Pretty much all of them.
It’d be easier to ask which bands do deserve their recognition.
Well easy answer is Taylor Swift, she’s a fine singer but not amazing, samey lyrics, like the McDonald’s of music. Is she a band? Idk. Agree with KISS.
It sounds like you don’t like pop music. 1989 is an objectively good album. I don’t know anything else about any of her other music, but that single album is DENSE with well executed main stream pop.
Having said that, should tickets to see her be as expensive as they are? Should people be as obsessed with her as they are? No on both counts.
I like a lot of pop music, mostly synth pop, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Hall and Oates, Billy Ocean, Howard Jones, Michael Jackson (yea). I listened to the album, it’s definitely well produced and catchy but I didn’t hear anything new at all, it’s very formulaic, which is fine for pop music of course but she’s definitely not doing anything new or exciting so I don’t get the hype at all. It’s good pop music sure, but filling stadiums? People flying around the world? I dunno. It’s more a cult of personality.
I think they should be upfront with people that when they go to her concert, they’re not hearing her sing live, at least most of the time, and they are not hearing the band play live.
It should be obvious that no singer could do several 3-hour shows a week for more than a year, and not have it affect her voice.
Just check out the Wings of Pegasus YouTube channel, to see where two different concerts in different countries had exactly the same music (vocal and instrumental).
I know several people who spent thousands of dollars to see her in concert. I’m not going to go out of my way to ruin the memory for them. They got the experience they wanted. But I’m also not going to pretend that it was a musical experience.
Imagine Dragons, ugh, music designed for car commercials and 8th graders, fucking rip my ear drums out.
I’d just add that I think part of their popularity comes from their “safe” image. You put on an Imagine Dragons song, you know you’re getting a pretty apolitical “pop-rock” song, not like those dumb hippies from the 70s or those indie-rock losers. Which I think sucks, to be clear.
whats wrong with imagine dragons?
They only seem to release music if they think it’ll do nothing but make major success through radio and appease record labels.
See their song ‘Thunder’.
Coldplay.
Their music doesn’t move me in any way (except to turn it off). Can someone please point out any good bit of any song? I’m willing to try, but everything I’ve heard for years is just musical mush.
We at least got a goated meme from them…
Coldplay is a band where I can recognize that there is talent, but I just cannot like them. The songs “Clocks,” “Yellow,” and “Viva la Vida” are good. Outside of those, I just don’t like them.
Maybe you find it sounds a little like some other song that came after this one.
WOW!
I think it hit different when they were contemporary. They sounded like nothing else on the radio. Ironically their songs were a breath of fresh air.
Adding on to your three, I’ll raise Shiver… especially that riff! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8XFFTWwSvY
Their songs The Scientist and Clocks are emotive and memorable. Besides those they sound like a safe and watered-down mid era Radiohead.
Coldplay is musical morphine: You’re either using it for a reason or you’re an addict.
Have you listened to their first few albums? They really went down the soulless pop music route after Viva La Vida IMO
Theres a remix of the song Yellow by Khost and FKYA (no idea who they are) that slaps hard. But thats it.
Not exactly what you’re asking, but Nickelback was a passing good rock band with several great songs. How they became the punching bag of bad bands I’ll never really understand.
They are like vanilla with vanilla sauce on top.
They are “radio rock” personified.
So you’re saying they defined a genre
Nope. Just personified it.
Nickelback has some great songs I still jam to. They’re just generic radio rock that doesn’t offend people. See also: Creed. Until Scott Stapp offended people.
Noone can tell the difference between Creed and Nickleback. I think that is part of the problem.
With legs wide opennnn
I remember it seemed like every time I got in the car at their peek they would be on. I always just assumed it was because Canada has always about the minimum amount of canadian content played.
Exactly my thought, Kiss is like royalty free muzak rock.
Exactly, also if you ever seen their photos in magazines from back in the 70s, they would have Pyro and spit out fake blood. If you never heard any of their songs just based on the visuals, you would think they were some deep disturbed hard-core metal but when you listen to their songs, it sounds like something you would hear on Sesame Street.
It was only really Gene Simmons that gave that vibe. I mean, ones a cat and another has a star.
I bought this album (Meatloaf, Bat out of Hell) back when you went to record stores and flipped through albums and bought something because the cover looked cool. I was already listening to Judas Priest, Iron Maiden… I was like wtf is this. Never understood that genre. And yeah, kiss sucks too.
Theatrical rock. Big outside the US. A lot of Americans don’t seem to dig it.
The fact that people acted like they didn’t know what he wouldn’t do for love tells me all I need to know about the haters. He spells it out pretty clearly. He won’t move on and fall in love again. He’s an immortal who fell for a mortal woman. She asked for all these things he could do. Then she said after she dies he should find love again. He said that’s it, that’s the line I won’t cross.
They only heard the radio edit, which completely cut that section of the song where he spells it out. Radio didn’t want to play a 12 minute song.
I was gonna say the video exists, but the video is about 7 and a half minutes while the album version is 12 and change.
One of my favourite songs right now is a Japanese song that’s around 11 minutes long. One of my favourite English songs is around ten minutes. I like long songs. I am aware that longer songs exist (RUSH’s 2112 being over 20 minutes, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly being something like 12-15 minutes, Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Hallowed Be Thy Name by Iron Maiden being around 10 minutes (sometimes much longer live), and I’ve even heard of modern songs reaching an hour or more. And some meme/concept songs that go for hours. Then you have concept albums that are meant to be listened to as a whole (as opposed to 2112 which was broken up into tracks). But I do like a few pretty long songs.
Meatloaf is a classically trained opera singer, and wanted to make rock ballads. I can understand people not getting it. Bat out of Hell II, Back into Hell was where he really hit his stride.
Meatloaf just had this annoying voice that made his music unbearable, the instrumentation is kinda ok if you like bloated overdramatic arena rock.
Being an anti-wax asshat, he died of COVID a couple of years ago. He was gonna do anything for love, but he wouldn’t do that.
KISS was mediocre rock at best. They have a few good songs. They are/were stage performers. Same with Gwar. Same with Insane Clown Posse. And KISS have done a lot to entertain their fans. They’re fine.
Most popular music is popular because a lot of people like it. I never much cared for Taylor Swift, but I decided to try her new album. I pay for music streaming, so it didn’t cost me anything. Turns out I really like most of it! Listened to her previous album and it doesn’t hit the same. So I’m not a Swiftie after all. Same with Kendrick Lamar. He was doing the Super Bowl last year so I listened to his latest album. I still play GNX from time to time.
Find what you love but don’t yuck somebody else’s yum.
If you like GNX try going waaaaaaaay back to the old old stuff, like his K Dot mixtakes back before he went by Kendrick Lamar. I think you can still find those on DatPiff, or at least you could add of a few years ago.
hype? Pretty much any because hype is almost always artificial.
But fans? I can’t say any band/performers don’t deserve their fan base. You pull the crowds that need what you’re making, so you inherently deserve them.
I can say that some fans do over hype the talents of what they like. It’s perfectly okay to be a middle range musician, and it’s perfectly fine to like them and recommend them exactly as they are.
Like, backstreet boys. Solid pop boy band. Had some great songs, but most were just okay pop. None of the members can really be compared to someone like Freddy Mercury, or Pavarotti, or Marvin Gaye, but they all had good voices to some degree or another and used them well. But their fan base back in the day was all about the hype, the fannishness of it. So they got hyped way beyond what they were.
That’s the curse of a lot of pop performers, and it is the curse of teen/tween targeted pop for sure.
A lot of that kind of performer has to totally undo their family friendly (which is a bullshit term to begin with) focus to ever really grow musically. Look at pretty much every Disney escapee for examples. Timberlake, arguably the best example of someone escaping that trap without having to piss off the original fan base, still drags some of that curse with him while producing some very good pop music.
Now, KISS? Since that’s the example in the post, I think you run into the trouble of hindsight. At the time they gained their initial popularity and success, they were a damn great live band. A KISS show back then was something most people had never seen, and the hype was justified
But they suffer from the success curse. Other people took what they did and did it better. So now the hype is essentially all nostalgia, so it feels out of place. Legit, go back and check out footage of their live shows and compare it to the standard rock bands of the same eras. It wasn’t until they went full idiot and tried to abandon the makeup (and all that went with it) that they lost the thread. At that point, they kept trying to summon up what they’d lost and never regained their mojo. At this point, a KISS show just doesn’t do justice to what the hype says. It can’t, because it isn’t the same band despite being mostly the same people.
But they were always mid tier songwriters (even the ones I fucking love were mid tier compared to a band like The Band that I tend to enjoy less).
So, that kind of thing is why I don’t jump on hype or shit on hype. It’s usually artificial, and it’s also usually generated by dint of numbers. So hype never carries well.
But it’s also why I never object or care about someone like Taylor Swift having a massive fan base either. She writes and performs for her target audience. She does that very well, no matter what else anyone thinks about her. Any pop performer is trying to do exactly that. Even niche subgenre performers that are actually trying to sell their music try to find a way to target a fan base (even if it’s only people that would object to being called a fan base).
I would, at this point in my life, also say that at least checking out hype can be worth it. Even if you don’t like whatever it is, you’ve shared something with other people, and that’s a net positive. Plus, you might run into a few songs you do like from someone you don’t otherwise enjoy (like shake it off from Swift for me)
If anyone says Rush, I will find you…oh yes, I will find you.
Rush.
(Just saying that so you pop by, and we can listen to some Rush together, maybe also some Yes, Hawkwind, Floyd, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, early Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Dream Theater, Fleetwood Mac, and Golden Earing’s Radar Love.)
I’ll say Rush, too, if it can get me in on this action.
Count me in, thats a great lineup
Not really able to be overrated anymore as you’ll be hard pressed to find an under 30 who even knows them.
But also its impossible for them to be overrated ;)
Rush is goddamn terrible. Every song changes tempo 12 times so the drummer can show off.
The Pass changes tempo?
Now tool, it can get trippy and complex. But rush has 19 albums and theyre all pretty different, not a lot of them are actually that proggy.
For me, it’s Oasis. When they reformed recently to play some shows, it was headline news across the UK.
They’re an okay band, but far from being anything special.
Oasis always sounded like they were imitating the concept of emotion, in their music, rather than actually expressing any. I don’t believe Liam and Noel Gallagher have ever felt any emotions beyond disdain for one another
They’re musically enjoyable but I do feel like we, as a society, need to truly reckon with how bad Oasis’s lyrics are. My general thought is that they wrote the music first and then said “well let’s not worry about having coherent lyrics, let’s just have me singing words that sound good at the right time in the song”.
Sex Pistols. Don’t get me wrong I like them, but they were children who made one album and were barely a band for a year. Their hype really comes down to the story of Sid and Nancy’s deaths.
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My understanding is that it was a more or less some kids that hung out at the same stores in a mall.
Edit: I looked it up. They hung out in Vivian’s Westwoods clothing store, Sex. Westwood and another fashion guy from those stores managed and styled them. Sounds like Westwood might have even fed them lines that became lyrics. They barely knew how to play their instruments for a solid chunk of that time.
Sounds like a boy band to me.
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Sid was the OG sex pistols ultra-violent megafan. The manager put him in the band basically as fan service.
Ghost. It’s just not metal. You can be into it and I’m not going to judge you or anything, but just stop calling it metal, it’s arena rock. Sticking feathers up your ass doesn’t make you a chicken.
Same thing with Avril Lavigne when she first came out I remember a lot of people on TV as well in my personal life would call her the queen of punk no, she is not punk just because somebody wears leather arm guards and has a shitty attitude doesn’t make you punk.
You just don’t get it, man, punk isn’t about rebellion, community, individualism, and anti-authoritarianism, it’s about wearing ties with wifebeaters and singing about boys!
Now I’m gonna sing about a sk8er boy and sell t-shirts at hot topic.
That’s #punkasfuck
Its arena rock for sure, but they put on a damn good show and dont use any backing tracks, so much much respect compared to all the fake ass bands nowadays !
Metal does not always need to be about screaming lyrics, fast-paced instrumentals and catchy solos and riffs. It comes in a lot of forms. If you were expecting Ghost to be yet another band where the vocalist is barking lyrics or wailing them whichever, the instrumental to be just plain heavy, then yeah I can see why you’re disappointed.
Also Arena-Rock is quite frankly a more horrible thing to classify them as. They just simply don’t fit that mold whereas Journey would.
It’s not metal. It’s definitely arena rock.
Nirvana… And I say that as a pretty big fan of them. I have no idea how they became the biggest band in the world. They were really really good, but I’m surprised by how much commercial success they had.
There weren’t a lot of radio friendly songs. Nobody knew what the lyrics were. For all the bands that try so hard to be commercially successful, Nirvana didn’t try much at all and still succeeded.
I saw them here, before they got famous. They did a big tour in a white van, played a bar here with a crowd of about 30 people! Bought the last shirt from the hands of Kurt, I had absolutely no idea they would get famous, they were so far from anything getting played on the radio. I only knew about them because my brother’s friend gave me a tape with them, Mudhoney, Tad.
Swear to God I cannot predict to save my life but live a few years in the future. You could have knocked me down with a feather when they got famous, and I think they were just as surprised.
I agree with you. They were good but not great.
Please tell me you have the shirt and can post a photo
Sadly I lost it, could not wear it in public back then, it had the circles of hell on the front and profanity on the back Fudge Packing Crack Smoking Satan Worshipping Mother Fuckers. White with pink print.
And yes if I had ANY idea they would get so big I would have asked them to sign it and kept it, I cut it up a little and wore it to shows and don’t remember what happened to it. Really this was like 35 years ago! Maybe more. The club was the Masquerade in Ybor City in Tampa, back when it wasn’t all bars and was still kinda rough.
I dunno, smells like teen spirit hit pretty hard. It was a new sound and many people’s first exposure to grunge. I agree, there are better bands (STP was better than Nirvana and I’m dying on that hill). But they were first, and it explains how they blew up overnight.
I never liked Nirvana other than a song or two. They had Dave Grohl and that explains a lot. Plus Kurt was an icon. Their success didn’t bother me. But I felt others did grunge better.
And they released three studio albums.
True, but 2 of them (bleach and in utero) are pretty rough and not polished for radio.
But I did and do love them.
They didn’t understand why they got big either. Such a tragedy.
Lemmy tell you why you’re wrong. JK you can’t fix stupid! Also jk you’re not stupid for having an opinion. I’m just bored waiting for my 3 year old to finish pooping kids still need help wiping their ass at this age but I do love Nirvana…got me through a lot of tough times. Listen to them live at the reading festival it might change your mind.
I love Nirvana. I’m a big fan. But in 1991 nobody would predict they’d become such a commercial success.
Grateful Dead
Yes they are very good musicians. Yes some good lyrics & songs.
But Christ are they overrated. I usually went to their concerts primarily to stock up on acid
I think people just like their logos and brand first and music last except ‘Touch of Grey’.
Christ are they overrated.
Overrated in what respect, though? What are critics / fans saying about them that you feel is over the top? For me, they were a significant folk rock band and cultural experience that formed a kind of haven from the world at large. They had plenty of groovin’, pleasant songs & jams that I could sincerely recommend, but I’m not really sure in what way they might be “overrated.”
Purely a single anecdote but not uncommon
One of my college roommates discovered the Dead our first year. By Junior year he literally listened to nothing else and had hundreds & hundreds of bootlegs. "Let’s listen to They Love Each Other, a concert from the early 80s, maybe at the Filmore? Let’s see… there’s Jan 27, 1982… or Aug 14th, 1983… "
And OMG on and on about what amazing musicians/songwriters they are. But I’m hearing what sounds TBH like semi-literate bluegrass. Hard to play, but not exactly complex composition or lyrics.
“They’re so honest and pure and noncommercial!”
Oh fucken gag me with a spoon they are multimillionaires many times over. And’ don’t tell me they never sold out, I’ll point at Touch of Grey
OVER. RATED.
Oh fucken gag me with a spoon
You GO, Valley Girl! :D
But yeah, I get your point, there. I used to be casual friends with someone who sounds like your roommate, with a massive collection of live performances. I would listen to a bit of Dead with him, but would NOT have been able to spend endless hangout times listening to nothing but their concerts. And just for me, personally-- I have a certain revulsion for obsessive behavior like that.
I’d say the Dead are a very fine band in the ways I first described, but… yes, could definitely be overrated in the ways you just described. There’s just too much fascinating music from around the world to make the Dead anything more than a passing obsession, at least for me.
Q: “What did the Deadhead say when he ran out of pot?”
A: “This music sucks!”
If they put in the work establishing themselves, composing and playing music, recording, touring, and attracting a fan base, then they deserve every bit of it.
I can’t stand Kiss, and about 90% of all the other bullshit out there, but its not my place in the cosmos to harsh someone else’s buzz about the music they like. My tastes are extremely eclectic, and only a tiny percentage would be into the same stuff I’m into. I wouldn’t tolerate criticism of my musical tastes, and I’m not about to criticize someone else’s.
Like what you want, WTF should I care?
I think anther reason why I don’t like kiss is there fans. As an example I have a coworker in his late 50’s and he is a huge kiss fan. But not just he is a fan YOU have to be a fan too or he will be mad at you. You can’t say that they suck or he will yell at you like a child. And his whole wardrobe is either kiss, Harley Davison, or Trump.
That guy’s problem isn’t Kiss.
True
