The Praise & Critique Thread.

[Ferbian]

So, we often hear about a band that people consider overrated, or a band that people consider underrated. And obviously everybody likes to get their thoughts in on it, and to critique or praise them to the point where they feel that they're "properly rated" so to say.

There'll never be a music artist that doesn't go through their career without a few haters, or a few lovers, and this is exactly what the thread is for. A place where both the haters, as well as the lovers can gather, and gather their praise and critique about whatever they want to.

Do you have an indescribable amount of hatred for an overrated band, that you just want to get out? Or do you have a band that you just cannot get enough of, but think doesn't get enough praise? Air your thoughts in here.

I'll go ahead and at least throw a shout-out for a band that I would like to consider underrated, due to the fact of how awesome a lot of their songs sounds, as well as the fact that their vocalist is just so incredibly impressive.

The band is: Kings Of Leon. I found myself telling Mozz a few months ago that I thought Kings of Leon was gonna go down in history as an underrated band with a world class vocalist, and that it surprised me to see that they hadn't had the biggest of mainstream success (In terms of record sales to say the least). And therefore I would definitely say that the sheer talent bottled up in this band most certainly deserves more credit than they're already getting.

Agreeing and / or disagreeing is more than welcome in this thread as well.

 

[LSN80]

I thought that Sex on Fire and Use Somebody got alot of praise as well as airtime to be honest. At least here in Pittsburgh where i live, Use Somebody was played both on the cntemporary stations that played anything from Tinie Tempah to Justin Bieber, and Sex on Fire was heavily played on the alternative rock station here.

One of the things that will always give KOL a bad rap is that they're very outspoken about the music scene here in the States. Do they deserve it? Well, their drummer said this about American music: Most music gets ignored in the States unless it's hip-hop or Hannah Montana or Disney music like the Jonas Brothers. Kiddy pop or hip-hop, that's pretty much what America is. You may turn on the radio and you hear maybe one out of 10 songs that you'd consider decent.

Personally, I think he's right. As ive mentioned in Dave's thread, it's incredibly hard for me to find new bands without looking for it. They play the same old stuff and if the music doesn't fit into that "mold", it doesn't get played. Unfortunately for KOL, their comments didn't exactly endear them to ClearChannel, a major distributor around here, and they stopped playing them. So band that loses half of their listening audience, especially if they're talented, is going to wind up flying under the radar and certainly will wind up underated. I know that there seems to be a growing disdain for them, which is a shame because I saw them open for the Strokes back in 2003 when they were nobodies and they completely tore it up. There's alot of talk, even on rock stations around here, that they've "sold out" their original sound to become more mainstream, but I personally havent seen it. I think they're an excellent band who distinctly seem to know who they are and that comes across both in their albums and in their live performances.

I grew sick of Use Somebody because that was during a time that I couldnt turn the channel without hearing the song. It started to fall into the Fray territory of bands that I like with songs I could no longer tolerate hearing. But Come Around Sundown was an excellent follow up album and songs such as Radioactive, Pyro, and Closer. I agree that they're very underrated vocaally and have a great musical sound.

A band that I see get alot of undeserved shit is Flyleaf. I hear the arguments that Lacey Mosley doesn't have the vocals to carry an alternative rock set, especially the screaming, and that the lyrics are too preachy. I don't buy it. I believe that most music can be interpreted several ways, and there's is a prime example of that. I hear alot of people say that they're overrated, but I don't buy it. They can play hard, and strip their music down acoustically and pull it off just as well. Im personally a big fan of 90% of their music and am disapointed when I hear words such as "overrated" associated with them. Thoughts on Flyleaf?

 

[FunKay the Inevitable]

Kings of Leon bother me just because of how much their songs get played on the radio. Like LSN, I swore I couldn't turn the radio on in 2009 without hearing Sex is on Fire. It bothered the crap out of me and I despise that song with a grudging passion. At the same time, I do quite like Use Somebody. Overplayed yes, but not quite in the same category as Sex is on Fire. Other than that though, I'm rather indifferent to them. Not really anything that stands out from the crowd as far as I’m concerned.

 

[Alex]

Ironically coming from a fan I have to say Nirvana are really overrated.

Don't get me wrong I love their music and the lyrics are great, but you get these people who believed (and still do) Kurt Cobain was some sort of musical messiah, yes he helped change the music scene but he didn't do it on his own. This brings me to bands that I think are underrated, living in Britain these bands really don't get the praise they deserve, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam etc they all helped contribute to the musical shift in the 90s as well as Nirvana and personally I think they were all musically superior to Nirvana as well.

To me Layne Staley, Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder were far better singers than Kurt Cobain. Jerry Cantrell, Kim Thayil and Mike McCready were better guitarists than Kurt Cobain In fact I would say Dave Grohl was the best musican in Nirvana. And yet these aren't really well known for their contributions over here and I feel they should get more recognition.

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

I agree Alex. Nirvana were a great band, and incredibly influential in changing the musical landscape and bringing grunge to the masses, but I do feel that since Kurt's death he has been made into some kind of "Messiah" type figure by music fans.

Yeah the guy was a really talented lyricist, a good singer and had a fantastic image which people associated with, but most of Nirvana's music is no better than Alice In Chains' or Pearl Jam's.

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" is a magnificent song, but Alice's "Man In The Box" "Would?" and "Rooster", Pearl Jam's "Alive", "Even Flow" and "State f Love And Trust" are just as good, as are Stone Temple Pilots "Sex Type Thing" "Crackerman" and "Dead And Bloated" and Soundgarden's "Fell On Black Days", "Outshined" and "Rusty Cage". Nevermind is one of my favourite albums, but "Bleach" and "In Utero" are nothing special to me, just pretty decent albums.

They simply cannot compete with the likes
of "Ten", "Facelift", "Superunknown", "Core", "Purple", "BadMotorFinger", "Dirt" or "Jar Of Flies" as magnificent grunge albums. Nirvana made one classic album (and what an album), and I am a fan of alot of their stuff, but they should be remembered as an influential band with a great album, rather than the greatest band who ever lived.

Kurt was a worse singer than Eddie Vedder, Layne Staley, Scott Weiland, Chris Cornell. The guitaring in those other bands were also better than Nirvana, and as Alex-A said, Dave Grohl has proven since Nirvana that his talent far outweighs that of Kurt Cobain.

Without Nirvana things would have been alot different, but when you look at the quality of the material they put out (bar Nevermind which is magnificent), they weren't all that great compared to the other great grunge bands of the era.

Influential? Yes!
Extremely Important? Yes!
As good as people make them out to be? No. One great album does not mean you are a great band.

Nirvana were good, not great. Kurt was good, not great.

 

[Aeon Mathix]

Nirvana suffers the fate in which someone becomes a lot more famous after they die. It's hard to say if Nirvana was still around today they would be anywhere near as popular as they became after Kurt had died. I love Nirvana, in fact the MTV unplugged album was the first album I ever listened to, but they are nowhere near what people make them out to be.

As for Flyleaf LSN, I love them to death. I have seen them live once and were just as good as their albums if not better. They definitely do deserve a lot of unnecessary hatred. Their music has gotten me through some really hard times, especially "So I Thought" which describes my ex wife and mine's relationship perfectly. It's probably the christian label that gets them the most hate. Or as I have read online numerous times "their an evanescence generic rock rip off feed to the masses band" which is where I call bullshit on every level. I hate when people think that when an artist releases a hit song that they are automatically labeled a sell out or corporate trash. You always hear about people on youtube, other forums, etc. talking about how artists that get a lot of radio airplay suck. Ok well correct me if i'm wrong and i'm not in a band, but I would think if I was, the whole point would be trying to get my music spread across and if people want to sit there and bitch about why their favorite underground indy screamo band doesn't get recognition, well they probably aren't doing something right.

A band I think in my own opinion that is highly underrated is Smile Empty Soul. You guys may have heard of them from their song "Bottom Of A Bottle" almost a decade ago. It's almost as if these guys follow me around in my every day life and write songs about what goes on in my life. Thoughts on SES?

 

[Nate DaMac]

I'm honestly pretty happy to see that I'm not the only one who finds Nirvana to be vastly over rated. I don't mean to say that I don't love the music because I do, but Kurt was not some out of this world genius. He was a good song writer and a decent vocalist, but he wasn't a God.

Also on the Kings Of Leon thing, I just can't get into them. I don't really have much of a thing for a lot of what is considered Alternative Rock these days but I usually tried to check it out when I could. However, I've way lost touch and I blame the incessant play of KOL on the radio for causing me to tune out.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but I find Guns N Roses to be an incredibly under rated band. Granted they are my favorite band of all time, but I don't seem to see a lot of love for them anymore. What pisses me off the most is when I hear them being lumped into the Hair Band genre with the likes of Poison and shit. There's seriously no connection there other than the guys in GNR having long hair.

Poison was the music that teenagers in the 80s were listening to when they nailed their prom dates in the backseat. Guns N Roses were the band that the heroin heads were blasting as the did a line of coke off of a strippers ass in a Juice Bar.

 

[TSG]

I'm not gonna say anything, about Nirvana, just because I don't wanna get into this argument again.

Underrated. I know he's not a band, but a guy who is extremely talented who you don't hear alot about is Lupe Fiasco. He has a great ability with storytelling, as evidenced by Kick, Push. He always has great, solid beats. He has an uncanny talent with rhyming and lyrics in general. Song's like Superstar, Streets On Fire, I'm Beaming, and others demonstrate that. I love the flow he presents on his tracks. He is one of those great rappers you never hear about because Weezy and Kanye are ruling the mainstream.