Music: What are your most overrated songs?

[Mr Jiggyfly]

Well, if I were to be quite honest, you wouldn't like me much. We got it, you "found" ( ) a few elements in the 300+ songs of the Beatles that were borrowed from other works, and that's reason enough for you to discredit their work. You do you, as they say, but that's such a limited understanding of art that you'll have to excuse me if I don't mind you.

The right way of reading these intertexts, is to reconsider the borrowing work in relation to the original work they are pointing to - unless you want to pretend that the punctual borrowing in Revolution, or the ol' flat top are not obvious enough to be intertextual markers - and maybe then you might have something worthwhile to say about the music. You can choose to read the music as a lawyer, but please don't pretend that we're discussing the same type of value or "worth". Now tell me what you think of Michael Nyman? (...)

It was way more than a few and McCartney even admitted they were serial plagiarists, but do go on pretending it was a few songs.

If fooling yourself into believing that helps you out, cool.

Not like you accepting what they were will change my life any TBTH.

If the bolded is really the case, then it may just be a miscommunication. But the fact that even here, you're automatically jumping to "disingenuous" and being suspicious of a distraction tactic (saying that you're not accusing someone of something is kind of negated when you put it out there anyways, btw) kind of reinforces what felt like passive aggressiveness and lumping me in with the opposition to me.

Here is what caused me to believe you were lumping me in with that. This was my response to your assertion.

As mentioned, this doesn't disregard your claims of the existence of plagiarism by The Beatles, but asks to what degree that a forgettable selection of accused songs should influence a person's opinion about the band in the grand scheme of things when they pale in comparison to the songs and parts of songs that they have that they are actually credited with "genius" for.

You replied to this with a counter-argument that didn't address what I questioned, but instead gave more evidence that there was plagiarism at play (which wasn't questioned), followed up with a remark about it being impossible to have a conversation with Beatles fanboys, which came across at a passive aggressive dig at the fact that you were still being questioned. Naturally, I was confused about whether you were referring to the person you were quoting, and apparently, Pranzo Oltranzista was too.

You replied to that confusion with
I get that it's a general statement, but the "Uh, sure" implied to me that you're lumping me in with that general statement as well. There isn't anything else in Pranzo's post to "Uh sure" about besides whether or not it was intended to be directed at me, from what I can see.

If that wasn't the intention, then so be it, that's a misunderstanding, but maybe be mindful of who you quote and what you choose to/not to address in those quotes. If you just want to tunnel in on your initial thought without addressing me or anything I said, maybe consider clarifying both of those things in your reply, or just quote the thing that you're actually trying to counter.

And yeah, I'm still curious about what your take on my actual follow-up questions were-- you kind of just charged right past them, and I think it's very relevant to the subject. Like, yeah, sure, let's say they plagiarized a number of songs, but is that disqualifying to the whole band's output or just those specific songs? Does that undermine the non-plagiarized songs too? And how much credit should they get for that collection (which most of their actual strongest material seems to belong to)?

I posted evidence about the plagiarism in a reply to one of your posts, then spoke in general about Beatles fan boys attitudes I had experienced over the years.

I don’t recall using any words that would lead you to believe I meant you, given you never said if you even liked them, I’m not sure where the confusion is here...

My point all along has been about my experiences with many, many Beatles fan boys and their belief the band were pioneers in Rock N Roll.

The black musicians they stole from were the true pioneers and the Beatles just put four white, clean cut faces to make it more mainstream (which they also readily admitted to as well).

So I find it comical that even the Beatles themselves admitting what they truly were doesn’t convince their fans.

If you don’t mind that they were serial plagiarists with a sound you enjoyed - I don’t have an issue with that and always say to each their own with the music they like.

When people start trying to rewrite facts about who were the real pioneers of rock n roll, and claim it was the Beatles, then ya, I take issue with that.

 

[Habsfunk]

And another music thread turns into a debate about the Beatles....

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

It was way more than a few and McCartney even admitted they were serial plagiarists, but do go on pretending it was a few songs.

So, on 300+ songs, without Google, you can name me like... I don't know, 50-60 more examples?

And you didn't get my post if you really think that the "serial plagiarists" étiquette matters to me.

 

[Shareefruck]

It was way more than a few and McCartney even admitted they were serial plagiarists, but do go on pretending it was a few songs.

If fooling yourself into believing that helps you out, cool.

Not like you accepting what they were will change my life any TBTH.

I posted evidence about the plagiarism in a reply to one of your posts, then spoke in general about Beatles fan boys attitudes I had experienced over the years.

I don’t recall using any words that would lead you to believe I meant you, given you never said if you even liked them, I’m not sure where the confusion is here...

My point all along has been about my experiences with many, many Beatles fan boys and their belief the band were pioneers in Rock N Roll.

The black musicians they stole from were the true pioneers and the Beatles just put four white, clean cut faces to make it more mainstream (which they also readily admitted to as well).

So I find it comical that even the Beatles themselves admitting what they truly were doesn’t convince their fans.

If you don’t mind that they were serial plagiarists with a sound you enjoyed - I don’t have an issue with that and always say to each their own with the music they like.

When people start trying to rewrite facts about who were the real pioneers of rock n roll, and claim it was the Beatles, then ya, I take issue with that.

I walked through what about your posts lead me to be under that impression-- if you don't want to address these points and just want to stick to your original message alone, so be it.

Again though, where I would disagree with you about this whole plagiarism narrative is the conclusions that you draw from these instances (I MIGHT also disagree with defining them as plagiarism on the grounds that Pranzo and others have, but that to me is the far less egregious part of the argument, and I've been willing to grant you the plagiarism part for the sake of argument). It isn't that I wouldn't mind if they were plagiarists of a sound that I enjoyed, it's that my appreciation of them doesn't appear to come from the songs and parts of the songs that you're suggesting are supposedly plagiarized. Assuming that you're correct, you've painted a picture of them maliciously jump-starting their career and continually padding it out with instances of plagiarism, and using that as a launching pad into some their own material. But from my perspective, the stuff that they "plagiarized" is generally what I find underwhelming and bland about them, and the stuff that you haven't given examples of is the material that elevates them into "genius" territory for me. What I admire about them is not the Little Richard/Chuck Berry/Rock and Roll riff side (when that stuff comes up, I'm like "alright, that's cute, but move it along"), it's the Bob Dylan/Beach Boys (and occasionally avant-garde)-influenced side (which I consider significantly more timeless), personally. Generally speaking, I feel like that's what they're credited as being pioneers for these days, not the rock n' roll stuff (which everyone including themselves knows is at least derivative and referential on some level, even if they may not agree that it's straight up plagiarism).

Every time I've brought this up or questioned to what extent plagiarized material should disqualify an artist, you've just repeated why you think their supposedly plagiarized stuff is in fact plagiarized.

And on another tangent, I think your statement "So I find it comical that even the Beatles themselves admitting what they truly were doesn’t convince their fans." is silly and itself comical. If you're a fan of someone's work, they aren't your master whose word is some form of gospel. Artists spout disagreeable BS about their own work all the time. Their opinions can be as wrong as anybody, and you'd be an utter fool to think something simply because they said it.

 

[Shareefruck]

Delete.

 

[holy]

Every song in existence is rated exactly where it should be.

 

[Fire Sweeney]

Probably anything by Crosby, Stills & Nash, but I can't think of one song as I would blow my brains out if I had to listen to a full song by them.

 

[Shareefruck]

Every song in existence is rated exactly where it should be.

I understand the sentiment-- certainly, every artist's reputation is what it is for a reason that can be accounted for and that doesn't owe anything to people's wishes-- But to me, that's kind of like saying that every individual's lot in their life is exactly what is deserved. There are always going to be external factors beyond a person's control, and what someone actually deserves is always going to be a subjective assessment based on others' sensibilities and how they imagine that things should ideally work.

"Deserve" doesn't/can't really exist objectively-- it's strictly a subjective concept, IMO, and the same is true of "overrated"/"underrated". But to say that because of that, "deserve" should equal actual reality doesn't really make any more sense, IMO.

 

[tarheelhockey]

There is a difference between influence and ripping someone off.

- Beatles were sued by Levy for blatantly ripping off Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me”.

- Revolution was straight plagiarism from Crayton’s “Do Unto Others”

- Lady Madonna was swiped from Lyttelton‘s “Bad Penny Blues”

- Harrison was found guilty of plagiarism when he ripped off “He’s So Fine”.

- “I Feel Fine” was a straight rip off of Parker’s “Watch Your Step”

Once again, their “innovations” were more plagiarism than the result of being some musical geniuses.

Lennon even had to write a letter in the 70s trying to defend why they had a propensity for ripping off black artists.

He called it a “love in”... which is basically code for rip off.

From the list above, I went and listened to "Do Unto Others", "Watch Your Step", and "Bad Penny Blues" to get a sense of what we're talking about here.

In my opinion, calling these "rip offs" is just fundamentally misunderstanding how blues music gets written. You bet your ass there's a dusty old forgotten record out there which makes each of those "originals" sound like "rip offs". It's inherent in the genre.

I guess you could criticize the Beatles for being four white guys playing blues music in the first place, but IMO that's pretty weak in the context of 1960s British rock and roll.

 

[ManwithNoIdentity]

Smoke on the Water
Sweet Home Alabama
Smells like Teen Spirit
Hells Bells
Enter Sandman

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

“One” by Metallica

 

[Warden of the North]

Smells Like Teen Spirit

 

[Hammettf2b]

“One” by Metallica

I hate this thread so much!!!! lol

So many of my favorite songs getting shot down. Saying that though, I'll go with...

Anything with Bob Dylan.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

I hate this thread so much!!!! lol

So many of my favorite songs getting shot down. Saying that though, I'll go with...

Anything with Bob Dylan.

It’s not even the best song on AJFA my dude.

 

[Hammettf2b]

It’s not even the best song on AJFA my dude.

well, I do actually agree with you there haha

 

[spintheblackcircle]

It’s not even the best song on AJFA my dude.

Frayed Ends of Sanity

 

[Habsrule]

Ahead by a Century by The Tragically Hip

Anything by AC/DC. Don’t get me wrong they are good but their songs all sound the same. It’s like they rip off themselves

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

Frayed Ends of Sanity

Is the best song on AJFA you mean??

If so, yes I agree.

 

[tacogeoff]

Ahead by a Century by The Tragically Hip

Anything by AC/DC. Don’t get me wrong they are good but their songs all sound the same. It’s like they rip off themselves

I think I would be on the Hip train as well. Highly overrated. Just behind the Beatles

 

[DaaaaB's]

Is the best song on AJFA you mean??

If so, yes I agree.

I like One but it's probably only my 5th favorite song on AJFA. Frayed Ends of Sanity might be their most underrated song period. Their most overrated and overplayed song is easily Enter Sandman.