion]

The best test of a bands true goodness is to see if they stand the test of time. I really don't care though, I prefer to keep the popularity of music and the quality of music separate.

 

[wolfy]

I'm starting to recognize how pointless this thread is. Every post is just "ZOMG THIS ARTIST DOESN'T MEET MY PERSONAL EXPECTATIONS FOR WHAT GOOD MUSIC SHOULD BE LOL"

which is pretty meaningless. If you're going to critique music, do it as objectively as you can by comparing the artist to other artists in a similar genre during a similar time period.

Frankly, most of you have a very parochial mold for what characteristics you expect "good music" to have and so you end up dismissing the vast majority of music by judging it in terms of some other genre that you like better. If you assume that all good music is supposed to sound like Lynyrd Skynyrd, of course Radiohead doesn't interest you. That doesn't make them bad; it makes you ignorant for saying so.

If you simply don't enjoy an entire genre, your opinion that x prominent artist from that genre is "overrated" or "bad" is just utterly meaningless, because you don't like that genre in the first place and so you have no idea how to evaluate the performance in meaningful terms.

It's like hearing 15 year old metalheads ramble on about how much the Beatles suck because when they listen to music they're looking for one very specific set of characteristics (in this case, fast, technically difficult, aggressive playing, chunky modern production EQd toward drums and guitars, and dark/menacing lyrics) and everything else just gets labeled "bad" because they don't understand how to judge a piece of music in the context of its own genre.

Not fitting your genre preferences doesn't make music bad. Stacking up poorly next to other artists in the same genre from the same time period in terms of objective critique does...if I hear another ISFP whine that "Radiohead sucks" for reasons that boil down to "they don't sound like AC/DC", I'm going to stab someone in the fucking eye.

"I listened to the whole Radiohead record, but I couldn't find one rockin' pentatonic blues riff, super cranked reverb-soaked arena drum beat, rippin' 128th note shred solo or lyric about gettin' drunk and lovin' my girl in my new '68 Chevy! This band SUCKS!" fucking

/rant

The reason I think Radiohead is overrated is not that they are not talented. Nor that they compare unfavourably with my personal favourites. It is the emotional attachment the fans have with the band, the emotional reaction of the fans. It seems out of whack.

 

[simulatedworld]

Fixed.

You sure about that INTJ label? This is a pretty sad misinterpretation of my post. There are criteria for mostly objective evaluation of music. When it comes to what you enjoy, that's all personal opinion...when it comes to what's skillfully made, that's much less subjective.

for the record, i said nothing about radiohead myself... umm, or whatever you're upset about.

For the record, I don't recall mentioning your name or indicating in any way that I was talking to you personally.

but i can't believe you're expecting objectivity(?) here.

so what. people are biased.. ain't no thing

edit: for record, i like the first album and the bends. why? probably cuz i'm biased too. i'm a guitar player/tend to gravitate towards that.. i think they rocked out more on those two...and were more guitar centric. maybe a little more condensed/anthemic/pop oriented as well.

k

 

[Magic Poriferan]

I was thinking about this the other day, and honestly... John Lennon.

I love the the Beatles, and they collectively probably are among 10 greatest musicians of the 20th century. Now, some say that the Beatles themselves are over-rated, and with the almost religious status they have, I can see why someone would say that. But they really are awesome, and incredibly influential. Over-rated perhaps, but not the most over-rated...

But let's look at their solo work.

They all had successful solo careers. I can't think of any other band where that happened. Of course everyone wants to scoff about Ringo, and I'll just let that go, and say that yeah, aside from the quality of his music, the fact that he didn't write much of his work is a major strike against him in terms of ranking him... so we'll put him in fourth.

But I may be one of the few people that would then put Lennon's career in third. In the 10 years he got to live after the Beatles, Lennon was the least prolific, and as far as I'm concerned, did lower quality work than George or Paul.

Wonderful Christmastime was in that span... and it's hard to forgive Paul for that, but it was about at the end, '79, so I'll let it slide. More often it's when I listen to much of Lennon's work, it sounds like he just phoned it in. The form too simple, the instrumentation too sparse, the lyrics often sound like an idea which was then never re-polished for musical format. A good example of that is his contraversial song, Woman Is the Nigger of the World. Yeah, I get the idea, but it sounds like he's sort of cramming the lyrics in there, like he never made the effort to turn prose into something melodic.

And that, of course, is relatively conventional. Then there's all of that garbage that he did thanks to the influence of Yoko Ono. Some people (and they are rare) insist that the stuff Ono did was genius. I never get this avante-garde, performance art stuff, myself. The problem is that it's often so alien that I don't even know what to rate it on, so I'm only left with my visceral response, and that tells me that it sounds like shit.

As far as technical skill, it's plain to see that George and Paul are both better musicians. They both could play more instruments than John, and they mastered some particular instruments better than John did with any. Ringo is also sadly underappreciated for what a good drummer he actually was.

Anyhow, what I think is the fact that John earned himself more social and political prominence post-Beatles than the others did, the fact that he seemed so experimental and innovative (even if it was all garbage), and of course the fact that he got shot, are the main reasons he's praised so much now. He is loved as a persona in a way that actually over-shadows his music.

Again, the Beatles are great, and being the third best of them still makes you a very good musician, so I'm not saying Lennon is bad, and I certainly love what he contributed to that band. But I really don't think he is the genius or the master that it has become so common to say he is.

 

[Jaguar]

I'm starting to recognize how pointless this thread is. Every post is just "ZOMG THIS ARTIST DOESN'T MEET MY PERSONAL EXPECTATIONS FOR WHAT GOOD MUSIC SHOULD BE LOL"

which is pretty meaningless. If you're going to critique music, do it as objectively as you can by comparing the artist to other artists in a similar genre during a similar time period.

Can you cry any louder? I don't think the people in New York heard you.

 

[miss fortune]

I heard him in Indiana!

 

[ajblaise]

Can you cry any louder? I don't think the people in New York heard you.

No... I definitely heard it.

 

[MacGuffin]

There were a lot of intuitives in the thread that also said Radiohead is overrated. I thought playing the sensing card was a cheap shot. That kind of thing gets on my nerves.

Cheap shot? Not if Radiohead is actually overrated.

EDIT: I'm actually listening to Radiohead right now, and their '00s output is superior to their '90s output with the exception of OK Computer.