NOTE: This post is co-written by Good Jaybee and Evil Jaybee. Most of the work was done by Good Jaybee (because Evil Jaybee is, well, evil) but we’ll call it out when EJ has something to say.
I recently threw a stink bomb into a discussion taking place on an Americana music site.
Members were asked which artists they thought were the most overrated. I just came to listen since I couldn’t think of anyone.
Some of the comments were of the kids these days variety. I'd had enough of that when I was an actual kid, but didn’t rise to the bait this time.
And of course there were the conformist-as-hell-but-don’t-know-it nonconformists who trashed the Beatles. For the most part, though, ire was directed at well, Americana artists, as was apt.
But then a few commenters put some pop/dance/rap artists on their lists. Now I’m a dilettante at best regarding those genres. I hate some, I like some. So I wasn’t exactly defending them when I jumped into it.
My point was if you don’t like a genre, how can you say an artist of that genre is overrated? It’s like someone who hates hearing fat ladies sing saying that opera is overrated. Maybe his opinion just doesn’t matter. Doesn’t he know this? Why is he even talking? The fat lady fans just don’t care.
I got a good mix of responses - none of them threatening actual physical harm. And the dialog eventually got to the I like what I like and you like what you like phase, which leads me to wonder what the point of the exercise was.
I always wondered how someone could dismiss an entire musical genre, anyway. Don’t you have to be familiar with something to form an opinion about it? I’d try to picture the person dutifully listening to a whole stack of albums in order to develop an informed opinion just for this occasion. And at the end of all that effort (and money spent), they would pronounce the genre “Sucky”. Really? Isn’t life too short for all that? Unless you’re a critic and you’re paid to do that.
I’ve since learned that most people don’t go to such lengths. They hear what they hear and then they give their opinion about it. And I guess if you hear a few songs and don’t like any of them, chances are you’re not going to like the next one, either.
Isn’t that enough to just leave it all be? Do you really need to make pronouncements about it? As if those who are enjoying it are wrong? (Evil Jaybee here. I will make exceptions for artists like Journey or Rush, who, if you like them, you're definitely wrong.)
So I got to thinking about what overrated really means. When we use the term, we’re essentially saying that we like something less than other people. Not much of a statement.
The logic of it goes something like this:
You like ______ a lot.
I don’t like _______ as much as you.
Therefore, you have rated ______ too highly.
Thus, you are incorrect.
Stop liking _______.
When put into a more global context, it’s more like this:
The whole world really like ________.
I think _________ is okay,
So the whole world has overrated them.
Thus, the whole world is incorrect.
World, stop liking ______.
This all sounds ridiculous to me, but it’s a bit more entertaining than "To each his own".
It comes back to the question of inherent quality. I once heard Mortimer J. Adler talking to Bill Moyers and rating Shakespeare over the poetry of James Dickey. Bill Moyers preferred the latter. Adler said that Moyers saw a quality in Dickey, as Adler saw in Shakespeare, but added that there was an inherent quality in Shakespeare that made him greater than James Dickey.
Funny how the guy who prefers Shakespeare also finds a greater inherent quality in him. What a coincidence. File that under No Shit, Mortimer.
On the other side of the coin, there are very few people who, when asked to choose between the Beatles and Herman’s Hermits, would pick the latter. But are they wrong if they do?
(EJ: Hell Yes!)
But once you get inside their heads you realize they're not. They like HH goddammit! And who am I to say that they’re f*cking stupid morons with no taste? (Oops, that was EJ again.)
A guy at work who once told me - with a straight face - that he preferred Wings to the Beatles. While I shook my head in disgust, another person there agreed with him. Now you expect to encounter such idiocy on the job but these were people I respected! They were older than me and thus preferred the more poppish/commercial Wings to the slightly rockier Beatles.
And the sales figures at the time may have backed them up on this. I’m actually afraid of finding out. (EJ: I'm not. I just checked a couple of sites and it looks like the Beatles are doing better.)
Thank God. But was it a matter of time? Were the quality/marathon Beatles inevitably going to beat out the hit-of-the-moment/sprinter Wings? I’d like to think so, but Cats has still grossed more than Gypsy on Broadway.
(EJ) Let’s stop right here. I will (and sometimes do) shout to the rooftops that the Wings people are WRONG about this. That there is an inherent quality (yeah, I said it) in Beatles music that is lacking in Wings. And those Wings fans make Hermans Hermits fans seem like Rhodes scholars.
Good Jaybee here. A seemingly obvious difference in quality - Beatles vs. Herman’s Hermits - may only be so because the Beatles are more famous than HH. In other words, perhaps it’s just the majority saying what they like and drowning out the HH fans.
I don’t have any Hermans Hermits albums. so for all I know they’re masterpieces. (EJ: Ah, but life’s too short to find out, right GJ?)
Uh, yeah. But for the hell of it, I checked the allmusic.com essay, and well, don’t you know that the author thinks their second album is just great?
Which brings me to Willie Nelson.
Or rather, that Americana site.
I somehow got pulled into an argument about Willie, or was it just an offshoot of the original Overrated Debate? Anyway, I was trying to play nice and pushed the to each his own line.
One guy was cool with that, since he was being attacked for liking some of Willie’s later albums. The other guy hated anything by Willie after 1985 or so.
We got to the you like what you like... phase (or, as the anti-Willie guy said, the you’re blind phase). (EJ: Didn’t he mean deaf?)
So to break the tension I decided to ask them both for their suggestions on good Willie Nelson albums. And guess who gave me suggestions? Not the Anti Late Willie guy, of course. You’d think that with all the effort he put into trashing stuff, he'd happily direct me to the "good". But no. He must have gotten bored.
So what’s the point of a negative opinion? I mean, it’s fine to have one. I have plenty.
Like this one. These guys are overrated:
Led Zeppelin
U2
The Police
Discuss!
And while you’re doing that, here’s one of the greatest songs of the sixties by the just-about-correctly-rated Hermans Hermits.
(EJ: Just try to think of a song by Wings you’d say was one of the greatest of the seventies. Good luck with that!)
