Post a controversial music opinion

Yeah

Troye Sivan is a better guitarist than Jimmy Page.

LOL

there are more chords, key changes, and tempo changes in The Beths' "Future Hates Me" than there are in the Cardiacs' entire discography

king sucks

I don't want to think about this, fortunately I made a bot for it. let's see what it comes up with:

"Is This It is the sonic equivalent of ghosting."

There were, at minimum, a couple dozen albums released in '67 which are better than Sgt. Pepper.

That's not controversial.

R.E.M. is actually really boring

wow, thread finally delivers

I liked R.E.M. a lot in high school and they are all smart, nice guys with good taste but man, I just never want to listen to them anymore. Somewhere around Monster I lost all interest. the limited guitar playing and lack of sonic depth, the boring arrangements, the mewling vocals, the poor production choices and terrible mandolin playing and clunky videos, their catalog feels very inert to me.

like at best I can muster a "yeah that song's okay" for a number of tracks. but a whole album? ew, just never in the mood.

Most bands are boring tbh

all bands are excellent

^^^^

rt

not all bands

bandsplaining

All duos are terrible.

All bands except R.E.M. are excellent

more like blands amirite

Any musician who has not experienced - I do not say understood, but truly experienced - the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS.

I feel like the Eagles worm has been turning for years now, but still no one is ready to say the Eagles are good. Until now folks. The Eagles are Pretty Good

All duos are terrible.

All solo artists are cowards.

lol

All trios are Norwegian.

All ILM posters are liars

I feel like the Eagles worm has been turning for years now, but still no one is ready to say the Eagles are good. Until now folks. The Eagles are Pretty Good

― strong deutan (rip van wanko), Friday, September 7, 2018 1:03 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have a constantly running loop of that lebowski clip in my head, but never more than last night when I was in a duane reade after hell commute that was playing take it easy

jmm otm

I feel like the Eagles worm has been turning for years now, but still no one is ready to say the Eagles are good. Until now folks. The Eagles are Pretty Good

― strong deutan (rip van wanko), Friday, September 7, 2018 10:03 AM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"i can't tell you why" is an amazing song but i can't join you here just yet

the eagles are good

i can't tell you why is really good

other eagles songs i like: hotel california, new kid in town, try and love again, take it easy, peaceful easy feeling, witchy woman

The High Llamas were (are?) a million times better than their 'parents', the Beach Boys.

that's not controversial, it's just wrong

the only good Beach Boy was/is Mike Love.

High Llamas relationship to the Beach Boys was always tangential at best (and related to a very brief period/narrow slice of their catalog) and was way over-emphasized in their press materials.

I would take even the low points of M.I.U. over the High Llamas tbh

No artist at all has a "New Jersey" - a huge event album that ultimately feels a bit hollow & signals a career decline

You could say that about any band that has the opportunity to develop someone else's idea further, if it works for you.

xps

There are a bunch of good Eagles songs. Every one of them was released as a single, so a compilation is all you need. There's not one Eagles album worth listening to all the way through. The Long Run comes closest.

The Beach Boys have, like, two good songs ("Good Vibrations" and "Don't Worry Baby"), and I could happily go the rest of my life without hearing either one of them ever again.

Can't think of any.

Black metal sucks. Even the "good" stuff is bad enough that it's worth handing the whole genre over to the Nazis and walking away. Let 'em have it.

Does it have to be a controversial opinion that we actually hold or are we allowed to just say something we think might wind people up?

Saying a band or genre you don't like sucks isn't controversial or even a wind-up tbh.

that late-90s Brian Wilson worship was so tiresome

Counterpoint: at a Silver Jews show, D. Berman did a sneering routine of saying, "What's the big deal with Brian Wilson? He's so overrated," etc.; which was equally annoying.

It could have been John Prine who wrote "Margaritaville."

Here's an (actually held) controversial opinion: while I've been into the Silver Jews since I first ran across "The Arizona Record" (filed under Pavement on a rack), and I think they have some terrific records, I also think Berman is significantly overvalued as a lyricist by most fans. He has some good one-liners, but his lyrics tend to be strings of "clever" non-sequiturs that only sometimes land. He's seen as some kind of rock poet.

I feel like the Eagles worm has been turning for years now, but still no one is ready to say the Eagles are good. Until now folks. The Eagles are Pretty Good

― strong deutan (rip van wanko), Friday, September 7, 2018 10:03 AM

We have a daily listening thread that'll prove you wrong.

you could make a dud list for most anybody

controversial among music nerds, but utterly non-controversial among everyone else

That's true, but everyone else ain't reading ILM.

For casual listeners, the Beach Boys are "Fun Fun Fun," "Surfin' U.S.A.," "Barbara Anne," and the other overplayed hits, so I understand the dislike.

Disliking Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush and Steely Dan is more controversial on ILM.

They have a stronger music nerd consensus than the Beatles, Stones, Dylan I think partially because they had become more dismissed at one point and so gen x and millenial music fans didn't feel as much like they were listening to the music of their parents.

They have a stronger music nerd consensus than those other acts because they are fundamentally nerdy and uncool themselves. The early beach-party hits are what normal people remember them for, but music critics love them for their saddo-weeping-in-his-bedroom stuff. It's the Van Halen/Elvis Costello dynamic all over again. ("Music critics like Elvis Costello because music critics look like Elvis Costello" — David Lee Roth)

lol Brian Wilson is like the opposite of Elvis Costello, that doesn't work at all

Wilson had hits.

https://imgflip.com/i/9x61bg.jpg

In the UK the Beach Boys were never uncool to music nerds.

Especially in Glasgow where it was compulsory to worship them.

lol Brian Wilson is like the opposite of Elvis Costello, that doesn't work at all

― a ZX spectrum is haunting Europe (Daniel_Rf), Thursday, June 12, 2025 12:01 PM (seven minutes ago)

Brian sang "Sail On Sailor" with Ray Charles, whereas Elvis uh....

True Beacheads like the post Smile era that’s a pretty lush soul inflected pastoral psychedelia that stays fresh because not so overplayed.

Breaking news: users on popular music forum encounter CHALLOPS on Controversial Music Opinions Thread!

But first: local woman SHOCKED to find fork in kitchen!

“It was just lying there in the cutlery drawer” reports Sharon, 36, of Shoeburyness, Essex

___do some people just have so many opinions that they leak out of their brain hole like diarrhea?_


You have a million threads where you can celebrate the godlike genius of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys, safe from dissenting opinions._


I don’t actually care it’s just kind of funny, like, ok you don’t like The Beach Boys, is that really controversial at all? I feel for you needing to let it out, though._


It apparently was controversial to a certain Baltimorean! (Who I hope is not Drew Daniel)

Well let me know when the official mourning period ends.

Yeah, isn’t this the thread for this sort of thing?

I’m almost 50 and appreciating the Beach Boys required getting past a LOT of corny associations that I grew up with. “Kokomo,” Full House, etc. There are several different versions of “Surf’s Up,” I think the one I like a lot is a demo and not so BIG.

In the wake of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson leaving us, I revisited the BBC/WGBH rock history series and forgot that episode 2 refutes the idea that the Beatles “saved” rock music and that the subsequent British invasion opened the door to the audience for rock music further splitting along racial lines.

Boring, Maryland, it’s really okay. It’s just a really unremarkable and not controversial opinion, and it was funny (literally as in haha) that you decided to express your dislike of The Beach Boys in such a basic manner so soon after Brian Wilson died. Again, I’m a moron why am I posting, go have the last word.

Not Drew Daniel. I should be so lucky! And I now live in DC. Anyways my identity is not important, I just had a visceral reaction to particularly graceless and self-congratulatory internet hardman schtick. Falling over yourself to talk shit about an artist who has just died is not exactly a profile in courage or bravery it just makes you look like an asshole imo.

The worst legacy of the Beach Boys is the morass of bands who think they can go directly to "let's get a glockenspiel player!" without spending the years writing "Fun Fun Fun."

The hardman shit is always around. I’ve been thinking of the hundreds of 1990s takes that all regurgitate some form of “here’s 10 new surf, garage, whatever bands that will make you forget the f’ing Beach Boys ever existed.”

I've never really been a direct fan of Brian Wilson or his Boys from the Beach but I feel like of all the artists I'm a fan of he's the guy most likely to inspire a one-off pastiche and I can't think of another artist quite like that.

I hate Oasis but I think the painting everyone is making fun of is pretty good.

I was asked to do a Brian Wilson RIP hot take on the radio yesterday morning, during which I found myself saying that surely everybody liked The Beach Boys: they didn't have haters, unlike any other classic act I could think of. So it's interesting to hear from people who never thought much of them.

Re fgti's dream, last week I dreamt I was at Saint Etienne's farewell gig, listening them play new material that was so beautiful and poignant that I also started crying. Which was odd, as I'm not that invested in them!

I can definitely get people why people wouldn't like the Beach Boys!

Hendrix famously slagged them off in 1967, calling them a 'psychedelic barbershop quartet' and I think that preppy close harmony singing is what puts quite a lot of people off.

Well yeah, the whole Beach Boys ethos was Leave It To Beaver style americana, worlds away from the counter culture of Hendrix or Dylan. Songs about surfing and hot rods and being true to your school (part of the reason why unperson was so offtm itt - these guys were preppies, not acerbic nerds like Costello and most music critics).

What happened later is 1) the whole Manson thing and Wilson's tragic genius trajectory allowed fans to view their story as darker and 2) the squeaky clean aesthetic became so old fashioned that it felt exotic and interesting to younger listeners.

Also

I don’t know if this is obvious/audible or if it’s widely established, but the level of chordal complexity that Brian was writing with, even on like “In My Room” and other super-early songs, it’s boggling. He’s writing jazz standards infused w new classical inflections, there are no other songwriters who were so successfully fusing these languages into “chart capable pop” outside of the people writing for Disney and Broadway. Truly it’s like “imagine if Jacob Collier wrote good songs” levels of inventiveness

This may not be a controp but I think the combo of savant level musical complexity and primitivism of presentation in the early pre post sounds stuff is why the influence on Ramones/Descendents/warped tour punk and emo is at least as profound as the later stuff on corny indie fucks.

Did Brian write all that early stuff on piano as he did in later years?

Turnstile is to punk what Sleep Token is to metal

I don't find that controversial at all. Both are shite.

Cake’s “I Will Survive” is better than the Gloria Gaynor original

Cake’s version is atrocious. They don’t even get the lyrics right, which signals that they don’t even understand the song or are purposely mocking it.

Cake was hamstrung by the sardonic tone which the singer choose to use (it was the 90's, irony was reflexive), but they 100% meant it with the covers they choose. I don't know that their version is better , but it's legit.
(but to Josefa's point, I could believe they were connecting to the music, not the lyrics)

That 90s 'ironic/heavy' cover might be a thread or poll idea.

There was a boodle of them made.

Dinosaur Jrs Just Like Heaven is the only good one.

I’m not even a fan of it, but I always heard the Cake cover as ironic but not sardonic or sarcastic: a (deliberately? appropriately?) half-hearted tribute to the idea that life’s devastations, and the summoning up of the resilience necessary to outlast them, do not always play out with the level of fanfare of Gaynor’s original.

Maybe it's not controversial now but back in the 90's I despised both Cake and Sublime. Still despise them, but back then they were universally loved, especially in NorCal.

I've always despise I Will Survive since I was a kid when it was out and played (or sung) throughout every wedding reception I was made to go to.
Cakes version was definitely as bad.

Maybe it's not controversial now but back in the 90's I despised both Cake and Sublime. Still despise them, but back then they were universally loved, especially in NorCal.

I also always hated these bands, luckily I wasn’t in NorCal. I still hate them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cake’s “I Will Survive” is better than the Gloria Gaynor original

FPd

When I first met my friend Brandy we chatted about music and she said she liked Cake, I said I liked The Distance and she said that was the only song of theirs she didn't like. I stopped myself telling her it was the only thing of theirs I could stand. Her favourite song of all time is What's Up by 4 Non Blondes. So I think that was the last time we talked about music.

Recent talk on the Dio in Sabbath thread led me to an unexpected conclusion... I prefer Dio Sabbath to Ozzy Sabbath

― Elvis Telecom, Monday, April 29, 2024

One year later, I still stand by this

Not that controversial nowadays, all normal people know Dio Sabbath RULES.

yeah i agree with that honestly

It's best to think of them as two entirely different bands. I mean, they changed drummers, too. The Dio-Sabbath reunion album The Devil You Know, released as Heaven And Hell, is a late-career masterpiece. I got to see them on tour supporting it, with Judas Priest, Testament and Motörhead. An amazing show.

to this day, still the most stacked bill i’ve ever seen. just absurd.

the tunes are worse but the band and especially singer is way better

jeeze I would never think to lump Cake and Sublime in together. It's like the guy who wrote the book on both Phish and ICP fans.

typical Cake fan looks like Velma Dinkley typical Sublime fan looks like Guy Fieri

alright so my controp is that Cake are fascinating because they've got like 20% of the Shaggs in them. I think a lot of what people call quirky or obnoxious is John McCrea not really knowing how to write or arrange a song. he makes a lot of bizarre choices and I'm not sure if they're intended to sound how they do but he doesn't know how to write otherwise. and I think the band was total happenstance as well, it feels like he just picked up bits and pieces of local bands and everyone took their own style to the proceedings and that's why they sound the way they do. as you might know "The Distance" is one of the rare Cake songs McCrea didn't write and I think that's why it was a big hit, it's still Cake so it sounds odd but the tune itself makes more sense...that's the kind of guitar riff you write for a song like that, not those weird stabby things McCrea always writes.

Sublime on the other hand I think you can easily tell what influenced them and what they're going for, its a combo of things with a similar vibe. they get compared to Soul Coughing a lot but those guys are all brilliant musicians (well, not Doughty) so their weirdness seems a lot more intentional. Cake on the other hand...none of the musicians have anything else going on musically outside of the band, McCrea doesn't even seem to like music in general (see: anyone who's ever written about what it's like to see them live)...anyway I think what they did to I Will Survive is 100% in earnest