THE BEATLES
It would make sense to call the Beatles a boy band except, lyrically, they fall pretty far short of the One Directions of the world. Songs like “Hello, Goodbye,” “She Loves You,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” could have been written by three-year-olds, while “Hey Jude” sounds like a bunch of dudes smoking pot and jerking each other off while yodeling. It says all you need to about this group that the most famous thing they ever did was walk across a street together.
ELVIS COSTELLO
"He started out as an overt racist and then turned into an overt appropriator. No wonder My Aim Is True is a beloved hipster classic."
THE DOORS
Jim Morrison looked good shirtless and wearing a necklace on a poster. But that’s about as far as he got because the only real influence the Doors have ever had is inspiring a generation of college freshmen dudes to learn how to play six chords on their dad’s acoustic guitar through ultimate-guitar.com.
BOB DYLAN
Bob Dylan is possibly the most self-absorbed, self-mythologizing piece of shit to ever pick up a guitar. By writing inscrutable songs that pretend to elevate the byzantine dramas of his whiny, privileged life to some sort of self-construed poetry, Bob Dylan paved the way for our current vapid culture of appreciating personal expression over any form of talent. He couldn’t sing, he made a bunch of terrible gospel albums, and he sold out his core folk fan base and its laudable values of anti-commercialism by going electric. Although he was seen as a voice of change, he demonstrated himself to be selfish at every turn of his career. And worst of all, he has two first names.
48 comments:
I disagree with almost all of Noisey's opinions you cited. Then again, I'm not paid to write.
The list is way off. WAY off.
Except for Madonna.
Madonna - 'She has gone a long way with a little talent.'
-Siouxsie Sioux
I have horrible taste in music.
Like this. I love it. and it's from the 80's.
Best piece of musical criticism I ever read, except they had to throw in Frank Zappa, because they needed a "Z." At least they said he only "probably sucked." Otherwise, I agree with nearly every word.
And for Zappa, while I admit a great deal of lameness, anyone who would write a 12-tone piece for chorus and orchestra, with the London Symphony playing it, and the chorus singing, among other things, "Munchkins get me hot," and blowing bubbles through soda straws...Well, all I can say is that's my kind of Stockhausen.
Kate Bush, really?
Spot. On.
I disagree with a lot of this list. The quality of the insults, however, is second to none. At least none that I've read in a long time.
Ok ... not entirely. But at least 80%
This is going to be a big comment trap, because everybody has opinions about music, and for some reason, feels obliged to share them. Of all the arts, music takes the least effort to consume, and the most to create.
Please forgive my wayward commas. The same things that fall from the ceiling and hit Elton John's piano keys are smacking my laptop this evening.
No problem, TT. You are a real music scholar, not a hack like me. But I reckon time with pop music.
Very funny comments, though in disagree these are the 'worst.'
I mean fer chrissakes, where are The Shaggs, Bay City Rollers, Blind Faith, Slayer, the Archies, Yoko Ono, etc.?
Overhyped, maybe, but none of those are the worst.
I think these may be on some sort of "Overhyped-Overpaid/Really Bad" continuum. Simply "Really Bad" doesn't score.
I think it would be interesting to make a scattergram of these and other musicians, with "Awfulness" on one axis, and "Gross Income" on the other. If the scales were adjusted properly, it's certain most of the "artists" on this list would cluster together.
What about Zoviet France?
And who could neglect Constantinople by The Residents?
C'mon. Not even close.
I would pick My Pal Foot Foot by the Shaggs as one of the worst - musician-wise.
OK, Jethro Tull wasn't on the list. Nor Dire Straits. That's good.
Wilco is though. WTF?
Noisy is just being shitty for its own sake.
As I say, make a scattergram.
The top likes comment at the site says a lot.
TTBurnett said...
Best piece of musical criticism I ever read, except they had to throw in Frank Zappa, because they needed a "Z." At least they said he only "probably sucked." Otherwise, I agree with nearly every word.
I have Zager and Evan, The Zombies, and ZZ Top in my iTunes. None of the them suck because nothing in my iTunes sucks. :P
What about the Cowsills? He must like them.
The Marvin Gaye line was awesome.
Plus, "sexual healing" sounds like a slogan for an STD clinic.
chickelit: None of those groups probably made enough money to qualify. Come to think of it, neither did Zappa, so maybe Zappa is lamer than the rest. Anyway, I think "overpaid" looms large in all this.
Nice to see somebody trash Willie Nelson - a failed blues singer before he was an overhyped "country" singer.
And, oh yes, Elton.
Zappa got plenty of my money - I bought at least 3 of his albums and tickets to his concert at Johns Hopkins in '67. And those were real dollars in those days, by gum!
Heck, his children are still living on his fortune.
Kind of OT, but we were speaking of Zappa, his daughter made a record of Valley Girl speak 30 something years ago (I am in no mood to research her name or the year that was released) and what do you know - in that short span of years a pattern of speaking that should have been mocked into extinction has now overwhelmed all other forms. Listen for it and you will hear it everywhere? The up inflection? Makes me want to puke.
But back to the subject at hand - amongst the Beatles Paul McCartney could play bass pretty well, but I think the rest of them were not that good, talent-wise. George Harrison was, in fact, terrible. A fumble fingered klutz who stumbled his way through more guitar solos than Ringo could shake a stick at. Ringo was a solid drummer, not flashy, but at least he kept good time.
Yeah, opinions about music - I got 'em.
He's a troll.
Somebody should cobble together an internet list of the 123 worst dancing architects.
At what they did the Beatles were actually quite good.
Dylan "a piece of sh*t?" Wildly erratic because he tried so many different ways of communicating, but some of his songs will last.
Kiss is the greatest musical influence in history by making all other musicians not even close to the worst of all time.
While there are groups that belong on the list, The Foo Fighter comment exposes the guy as a retard.
Over the years, I've come to appreciate a lot of music more than I did back when it and I were new. I'm amazed at how good the stuff was in the 60's and 70s under all that altered consciousness. Although I'm supremely lame at it, I have learned enough to write and play some songs, and that has shown me both how easy it is to make an OK song, and how hard it is to make a great one.
I disagree with alot of the critique, but yea, Dylan was the most over-hyped.
There are bands that suck because they lack actual musical talent and are studio creations/hype sensations (Kiss, Blondie)
and there are bands that I cannot stand (Pearl Jam) but come on - Tom Petty, U2, Rush, Queen, Van Morrison, Fleetwood Mac? Shut up.
I like Dylan's son. Plus, he's yummy.
Why no Smashing Pumpkins? They really are over-rated. That guy's voice is pure fingernail chalkboard.
Well, Sixty's right about Zappa. He did make a lot of money, which probably is the reason he's listed, although barely. I never thought of him as that commercial, but I'm reminded he seems to have adopted the approach implied by the title of his Sgt. Pepper parody, We're Only In It For The Money.
Anyway, "Valley Girl" was on the album Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, from 1982. And the brilliant voice-over was done by Zappa's daughter, Moon Unit, then 14 years old. I've played that cut for my kids, and they've wondered what's so funny. Some expressions, such as "totally tubular," are relics. But, overall, Zappa was a linguistic prophet.
Sad, is it not, Tim, that what should have stayed a local linguistic aberration has become standard English for a majority of Americans.
You know it's bad when you hear black football players talk like that. Really, dude? That's like totally grodie to the max!
So changes the world, and our language with it.
Which reminds me - we were studying Petrushka in music class in high school and next thing I know - bam, Zappa is quoting it on one of his albums. Thank goodness I got to see the ballet before his Frankness ruined it for me.
Costello started out as an overt racist and then turned into an overt appropriator.
Weak tea.
A lot of the 'criticism' is worthy of a social study class.
I would argue that criticism of Costello is spot on.
And that his "Who's on first" routine was a rip off.
Elvis Costello once said that he could have had a career like Bruce Springsteen's if he had made "Armed Forces II."
After all these years I'm still not quite sure what he meant by that but I originally took it to be a snarky rip on Springsteen. Now I'm not so sure.
I was in the basement the other day, working out, listening to "Armed Forces." I really liked it a lot.
It occured to me that maybe Costello tried to make "Armed Forces II" but he couldn't manage it. Guess I'll never know.
By the logic of this criticism, if you were a racist baseball player but you had hall of fame numbers you were a lousy, or perhaps worst than lousy baseball player.
Yea Abe Lincoln, G Washington, founding father... but were they racist?
Same bs.
Maybe, in your limited world view, but I am going to guess that you have no idea what Elvis Costello said, when he said it, or when Washington and Lincoln were alive.
It's on the internet, but as I recall, Elvis Costello was in a hotel lounge (or someplace like that) and Bonnie Bramlet (or some name like that), who was a backup singer for Steven Stills (or someone like that) told Costello (or McManus or some name like that) that Ray Charles (pretty sure about that) was her hero and Costello said that Charles was a "blind, ignorant nigger" and she belted him across the face.
I wrote the incident off as Costello trying to push her buttons and doing too good a job at it and no indication of real racism on his part.
Whether I was right or wrong, my opinion didn't (and still doesn't) count for jack shit, either way, truth be told.
You're always in the basement, Eric. You'll end up with purple bags under your eyes...if you're not there already. Only telling you this because of my deep concern for your wellbeing ha ha ha ha ha........
Meh, litany of tedious click bait. Which I read all the way through, of course, and disagreed with 80%. There's a reason all these acts were popular to begin with and why they still get played while more recent tunes go to the dustbin after their initial internet-hyped fame burst.
I would agree with that - seems like just yesterday musicians wrote pop tunes that were interesting or had a hook, sometimes some actual playing ability was involved in creating the record, and once in a great while, a tune smith wrote something that has lasted for decades.
In 50 years will anyone remember anything that Lady Gaga ever recorded? Can we remember it even now? Over-produced garbage that lasts about as long as a hit on a crack pipe.
Which I hear is not long. I have no interest in discovering that for myself. Others can chime in with their experience, either with Lady Gaga or crack consumption.
The pop music of the 60s-80s, even the 90s (I suppose; I was working my butt off too much to do much partying in the 90s-00s) had seriously weird and/or stupid aspects to it but it was an authentic, original, weird. It wasn't a written, designed, and dressed by committee then auto-tuned weird. Listen to anything by, say, random example, Wings. It's insane, like how much pot do you really need to smoke, Paul? insane. But it stays in your head (or in RAM) (heh) whereas the oversynthesized heavily beaten tootlings and wailings that I hear at the gym (over the sound system, you guys) do not. Or maybe it's just me. Maybe it's generational.
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