Most Overrated "Classics"

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My apologies if this topic has been exhaustively covered before (I didn't see it in a search). There's a June 2007 Article In The Guardian About The Most Overrated "Classics" . I thought the contribution from Green Gartside (Scritti Politti) about Arcade Fire's disc, Neon Bible, was really well-put:

People who enjoy this album may think I'm cloth-eared and unperceptive, and I accept it's the result of my personal shortcomings, but what I hear in Arcade Fire is an agglomeration of mannerisms, cliches and devices. I find it solidly unattractive, texturally nasty, a bit harmonically and melodically dull, bombastic and melodramatic, and the rhythms are pedestrian. It's monotonous in its textures and in the old-fashioned, nasty, clunky 80s rhythms and eighth-note basslines. It isn't, as people are suggesting, richly rewarding and inventive. The melodies stick too closely to the chord changes. Win Butler's voice uses certain stylistic devices - it goes wobbly and shouty, then whispery - and I guess people like wobbly and shouty going to whispery, they think it signifies real feeling. It's some people's idea of unmediated emotion. I can imagine Jeremy Clarkson liking it; it's for people in cars. It's rather flat and unlovely. The album and the response to it represent a bunch of beliefs about expression and truth that I don't share. The battle against unreconstructed rock music continues.

My wife loves Neon Bible, but the more I listen to it, the more plodding it sounds to me. Lots of other sacred cows get slaughtered in the article, e.g., Nevermind, Is This It?,Pet Sounds, and Sgt. Peppers, among others. What do you think are the most overrated "classic" albums?

Daniel, Esq., Tuesday, 3 July 2007 00:05 (eighteen years ago)

yeah we did this

marmotwolof, Tuesday, 3 July 2007 00:07 (eighteen years ago)

oooh "controversial"

easy to miss, i guess.

jed_, Tuesday, 3 July 2007 00:07 (eighteen years ago)

yeah don't feel bad it's gotten really hard to search for something without a very specific thread title

marmotwolof, Tuesday, 3 July 2007 00:09 (eighteen years ago)


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