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What are the 5 most overrated rock albums?

1. The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. The songs on this album are nowhere near as memorable as those on "Revolver" and "Rubber Soul". For that matter, this album is nowhere near as innovative, nor ultimately as influential, as either "Pet Sounds" or the first Velvet Underground album. I'm not the first to point out that blame for such artless excess as all seventeen minutes of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida rests primarily with Sgt. Pepper.

2. Pink Floyd: The Wall. All of the criticisms usually applied to late 70's stadium rock, i.e., that it was pretentious, bloated, pseudo-intellectual,and self-indulgent; apply doubly to this crock opera. If you want witty and insightful philosophizing on the human condition, read Nietzsche, H.L. Mencken, or Michel Foucault. To seek such wisdom from pop music, a genre defined by its righteous Dionysian folly, is the greatest folly imaginable.

Pearl Jam: 10. Johnny Rotten was bang on when he described Pearl Jam as "bloody awful" and as sounding like "Joe Cocker singing for Black Sabbath." To my ears, this sounds like so much bland 70's rock (e.g., Bad Company). As The Monkees are to The Beatles, so are Pearl Jam to Nirvana.

4. U2: The Joshua Tree. I don't know where to begin. These guys plagiarized Joy Division, and set their sublime riffs to dumbass lyrics bespeaking the most niave sort of Oprah Winfrey meets Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms bourgeois liberalism. I've said it before, I'll say it again: If you make me listen to a record by someone named Bono, his first name better be SONNY.

5. Bob Marley & The Wailers: Exodus. Not only was Bob Marley not, by a long shot, the best pop music figure to come out of Jamaica, he wasn't even my favorite member of The Wailers. The monomaniacal cult of personality surrounding the deceased Robert Nesta Marley comes at the expense of all the other, far more exciting, music to come out of that poverty-stricken island. As Lester Bangs put it:

"Toots and the Maytalls, who never got promoted properly, are the real heat from a Stax/Volt kitchen, whereas Marley always struck me as being so laid back he seemed almost MOR. Rastaman Vibration was the last straw: an LP obviously calculated to break Disco Bob into the American Kleenex radio market full force, complete with chicklet vocal backdrops chirping 'Pos-i-tive!'
tweakgeek
waltersalas's avatar
waltersalas
581 posts
 

1)Pink Floyd, 'Dark Side of the Moon' - Is this thing still on the charts? 'Wish You Were Here' is a much better album.

2)James Taylor, anything except 'Fire and Rain'- Maybe a cheap shot to include a singer-songwriter as frothy as Sweet Baby James on this list, but I had a girlfriend once who LOVED him. He's just so sensitive, you know. We're broken up now, so on the list goes the Prince of Smarm.

3)Dire Straits, 'Brothers in Arms'- Yes, they've got a sound and they've got their MTV and they've got their beach homes. They just ain't got much to say. I'll be fine if I never hear "Money for Nothing" ever again.

4)Pearl Jam, 'Ten'- A very earnest, well-intentioned band, and they have improved. But the debut failed to live up to the hype, and then some. Sodden, dreary, dead on its feet, its weakness was brought into sharp relief by the brilliance of Nirvana's 'Nevermind'.

5)Beatles, 'White Album'- Some great stuff interspersed with some crap. I'd vote for this one over 'Sgt. Pepper's'. For that matter, I'd vote for 'Abbey Road' over 'Sgt. Pepper's'.

The best bands of the 1980s were, in no particular order, Talking Heads, X, the Feelies, the Minutemen, the Replacements, Husker Du, and Prince and the Revolution.

As to those who warn us not to look for deep meaning in our music or take it too seriously, I can only shake my head in wonder. It seems people in this hobby fall into one of two categories--those who build their systems to bring them closer to the music, and those who buy their music to bring them closer to their systems. Music not that important? Mister, in my house, it's a basic food group.

Anybody want to go for a Top Five Underrated Albums thread? I'd rather learn about 'obscure' stuff that moves people than bash...well, come to think of it, bashing is fun, too.



wmcmanus's avatar
wmcmanus
171 posts
 
I'm glad nobody has picked on Elvis! He died, didn't he?
viridian's avatar
viridian
4,184 posts
 
I don't know their albums, but I can name five acts:

1)Boston
2)Journey
3)Madonna
4)Yanni
5)Kenny G

Note, the last three have spared us their last names, probably afraid that we would drop by the mansion to borrow some flour.
centurymantra
133 posts
 
Hey Tweakgeek,Looks like you started a lively thread and was most intrigued to see a few of your 'best of' inclusions. I'm a bit disappointed that you pick 'Siren' as the best Roxy Music album, but kudos for throwing the Residents in there (what about 'Duckstab' and 'Third Reich of R&R' though?). 'Modern Dance' and 'Funhouse' for absolute-sure, but Killdozer....wow, there's a band I haven't thought about in a long time. Let's dig into the same vintage and put Meat Puppets 'II' and 'Up on the Sun' in that list. I appreciated and sympathized with at least a few of your initial comments that began this thread as well. As far as Marley is concerned, I just may have to say 'thank you' for voicing your opinion on that. I am definitely not gonna dismiss Marley and his significance. A couple of his earlier works and some of the stuff he did with Lee Perry is pretty vital stuff, and I've heard a couple of live sets that really did rock. That aside, as something of a reggae fan/collector who has dug into the veritable labyrinth of the recordings that came from the classic era of Jamaican music, it is disappointing to see Marley get such exposure to a degree that shrouds everything else in the scene. I'm definitely sick of the weekend 'reggae warrior' type...you know, the guy who has one, maybe two Marley albums (and one of them has got to be Exodus) and likes to occasionally blast them out of the frat-room living area while proclaiming that they are really 'into' reggae. When anything gets a little too popular, I suppose it's easy to begrudge it. OK...let the thread continue with even more astute observations.
wmcmanus's avatar
wmcmanus
171 posts
 
Viridian, it took me about five years to realize that Madonna and Cindy Lauper were two different people! She's got to go, especially now that she's embarassing herself in London. Oh, and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was about the biggest piece of poop for a top-rated albulm that I've ever heard.
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