Top 10 Most Overrated Songs

Top 10 Most Overrated Songs

Written by Zeromage 52 Comments
Last Updated:: June 18, 2009

The traditional list of overrated songs include songs that are patently overrated. This list however will feel the need to make evident those overrated songs that aren’t as obviously overrated to the casual listener. That being said, this list will piss people off because there will be songs on here that the reader will think are timeless or classic. This list will debunk the mythology placed on some of these songs by showing their boring quality, their average quality, and their tricks that make them seem better than they actually are. Some of the “best bands of all time” are on this list. This is not to say that we are condemning the bands, but just the specific songs, so take care before the commenting is in defense of the band rather than the song.

10. Light my Fire- The Doors

The live versions of this song are full of Jim Morrison pontificating on solipsistic poetic themes. Then comes the song. One of the more boring songs of all times, but for some reason immensely popular. It’s hard to image a chorus as dull as Morrison’s delivery of “Come on baby light my fire”; not just vocally dull, but just as lyrically dull. The only thing interesting about the song is the resonant funeral organ that’s fortunately mixed as high as Jim Morrison’s limited vocal capacity. Still, instrumentation aside, nothing could save the song from being just a very regular song. It is regular at it’s core. It doesn’t move fast nor slow. It doesn’t want to do anything other than be bored with itself. This works to some songs advantages. The La’s for example were masters at this, but Light my Fire just comes across as plodding psychedelia.

9. Radiohead – Creep

Radiohead are a great band (as you can see on our Top 10 90’s Bands list) but this song is too representative of the early 90’s (American culture at it’s arguably worst moment). Oh so much pain, too much pain. I suck, beat me up (I’m already being beaten up). Oh the irony, “I wish I was special”. Wait, you mean that you never took this as Irony in what Thom Yorke was delivering? No wonder why you were getting your ass beat and listening to this song. No wonder why you were getting overjoyed by sneaking out of the house and drinking with all your other loser friends relating to each other in your pretend suburban nightmares. Oh the misery of it all! Wasn’t Euthanasia legal back then?

8. U2- I still Haven’t found what I’m looking for

This song sucks. Wow. U2 have two places on this list. It’s not their fault though that their shitty songs are over appreciated by a insipid mass. What the fuck is Bono looking for? Why does he keep wondering that there is something to look for. Who gives a shit? This gesture I guess is supposed to be spiritual. You know, you’re at a low point, a mid-life crisis and you don’t know what you’re looking for in your life so you get in your car and start crying as this song comes on. Isn’t that what you see on the TV? People going in cars crying about things that don’t matter. Oh, now I know why you like this song so much, because you can be endless searching for the sake of being emotional just like the people on the TV!

7. Drops of Jupiter – Train

Uh Oh. That piano beginning. This is when Train were going to be taken seriously for the first time. Part modern country, part pop, vastly mainstream. Lyrics mixing the elements into pseudo-poetical form. The formula is all there. And just when you thought the formula wasn’t need in any other formulation, you have the ending with the endless Na’s. This was really a great song. It was like every other song that had to be heard of as good. This had to be a good song like all the other songs that had to be good. It had strings to it sweeping up into the final chorus. When will these gestures ever become exhausted? “Si seulement une nation de philosophes a existé” – Rene Descartes

6. Van Morrison- Brown Eyed Girl

Poor Van Morrison. All those above-average songs and only remembered for this one “party song”. Hyper happy, hyper soulful and never possible of being disliked (“What’s wrong with you man! This is Van Morrison”!). A chorus everyone can sing too. A chorus a monkey can sing too. We can all sing together in Brown Eyed girl; Man, Woman, Child, Monkey, Grasshopper. Everyone, cmon, lets get altogether, arms around each other….here comes the chorus…..SOCIAL EJACULATION! You made it in western society. You sang an obvious song with obvious people at an obvious place.

5. Nirvana- Smells like Teen Spirit

It wasn’t Kurt Cobain’s fault that this song was overrated. It wasn’t a bad song. It was transformational for a generation and deserves credit for this movement that was heard in the song. But it wasn’t transformation for anyone else, at least it wasn’t supposed to be if children (also including “adults”) could only find the will to create their own identities from the knowledge of their absence from a past presence. Their different context couldn’t be understood as being absent from this time when every time they flipped on VH1 or MTV there some goon saying “This song changed music”. Platitudes and tropes; the artistic stabilization of what was always meant to be forgotten. If only Cobain could live in that world, he would still be alive today.

4. Greenday- Good Riddance (Time of your life)

Meta-emotional in delivery. It’s a time for graduation. Graduation from high school, and if you go to a below-average college, another high school style graduation. An endless amount of nostalgia pricking at the bellows of forgettable memories, or unforgettable memories that would be forgettable if not for the neurotic impulse to self-define in every single event that happened in one’s life. Greenday must feel the same as the high school graduate. Judging by their hair styles now (How old are they now, mid 40’s?) they’re still on the brink of finishing their final class and earning that final C in the “general science” class, the class for…you know…people who don’t take Physics or Chemistry. The time of their lives, your life, the most average life.

3. U2- Beautiful Day

This song is a pile of tricks. It’s exploding predictable chorus is trick number 1, and it’s not that it’s a difficult trick to perceive. It’s difficult for anyone who sees U2 as anything other than “great”; an impenetrable band who writes only quality music. Well this song is complete shit. The chorus isn’t even catchy. With an entrance and soar in the production at least make it catchy. Instead it’s a big pile of shit. It’s come downs and massive builds up back and forth. It’s wedding songs for couples who think they’re different from those other wedding couples who play “cheesy” music. U2 cut the cheese on this song. Some people just aren’t smelling the stink.

2. The Long and Winding Road- The Beatles

Paul McCartney’s masturbation session in Burt Bacharach tropes could only sound as boring as it’s intent. One wonders who can listen to this song consistently. Certainly one can come across this song in the Beatles catalogue and hear McCartney’s immense insecurity of never having written a song as good as John, but to listen to it again? This is highly improbable unless one feels they have to like the Beatles because they are afterall “The Beatles”. This song is slow, lacking in any passion, lacking in everything that makes a song good. It just moves on record waiting to be heard because it was written by someone in The Beatles…but by the weak songwriter in The Beatles.

1. The Pixies – Gigantic

Fucking boring ass bassline. Some ugly ass whining in back. Some stupid ass talking about “everyday” bullshit in the guise of importance. Shitty ass production. Predictable guitar noise, more predictable overdrive in the chorus. A repeating chorus with poor and obvious insinuations. The same thing again. Complete trash. The instinct of Indie music epitomized. The diminution of everything musical from centuries past. Not only one of the most overrated songs of all time, but likely the worst song ever put to record.

52 Comments

#1 Amy says:
March 18th, 2010 at 11:53 am

Great list.

#2 PHI says:
March 18th, 2010 at 11:59 am

Shitty list.

#3 Brian says:
March 18th, 2010 at 12:34 pm

Smells Like Teen Spirit is NUMBER 9 on rolling stone’s TOP FIVE HUNDRED SONGS OF ALL TIME. Its consistently voted the best song of the 90s by VH1. And it defined a generation. But oldwizard.com says its not a transformation for anyone else. Hm. I wonder who we should believe.

#4 Brian says:
March 18th, 2010 at 12:46 pm

Do you guys honestly think anyone cares what you think about music? You guys consistently put Oasis above the Beatles on your lists. And you obviously hate Nirvana and U2 because you want to bring down any band that could be considered bigger than Oasis.

How about Live Forever and Wonderwall? Those songs are massively overrated if you ask me.

#5 Adam says:
March 18th, 2010 at 1:19 pm

I’ve been reading this site for a long time, but I rarely ever leave a comment. I had to leave a comment on this list though. Not because of the article, but the comments I’m already seeing here. Don’t you guys get tired of putting all this work into these lists (its seems like you do put some work into them, as they are usually well written and oftentimes pretty damn funny) only to have some thoughtless morons leave a comment like “shitty list”? I thought I’d let you know that you have at least one fan, who enjoys reading the stuff you guys put out. Honestly, this site has entertained me for a couple of years now. Nice work!

#6 Scott says:
March 18th, 2010 at 3:11 pm

More like “Good songs that I will call overrated so that I get some traffic”.

Let me predict the next list.
“Top 10 Most Overrated Movies”
10. Casablanca
9. The Godfather
8. Citizen Cane
7. Jaws
6. Star Trek
5. Silence Of The Lambs
4. Forrest Gump
3. Shawshank Redemption
2. Titanic
1. Sonic The Hedgehog

#7 BERSERKR says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:15 pm

I have no real problem with this list, U2 especially i have NEVER liked, the one that confuses me though is the Pixies song, all the other songs are very well known songs, i have never heard that pixies song in my life:P shouldn’t you have used the one at the end of Fight Club?:P

#8 The Mountain says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:15 pm

Woop! Sonic #1!

#9 The_cheat says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:50 pm

Yes! I couldn’t agree with this list more. Greenday is one of the worst bands I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Whoever wrote this list is a genius. Maybe even a god. And I will bow down and worship you as soon as I am done with this comment.

#10 one eyed willie says:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:22 pm

U2 is awesome. And this list is crap.

#11 one eyed willie says:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:22 pm

Scott, are you implying your favorite movie is titanic? Are you a homo?

#12 Chris says:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:25 pm

Where’s Wonderwall?

#13 Scott says:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:27 pm

@one eyed willie
No. I only saw Titanic once, and laughed the whole way through, especially when everyone died.

#14 Greg says:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:29 pm

Wonderwall IS overrated, but Ryan Adams has a great version of that song. I hear that’s even the version that Oasis plays live now.

#15 Bob says:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:36 pm

What about these songs?:

Freebird
Like a Rolling Stone
Pour Some Sugar on Me
How You Remind Me
When I Come Around
Hey Jude
Any Backstreet Boys Song
Any Brittney Spears Song

#16 George says:
March 18th, 2010 at 6:42 pm

First off Bob, no one with any actual interest in music would ever give a good review to Def Leppard, Britney Spears, or the motherfucking Backstreet Boys. Second, just because you have no fucking patience, and can’t listen to a song longer than 5 minutes, it doesn’t mean the song sucks.

Brian, Rolling Stone and VH1 suck. And not just at the level Jar Jar Binks sucks, they suck at the level Hayden Christensen sucks. Any magazine that puts the fucking Jonas Brothers on the cover, and any network that gives Bret Michaels his own reality show is a cause of evil and suffering that must be liquidated.

Don’t worry, like all of you, I want to punch Zeromage in the jaw every time he says Oasis is better than The Beatles, but Oasis doesn’t suck. And I hate most 90’s bands with a passion, so not hating them is not fun to type. The Gallengers are assholes, but they’ve made some excellent music, way better than the usual Top 40 shit.

#17 Patrick says:
March 18th, 2010 at 8:47 pm

This list is bound to get a reaction with all of the popular groups listed here.

#18 Sage says:
March 18th, 2010 at 8:53 pm

Who let ZM out?!?! God damn it he’s writing about music again…. I told DM this would happen!

#19 Anthony says:
March 18th, 2010 at 10:28 pm

If Kurt Cobin (sp?) would not have died his band would just have faded away like lots of great bands have over time.

#20 Mind Crime says:
March 18th, 2010 at 10:45 pm

Great list. I hate the pixies.

#21 Loeb Sucks says:
March 18th, 2010 at 1:03 am

Good list.

#22 Brian says:
March 18th, 2010 at 1:41 am

superior list. The pixies should just be up there as a whole

#23 HulkBuster says:
March 18th, 2010 at 3:34 pm

You guys should have put “How you Remind Me” on this list at #1.

#24 Galaxy says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:46 pm

Freebird is undoubtedly one of the most overrated songs of all time. It definitely should have made this list.

#25 Derek says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:18 pm

Haha…the Beatles are overrated? You guys are idiots.

#26 Neutrality says:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:37 pm

Brian, are you aware that we care if you think no one cares about what Old-Wizard thinks about music? Ask me, i’ll give you answer you might be familiar with due to Women. Now, great list, i do honestly get tired of hearing Nirvana’s ‘Smell’s Like Teen Spirit,’ the rest i’ve heard about, never personally heard them though… until now.

#27 Vince says:
March 18th, 2010 at 3:45 pm

This site is fucking retarded.

#28 else3573 says:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:49 pm

I absolutely agree with Beautiful Day and Creep. never liked either song (The only good thing about Creep is the way the guitar comes in so staccato at the beginning of the hook, and Beautiful Day is just garbage), however, if you’re going to pick a U2 song, Stuck In A Moment That You Can’t Get Out Of was absolute crap.). Also, it seems you are looking for songs to somehow solve all of humanity’s problems, or be musical masterpieces. Drops of Rain was actually a pretty song IMO, and Smells Like Teen Spirit, though not Nirvana’s greatest track, DID save us from the hair band era, and get the general public listening to a much better class of music. Not all music needs to make a difference, some times it’s nice to have some innocent (some say mindless), but catchy music to sing along with, like Brown Eyed Girl, another good track. You sound awfully bitter in these reviews….

#29 Omar says:
March 18th, 2010 at 3:51 pm

Way to be the hard core rebel and pick songs that, for the most part, are pretty good songs. The Beatles suck. The Pixies suck. Nirvana sucks. Just listen to your Marilyn Manson and stop making lists that make you look retarded. Can’t believe I just wasted 5 minutes with this thing.

#30 HK says:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:09 pm

@Omar:

You’re right, the Pixies do suck.

#31 chrisnightbird says:
March 18th, 2010 at 2:28 pm

Wow! I don’t know what to say. But yes… Oasis does suck for the most part. Wonderwall is one of the most yawn-worthy songs in Rock and Roll history.

#32 Frank says:
March 18th, 2010 at 6:36 pm

I’ve spent a good portion of the last hour looking over your musical opinions and I have to say you are well spoken, and I thought many of your points have been valid, until I noticed that you have absolutely no idea what music is about unless it came from the crate full of your dad’s vinyl. Your buddy Destructomaximo seems to understand why the Pixies were amazing, why don’t you pull Liam Gallagher’s dick out of your mouth for a little while and let him educate you.

#33 Frank says:
March 18th, 2010 at 6:38 pm

also… good call on the Doors. They should never have existed.

#34 Durham1984 says:
March 18th, 2010 at 9:12 am

Oh Wow, totally agree with Your Van Morrison Pick. He has so much stuff that is way better, “Tuepelo Honey”, “Jackie Wilson Said”, “Moondance”, Etc… Good List! Oh but what about “Freebird” By Lynyrd Skynyrd, and “Mustang Sally” By Wilson Pickett? XD

#35 Odyssey says:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:06 am

lol@u for having a Beatles song on here, especially The Long and Winding Road. And to say Paul is the weak songwriter? Please, give me some of whatever you and Lennon were smoking.

#36 Max says:
March 18th, 2010 at 10:29 am

The Doors, The Pixies?!

You can fuck right off mate.

#37 Relayer71 says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:29 am

HAHA! A list I agree with for once!!! And I actually do like some if not most of the songs on this list but I can totally understand where the author is coming from and he’s right on many points.

#38 Delta says:
March 18th, 2010 at 1:40 am

So was this list altered partially or completely?

#39 Justin says:
March 18th, 2010 at 3:55 am

Why no Linkin Park or Enter the Sandman by Metallica?

#40 Fedricco Rabaya says:
March 18th, 2010 at 2:32 am

The new song of Taylor Swift is very overrated.

#41 Scott K says:
March 18th, 2010 at 1:44 pm

just cos you dont like them doesnt mean their bad

#42 Omar says:
March 18th, 2010 at 2:43 pm

Is anybody on this stupid site even old enough to drive? Taylor Swift? You are all why Al Queda hates us.

#43 David says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:58 am

Wow, this list is boring. Next time when you do a list try to include other genres instead of just rock. Not having any of some of the terrible pop music released over the years makes this list invalid.

#44 avi says:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:16 pm

1.Smells Like Teen Spirit
2.We Will Rock You
3.Beautiful Day
4.Another Brick In The Wall
5.The Long And Winding Road
6.Carry On My Wayward Son
7.Born In The USA
8.Hotel California (Which is still a good song.)
9.Wonderwall
10.Gimme Shelter

#45 TheWarfreak says:
March 18th, 2010 at 4:11 pm

About ‘Creep’: “this song is too representative of the early 90’s (American culture at it’s arguably worst moment)”

I’ve often thought that Radiohead was representative of America’s worst cultural moments…oh wait, I guess that would be ridiculous because they aren’t from America…

#46 Jake says:
March 18th, 2010 at 11:06 am

About ‘Creep’: “this song is too representative of the early 90’s (American culture at it’s arguably worst moment)”

I’ve often thought that Radiohead was representative of America’s worst cultural moments…oh wait, I guess that would be ridiculous because they aren’t from America…
———————————————–
Idiot, their music is still played and liked in America though.
Agreed about creep, “I’m a creep, i’m a weirdo” wah wah wah i wanna die wah wah wah.
America like’s angst and introverted music.

#47 kevin says:
March 18th, 2010 at 2:38 pm

Yeah the song was a huge hit in America. I didn’t see the list claim Radiohead was American.

#48 Troll 4 Life says:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:02 pm

Most overrated songs:*

10. “Satisfaction,” The Stones**
9. “Freebird,” Lynyrd Skynyrd
8. “November Rain,” Guns ‘n Roses
7. “Plug in Baby,” Muse***
6. “In Da Club,” 50 Cent
5. “Idioteque,” Radiohead****
4. “Last Nite,” The Strokes
3. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Nirvana#
2. The Entire Discography of Oasis.
1. “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” Green Day

*In order to qualify, the song in question has to be at least somewhat critically acclaimed. Obviously bad songs like “Carry on my Wayward Son” and “Achy Breaky Heart” don’t count, because everyone hates them. Similarly, I can’t pick any obviously stupid songs that people love none the less, because they’re obviously stupid, so no “More Than a Feeling” or anything by Kiss.

**Why is it that a band that has created so many great songs that soar above this one is remembered for their first hit? It’s a good song, but compared to “Brown Sugar,” “Tumblin’ Dice,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Moonlight Mile,” “Paint it Black,” and “Jumping Jack Flash,” it’s loads behind.

It would be like if The Beatles were mostly remembered for “Twist and Shout,” it’s not fair.

***When a Rush fan like myself thinks a band is overblown and pretentious, you know you’ve gone too far. Muse is incapable of toning it down for even a second, or changing their style, and the singer doesn’t even sound like a human.

****This is coming from a man who loves The Bends and OK Computer, but Kid A? The album had no tunes, why did it become number one on every critics “Album of the Decade” list.

#Let’s face it, the grunge and post grunge eras of music have been exponentially worse than the hair band era, I’d take Skid Row over Nickelback and Creed anyday.

#49 Troll 4 Life says:
March 18th, 2010 at 5:03 pm

Oh, and fuck you Zeromage, Oasis fucking sucks, and you’ll be trolled for life, hence my name, for your sins. I’m the fucking end all and be all of your miserable existence.

Top 10 Most Overrated Songs

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