Most Overrated And Underrated Bands

[pls respond]

you are all madMy Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was easily one of the best albums last year

[shadow pridak money gang]

Overrated: Kanye West. He sucks really isn't that good,Underrated: Any Folkmetal band.

False.

[Archer Vonn]

Overrated: Kanye West. He sucks really isn't that good,

now are you saying this as a hip hop fan or as a taylor swift fan

[-Blank-]

Overrated: Kanye West. He sucks really isn't that good,

now are you saying this as a hip hop fan or as a taylor swift fan

I hate Kanye and I'm don't like hip hop or Taylor Swift.

[Archer Vonn]

do you hate babies? kanye west is a musical genius. yes, i just said that. he's the best MC alive, and hes also one of the best lyricalists alive. you can't be overrated if you can back it up.

[-Blank-]

do you hate babies? kanye west is a musical genius. yes, i just said that. he's the best MC alive, and hes also one of the best lyricalists alive. you can't be overrated if you can back it up.

I hate rap and I hate his ego(no I don't hate him for his thing with Taylor Swift). That says it all no? Did I say he was overrated?

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Lyricalists? Seriously?I'm not going to say Kanye West is awful, but he's definitely not my cup of tea.

[shadow pridak money gang]

It's lyricists.But you can't deny he's a really creative guy.

[Malevolence]

No clue who you people are talking about, but...If the Bergmans are still alive, doesn't that negate any other lyricist from being the best?Come to think of it, Sondheim is still alive and kicking as well.Noel Coward, And Victoria Wood both deserve to be in the top five as well. Noel may be dead, but his genius negates that.And Ayumi Hamasaki writes some really beautiful heart-felt lyrics.Kadim Al Sahir also rates up there.Emilie Simon, and Emily Loizeau too.J.J. Lin has written some rather gorgeous lyrics...and then there's...ehn, I can't think of a name right now, but I will.Okay, maybe I should make a top ten lyricists...I'm really showing my mental age, aren't I?

Edited November 6, 2011 by Malevolence

[Archer Vonn]

do you hate babies? kanye west is a musical genius. yes, i just said that. he's the best MC alive, and hes also one of the best lyricalists alive. you can't be overrated if you can back it up.

I hate rap and I hate his ego(no I don't hate him for his thing with Taylor Swift). That says it all no? Did I say he was overrated?

my bad, i thought you were the guy i originally quoted.and, yeah, lyracist, shut up xP Edited November 6, 2011 by ~JC~

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

While we're blathering on about lyricists, I feel like Ian Anderson deserves a mention.

[Chibinuva]

Lyricalists? Seriously?I'm not going to say Kanye West is awful, but he's definitely not my cup of tea.

This. Also, I kinda like the thing with Taylor Swift if only because it became a hilarious meme. Also Cryoshell is pretty good, partially due to having great rock sounds with piano nicely incorporated. (of course, they're not necessarily underrated so much as they aren't known very well.)

[Malevolence]

"having great rock sounds with piano nicely incorporated" That's special? I hear it all the time, and going quite a few years back.I never could tolerate Cryoshell myself. Perhaps if they sang in their own language rather than English, because the vocalist's voice is not well-suited to it at all.

Edited November 7, 2011 by Malevolence

[HAZMAT]

he's the best MC alive

That's a pretty bold claim.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Honestly, all of the claims in that post were just the biggest hyperbole ever. It's like the post contained so much hyperbole, it transcended the concept of hyperbole, and became, I dunno, hyperbole-and-a-half or something.

[Onyx.5]

But you can't deny he's a really creative guy.

Y'know, I was going to do just that, but after doing a bit of research it seems there's more to the guy than I thought. Still,

I'm not going to say Kanye West is awful, but he's definitely not my cup of tea.

As someone who personally likes a lot of electronic music, for overrated I'm going to go with... pretty much all the well known guys really. Daft Punk is alright, but I think overrated (or maybe they just have so many people copying them they don't sound original anymore..?). Skrillex is alright, but overrated, and I don't find him to be the poster boy for dubstep most people have made him in to. Tiesto's also popular, I don't get that. Eh, I don't get popular music in general. Guess I'm in a minority, in terms of musical taste.Underrated, well... Really, you can't throw a rock without hitting a band or artist who's "underrated". We all have the people we like despite no one around us liking them. Especially so for genres that aren't on store shelf labels (Pop, Rock, Rap...). And personally I know electronic music if full of aspiring artists who will never reach a wide audience. But I'm having a pretty hard time thinking of artist that seem especially noteworthy, who don't already have a pretty good fanbase. All the others seem too niche to be worth mentioning. Like they're not under or over rated, just comfortably rated.

[Xomeron]

Overrated: Almost anything from after 1999Underrated: The Fratellis(Scottish happy punk) and Rush(best musicians in the world)

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Nah, there's good stuff from after 1999, you just have to find it.The Rutles are pretty underrated, though. Musically good parody music is something we need more of.Oh, also Eric Idle doing things. That needs to happen more, too.

[Malevolence]

^Eric Idle should do more Television theme songs, actually. Every time I watch One Foot in the Grave, it's the ONLY television theme song I've ever had the urge to sing along with.

[Padishah Mehmet II]

Underrated: rap in general, because people tend to reject it and pronounce it to be about nothing but sex and violence. It's not, guys. It's about urban culture. The fact that motives of sex and violence are incorporated often, and in mostly actually bad rap songs as opposed to the good rap, hardly allows you to name the whole genre as nothing but those two things. Even if they were, why is it so bad?Rap is poetry set to a beat, plain and simple. It can be bad poetry, but that doesn't let you name the whole genre bad.Overrated: ... Hm. There's a bunch of bands I consider overrated. None I can really back up though - every time the reason is, "my personal taste".-Dovydas

[Malevolence]

^I'll also throw in that even if you don't like the style of Western/American rap, it does tend to be used in many other countries/languages, some of which actually enhance the beauty of the singing style.

[CroMagnonMan]

Well, of course. They're all very good musicians, and important ones as well. Some people just cross the line when they start regarding them as gods instead of men.

In reply to this and other posts of the same nature, who are these people who regard them as "gods"? It sounds to me like you're all exaggerating a bit. Sure, there are some who go really crazy over certain musicians, but then there are others who just regard them with the same respect they would to any geniuses of their field, and sometimes that involves "adoration", which others may perceive as excessive. Considering the fact that you admit the Beatles and others of their era were very good, what do you expect from people but that they put them up on pedestals?It seems to me that the idea at work here is "people think they're brilliant, therefore they must be overrated". But unless you're pointing out some flaw or deficiency to their work that other people are ignoring, how can it be overrated?~QMark

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

The flaw is in the people who insist that the Beatles are perfect, and that everything they've done is completely beyond critique. Which it isn't.They're overrated because they're so hyped up by their fans that it would be impossible for anyone with that kind of status to not be overrated.

[SgtPanda]

Most rap nowadays is just generic stuff with huge amounts of random singing choruses, especially Eminem (Yes, I said it.)I'm one of the only people I know who listen to Run DMC and DJ Premier, and that kind of rap is especially better than the generic stuff on the radio.Also French hip hop is where most French house comes from

[Jean Valjean]

Overrated: To be honest, I never really saw much in the Beatles, and I know people who absolutely obsess with them. I'm not saying that they're a bad band, but I honestly liked a few other musicians from that era more, and most of their songs seem a bit too random and similar for me. Because I have to admit that a lot of them have the same feel due to the arrangements and stuff like that. Now unfortunately, all of my sisters and my mother are huge Beatle fans, so it's something I have to live with. Especially on long rides.But just to give people an idea of where some of my frustrations come from, I noticed that the song "Hey Jude" was over seven minutes long and over four of those minutes was simply the band going "na na na na na na na na na na na hey hey", which means that the band had a very long song that takes up so much extra radio time for no reason. It's not a slanted attack against the Beatles, just an objective observation. Also, I disapproved of Justin Bieber's "Baby" and other songs for the same reason, so I don't really want to be a hypocrite. But my sister, on the other hand, who is old and mature, gets wide eyed with flared nostrils and will say "We like the Na-nas!" You know, in a seriously uptight, defensive way. "Every single one of those Na-nas had to be there. Worship worship. Grovel grovel."Okay, okay, I get it. And I like several of their songs. But the best band of all time? How on earth did that happen?Underrated: I can think of a ton of obscure songwriters, from Tom Lehrer to the Arrogant Worms, but I'm going to point out the Backstreet Boys. Yeah, sure, they were a boy band, but wen I was little I thought that they were pretty cool and that their singing arrangements were pretty strong. I don't know why some people like to still refer to them demeaningly as the epitome of pathetic pop music that isn't even music. It had some actual quality and was a far better representation for pop than current pop songs.Also, I think that Britney Spears is underrated. I want to see her be successful again. I'll be a Britney fan to the end.Your Honor,Emperor Kraggh

[Malevolence]

Over-Rated: BoAUnder-Rated: 2NE1I like them both, but I said this just to play with Valenti

[BULiK]

the portal 2 soundtrack is highly underrated. it's alot better than whatever musical failures songs they put on the radioand its free. beat that

Edited November 8, 2011 by Bulik

[Angel Beat]

I like them both, but I said this just to play with Valenti

Ee-yup, not the best thing to do, though. :)Anyway! I'm terrible at judging overratedness and underratedness.

[vulpelibrorum]

Agreeing with most people who have posted that the Beatles are overrated. The problem with being a more experimental group in the 60s was that either you had a hit, or just music that would be immediatly be thrown into the dustbin of history. The latter happened to about 40% of their recordings. All the Beatlemania was also resposible for pushing plenty of promising musicians off the charts, which is why the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, The Beach Boys, and other notables of the era are the only groups anybody actually remembers from the 60's. Of course, they are all great and undeniably influencial artists, but it's a shame that all that largely untapped talent was frogotten beneath the big names.In the 50's, just about anyone could sell a song to a record company and have a chance of it getting airplay if the public liked it, which is one of the reasons that early Rock and Roll pioneers could come up with many of the raw, unique sounds that inspired the later, far better known groups. By 1966, probably 70% of these preformers had either been forced to move on, were dead, drafted, or jailed, or rotting doing endless nightclub preformances. It's a sad fate.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Quite right, and the fickleness of the music critics in the late 70s and on into the 80s also contributed to the decline of bands from that era that weren't the Beatles. This was one of the reasons behind the downfall of Jethro Tull and ELP* - after progressive rock fell out of fashion a bit, the critics fell in love with acts like the B-52s, and had nothing but bile for groups like Tull that tended towards intense instrumentals and somewhat dense vocals.*Hardly the only reason ELP went down, of course - the main one for them was that they lost their heads and recorded the album Love Beach.

[son of the shadows]

Overrated: Justin BeiberUnderrated: Pretty much everyone that isn't Justin Beiber.Simple as that.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Uh, no. Musicians that receive vast volumes of hate from the general public are not overrated. Overrated implies that everyone likes them way more than they should.

[Necro]

Quite right, and the fickleness of the music critics in the late 70s and on into the 80s also contributed to the decline of bands from that era that weren't the Beatles. This was one of the reasons behind the downfall of Jethro Tull and ELP* - after progressive rock fell out of fashion a bit, the critics fell in love with acts like the B-52s, and had nothing but bile for groups like Tull that tended towards intense instrumentals and somewhat dense vocals.*Hardly the only reason ELP went down, of course - the main one for them was that they lost their heads and recorded the album Love Beach.

Personally, I'd beg to differ there. Given Led Zeppelin, Queen, Tull, and dozens of other bands that are pretty much agreed nowadays to be the giants of rock were consistently selling out venues and getting gold records on a regular basis in spite of, until they became the big thing, being fairly consistently panned by critics. Even as far back as the 50's, rock was condemned as devil music that corrupted as much as it was praised as an energetic, young new genre, to the point that some groups actually sent the FBI letters claiming Elvis, the first rock & roll star, was a danger to American society, and reviews saying, to quote one from the New York Times, "Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. His phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathtub."Teddy Roosevelt's words ring true to the listener's ears, in my mind; "It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat." Critical acclaim has been completely irrelevant to rock music since its inception. It's nice, but meaningless; neither artists nor fans care what writers with no real musical experience and no grounds to speak from hiding behind a desk have to say, the music speaks for itself. Edited November 9, 2011 by Necro

[Dorek]

Overrated: Nickleback... They suck.Underrated: Dunno. I'll just say Exodus.

I think people tend to realize how much they suck =P. Then again, they do manage to pack stadiums, so I don't even know, man.Overrated is anything you'll find on mainstream radio. Pop music is nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy; there's a reason we never call it "popular" music anymore.There's plenty of underrated bands, but I like to think most bands find their niche after a few years. You have bands like 10 Years and Sevendust, who are really great musicians and have a loyal following, as well as a great live performance, but they're always just under the radar; their singles never reach number one, their records never quite go gold, etc. And then you have larger bands like Static-X and Mudvayne who manage to sell records out the wazoo, and are good bands on the whole, but they aren't necessarily selling because the album is great (whether or not it isn't), but also fall under the "underrated" simply because they don't get much critical notice.It's a tough thing to categorize. I think in this day and age, bands either find their place in the music industry, or they just tend go away.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Fair enough, I suppose, though I still feel that Tull and early ELP get less recognition now than they deserve.

[Necro]

True, but that's the nature of those sorts of bands, that strive for artistic statements instead of hits, and if hits come, hey, cool - their business form doesn't rely on hit singles or radio airplay or critical praise or anything like that. Rather, it relies on fans that like the style of music, the artists, and where they take things, and don't expect chart success to mean a good record, who consistently buy records because of a trust of quality product and, nowadays with the internet, sometimes a friendly relationship with the artist instead of just buying that one song in their ear.The Grateful Dead are a great example of this; Deadheads are such a big force that they're a cultural shorthand, but the majority of their discography are jams recorded in what would be bootlegs for any other act at the time, and Truckin' and Touch Of Grey are their only real big hits with staying power. It takes much longer to build, but I think it's a much more effective method, and since there's no pressure to pump out chart-toppers and keep up with the trends, results in better music since there's much less commercial and critical pressure on the artists.

Edited November 9, 2011 by Necro

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

True enough,and I think it's a favorable balance for those bands and fans, on the whole.Although, if I ever find the person who decided Grateful Dead Monopoly was a good idea...

[Fresh Makuta of Bel-Air]

Overrated: Justin BeiberUnderrated: Pretty much everyone that isn't Justin Beiber.Simple as that.

Not really. I've never seen anyone claim that Justin Bieber is a good artist, just that a ton of people think he's cute. In fact since we're on the internet I think there is literally no one that likes Justin Bieber here.As a person, he's overrated. Musically? No one has ever claimed he's a musical genius. Edited November 9, 2011 by Fresh Makuta of Bel-Air

[CroMagnonMan]

The flaw is in the people who insist that the Beatles are perfect, and that everything they've done is completely beyond critique. Which it isn't.

But my point is that these people are not in the majority, which you yourself said is the criteria for being overrated. Which is why I asked, "Who are these people regarding them as gods?" I maintain that sounds like a gross exaggeration; to an observer, idolization will always seem more excessive than it is. Talk to half the fans of anything and they will blather on about its merits. I'm more interested in hearing these hypothetical criticisms that you say other people will not tolerate.But in fact, there seem to be more people sharing the same view as yours -- that the Beatles are "overrated" -- than there are claiming the Beatles are perfect, at least in my experience. (It's annoying, to be honest, because a lot of people seem to think being overrated completely invalidates anything great about a band, or that bands simply aren't allowed to be considered "classic" or "legendary".)

They're overrated because they're so hyped up by their fans that it would be impossible for anyone with that kind of status to not be overrated.

That's... very poor reasoning. It's completely subjective whether or not something is "great" or "really, really great", so there's no reason to think the opinion of "the fans" is any less valid than yours, unless you have some specific complaint about the quality of the music. (And yeah, I know music in general is subjective, but if we're not dealing with specific issues then we're dealing in abstracts, and there's no point to that.) And if you don't bring it into the discussion, then you're just validating the opinion of the people who think the music has no flaws.To me, for something to be overrated, the major complaint can't be "it's not perfect", even if people are saying "it's perfect", because there comes a point when saying something is "almost perfect" becomes a case of splitting hairs. (That's why you never see an album with a 4.9 star rating.)

Overrated: To be honest, I never really saw much in the Beatles, and I know people who absolutely obsess with them. I'm not saying that they're a bad band, but I honestly liked a few other musicians from that era more, and most of their songs seem a bit too random and similar for me. Because I have to admit that a lot of them have the same feel due to the arrangements and stuff like that. Now unfortunately, all of my sisters and my mother are huge Beatle fans, so it's something I have to live with. Especially on long rides.

Seems kind of weird to describe a set of something as being both random and similar. I'm not really a diehard Beatle fan, though, so don't worry, haha. I'm just not sure what you mean by "random" in the context of what you're saying, about everything having the same "feel"...?

But just to give people an idea of where some of my frustrations come from, I noticed that the song "Hey Jude" was over seven minutes long and over four of those minutes was simply the band going "na na na na na na na na na na na hey hey", which means that the band had a very long song that takes up so much extra radio time for no reason. It's not a slanted attack against the Beatles, just an objective observation. Also, I disapproved of Justin Bieber's "Baby" and other songs for the same reason, so I don't really want to be a hypocrite. But my sister, on the other hand, who is old and mature, gets wide eyed with flared nostrils and will say "We like the Na-nas!" You know, in a seriously uptight, defensive way. "Every single one of those Na-nas had to be there. Worship worship. Grovel grovel."

Er, saying there was "no reason" for it isn't really fair, nor is there an "objective" criteria to decide that. I mean, having an outro that's four minutes of more or less the same thing is an artistic choice, and I don't know why "radio time" should come into that decision making process. The whole song was kind of building to those four minutes, or that's the way I see it, and I don't think it would have been nearly as effective if it had been allotted a shorter amount of time. It's kind of anthemic, you know? I just listen to it and enjoy the repeated melody, maybe hum along to it. It wouldn't work for just anything, mind you, but it works for that, I think.I don't know what your musical tastes are, but I like listening to a band just jam every now and then. It reminds me of two Dire Straits songs, Money for Nothing and Why Worry, where the outros are just minor improvisations on a basic pattern extended for a while (both songs are around 8 minutes, I think). Sometimes I'm not in the mood for that, though, and then it kind of wears on me, so I'd understand why you wouldn't like those four minutes.

Okay, okay, I get it. And I like several of their songs. But the best band of all time? How on earth did that happen?

Eh, it had to happen at some point, with someone. And it's not like it's a truth universally acknowledged. I do dig the Beatles, though, so I don't mind if they're the ones who get that "title".~QMark Edited November 9, 2011 by QuestionMark

[son of the shadows]

Overrated: Justin BeiberUnderrated: Pretty much everyone that isn't Justin Beiber.Simple as that.

Not really. I've never seen anyone claim that Justin Bieber is a good artist, just that a ton of people think he's cute. In fact since we're on the internet I think there is literally no one that likes Justin Bieber here.As a person, he's overrated. Musically? No one has ever claimed he's a musical genius.

At my high school they did, but then again my high school is abnormal. lol