Most Overrated Act To Get More Than Two Songs On Pitchfork's Best Songs Of The 80s

I try not to let my feelings about U2 in the 21st century cloud my feelings about them in the 80s, so With or Without You would definitely be on any similar list I made.

I can't say who's most overrated, but purely based on my taste, the one I could most easily do without is Whitney Houston. I've never really been able to appreciate her singing - but I guess it's a straight-line from her to stuff like Celine Dion and American Idol, so clearly she's been influential.

^this

the answer to this poll is u2

― for sale: baby shoes, never worn your ass (katherine), Monday, August 24, 2015 8:58 PM

def

croup, you have thought about this list more than anyone on the planet including p4k staff

*flips a coin for Joy Division and U2*

http://covers.feedbooks.net/book/6678.jpg?size=large&t=1435714662

croup, you have thought about this list more than anyone on the planet including p4k staff

i'm ok with that, still got my work done

I somehow missed U2 in this poll. -1 Fleetwood Mac vote.

so many of these were good but unnecessary, they should have limited to one track per any album to cut down on redundancy

Could vote for a few of these, but Slick Rick seems the most eligible candidate for knocking off.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, August 24, 2015 6:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

terrible opinion

Perhaps. I've just never liked him.

I'd have to say Diana Ross, because we're talking about '80s Diana Ross, which is mostly pretty unspecial.

no use for Guns & Roses apart from Sweet Child 'o Mine, even that one I could have done fine without

Voted 'do we have to do a WORST poll? really? sigh.'

Yeah, moan moan mo.

The Replacements, that's an American thing, don't get it. I have never knowingly heard Frankie Knuckles! Must be better than Guns 'N' Roses though, amirite?

you are most correct

Joy Division, U2 or Springsteen

I don't really know what the Replacements sound like

I'm OK with more than one track per album if only b/c I'd hate for the title track to represent Purple Rain.

Pixies should walk away with this but won't. Voted Cure anyway because no one else will and I have no idea what Cure fanatics are hearing that is so transcendent, but can dig the Pixies at their best.

doesn't Arthur Russell have 2 on the P4K list?

The whole purpose of this thread is to show how anti-rockist you are but I gotta be me. Diana Ross solo sux 4eva

Went with Guns 'N' Roses.

Surprised U2 isn't sweeping this. I thought we were just talking most overrated act, not most overrated eighties catalogue. I like the first three songs on Joshua Tree as much as anyone, but U2 is still definitely the most overrated of these acts.

This is CLEARLY The Replacements.

I mean, I kind of hate Diana Ross and this is STILL The Replacements.

pixies blow imo, fuck that band

new order is okay but there is so much boring worship of that band

Voted Cure

no. no no no.

u2 is the easy answer but i don't particularly enjoy the clash songs that placed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8w7CCq036o

i never really got into whitney houston

One thing that constantly surprises me about millennial's music taste (and the Pitchfork list is definitely written by them, for them) is their total rejection of REM.

It's hard to believe that they only got one song on the entire 80s list, when they were arguably the most influential American rock band of the entire decade.

i don't know if they're rejected per se

rem would have soooo much more mystique if they'd split in 97, hard to miss a group that only half-went away

that said rem underperforming on critics lists says more about what critics feel the need to celebrate than what "the kids" are into

lest we assume the kids were really into los lobos albums in the 80s

REM is probably my favorite band, but what is there to say about them in 2015? it's better to open discussion more widely

if only the same applied to the stupid Pixies...

13 year old me thought their La Bamba cover was cool. I probably didn't really start getting into Los Lobos until I was at least 20-ish, though.

(alright, just in case this turns into The Defense Of Los Lobos, I love the latin playboys and How Will The Wolf Survive, I'm just trying to note the obvious that "critcs picks" != the pulse of the nation's youth)

(I know)

Haha I was just thinking about how Los Lobos got shut out of this poll. Will The Wolf Survive would be high on my 80s song list.

And I'm primarily basing my REM theory on a cd I burned for my young cousin who has cool music taste but hated Murmur. REM just stuck around too long, it's true. The kids just know them as this lame band of old dudes.

That never stopped me from getting into the Stones, but I wonder if I'd be even more into the Stones if they'd stopped at, say, Some Girls.

Whitney Houston - great voice, but never liked any of her hits

also, who the hell is Frankie Knuckles?

Dude had a few top 40s in the early 80s, wrote "I've had the time of my life" - kids are really into him now, I think there might have been a reissue

his duet with Ann Wilson is sweet.

Alfred I am not making some "lol rando 80s details" joke I am describing the specific career details of franke k. Please respect that.

Oh yeah forgot Whitney who was an even bigger target

xps interesting... so are you saying that the gesture of tearing down "overrated" popular music acts is frequently bound up with rockist assumptions/preconceptions from the word go? there may be something to that

re: gnr "influence" - in the most on-the-nose sense, a lot of admittedly forgotten bands launched between 1988-1992, buckcherry, those kinds of bands.

fair enough I just didn't think there were actually that many of these bands

It really is weird that people only voted for Whitney and Diana, huh. *raises eyebrow*

the question is overrated, not hated. you can like a band and still think the hype is unjustified.
I voted Talking Heads, a band where I'm quite happy with a single disc compilation of their work.

ya I am much more receptive to arguments about New Order or Talking Heads being overrated (even though I love both bands, and would put the Heads in my top-5 all-time) because I have actually *seen* that overrating in practice. not sure which critics/DJs are out there pissing off the italo snobs w/ tireless Diana Ross partisanship, but I would love to meet them!!

the question is overrated, not hated. you can like a band and still think the hype is unjustified.
yeah sorry about that - i actually almost corrected myself. i didn't ask who you "hated" but who least deserved pfork's acclaim.

that said, i still think the most interesting thing about the poll was the reveal of how broad the spread was. almost every act had at least two people who thought they weren't all that.

they were undeniably a big deal, but I'm at a loss for who they influenced

the manic street preachers

Talking of overrated garbage...

I didn't vote (lol I didn't even read the list) and while I don't ever need to hear/read about MJ or Madonna again for the rest of my life, I get how huge they are and their impact is undeniable so their inclusion isn't really unreasonable, whereas GnR being included really is some "you had to be there"/"I was 13 when this album came out" sorta bullshit, there's just no defending them.

xxp

if you can't tell the aural difference between "Paradise City" and "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Talk Dirty to Me" and "House of Pain," then Idk

haha i'm in my mid-30s and i was like 8 when this album came out, I realllllllly don't think pitchfork is staffed overwhelmingly by 40 year olds

My argument about New Order and Talking Heads being overrated boils down to me being really bored every time I've tried to listen to them. So they're not really overrated at all - I'm just wired differently.

Although maybe some of your wirings are overrated ;)

received wisdom then? idk

xp

if you can't tell the aural difference between "Paradise City" and "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Talk Dirty to Me" and "House of Pain," then Idk

the main differences are a rhythm section taht could swing and Axl's imitation of Big Jim Dandy, but that's not enough to make it great imo

if anything gnr benefits from the lack of obvious imitators in the limelight - as early as 98 (when axl got a spin cover) they were being enjoyed the way Mad Men is enjoyed by some - this vicarious look into an unenlightened past

yeah that makes sense

yknow while kurt may not have play "my michelle" he wasn't the first temperamental eccentric shrieker signed to geffen to conquer rock via mtv. gnr not only paved the way for "OOOHH GIRL I'M SO MAD AND COMPLICATED, JUST A MESS OVER SUPER-TIGHT DRUMMING/ DRUUUGS" but got bloated so quickly they gave the new breed something to shove out of the way.

gnr was also ahead of the curve in getting someone who knew the fastbacks on a major

*no one* said Sade??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWJ4UObLyks

i'm just saying fellow gnr non-fans, the ship sailed already, why not focus on trying to figure how/when motley crue snuck into the rock god canon

they didn't

"The Dirt" raised their profile to some degree but no one cites their music as canonical

hair metal canon sure

i don't necessarily mean critically, but doesn't it seem like they've sidled up into this status level that they really don't belong to? this probably sounds like total hair splitting.

idk name names/cite sources

eh i'm just pulling stuff out of my ass. do you watch tv?

I don't really watch stuff they might show up on - their popularity seems p restricted to a subset of my generation. I never hear their stuff on the radio, none of my younger coworkers would know who they even are unless it's because of reality tv/the sex tape or a passing reference in Rock of Ages or something.

Which is not the case when it comes to Zeppelin, Sabbath, the Stones etc.

or GnR for that matter

yeah motley and poison are definitely better remembered than richard marx as far as late '80s hitmakers go but i don't see jann s wenner rolling out the hall of fame red carpet for either any time soon

Richard Marx, Twitter legend

Not the best metric but their most popular song on spotify is 'kickstart my heart' with 21M plays. For comparison GnR version of 'knockin on heavens door' has 38M. Sweet child o mine has 86M.

Not hair metal but kind of influenced it, Cheap Trick's most famous song only has 8M. People are idiots.

I'm sure "The Flame" has more than eight million.

And yet still no-one will defend Bono and the lads.

Making a case for G'n'R has proven quite sufficiently unrewarding, thanks. I'm done with the pro bono work for this week. (See what I did there?)
I think U2 made some superlative rock records over the course of a decade or so, but there's no point trying to establish a reasoned debate on that. Between the singer's attempts to make the world a better place and the whole iTunes debacle, all people want to do nowadays is dump on them from a height. So it goes.