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What are the 5 most overrated rock albums?

1. The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. The songs on this album are nowhere near as memorable as those on "Revolver" and "Rubber Soul". For that matter, this album is nowhere near as innovative, nor ultimately as influential, as either "Pet Sounds" or the first Velvet Underground album. I'm not the first to point out that blame for such artless excess as all seventeen minutes of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida rests primarily with Sgt. Pepper.

2. Pink Floyd: The Wall. All of the criticisms usually applied to late 70's stadium rock, i.e., that it was pretentious, bloated, pseudo-intellectual,and self-indulgent; apply doubly to this crock opera. If you want witty and insightful philosophizing on the human condition, read Nietzsche, H.L. Mencken, or Michel Foucault. To seek such wisdom from pop music, a genre defined by its righteous Dionysian folly, is the greatest folly imaginable.

Pearl Jam: 10. Johnny Rotten was bang on when he described Pearl Jam as "bloody awful" and as sounding like "Joe Cocker singing for Black Sabbath." To my ears, this sounds like so much bland 70's rock (e.g., Bad Company). As The Monkees are to The Beatles, so are Pearl Jam to Nirvana.

4. U2: The Joshua Tree. I don't know where to begin. These guys plagiarized Joy Division, and set their sublime riffs to dumbass lyrics bespeaking the most niave sort of Oprah Winfrey meets Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms bourgeois liberalism. I've said it before, I'll say it again: If you make me listen to a record by someone named Bono, his first name better be SONNY.

5. Bob Marley & The Wailers: Exodus. Not only was Bob Marley not, by a long shot, the best pop music figure to come out of Jamaica, he wasn't even my favorite member of The Wailers. The monomaniacal cult of personality surrounding the deceased Robert Nesta Marley comes at the expense of all the other, far more exciting, music to come out of that poverty-stricken island. As Lester Bangs put it:

"Toots and the Maytalls, who never got promoted properly, are the real heat from a Stax/Volt kitchen, whereas Marley always struck me as being so laid back he seemed almost MOR. Rastaman Vibration was the last straw: an LP obviously calculated to break Disco Bob into the American Kleenex radio market full force, complete with chicklet vocal backdrops chirping 'Pos-i-tive!'
tweakgeek
lazarus28
339 posts
 
hey, easy on the smiths. . . . . . johnny marr is some kind of living guitar god - one of the few true guitar-wizards who actually writes interesting licks instead of composing rediculous showcases of his ability that are boring and self-indulgent ie joe satriani, eric johnson, ect. (IMHO)

hmm, i guess i'm just adding fuel to the fire. . . . and after feeling insulted over the smiths comments. . . . . sorry guys.
tweakgeek OP
76 posts
 
Ok Ben,
I'll accept your challenge, sort of. First rule of any best album list is that greatest hits packages and compilations must be left off. To include them would be cheating. Second rule is that there is only one entry per pop star (I'm not going to dignify this silly stuff with the term "artist"). Also, none of my beloved Jazz & Classical recordings are included here. They play ball in a different league. Everything before about 1965, and almost everything from Jamiaca is excluded. The LP as a genre is largely irrelevant both to the 50's and to Reggae. You'll have to see my singles list for these. For the same reason, Soul and R & B are underrepresented here.

Ben, you are giving me a sort of Sophie's Choice. I cannot edit the list down past 18 entries. Here are Tweakgeek's fave pop music albums (in no particular order)

Joy Division-Closer
Clinic-Internal Wrangler
Van Morrison-Astral Weeks
The Pogues-Rum, Sodomy & The Lash
Roxy Music-Siren
Pere Ubu-The Modern Dance
The Stooges-Funhouse
Curtis Mayfield-Curtis
Black Sabbath-Sabotage
AC/DC- Let There Be Rock
Abba-Super Trouper
The Cramps-Gravest Hits
Killdozer-12 Point Buck
David Bowie-The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
Bruce Springsteen-Nebraska
The Rolling Stones-Exile on Main Street
The Stone Roses-The Stone Roses
Led Zeppelin-Physical Graffiti

Now folks, can we get back on topic?
Let the abuse of my faves begin!
raguirre
120 posts
 
I've never understood the appeal of Journey. Tweakgeek - yes, U2 'borrowed' mericlessly from Joy Division. Yes, Joy Division borrowed mercilessly from Can and a few others. Yo La Tengo 'borrows' from VU, but that doesn't make their albums any less great. Artists borrow things all the time. (None of this should imply that I don't think that Joshua Tree -and U2 in general- is horribly over rated.)

James Joyce's Ulysses - pretentious as hell. Still one of the greatest works of English literature.
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
How the Ramones could be in the Rock N Roll Hall of fame is beyond explanation. They had a few good hits (loud noisy hits), but Hall of Fame?
ozfly
887 posts
 
I agree with lots of the above. Anything by post-Gabriel Genesis is overrated. Aerosmith -- anything since Toys in the Attic (which was a fun listen for its time). Sting -- come on, that's not even rock, is it? The Stones were great early on (Paint it, Black or Mothers Little Helper) but by the time they tried disco, "forget about it". While I love the Who, I've never been a Tommy fan. While I love Pink Floyd (Wish You Were Here and Animals in particular), I've never been able to convince myself to pick up The Wall. And if I never hear one of the top rated songs of all time "Bye, Bye Miss American Pie", I'd be a happy guy. Great post. Oh, Sugarbrie, I'm with you on the Ramones. Also, while the grunge movement was lots of fun, I do believe Nirvana was overrated in general -- there were a lot of other fine players in that game (I miss Sound Garden for example).
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