The World’s Most Overrated Bands & Musicians Ever:

> Velvet Underground – Lou Reed is a bad Bob Dylan impression, as if you could get worse than Bob himself . . . see below. Lou Reed & Nico plainly couldn’t sing. The songwriting was really good at times; like Bob Dylan, put somebody else recording those songs with better production & a number of them could have been big hits.

> The Rolling Stones, except that Jagger & Richards were excellent songwriters

> Eric Clapton’s guitar playing, but good writer & singer

> George Harrison’s guitar playing, but good writer & singer

> Kiss

> Lynyrd Skynyrd

> Sonic Youth – bad punk, after punk died, which was never good anyway

> U2 (without Bono, they would suck, except that the U2 production is one of the most-copied sounds ever, which isn’t something the band created — thank the early producers of their albums)

> Coldplay (U2 with more production/keyboards & less talent)

> The Cult (a lesser-talented, but heavier U2 & INXS blended copy)

> Led Zeppelin (without the studio tricks, like endless retakes until they get it right, they’d suck, just like they did live, and John Bonham isn’t nearly as great as he’s made out to be – go listen to Neil Peart for 1 minute – that’s the greatest rock drummer)

> Depeche (Com)Mode (All Electronic Pop sucks)

> Radiohead

> Poison (a Motley Crue wannabe, and I’m not hot on MC either)

> Talking Heads (although their production was good, I can’t stand David Byrne’s voice — He’s a David Bowie wannabe)

> Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – every song he writes is in a major key & revolves around the 1-6m-4-5 change or some variation of that. Take that away and he’d have no catalog. He & his band are also incredibly way over-the-top when they perform that it’s like a parody of a 70’s Rock band, like I’m watching Spinal Tap, Part 2 — The Jersey Sound. Or Eddie & The Cruisers, which was a parody of Springsteen.

> The Band (they were all lame musicians, except that Garth Hudson was a decent keyboardist, and I liked some of their songs & Levon’s voice, but what saved them was Robbie Robertson’s songwriting skills)

> Green Day & just about all of Alt-Rock

> Bob Dylan (highly overrated songwriter — the only reason his songs are any good is because good producers for other bands did a job in making them sound good for covers by their bands)

> Any teen idols

> Any Rappers & Hip-Hoppers

> Most of early Rock & Roll & most of early R&B/Soul

> Virtually all of Blues

> Virtually all of Country, with the exception of the acts that came in the mid 80’s to mid 90’s such as Restless Heart, Blackhawks, Exile, etc.  Nashville ran them out of town on a rail for being too Pop & then it really turned into Pop when Shania Twain come onboard. What they call Country now is Southern Pop/Rock. Merle, Waylon & Conway are rolling over in their graves over this crap.

> Leonard Cohen – his songs don’t sound well-written no matter who does them & no matter how good the production is.

> Sex Pistols & all Punk bands – can you believe they were inducted into the R&R Hall of Fame, and can you believe they turned it down? Shows you how stupid the whole hall of anything is.

> White Stripes/Jack White & any of the guitar-drum duo bands & other garage bands out there. “Garage band” is a pejorative term, people.

> Foo Fighters – not bad players, but not as good as you‘re led to believe. Their songwriting always leaves you wishing it had been just a bit better. They’re missing a really good chorus hook in virtually every song. It’s like it’s almost right, then they lose it. A better producer would have pointed that out. When you get down to it, they’re like a semi-pop Nirvana clone without the good hooks

> Trent Reznor/NIN – total joke, another bad-but-electronic U2/INXS clone

> The Grateful Dead – they were really lame & loose. The harmonies were pitchy & offbeat, the playing was basic rudiments, and with the except of a few songs, they had no hooks & weren’t well-written, and even those few decent songs weren’t very good. Most of the shows were just jam sessions for a crowd of very-high pot smokers & acid trippers. It was just a social phenomenon.

> Jimmy Buffett – and I like his music a lot, but he’s just highly-overrated. He should haven’t been as popular as he was — it was more or less a movement like the Deadheads were.

> Adele – now we have a ton of fat chicks with little talent copying her crummy glissando vocal licks – you know, when people slide up & into the note to find it because they can’t hit it otherwise.  Remember the awards show when she had to stop the song & start over — who does that unless they suck?

This list could go on & on. They’re overrated because literally any musician could do what they do — it doesn’t take a plethora of talent to do it, and talent is what music is supposed to be all about, not popularity or how good it makes you feel — you can drink or take a pill or injection for that.

So what’s good? Bands & musicians that have worked hard to hone their talent & play music that requires that talent to play & sing. YES, Kansas, Styx, Journey, Dream Theater, Saga, Dave Matthews Band, Steely Dan, Billy Joel, virtually any studio & orchestral musicians & backup singers, and anybody else whose music it takes many years to learn how to play correctly.

I’m a big fan of Led Zeppelin. I love the music & the production. They were pioneers indeed. I respect their talents greatly, but to a defined degree. Their songs will seemingly live on forever. But they have a lot of faults that people tend to overlook & they aren’t as great as people with rose-colored glasses tend to believe . . .

Jimmy Page was a below-average guitarist & only sounded good in the studio & not always at that.  Live & in reality, he sucked pretty badly.  Just listen to the solo in Heartbreaker (done in his prime) to realize how bad he was — it’s cringing & embarrassing & he let that end up on the record for posterity, which shows you he’s not THAT good a studio player or producer.  He & Plant were also song thieves, having admitted to have been part of stealing numerous songs from Blues players, and they won’t admit to stealing the main identifiable part of their most famous song, Stairway To Heaven from Randy California & his band, Spirit, whom they toured with prior to the conception & release of STH.  But Page did write some good songs when he wasn’t stealing them & he did some good production at times, but it was not as good as a real producer would have been, and he is highly overrated as a musician.

The band itself was a great pioneer indeed, but they didn’t invent Hard Rock or Classic Rock and certainly didn’t invent Heavy Metal.  Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Cream & a host of others were releasing music before Led Zep that was the genesis of what Led Zep was doing, and much of what they did was turn up the noise on Blues songs, and sometimes they didn’t even bother to change the melody or words, which is why they got sued more than once for stealing songs.

John Bonham was a good drummer, but he couldn’t carry Neil Peart’s drumsticks — that’s not even a valid argument.  The intro of Rock-N-Roll is not in time & I don’t think it was intentional to add a beat to it as it has 17 beats.

Robert Plant’s voice was so fragile that even in his 20’s, he couldn’t hit the notes he produced on records. Listen to the live recordings in the 70’s & you’ll hear him using lower alternate vocal notes as he can’t hit the original vocal notes even then.

John Paul Jones was the most talented pure musician in the bunch, and he wasn’t incredible by any means; just a good well-rounded player. It’s somewhat uncommon to see guys who play bass & keyboards, but not completely rare, and many of them do it better than JPJ — Geddy Lee, for one. The guy in Zebra for another, and they both sang their ass off while doing it.

The Kinks are also highly-overrated except that they influenced Punk, which is a crummy offshoot of Rock played by musicians who suck talent-wise, and a further offshoot in that it influenced Grunge, most of which was also devoid of talent. You can start learning guitar now from scratch, and within a month, you’re playing most all of the Kinks output & most of Punk & Grunge note for note. That’s not talent. It will take far longer to play something by artists who actually have talent, like Led Zep, YES, Steely Dan, Van Halen, Kansas, Boston, Styx, Journey, Night Ranger, Ozzy, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Dave Matthews Band, etc.