Top 10 Most Overrated Bands

Top 10 Most Overrated Bands

Written by Zeromage 63 Comments
Last Updated:: July 1, 2008

Pop music as a field of art has been notorious in exaggerating the importance of its own work. From the more naïve claims of divinity by certain artists, to the subtle interpolations of an artist’s songs to anywhere that a sound system projects, pop music has found itself as the most conspicuous signifier of the age of self-importance. Nowhere is this seen more than the fans and followers of bands who momentarily become enamored by a nuanced style. This implicit privileging of difference as the most superlative of qualities in a work of art has guided not only pop music’s actual creations, but the popular connotations of pop music itself.

When commenting on popular music in an ostensibly “credible” region, it’s always given that change and artistic metamorphosis are the common sense values for the artist, hence the privileging of the self as that which is independent and identifiable as a self in distinction of other selves. Pop music’s claim for individuality is not simply a recognition of an age which is self-obsessed in seeing itself in its individuality, but the diminution of the traditional sense of aesthetic quality as that which is the music listening experience itself. In this list, we’ll highlight how pop music has come to show itself as justifying its worth in difference purely speaking, and how music’s traditional essence in unrecognized aesthetic appeal has been lost because of this. We’ll see how these next bands have been heralded mostly for aspects that have nothing to do with the aesthetics of music, but the popular recognition of difference. It’s with this in mind that the importance of the transcendence of pop music is to become a theme for one who listens to music afterwards, which is methodically nothing more than negating oneself, one’s entire identity from the music listening experience.

10. Polyphonic Spree

Has there ever been in a band in pop music who is more deserving of the pejorative adjective “mawkish” than the Polyphonic Spree? Constituted in some ostensible negative taste in the air, The Polyphonic Spree typically saw itself as some reaction to this negativity they made up to react to. The essence of this band is a blind naïve optimism that is supposed to represent a more primal intuition for loves and hugs. Draped in white dresses and jumping around like grade school children, The Polyphonic Spree gave a new definition to what bombastic music was, which is nothing other than not recognizing how bombastic your actually being in thinking your movement where everyone can sing and shout together is genuine…like children. Backed by a multitude of vocalists and instrument players, the Polyphonic Spree played faux-orchestral music within hackneyed major scales and the most banal of feel-good platitudes that was to fool the listener into hearing simplicity. Never saying anything important and certainly never sounding important, this bombast would fall only on easily fooled ears, who would then be easily fooled by the next band who publicly expressed its shiny happy love for the universe. Indie music in general had fallen for this conscious phase and showed why any merit the genre had ever garnered had only been from the advent of the coming-of-age “I wanna be me” attitude, in the case, where supposed optimism had sprung its puerile head from the ground to see if anyone was watching. For those who actually listened to music though, only one word would stand out in their head when listening to the Polyphonic Spree…tacky.

9. Can

One day Person A had read a magazine where Can’s “Tago Mago” had been qualified as a landmark album. Person B, had fallen into the same trap previously and spent 5 dollars on a used copy on this completely un-listenable album. Person B knowing he wanted a T-Rex album from Person A, offered to trade his copy of “Tago Mago” to Person A who wanted to hear it from reading about it in a magazine as a LANDMARK ALBUM! Person B got his wish as he procured for himself “Tanx” which was much lesser known and sometimes defamed in the press. Person A was excited to listen to a LANDMARK ALBUM that he had never heard before. After a week, Person A, disparaged, lonely, vexed, and not eating much asked for his copy of “Tanx” back from Person B. Person B gave him his copy back, and reticently they went to the local record shop together to purchase a copy of “Tanx” so they both had it. Both of them together went out to the street afterwards and laid Cans “Tago Mago” in the middle of the street. Together they spent the day watching the album case with the cd inside being run over by cars, trucks, bicyclists, and their own stampeding feet when traffic had cleared. That day, Person A learned a lesson, and Person B had too much sympathy for the experience of listening to “Tago Mago” to rub it in. The lesson was not formerly stated between them both as what was silently spoken was so loud, that actual spoken words would have been too soft. Even now, the silence is too strong, and too loud to want to formerly express what happened that day, and what each heard from THE LANDMARK ALBUM that was “Tago Mago.” This lesson that they would never forget, and are best friends still today.

8. Franz Ferdinand

In the early 00’s, indie music found its 15 minutes of calling the next thing revolutionary in music that sounded like music you could dance to. Instead of the dismal attitude that indie music thought it was condemned to embody, it found that the genre could attach itself to obvious beats and still remain underground in appearance. Like most new movements, the hyperbole that surrounded the band, in this case, Franz Ferdinand was enough to make the listener at least have to check out what was going on in the actual music. Besides the 15 minute flirtation with music that was consciously not afraid to act pop, there was little to desire in the music of this band. In the first place, the songwriting was below average. The choruses were nonexistent, and the any sense of melody was diminished by the “heyyy look at me and this edgy new music” vocal delivery by Alex Kapranos. If one of the fundamental themes of this list is to highlight bands and sounds that fooled a listener into thinking they were actually good, no where is this more conspicuous than “This Fire”. A banal attempt at a rave-up song beleaguered by big beats, a shouty chorus, punk guitar, and absolutely no melody or authenticity. Their second album was even worse, with the introductory single “Do You Want To”, that shamelessly tried to recreate the jocular musings of “Take Me Out” accompanied by lyrics that were supposed to be nuanced in this same jocularity, but instead came across extremely hackneyed. The idea of edgy dance punk falls on its head in Franz Ferdinand when its realized that these songs don’t want to be listened to after their immediate comic appeal.

7. The Brian Jonestown Massacre

There has never been a band in the history of pop music who cashed in on the success of a film about them as much as the Brian Jonestown Massacre has. A band with players who can’t play their instruments, no apparent melodic choruses, and a singer who can’t carry a tune in reasonable pitch for the life of him, Brian Jonestown Massacre owed its success to the exaggeration of difference as the standard for quality in music. To show how flexible difference could be conceptually qualified, BJM exemplifies this more than any other band, because they actually never made a unique sound in their life. They were championed for being different from the immediate times, in their obsequious disposition towards 60’s flower pop. It’s one thing to ape decent bands from the past, its another to ape them and make them sound worse. It’s with the popularity of drug addiction as authenticity and incandescent pictures in music magazines that BJM became popular. This medium became focused in a movie about them and the Dandy Warhols called Dig!. The sheer amount of people who obviously knew nothing about music but would claim BJM as “the next Dylan” in every video shot had proved that no other band had come as close to BJM in being this mythologized. The idea that something would be good in the first place because it’s the “next Dylan” goes to show how inconsequential these managers and A and R types are in knowing anything about music besides quixotic headlines in a band’s profile in a modern music magazine. If you don’t believe me on the quality of BJM’s music though, don’t take my word for it and go see them live. I’m pretty sure your first band you started in 8th grade sounds as sonically coherent as this band on their best day.

6. The Cure

The Cure had a resurgence in popularity in the past 2 years mainly from children below the age of 17 who identified bright lipstick with interesting music. Interesting music was supposed to be the selling point for The Cure who wore its theatrical badge on its sleeve as publicly as Fred Astaire liked cajoling single women. The Cure, always failing to deliver sweeping choruses that the production wanted to reach and always relying on the melodramatics of Robert Smith’s vocals, saw its popularity ascend with its somber appeal to disenfranchisement, the best idea for any band who is interested in selling music to 13 year olds. “Boys don’t cry” resurfaced in its puerility. What was called simplicity in this song was privileging a lachrymose personality for the sake of its own self. “Lovesong” made it chic to over exaggerate the idea of love to aggrandized proportions, to the point of fictionally creating problems out of thin air for children to pretend the most basic of romantic tragedy’s to. All in all, the image of The Cure monstrously trumped any listening experience which was devoid of a strong sense melody and any sense of artistic restraint. In the age of expressionism (“express yourself”!) The Cure could find it’s way to fame by having big hair and playing songs mostly in minor keys, and when a song was played in major, like “Just Like Heaven”, the children would jump up and down on their beds in their lovesick personality’s that required no effort, no responsibility, no sense of magnanimity, in other words, the definition of modern love as being childish.

5. Joanna Newsom

It’s hard to image there ever being a worse singer than Joanna Newsom, who has become successful by modernity’s insistence for qualitative relativity in music. This singer/harpist who sounds like nails on a chalk board must be the work of some jocular God who is laughing at a population who takes this seriously, essentially by training one’s ears to adapt to the sound of nails on a chalk board as being good, or as good modernists we should say “relatively good”. Her album “YS” was championed for its uniqueness and nuanced arrangements that tended never to repeat. A lot of space was left open for string arrangements, harp, and upfront grating vocals that sounded like a child being whipped by a medieval school teacher. Common sense may have told Newsom to load up the production with more instruments and ambience to curtail the bitter sound of the vocals, but as always, that was the whole point, to let poor vocals stand out in their poorness as authenticity. Adding to the unlistenable vocals were songs that never ended and arrangements too subtle to ever make an impact on a listener except those who listen to music with unfounded ideas in their head of authenticity. The sycophantic praise that traversed the reviews of this album ignored the incessantly long songs and overabundance of poor singing that would be clear self-indulgence to the honest listener. Joanna Newsom greatly shows the lack of clarity in a person who listens to music like hers. Listen to what the person actual has to say in words when describing Joanna Newsom and you will understand this jargon of authenticity often revolves around the multitude of adjectives that are synonyms for “unique”.

4.Blondie

It’s with Blondie that dancing becomes wrong. Not ethically wrong, but wrong in the sense of one having no idea how to dance. Blondie has become a signature image for 80’s music which combines synth leads with basic beats and finds its appeal in being robotic. The trashy image and the chanty, identifiable choruses have added to the appeal of teenagers coming of age looking for some retro chic to attach to. That Blondie never had any shame with its Warholian dalliance goes to show an example of the unabashed acceptance of style over substance. Where any substance was found, it was quickly sublated by the overtly urban images of promiscuity.

Somehow, the younger of age found a way to dance to this actually undanceable music, by intuiting the style of the pictures and music that they were overwhelmed with. Those who ever thought that this music could be danced to (those who go to Britpop clubs without an inkling of a taste for danceable British music) ruined the fun for those who went to dance nights to enjoy classic grooves. That these fans had no instinct for swing or slide, but thought what they were doing was some purer form of expression, went to explain an analogy of one of pop music’s fundamental characteristics of championing the individual self over actual truth. Having to endure listening to this unmovable music while seeing people try to move to it created a wince in the listener who knew that groove and movement was much more appropriate in the sonic shifts of a T-Rex song. Having to come to the realization that this music has been widely accepted as good, even by the DJ, created even a more despairing sense in the music listener. Over time though, when public significance subsides in unconsciously defining music quality, the music of Blondie will be forgotten, or will serve as an example for the one time need for a transcendence of pop music.

3. The Pixies

The honest listener for the life of him doesn’t understand why he should like the Pixies. Has there ever been a band heralded as the grace of the independent genre more than the Pixies? It’s with this canard, that indie music in general is not to be taken seriously. Show the honest listener a song from the Pixies that is supposed to be one of their more finer moments. Show them “Gigantic”. A flustered look will come over them telling everyone “This sucks. This is what my high school band sounded like at the gymnasium talent show”. A boring beginner baseline, a terrible lyrical theme that was to signify a surreptitious perversity, and a vocal melody that was as interesting as how they actually looked embodied this somnolent excuse for a unique song. But this was one of the reasons why this band was popular. Because they didn’t look interesting, they were interesting, thus further proving the flexible nature of the concept of difference; A concept used so vaguely as to the point of meaninglessness, which is the sound of this band. Filled out in the Pixies essence is their singer Frank Black who can’t sing, and this is why he’s supposed to be amazing. Turn on the song “Velouria” and you will start wondering why you’re putting yourself through having to listen to a song that is so unmusical and sung so terribly. Irony, Parody, Postmodernism? You fill in the blank for all the grotesque modern connotations that have made bands this shitty so popular.

2. The Clash

The Clash are understood as gods within rock music mostly by people who like hearing “Should I stay or should I go” at bars and thinking they’re living out a sequence in a trashy movie where only the rough and tumble go to drink. A close glimpse away from the haggard leather coats and smarmy vocals though shows a band who perennially failed to write good songs. Aside from the most obvious singles, albums like “Combat Rock” and “Sandinista” were massive yawn fests in average rock with hints at dub culture. “London Calling” which was part punk and part 50’s rock was always inept in songwriting. The popularity of a song like “London Calling” is owed towards a fan base who doesn’t listen to music, but listens to ideas, in this case, ideas of political injustice and social awareness that ostensibly makes a band better and more important than what they are. Pop music’s tendency to adopt the same topical political positions regarding only the contemporary world continually shows why its embarrassing to hear what it has to say about any of these positions as their understanding of politics in general still hasn’t effloresced out of childish quixoticism.

This bratty attitude about supporting radical tendencies in bitching about modern government never grew past this most childish point. It never occurred to The Clash or any “socially aware” band of the possibility of a theoretical account of the inequality among men in general, nor of the much more primal constitution of understanding in general for any sort of idealized politic to exist. As these notions were not popular forms of radical modern politics and the chic of Chomsky, they were to never be thought of. Instead, because of The Clash we were led to believe that intelligence in rock music was equivalent to making your first political stand in the playground that was so naïve and so devoid of any actual depth in the history of statehood in general, that only the most credulous would become neophytes in this intellectual immaturity, which unfortunately happened to be an entire herd. Like many bands of their stature, people who say they like them usually don’t listen to them, but when they are talked about in a conversation, you will hear aggrandized accolades like “they changed music”, and “the world needs The Clash”. When hearing these abominable platitudes, you can be certain that The Clash never won its success off its actual music.

1. Nirvana

As is more understood than the existence of potato chips is the popular insight “After hair metal, Nirvana came in and changed everything”. What Nirvana was, was nothing other than the fulfillment of underground rock as constituting the critical quality of music. What would previously be heard as cacophonous and blatantly a-tonal was somehow heard as the greatest sound in the world of that day. This popular fulfillment though was not a victory for music itself, but the victory of immaturity as the identity of what quality music was. Years and years after Nirvana saturated popular music with despair and no real clue for how instruments were to be played, bands would adapt this same style as the evidence of their own instincts, which was negating any sense of personal transcendence for the way of a conspicuous identity in downtrodden personality.

The music itself, which often consisted of choruses where 2 or 3 words would be shouted behind 3 power chords running a speed circle, signified the absolute ease in which anyone could make non-pleasant sounding music. Its with this in mind that immaturity is not to be an analogy for simplicity like many had tried to make it out as. This immaturity in the form of the popularization of music for angry children who tended to live in 2-floor suburban houses, struck not a primal instinct for nature, but the modern instinct for entitlement, which was nothing other than one’s insistence for being angry in the face of nothing appearably worth getting angry over. The problem though, was not the fact that nature will have its say in the growth of those younger in age, but that this form to be grown out of was recognized as the most pure quality for the listener, making any sense of musical taste and development static in the face of this puerile sound.

The reason for this static sojourn in gloominess was not the musical experience of listening to Nirvana, but the most grotesque phenomena to come from the relativity of the social-human in the later half of the 20th century, which was nothing other than the idea of relativity (postmodernism) becoming herd-animalized, when outright expression (for its own sake) became the form of the herd. It’s not as if expressionism first saw its ascension in Nirvana and the popularization of vexed underground music though. It has no claim for an appearance in originality. In the earlier part of the 20th century, one was treated to the forms of this mode of music in the likes of Schoenberg (“Survivor from Warsaw”) and Alan Berg. The difference was, this music was not herded. One who went to see Schoenberg at the theater knew what he was hearing was purposely not pleasant, and was an index for madness that had no want for being identified by the herd, mostly because there was no herd to easily identify.

It’s with this in mind that we come to the most fundamental problem of pop music, which is the over exaggerating (over-rating) of bands to mass popularity and herd-mentality. There is no more identifiable band than Nirvana to display this phenomena where a band becomes over-rated purely for identities own sake, in this case, the identity for what is unmusical. This popularity for identifying in what is unmusical is the effect of popular culture in its technological developments combined with the intellectual insistence in the relativity of truth. In other words, when the camera starts taking pictures of angry children wearing dirty clothes. The challenge then for pop music, if its to win for itself true transcendence, is the negation of its own basic form, which is the negation of ones want to be seen a certain way by others via a camera or video recorder, and a rigorous turning to identifying the absolute truth in the universe. It is here where one will find how a band like Nirvana was never something to be idolized, but something to be quickly grown out of.

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63 Comments

#1 Isaac says:
March 19th, 2010 at 1:24 pm

Nirvana sucked. Get over it.

#2 avi says:
March 19th, 2010 at 10:31 am

Here’s my top 10.

10.The Rolling Stones-Spectacular band, though they have a cult following not deserved.
9.KISS-Their music sucks! How are they even considered good enough to be overrated?
8.Radiohead-I’m just not a big fan. There’s probably something i’m missing about them, but no band is as good as people think they are.
7.U2-Ditto.
6.DMB-See KISS.
5.Led Zeppelin-Even though they are my favourite band, they’re still way, way overrated.
4.Bob Dylan-Amazing songwriter, but not THAT great.
3.The Doors-Maybe the best example of a good band with a some good songs that made everyone think they’re the best thing since peanut butter.
2.Pink Floyd-I enjoy most of their songs… for 2 minutes.
Before we get to 1, some honorable mentions.
The Clash-see The Rolling Stones.
Nirvana-Ditto.
Weezer-Meh.
The Who-See Nirvana.
Oasis-Good band but they are, like, insanely popular. Didn’t make the list because enough people hate them to compensate for it.
Pearl Jam-See Weezer.
Guns ‘N’ Roses-See Oasis.
Aerosmith-Ditto.
AC/DC-ditto.
Def Leppard-See Pearl Jam
Metallica-see AC/DC.
And the most overrated band is…
1.The Beatles!-Amazing, amazing band. No band could ever be half as good as people think they are.

#3 avi says:
March 19th, 2010 at 12:15 pm

1.Floyd-They don’t even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as The Beatles, Zeppelin, The Stones and The Who. The 4 combined haven’t put out half the crap Floyd has.
2.U2-Explain to me how Bono is a good singer.
3.Prince-He sounds dated as heck.
4.Nirvana-Jesus would have forgotten them if Cobain didn’t commit suicide.
5.KISS-One of the worst bands ever.
6.Sex Pistols-Blech.
7.Eminem-Enough said.
8.Oasis and Coldplay-RRRRIIIIIPPPPPPOOOOOFFFF.
9.Grateful Dead-Never been on acid, so I can’t say I was ever a big fan.
10.Elton John and Billy Joel-since the early 80’s.

#4 otto says:
March 19th, 2010 at 3:32 pm

a vote for the flaming lips: the most overrated dreck around.
and a kiss to avi-never-been-on-acid: you are a frozen bag of fool.

#5 deej says:
March 19th, 2010 at 4:44 am

You put The Pixies and the Cure on the overrated list?! At the same time having Oasis as the best band of the 90’s on another list? Huh? On the overrated list where is Areosmith, Coldplay, U2, Van Hagar, Greenday, any R+B singer after 1976, Midnight Oil, The Cult, Poison, Godsmack, The Grateful Dead? The Pixies and the Cure were originals that paved the way for bands like Radiohead ect ect. And half of these bands nobody has ever heard of them, how can you be overrated if you’re unknown?

#6 avi says:
March 19th, 2010 at 11:38 am

I forgot to mention The Dave Matthews Band and The Eagles. And otto:”and a kiss to avi-never-been-on-acid: you are a frozen bag of fool”? huh?????