Number 8 Most Overrated Musical Act of All Time: Metallica

Just because the Billboard Top 100 loves a band doesn’t make it great. Just because hundreds of thousands of semi-literate malcontents with holes in their jeans think a band is awesome doesn’t make it so. Three chords, piped through solid state amps with manufactured simmering rage, doesn’t make a great band. It’s true that, given the state of today’s “music” scene, Metallica seems positively genius on the basis of the fact that they could actually play instruments, but let’s not forget that “playing” was a quite relative term stretched to the limits of meaning with this band. The entire time that they were shoved down the collective throat of America by the marketing department, there were much better bands churning out great performances and tracks in poorly lit dives all over this nation. You just never heard of them.

Overratedness Rating: 4/5 Miley Cyruses

Number 9 Most Overrated Musical Act of All Time: Duran Duran

Duran Duran: Generally representative of the worst decade in the history of recorded music, Duran Duran epitomized the Style-Over-Substance motif that marked pretty much the whole 80’s. Any “band” that employs synthesizers for any reason automatically belongs in the dustbin of history, but Duran Duran took such fakery to Crap Hall of Fame levels. Combined with angsty expressions, over-moussed locks and OoLaLa-We’re-Too-Awesome-For-America schtick, this “band” cranked out a lot of the soundtrack to our parachute-pants-owning, John-Hughes-Movie-Watching innocence. Just a whiff of their “music” makes me remember sitting in the vice-principal’s office waiting to get licks for disrupting English class. Any actual survivors of the 80s will likely exhibit embarrassment at owning anything related to Duran Duran.

Over-Ratedness Rating: 3/5 Miley Cyruses

 

 

Number 10 Most Overrated Musical Act of All Time: Willie Nelson & Bruce Springsteen (tie)

Number 10: (Tie) Willie Nelson and Bruce Springsteen. These are tied because Bruce Springsteen is basically Willie Nelson for Yankees. Let’s be honest here. Does anyone really listen to Willie Nelson music hoping to hear something innovative or genius? Or do they just buy the t-shirts because it’s a way of showing the world that you’re part of the Sensitive Lefty Crowd so outnumbered in Texas? Very minimal musical ability on the part of the red-headed stranger…..he’s a writer, to be sure, but so was James Joyce. Doesn’t make him a musician or a great musical act. I appreciate his contributions to the Highwaymen and the big aesthetic shift that they represented in country music, but since he grew the hair out and decided to be more known for his scofflaw-ness than his talent, he’s really just the Texas Lefty version of Tupac—you have to like him to be in the “crowd.” Every four years, the media trots out old Willie and Kinky Friedman while they invite Wendy Davis or some other Communist onstage to create the myth that Texas is “going blue,” and it just further tarnishes any aspirations they might have toward actual musical excellence. Just inviting to the stage some Irish guy who took to calling himself “Beto” in a craven, cynical attempt to woo Latino votes doesn’t make you a great musician. Similarly, pretending to speak for the “common man” while preaching the same old Marxist tripe to them that promises to KEEP them down is not the same as being an actual artist.  Rule Numero Uno: if your "art" is didactic and preachy, it's probably not art at all. Overrated. 

Over-Ratedness Rating: 2/5 Miley Cyruses