Friday, March 20, 2020

Top Ten Most Overrated Albums

Number of the Beast

I’ve always loved Iron Maiden. Many have called them overrated, then as now. Certainly they got a little carried away with ego and image; they are the sole inspiration for parody in Spinal Tap.
            Whether this album best represents all of those things that were overblown about them, I don’t know. Certainly it’s a great album, one of their best. I just think that people focus on it too much. What’s disappointing is, it’s the first Maiden album that does not have an instrumental; and the first without Paul Di’Anno. Now, Bruce is a great singer but as he was still under previous contractual obligation he couldn’t even contribute his amazing songwriting abilities to the meager extent that Steve Harris would later permit. Also, as Nico has not yet joined on drums I must say, the chemistry between Bruce and
Clive Burr is less than stellar—‘Run to the Hills’ is the exception that proves the rule; overall that bouncy tom-tom sound worked much better with Paul’s sharp, angsty vocals, whereas the lineup that coalesced for Piece of Mind was their most sophisticated, and probably the most talented metal band of all time.
            The title track is worn-out; aforementioned ‘Run to the Hills’ is always fun to sing along to with friends, ‘Hallowed be Thy Name’ is of course their greatest song ever and ‘Total Eclipse’, co-written by Di’Anno is probably Maiden’s all-time heaviest song.

Some Girls

Some Girls has been quoted as being the last truly great Rolling Stones album—well, not quoted; but people have said that.
            And I get what they mean: it is the end of an era, the Stones finally letting youth and their earlier stardom go. The thing is, though, it just isn’t true. Tattoo You and Steel Wheels are far better albums—more mature, more heavy, more masculine—more consistent: there are really only a couple good tracks on Some Girls.
            Keith’s ‘Before They Make Me Run’ is the absolute highlight. ‘Shattered’ is cool. ‘Beast of Burden’, alright. But ‘Miss You’ is played out; I had a Puerto Rican coworker who found the breakdown rap mildly offensive and irritating—as far as disco they do a better job on ‘Emotional Rescue’, thanks of course to Bill Wyman.
            The title track is not just sexist and racist—it’s boring. And is it ‘Just My Imagination’ or is Mick getting too old to seem cute doing his little English covers of Motown songs?

Appetite for Destruction

OK, it’s probably one of the greatest rock debuts of all time. ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ and ‘Paradise City’, all great songs, still play on the radio daily. I’m just tired of hearing people talk about, “It’s their greatest album”! Use Your Illusion, anybody? If you wanna admit that the only thing that makes it “better” is the fact that Steven Adler’s on the drums, fine! at least you’re being honest; and maybe you’re right... but if it’s because your measly brain can only handle songs about sex and drugs and not contemplate war, social dislocation, megalomania, love and other more philosophical considerations just go back to your AC/DC!

The Doors

This, too is one of rock’s timeless debuts. ‘Light My Fire’ and ‘Whiskey Bar’ are staples of classic rock radio. ‘The End’ is iconic through its use in Apocalypse Now and as the inspiration for epic rock from ‘Dream On’ to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Above all this record captures the time (’67) place (Los Angeles) and feeling (duh!) better than any other.
            The problem is that by holding it up critics have asserted the band’s subsequent efforts fall short—and this is untrue. From the spaced-out perfection of Strange Days and the prog-rock experiments in the studio that led to the commercially successful Waiting for the Sun, to the brilliant orchestration and proto-hip-hop of Soft Parade and all-on rock of Morrison Hotel and L.A. Woman, not to mention the excellent live shows turned out on the occasions Jim wasn’t too messed up to perform, the Doors never looked back.

Kind of Blue

Kind of Blue truly is a great album. Perhaps the greatest. Still; it represents a certain whitening and stagnation of jazz taste, even if made by a predominantly black and forward-thinking ensemble. Miles himself hated being pigeonholed by this release, even as it helped him to reach a wider audience, whom he exploited to finance his expensive tastes.
            John Coltrane is neither at his worst nor his best. There are definitely Miles records where Trane’s solos are simply embarrassing. But here, he is the least remarkable of the group.
            Bill Evans, despite adding so much to the texture and atmosphere of the record (his intro to ‘All Blues’ is a highlight) is shown up by Wynton Kelly, who only plays on one track, the bluesy ‘Freddie Freeloader’. And the closer, ‘Flamenco Sketches’, which is given two takes on modern Cd releases, is boring, and disappointing next to the full realization of the incomparably superior record, Sketches of Spain.
            This album helped to kick off the modal jazz craze, but for all that, despite its authentic jazz elements, where are the drum, the bass solos?

Exile on Main Street

Yes, another Stones album on the list…maybe I’m trying to say something? What if we listed the most overrated bands?

            Anyhow, Exile is a sprawling mess. And why do we romanticize the fact some rich English chaps don’t wanna pay their taxes? There are two good songs on this heroin-soaked-cotton-ball of an album: ‘Tumbling Dice’ and ‘Happy’

pretty much everything by Bach
other than the Organ Works

Why are classical listeners so obsessed with Bach? As if he were the apotheosis of Baroque, rather than its contrapuntal decadence?
            The answer, I think, lies in the eugenic, anti-Catholic bias of Anglo-Teutonic protestant tastemakers in the English-speaking world. The Italians, even the least of them, were vastly superior to this uptight Lutheran, and the early Baroque far more pure than the late. At the same time I’d rather hear J.S.’s son C.P.E. Bach most days than his father.
            To be fair, there are a few choral masterpieces and, again, the organ works are divine, incomparable and in a class of their own, though I’d throw in Wagner’s arrangement of the Wedding March from Lohengrin.

The Ring Cycle

Speaking of Wagner, he only followed through in finishing this quartet of nonsense at the unremitting prodding of his benefactor, mad King Ludwig of Bavaria. Wagner at one point wanted to produce the piece annually at no charge for the benefit of the common man, socialist that he was, in a wooden theatre constructed specially for the occasion and burned to the ground after the third night. Rather, at his wife’s insistence and, ultimately, direction, he got Bayreuth with high ticket prices exclusive for the well-t-do whom Wagner despised.
            Siegfried has its moments; the rest of it is boring. The overture to Das Fliegende Holländer has all that is great about The Ring, condensed into actual music.
            Lohengrin is divine. Tristan und Isolde heavenly as well.
            No doubt The Ring has helped to inspire more cultural works in the last century than any other musical composition, from Tolkien to Star Wars. Nonetheless; it is far from Herr Kapellmeister’s finest.

Led Zeppelin IV
or Zoso

I take it back, then—the Stones are not the most overrated band. This scrawny, effeminate shrieker and the drunken buffoon of a drummer who only knows one beat utterly ruin the ingenious creations of the studio musicians: bassist/keyboardist/mandolin master and junkie/sex-pervert guitar player; except perhaps on ‘The Battle of Evermore’, the only good track on this absolutely (and literally) God-forsaken album.
The horrible, overrated ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is probably only so popular because Bonham doesn’t play for most of the song—and yet, paradoxically, the song only gets good at the end, when the drums come in.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

The rest of this list is meaningless. Great music enjoyed by sensible individuals.

Here we have something of another order altogether. How the greatest rock band, under the obvious and indiscreet influence of the most wonderful drug churned out this garbage is beyond me.
There are precisely 1.5 good songs on this record: the incomparable harmonic joy of ‘Lovely Rita’ and Lennon’s part of ‘A Day in the Life’.

            

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