Music: Most Overrated and Most Underrated Rock Band in History

[tarheelhockey]

I find it hard to accept "overrated" as a label for the most commercially successful bands in the world. The basic purpose of being a musician in the public sphere is to entertain, which is quantified by how many people put their money down in order to be entertained.

A working definition of "overrated" might be a band who:

• most people on the street would recognize the name, but would be unable to name or sing one of their songs
• didn't have any special commercial impact, compared to what you expect from a household-name band
• didn't have any broad or long-lasting influence on mainstream music
• didn't have a foundational or game-changing influence on their own genre (i.e. the genre would still have existed and sounded pretty much the same if this band had never existed)
• Has little appeal for people who aren't devotees of their specific genre

I'd nominate Anthrax as a band that ticks all those boxes.

 

[Shareefruck]

I find it hard to accept "overrated" as a label for the most commercially successful bands in the world. The basic purpose of being a musician in the public sphere is to entertain, which is quantified by how many people put their money down in order to be entertained.

A working definition of "overrated" might be a band who:

• most people on the street would recognize the name, but would be unable to name or sing one of their songs
• didn't have any special commercial impact, compared to what you expect from a household-name band
• didn't have any broad or long-lasting influence on mainstream music
• didn't have a foundational or game-changing influence on their own genre (i.e. the genre would still have existed and sounded pretty much the same if this band had never existed)
• Has little appeal for people who aren't devotees of their specific genre

I'd nominate Anthrax as a band that ticks all those boxes.

Under that definition, wouldn't that imply that bands who don't make a lot of money but are valued despite that are inherently overrated? That would seem pretty backwards to me. I don't think the value/purpose of a musician can really be reasonably quantified, personally. There are so many factors that skew that.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Are you saying that bands who don't make a lot of money but are valued despite that are inherently overrated? That would seem pretty backwards to me. I don't think the value/purpose of a musician can really be reasonably quantified, personally. There are so many factors that skew that.

I'm saying musicians are, by definition, entertainers. And a very strong objective measure of entertainment value is commercial success. It's possible for a label to push a product to market so hard that they create some artificial success, perhaps a quick rise up the charts on a debut single, but that can't be faked for very long. Nor can it be ignored if people keep coming back to buy albums, concert tickets, etc. I might think Nickelback sucks out loud, but it's hard to call them "overrated" if many many many people are falling over themselves to hear their music.

A band that doesn't sell records, doesn't have a concert following, doesn't have much appeal outside of a niche audience... that band might have some sort of noteworthy talent on a technical level, but they obviously aren't proving themselves to be very entertaining, are they? Again, it can't be faked. Sitting alone in a recording studio making technical masterpieces might be admirable, but if the record doesn't attract an audience then the musician is not doing his actual job. It's hard to call him "underrated" if he's not doing his job and nobody knows who he is.

Those are, of course, the two extremes. What's rare is the case where someone achieves a high level of recognition without a commensurate level of success. Almost any band that an average person could name has had some degree of success, whether as a short-term fad or a long-term staple of the industry. It's actually quite hard to name a band that has both a limited audience and a limited range of influence, and is still somehow a household name.

 

[TheAngryHank]

Overrated: AC/DC

Underrated: Montrose

AC/DC is to me both.

With Bonn Scott ,underrated
Without , overrated

 

[Shareefruck]

I'm saying musicians are, by definition, entertainers. And a very strong objective measure of entertainment value is commercial success. It's possible for a label to push a product to market so hard that they create some artificial success, perhaps a quick rise up the charts on a debut single, but that can't be faked for very long. Nor can it be ignored if people keep coming back to buy albums, concert tickets, etc. I might think Nickelback sucks out loud, but it's hard to call them "overrated" if many many many people are falling over themselves to hear their music.

A band that doesn't sell records, doesn't have a concert following, doesn't have much appeal outside of a niche audience... that band might have some sort of noteworthy talent on a technical level, but they obviously aren't proving themselves to be very entertaining, are they? Again, it can't be faked. Sitting alone in a recording studio making technical masterpieces might be admirable, but if the record doesn't attract an audience then the musician is not doing his actual job. It's hard to call him "underrated" if he's not doing his job and nobody knows who he is.

Those are, of course, the two extremes. What's rare is the case where someone achieves a high level of recognition without a commensurate level of success. Almost any band that an average person could name has had some degree of success, whether as a short-term fad or a long-term staple of the industry. It's actually quite hard to name a band that has both a limited audience and a limited range of influence, and is still somehow a household name.

I think that's looking at it in a very superficial way. I might agree that in one way or another, every musician's goal is to generate some level of satisfaction from others (although even that is very debatable), but satisfaction comes in many forms and degrees that are impossible to quantify, and commercial success is a horribly insufficient measure of that, let alone a strong one. It's impossible to know how much (let alone how meaningful) satisfaction someone's actually getting out of something even if they are spending their money on it, and whether a niche artist with a limited audience of enthusiasts is truly generating less overall satisfaction in people's brains than a popular artist reaching many times more people-- it's completely ambiguous. At best, the ability to earn money is a necessary means for survival and longevity, not the necessary end purpose/goal/job of every musician. Nobody can really have an authority on what that goal/purpose is or ought to be anyways, and it can differ from artist to artist (that said, I'm not even convinced that their goal is relevant to how they should be valued to begin with). It's illogical to just go "Look, this is a prerequisite for any artist to do what they want to, therefore, it's their purpose and what they should be judged by."

On top of that, there are numerous other factors that influence whether or not people want to spend their money on a musician (or trip over themselves to support them) besides just the music itself (or even marketing, for that matter). Arguably factors that outweigh the influence of the music itself (image and charisma being the most obvious-- and probably similarly timeless).

I mean, I'm not sure how that logic is really THAT far removed from saying something like "Look, humans need money to survive, it's literally their job to make money, and every great human who becomes a household name ends up being marketable and lucrative in some way, therefore, making money is the purpose of humans, and the effectiveness of a human should be judged by how much money they have." It's a very weird circular argument (especially the "everyone who becomes a household name had some commercial success" part of that).

 

[tarheelhockey]

I think that's looking at it in a very superficial way. I might agree that in one way or another, every musician's goal is to generate some level of satisfaction from others (although even that is very debatable), but satisfaction comes in many forms and degrees that are impossible to quantify, and commercial success is a horribly insufficient measure of that, let alone a strong one. It's impossible to know how much (let alone how meaningful) satisfaction someone's actually getting out of something even if they are spending their money on it, and whether a niche artist with a limited audience of enthusiasts is truly generating less overall satisfaction in people's brains than a popular artist reaching many times more people-- it's completely ambiguous. At best, the ability to earn money is a necessary means for survival and longevity, not the necessary end purpose/goal/job of every musician. Nobody can really have an authority on what that goal/purpose is anyways, and it can differ from artist to artist. It's illogical to just go "Look, this is a prerequisite for any artist to do what they want to, therefore, it's their purpose and what they should be judged by."

On top of that, there are numerous other factors that influence whether or not people want to spend their money on a musician besides just the music itself. Arguably factors that outweigh the influence of the music itself (image and charisma being the most obvious one).

Then we just scrap the whole thread because this is all opinion and nobody can be an authority on opinion. Why even have the conversation? It's all meaningless and arbitrary and relative and...

OR, use a reasonable objective measure to approximate listener satisfaction and recognize that while it's not going to be inherently 100% correct all the time, it's going to be pretty darn close.

In the music industry, the purpose of printing albums is to sell them. The purpose of having a concert is to sell tickets. If a musician doesn't want to do those things -- if his goal is to be artistically self-satisfied or whatever -- then he is welcome to not have concerts or albums. He can be a hobbyist and that's totally fine.

But if he's is a professional musician demanding payment, then his literal job is to entertain, and the measure by which he is judged is selling albums and tickets. If he fails to do that, then for all his technical or artistic ability, he's not very good at being a professional musician is he?

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

But if he's is a professional musician demanding payment, then his literal job is to entertain, and the measure by which he is judged is selling albums and tickets. If he fails to do that, then for all his technical or artistic ability, he's not very good at being a professional musician is he?

So, basically, Michael Buble >>>>>>>>>> John Zorn

 

[IceNeophyte]

Overrated: U2, Metallica.
Underrated: Supertramp and agree with REM

 

[Shareefruck]

Then we just scrap the whole thread because this is all opinion and nobody can be an authority on opinion. Why even have the conversation? It's all meaningless and arbitrary and relative and...

OR, use a reasonable objective measure to approximate listener satisfaction and recognize that while it's not going to be inherently 100% correct all the time, it's going to be pretty darn close.

In the music industry, the purpose of printing albums is to sell them. The purpose of having a concert is to sell tickets. If a musician doesn't want to do those things -- if his goal is to be artistically self-satisfied or whatever -- then he is welcome to not have concerts or albums. He can be a hobbyist and that's totally fine.

But if he's is a professional musician demanding payment, then his literal job is to entertain, and the measure by which he is judged is selling albums and tickets. If he fails to do that, then for all his technical or artistic ability, he's not very good at being a professional musician is he?

There's this gross misconception that I always see on this board that goes something like "If something is too nuanced, subjective, and ambiguous to quantify, then we should just take the only thing related to it that is possible to quantify in some way and treat that like its be-all-end-all objective value (simply because we can't get closer), even if it isn't actually representative of that." That's really silly, in my opinion. If we can't get closer, then we simply shouldn't pretend that we can get closer.

Yes, the question of the thread is inherently subjective and opinion-driven. Nobody can be an authority on it, and nobody should be the authority on it. Conversations like these are worthwhile for the sake of sharing perspectives and potentially broadening our own by listening to others, but at the end of the day, it can only be educated guesswork (MAYBE that guesswork could become objectively quantifiable if we could measure our brains or read each other's minds, but that isn't the case, so there's no sense in trying to force objectivity where it doesn't exist). That subjective guesswork is inherently interesting and worthwhile to explore, though, so that alone is sufficient reason to engage in it. Where does this persistent idea that there's only a point to something if it's objectively decidable come from?

The issue is that commercial success is a terrible approximation that logically isn't going to come even remotely close to the real answer, if it were hypothetically somehow possible to navigate through all the factors that skew it and get to the bottom of how objectively valuable something actually is.

Everything that you're citing as a purpose in the music industry is merely a necessity. That's all that it being a "job" means, really. This could ultimately be a means to a more meaningful and purposeful end that has nothing to do with that job for any given musician, and if that's the case, then they are welcome to being a hobbyist OR having concerts/albums, AND being a professional musician. If they can get away with it, then they can get away with it. It's not one or the other. It's not like you make an oath about the purpose of your life's work the moment you become a professional or something. You just arbitrarily need to continue hitting these marks in order to continue being it, whether that's your ultimate purpose or not.

Beyond that, nothing in the thread even suggests that we're trying to find out "who is overrated and underrated in terms of being a professional musician trying to make money" anyways, so why assume that? The "professional" part of that is completely incidental and was never even mentioned. They happen to be professionals, but are we judging them as professionals and by their professionalism? No, we're judging them as musicians and by the music that they make.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

Overrated: Rush, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Ozzy (as a solo artist), Slayer

Underrated: Crowbar, Autopsy, Alice In Chains (with Layne),

 

[Fantomas]

It's probably sacrilegious to say this, but The Rolling Stones have never hit the sweet spot for me. Especially their work post-Brian Jones.

I listened to Let is Bleed a short while go and it sets the mood in the most incredible way with Gimme Shelter. A killer track to kill all tracks. And then the rest of the album... kinda boring.

Most Stones is like that for me. Some great tracks and the rest is a buncha white boys badly ripping off Black blues.

Nothing against the Stones' musicianship of course (notably Mick Taylor) and their unmistakeable status as pop idols. The concerts usually deliver. But still overrated.

 

[tarheelhockey]

So, basically, Michael Buble >>>>>>>>>> John Zorn

If the ">>>>>>>>>>>>>" translates to "better than", then that is truly a matter of personal preference and taste. I'm not saying commercial success is a measure of how any given person should receive their music as art.

If we're talking about success as a recording artist, professional musician, entertainer? My answer is that John Zorn isn't a big enough name for "underrated/overrated" to really apply to him. In that sense, he at least has the upside of potentially influencing future music in a way that would prove him to have been underrated in his time. If in 50 years nobody remembers him at all, that wouldn't make him overrated because most people didn't rate him to begin with.

 

[NyQuil]

I was going to put the Beatles on overrated but I expected a deluge of slings and arrows.

Ultimately, I can't deny their apparent influence on other artists and on music in general, as well as their popularity, so to call them overrated because I don't particularly like listening to them, even though I've heard all of their songs over the years seems trite.

One of my fellow band members loves the Beatles, so we've tried a few out, but I just can't get into them.

I'd much prefer a band like Led Zeppelin to both the Stones and the Beatles, but they've shown up on a quite a few overrated lists in this thread so it's definitely subjective.

 

[NyQuil]

If the ">>>>>>>>>>>>>" translates to "better than", then that is truly a matter of personal preference and taste. I'm not saying commercial success is a measure of how any given person should receive their music as art.

If we're talking about success as a recording artist, professional musician, entertainer? My answer is that John Zorn isn't a big enough name for "underrated/overrated" to really apply to him. In that sense, he at least has the upside of potentially influencing future music in a way that would prove him to have been underrated in his time. If in 50 years nobody remembers him at all, that wouldn't make him overrated because most people didn't rate him to begin with.

It's pretty hard to be overrated if you don't sell a lot of records.

In that case, it would basically mean that you disagree with critical opinion or Pitchfork's fawning reviews or some such.

 

[Shareefruck]

It's probably sacrilegious to say this, but The Rolling Stones have never hit the sweet spot for me. Especially their work post-Brian Jones.

I listened to Let is Bleed a short while go and it sets the mood in the most incredible way with Gimme Shelter. A killer track to kill all tracks. And then the rest of the album... kinda boring.

Most Stones is like that for me. Some great tracks and the rest is a buncha white boys badly ripping off Black blues.

Nothing against the Stones' musicianship of course (notably Mick Taylor) and their unmistakeable status as pop idols. The concerts usually deliver. But still overrated.

Completely agree. I think their prime is solid, but nothing that really feels exceptional or particularly heightened/beautiful to me. Just kind of this tight, baseline "have a good time" thing, which can only get you so far, I feel. And when Jagger gets personal/emotional, I find it kind of hard to buy-- same with Plant, really-- it usually comes across as hollow showmanship to me.

 

[Fantomas]

Then we just scrap the whole thread because this is all opinion and nobody can be an authority on opinion. Why even have the conversation? It's all meaningless and arbitrary and relative and...

OR, use a reasonable objective measure to approximate listener satisfaction and recognize that while it's not going to be inherently 100% correct all the time, it's going to be pretty darn close.

In the music industry, the purpose of printing albums is to sell them. The purpose of having a concert is to sell tickets. If a musician doesn't want to do those things -- if his goal is to be artistically self-satisfied or whatever -- then he is welcome to not have concerts or albums. He can be a hobbyist and that's totally fine.

But if he's is a professional musician demanding payment, then his literal job is to entertain, and the measure by which he is judged is selling albums and tickets. If he fails to do that, then for all his technical or artistic ability, he's not very good at being a professional musician is he?

The idea that the music industry is some sort of science of identifying and satisfying "listener satisfaction" is hilarious to me.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

It's probably sacrilegious to say this, but The Rolling Stones have never hit the sweet spot for me. Especially their work post-Brian Jones.

I listened to Let is Bleed a short while go and it sets the mood in the most incredible way with Gimme Shelter. A killer track to kill all tracks. And then the rest of the album... kinda boring.

Most Stones is like that for me. Some great tracks and the rest is a buncha white boys badly ripping off Black blues.

Nothing against the Stones' musicianship of course (notably Mick Taylor) and their unmistakeable status as pop idols. The concerts usually deliver. But still overrated.

I'll go one further and concede that while it's impressive for Jagger to have this much energy for performing at his age, I've always found his stage persona obnoxious as hell. I don't find it was particularly cooler when he was younger either.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

As for the question...

Underrated: Alice Cooper (the band and the very beginning of his solo career) - from '69 to '78, he/they were up there with the very best. The later part of his act kind of blurred everybody's memory.

Overrated: Radiohead

 

[NyQuil]

The idea that the music industry is some sort of science of identifying and satisfying "listener satisfaction" is hilarious to me.

Where I typically take issue with "rock and roll" is whether the "attitude" is part of the music or not.

With punk, it certainly appears to be - bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols live off their on and off-stage antics and reputations.

So it appears to me with bands like the Cure or the Strokes, whose music I find to be not overly inspiring but they fill some kind of rebellious need out there.

It might be my relatively charmed upbringing that left me without any real need to overtly express some kind of dissatisfaction.

People call Led Zeppelin one of the "greatest rock bands" because of their "excesses on tour" and the wild stories of the "rock and roll lifestyle".

I like all kinds of music, but how they dress and act doesn't factor into it. It may also be that I'm not as focused on the lyrics as many other people appear to be, and I'm more into the sonic experience than the storytelling aspect of it.

With the Stones, a lot comes down to Jagger's "charisma" as one of the greatest "front men". I've certainly attended some excellent live performances that rely on the energy of the musicians but is that how I judge their music?

Tough call.

 

[tarheelhockey]

There's this gross misconception that I always see on this board that goes something like "If something is too nuanced, subjective, and ambiguous to quantify, then we should just take the only thing related to it that is possible to quantify in some way and treat that like its be-all-end-all objective value (simply because we can't get closer), even if it doesn't have much relevance to the subject." That's really silly, in my opinion. If we can't get closer, then we simply shouldn't pretend that we can get closer.

Yes, the question of the thread is inherently subjective and opinion-driven. Nobody can be an authority on it, and nobody should be the authority on it. Conversations like these are worthwhile for the sake of sharing perspectives and potentially broadening our own by listening to others, but at the end of the day, it can only be educated guesswork (MAYBE that guesswork could become objectively quantifiable if we could measure our brains or read each other's minds, but that isn't the case, so there's no sense in trying to force objectivity where it doesn't exist). That subjective guesswork is inherently interesting and worthwhile to explore, though, so that alone is sufficient reason to engage in it. Where does this persistent idea that there's only a point to something if it's objectively decidable come from?

The issue is that commercial success is a terrible approximation that logically isn't going to come even remotely close to the real answer, if it were hypothetically somehow possible to navigate through all the factors that skew it and get to the bottom of how objectively valuable something actually is.

Everything that you're citing as a purpose in the music industry is merely a necessity. That's all that it being a "job" means, really. This could ultimately be a means to a more meaningful and purposeful end that has nothing to do with that job for any given musician, and if that's the case, then they are welcome to being a hobbyist OR having concerts/albums, AND being a professional musician. If they can get away with it, then they can get away with it. It's not one or the other. It's not like you make an oath about the purpose of your life's work the moment you become a professional or something. You just arbitrarily need to continue hitting these marks in order to continue being it, whether that's your ultimate purpose or not.

Beyond that, nothing in the thread even suggests that we're trying to find out "who is overrated and underrated in terms of being a professional musician trying to make money", so why assume that? The "professional" part of that is completely incidental and was never even mentioned. They happen to be professionals, but are we judging them as professionals and by their professionalism? No, we're judging them as musicians and by the music that they make.

I'm not assuming anything of that sort, or trying to force my opinion on others. I said in my first post:

"I find it hard to accept "overrated" as a label for the most commercially successful bands in the world... A working definition of "overrated" might be a band... I'd nominate Anthrax as a band that ticks all those boxes."

You're more than welcome to disagree or to disregard my perspective altogether.

But I don't think it's necessary to generalize or caricature my opinion as though I haven't thought it through, or to accuse me of making wild assumptions about the topic.

If that's the direction this is going -- then yes, this is a bad faith conversation from the get-go, and we may as well scrap the attempt at a dialogue.

 

[SniperHF]

RE: OPs two points on Nirvana
Nirvana is certainly overrated in musical ability (particularly Cobain as a singer, he's not that great) but they are in no way overrated in terms of impact. It's true other bands at the same time were doing similar things but finding the first one to break into the commercial mainstream is a really big deal. It changed almost everything in the early 90s music culture. Saying if it wasn't them it woulda been someone else might be true, but it might not. Either way it's not fair to Nirvana.

I'd nominate Anthrax as a band that ticks all those boxes.

Anthrax is absolutely overrated but big 4 has a better ring to it
I do think the Public Enemy collaboration was a bit of bullet point #2 though.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

So far as I can tell, I think The Strokes are essentially a band that crashed the moment the other bandmates besides Casablancas wanted to contribute to the music. It's completely fair but it immediately made them a worst band. It's true that they still churn out a great song here and there, but I much prefer what Casablancas is doing with The Voidz. It's great stuff.

 

[Shareefruck]

I'm not assuming anything of that sort, or trying to force my opinion on others. I said in my first post:

"I find it hard to accept "overrated" as a label for the most commercially successful bands in the world... A working definition of "overrated" might be a band... I'd nominate Anthrax as a band that ticks all those boxes."

You're more than welcome to disagree or to disregard my perspective altogether.

But I don't think it's necessary to generalize or caricature my opinion as though I haven't thought it through, or to accuse me of making wild assumptions about the topic.

If that's the direction this is going -- then yes, this is a bad faith conversation from the get-go, and we may as well scrap the attempt at a dialogue.

I think you might want to re-read with less assumed negativity the context in which I was using the words "assume" and "force". I wasn't referring to you trying to wildly force your opinion onto others. I just mean why are you "assuming" that "professional" should even be part of the equation and "force" an objective requirement into something subjective, even just in the context of you forming your own personal opinion. I gave reasons for why I don't see its relevance. The latter was also not in response to your initial comment, but to your most recent response about how there's no point if it is subjective rather than objective.

I'm not sure how I'm caricaturing your opinions or what's bad faith about this-- I'm just addressing why I don't find what you're saying reasonable or well-founded.

 

[tarheelhockey]

It's pretty hard to be overrated if you don't sell a lot of records.

I agree. I think the "overrated" factor comes in when a band hits a level of success that makes them known to a lot of people, but a relatively small number of people actually like that band.

Again just picking on Anthrax because there aren't very many examples like this in recent memory -- pretty much everyone knows about Anthrax and they are widely considered one of the top metal bands ever. But you look at their lifetime album sales (2.5M domestic, 10M international) and those numbers aren't really that impressive. Look at the sales of each individual album and nothing really blows you away. They didn't have an iconic single or even just a series of well-known songs. They didn't do anything special on the live tour circuit, and certainly never had that "signature" tour that people still talk about.

It's really hard to escape the conclusion that... not that many people really listened to Anthrax.

Now, there are a lot of other household-name bands that didn't have a ton of commercial success. Usually those are very influential bands that changed some aspect of the way music developed. Anthrax didn't really do that either. Their music never won any significant recognition when it was current, and outside of the usual platitudes you don't hear anyone talking about them the way they might talk about Slayer for example. In artistic terms they're just kind of... there.

So they're a band that didn't have that big of a following, weren't especially influential, and even within their own subgenre they're overshadowed by direct contemporaries. Yet, literally everyone has heard of them and you see Anthrax t-shirts all the time. To me, that's a pretty clear case of a band's image outrunning their actual success and influence.

The idea that the music industry is some sort of science of identifying and satisfying "listener satisfaction" is hilarious to me.

It's not much of a complicated science. People send pretty clear, unambiguous signals about what they do and don't want to listen to.

 

[Fantomas]

It's not much of a complicated science. People send pretty clear, unambiguous signals about what they do and don't want to listen to.

Based on what?

How can one even know what they want or don't want to listen to unless one has an extremely broad grasp of music?