Welcome to another edition of Track Marks, in which your Idolators perform an autopsy on the latest band burning up the MP3-blogger charts. Today, however, we’ll take a look at one of the week’s most popular listicle subjects:
Artists: Music journalists and bloggers looking for something to write about in a sorta-slow news cycle.
Project: Lists of “overrated music.”
First mention: Ever? Good luck trying to pin it down.
The Build-Up: This most recent bout of idolatry-sabotage was no doubt precipitated by the 40th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, what with the piece that sparked it being called “Sgt Pepper Must Die!” (Exclamation point in the original.)
The Dam-Break: Last Friday, the Guardian surveyed a bunch of musicians on their picks for most overrated albums (Billy Childish, the garage-rocker who also penned “We Hate The Fuckin’ NME,” picked Pepper). Targets included the Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible, Tupac Shakur’s All Eyez On Me, and Nirvana’s Nevermind, which was described by Wayne Coyne as being by “this band that sounds just like Nickelback.” Not only did that last zinger rile up the blogs, it inspired a bunch of other hacky listicles, the pinnacle being this MSNBC piece that tried to blame the Doors for Matchbox 20 while actually defending the Oliver Stone movie. Not that we like the Doors, but seriously, come on.
Odds Of Ever Going Away: Are you kidding? On days when there’s no Kelly Clarkson drama or new Lil’ Wayne freestyles to chat about, bloggers and writers need seemingly endlessly debatable topics like this. (Trust us on this one.)
Even Best Week Ever did a bit on it as well.
Idolator, who do you hate?
Wayne Coyne is absolutely right. “All Apologies” is a decent song, “Unplugged” was an ok covers album, although many barbands could do better.
But overall, they were musically nothing special, the “voice of a generation” thing was 100% hype, and they will be a footnote to music history.
Yeah, but I had to laugh after reading Wayne’s ‘What are these drug addicts going on about?’ re: Nirvana. You kinda need to be on drugs to get any joy out of “At War with the Mystics”.
@drjimmy11: Dood, are you 12?
Gotta go with Mr. Coyne on this one. I had no interest in Nirvana then and have even less now.
Not to let this devolve into Nirvana beat-down, but I’ve got to agree as well. So much more hype than talent.
But, they’ll still go down as “the voice of a generation” because that moniker has been burned onto the brains of said generation.
I don’t agree with Wayne Coyne word for word, but I understand his sentiment. And I think his piece works really well because of it. If you take his P.O.V. re: “this sounds like Nickelback” and put it in the perspective of a young kid who doesn’t really care for a time-line of rock, it’s very cogent.
And, admittedly, “Negative Creep”, “Floyd The Barber”, “Sliver”, “All Apologies”, etc. are songs I so prefer these days than anything off Nevermind. I really like Nirvana, but Wayne is right when it comes to its canonical status having reduced the experience of that album for me. Perhaps that says more about me (or Wayne for that matter) than Nirvana.
Anyone read “Kill Your Idols” by Jim Derogatis? It’s a compilation of mostly fantastic essays on this very subject. (So similar, in fact, that I’m surprised I haven’t seen it mentioned in any of the articles I’ve seen.) In this case, it’s music writers bitching about classic albums, vs. musicians doing so. I believe “Nevermind” is in there, and I know “Sgt. Pepper” is. Well worth the read if you’re, say, someone who always thought Patti Smith was insanely overrated.
I agree with the critcism that it’s difficult to listen to Nevermind today and not reminded of the dreck it inspired. However, that record was still crucially important since it introduced God knows how many listeners to the existence of “indie rock” and even punk rock. I’m one of them. Before Nirvana, I was a typical, 12-year-old, suburban Metallica and RHCP fan until I saw Cobain’s liner notes for Incesticide where he name-dropped many strange bands and artists like “Sonic Youth,” “Dinosaur Jr.” and “Ian MacKaye.” I investigated to see who the hell those guys were and 10 years later, I ended up being a music journalist.
@Cam/ron: and the raincoats!
You can like “Nevermind” or not like it. You can say it sounds like Nickleback if you want (even though you’d be wrong, although I get what Coyne is getting at). I’m not even a huge fan of it, having not been able to listen to it with any recent frequency due to it being played to death in the early ’90s.
But to say it didn’t have any cultural impact or that it was mostly hype is just plain dumb. As a freshman in college in ’91, even the black kids on my dorm hall were jamming “Teen Spirit” with the bass cranked. Mainstream rock was on its deathbed at the time (Great White anyone?), and the album basically extended the life of your standard guitar-bass-drums rock band for another 20 years at least. It did this by mainstreaming punk anger, adding irony to the formula, and bringing some fun and a little bit of danger back into Top 40 rock that had become boring retreads of “Life is a highway.”
Now, you can make the argument that mainstream rock assimilated Nirvana’s influence merely to turn out turgid minor-key crapola like Nickleback, etc. But to say they were hype or without talent makes you look like you’re 14 yrs old. Kill yr idols and all that, but at least know what you’re talking about.
First of all, if anybody says “Pet Sounds” is overrated they are fixing for a fist fight with yours truly. I probably won’t win it but, eh, I’ll be throwing down either way.
As far as Nevermind goes, I agree with MC completely. It always happens: genuinely good underground music eventually breaks through to the mainstream, and is then co-opted by the mainstream and turned into a shiny new product that is more easily digestable for the average consumer, without the rough edges or smart commentary. This is how Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Soundgarden gave way to Matchbox 20, Third Eye Blind, Nickelback, etc.
But you can’t hold it against Nirvana that they launched a legion of crap bands. It’s like saying you wish “Ten” had never been released just so you wouldn’t have to deal with Candlebox.
re: Wayne Coyne
Isn’t releasing an album on 4 separate CDs that must be played simultaneously on 4 separate cd players just about the most self-indulgent “I’m an ARTIST DAMNIT!” idea ever? I mean, are you even allowed to refer to anything as “navel gazing” after that?
Secondly, yeah, you need to be on some pretty heavy drugs to listen to anything the Lips have done. Except for, like, the lips songs that get used in commercials.
Wayne wasn’t really trashing Nirvana as a band, and he’s right, the other albums are better. Thankfully the Lips have put out better songs than “She Don’t Use Jelly”. If they hadn’t put out “Yoshimi…”, that’s all most people would remember his band for.
@StopKillingMe: think you can take Stephen Colbert?
Ian Williams’s beatdown on the Strokes just about summarizes everything I hated about those guys back in ’01. The “New Velvet Underground,” my arse.
I really gotta listen to something by Nickelback. They seem so universally hated – or at least dismissed with contempt – that I’m almost inclined to think they’re ahead of their time or something.
antistar says:
“If they hadn’t put out “Yoshimi…”, that’s all most people would remember his band for.”
there was also this album called “The Soft Bulletin” that some of us sort of remember (it usually outranks “Nevermind” on best of the 90s lists not made by Rolling Stone and VH1).
it’s a real case of pop amnesia, however, to say that “Nevermind” is a shitty record or that it was all hype. that album is, in terms of depth, the 1997 Kentucky Wildcats Men’s Basketball team – they’ve got starters on anyone else’s team coming off the bench. since the sports metaphor has exhausted itself, just try these on for size – “Polly,” “Drain You,” “Lounge Act,” “On a Plain”. these were the songs they *didn’t* shop to radio. “In Utero” is meaner, nastier and has better singles, but pound for pound, it also has a lot more filler than “Nevermind”.
for god’s sake, guys, can’t it just be a great record without carrying this “voice of a generation” horse puckey? is it overrated? YES! but does overrated automatically mean “worthless piece of shit?”