How “Overrated Music” Became This Week’s Biggest Angle In The World

noah | June 20, 2007 4:29 am
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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.)

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