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Most overrated band of all time?

MacNut said:
Heres the thing with U2, they are not a bad band. They just haven't changed their style in 20 years. All their music sounds similar.
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Now that I disagree with, they tried changing their sound a few times and it was always met with a lot of criticism. They changed quite a bit for Zooropa and whatever album that track "Discotheque" was on.

The inside joke about U2 is that the guitar parts consist of The Edge plucking one string followed by 5 minutes of digital delay, reverb, chorus, and pitch shifters doing the rest.
 
pointycollars said:
Tough call. I liked "In the Air Tonight", "Land of Confusion" and "Another Day in Paradise" - but you could catch me on a technicality with the last one because that was solo Phil Collins. Might file that under "over-hyped with a few good ones."
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You should go back to Peter Gabriel era Genesis and re-listen.

Also, Home by the Sea and Mama are great Phil Collins era Genesis songs. The susudio stuff really was the beginning of the end for them.

It's weird, from the mid 80's through mid 90's you couldn't go for an hour without hearing Phil Collins in some form, then he vanished.
 
Fast Shadow said:
Beatles, hands down most overrated.
U2 jumped the shark around 1990.
Oasis, all they did was rip off the Beatles and didn't even try to hide it
KISS
Aerosmith post-1990
Nine Inch Nails
Nirvana, probably the second most overrated band of all time.

Most overrated song of all time, Jimi Hendrix star-spangled banner from Woodstock.
"Miss American Pie" by Don McLean may actually be the most overrated song, though. It's pretty terrible.
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Thats a pretty good list and I'd have to agree with all of those, especially that band at the top....
 
WildPalms said:
Thats a pretty good list and I'd have to agree with all of those, especially that band at the top....
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I have one additional entry for my list, and it's conditional.

Eric Clapton's a good songwriter and a good guitarist, but his cover of I Shot the Sheriff is absolutely terrible. And people go nuts over it like he was some kind of visionary, when all he did was rip off Bob Marley the same way Pat Boone ripped off Little Richard. But then Clapton went on to do a lot of fantastic, original material without just parroting blues masters, so I wouldn't say he's overrated on the whole.

Most underrated musicians:
Alan Parsons
Steve Winwood
Peter Gabriel
Todd Rundgren
 
Killyp said:
I'm convinced that anyone who says The Beatles are overrated aren't really very musical... 😱
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I'm convinced people who say they aren't overrated only say that because they feel they have to say it. Not because they actually think it.

I'd say the Beatles were in the right place at the right time. That's it. They wrote a couple of catchy songs along the way and were marketed incredibly well. Mop top wig anyone?
 
The fact that they were as big as they were was definitely due to them being, as you say - 'in the right place at the right time', otherwise they would have been one of those obscure bands who never made it big, but still stand up as an inventive and 'special' band.

However, they did make it big. They were massive, and yet still one of the most experimental and influential bands ever.

Without The Beatles, music would be a pale shadow of what it is nowadays...
 
Radiohead (Innovative?)

I have to disagree with all the people saying the Radiohead have been innovative with Kid A etc. There were plenty of bands in the 1970's (the dead c's) especially who were doing similar things, even poeple like Stockhausen too.

One thing that Radiohead have managed to do is bring such experimental forms of audio reproduction to mainstream and commerrcial music.

BTW most overrated and overhyped is one Mr. James F#@king Blunt!
 
psychofreak said:
Whatever you think of their songs (personally I'm a big fan), the BBC's remake of Sgt Pepper's with modern bands shows that their musical talents were great by today's standards.
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A band or performer is only as good as the producer making them sound good. A lot of the Beatles success was the studio they recorded at.

If you think about it all the Beatles were was a boy band. If you go by todays standards they would never have lasted past 2 records. I think the later stuff was better then the early.
 
MacNut said:
If you think about it all the Beatles were was a boy band. If you go by todays standards they would never have lasted past 2 records.
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But they were wildly successful by the standards of their time. You can't isolate popular music from the time it was popular. Early and late Beatles and Rollings Stones are great examples, but there are obviously others. There are a lot of albums that don't get made without the groundbreaking work of, oh, Sgt. Peppers, for instance. Jimi changed what a rock guitar solo consisted of. Dark Side of the Moon changed what a well produced album sounded like. Black Sabbath changed what hard rock sounded like. "London Calling" changed the whole calculus of what rock was (and wasn't). Grunge ended the whole hair band thing. And on and on...

Re: Beatles
MacNut said:
I think the later stuff was better then the early.
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Absolutely.
 
MacNut said:
Heres the thing with U2, they are not a bad band. They just haven't changed their style in 20 years. All their music sounds similar.
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I don't see how the seven works listed at the end of this post are like each other in mood, lyric, tempo, density of arrangement, etc. Several will probably be recognized by most people and some possibly not. I likely could have taken any other seven songs across the span of U2's existence and have said that as well.

Now I'm the first to admit that I have stuff on my iPod from some artists where the whole draw for me is that all ten songs sound of a piece and I can work out to them without missing a beat or wondering which song it is because it doesn't matter and variety was not their point, nor mine in picking their album.

That's never been what U2 is about, so let's not even go any farther down the road of their stuff all sounding similar. Sure they have their arena-rockers that end up in heavy rotation and get to sound familiar even if you only hear them while trying to find a weather forecast on a rental car radio. That's not the body of their work and it's not right to call them overrated on the basis of what gets commercial play. I would not want to hear "Where the Streets Have No Name" five days a week, but then I don't think of that first when I think of U2....


So Cruel - Achtung Baby

Promenade - The Unforgettable Fire

Electrical Storm - single

Elevation - All That You Can't Leave Behind

Dirty Day (Bitter Kiss) - Please

Vertigo - How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

Summer Rain - Beautiful Day
 
John.B said:
FWIW, I've broken down and analyzed about a dozen Gilmour guitar solos. The guy is a freakin' genius (and Rick Wright with the chord voicings, amazing!)!!!
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Yeah, he's really one of the most creative soloists in rock, good singer too.

Wright's not bad either.
 
Just thought I'd chime in on the Beatles debate here.

I think the vast majority of the posters calling the band overrated are people who are only familiar with or been exposed to the early, pre-Rubber Soul work. This is especially evident in the posts that call them a "boy band" and reference how "cute" they were.

I'd say these posters make up 75% of the overrated lobby, while the remaining 25% are familiar with the Beatles entire body of word and have come to the conclusion that they're overrated. Of this group, the majority think they're very talented anyway, just not as talented as some people say they are. A small minority simply think they're bad.

To address the first group: you've really got to look beyond the early material to tracks of Revolver, The White Album and Abbey Road to really understand the genius of the band. The post '65 span of albums contains some of the most brilliant tracks ever recorded:

• Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
• Eleanor Rigby
• Tomorrow Never Knows
• A Day in the Life
• While My Guitar Gently Weeps
• Something
• I Me Mine

These were not cookie cutter songs, they were completely innovation compositions unlike anything else that was recorded at the time - heck, unless anything else on the very same albums they were a part of! - whose influence can be found in the foundation of nearly any rock track or album you hear on the radio or see being blogged about today.

To address the second group: I respectfully disagree with your opinion, but enjoy hearing your well informed thoughts. That's what these forums are for 🙂
 
i'd just like to chime in and say how ridiculous it is that U2's guitar player's name is The Edge. stage names like that are so obnoxious.
 
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