Hits In The Car

Before falling asleep last night, I spent quite some time thinking about the most overrated albums list I posted yesterday.

The definition of overrated according to BBC is this "We want to hear about the albums that the consensus insists we hail as works of utter genius but, when you actually listen to them, turn out to be as mundane and inspiration-free as something by Ocean Colour Scene."

First impression was that X&Y by Coldplay doesn't belong in the list. If no one seems to be rating it very high, it can hardly be called overrated. Acclaimedmusic does not rank it among the 2000 best albums ever and according to RateYourMusic the album is the 86th best of 2005! Whether or not the album is any good is one discussion, but I really cannot see (or understand) why it should be in the list! Disappointment (and hype prior to the release) doesn't equal overrated!

Another thought was that you should take (at least) two things into consideration before using the overrated phrase. Of course the listening pleasure is rather significant when rating an album, but I doubt that you can simply ignore the importance factor. I'll never claim to be an expert in music history, but didn't albums like Pet Sounds, Sgt Pepper and Never Mind The Bollocks inspire generations of musicians? What would the music of today sound like without these albums?

Of the 9 albums I own, I only listen regularly to The Queen Is Dead, which I think is a absolutely brilliant! The remaining 7 albums (I just excluded Coldplay and I cannot stand The Libertines, which has prevented me from buying the album) have never entertained me the way I thought they would and I'm almost prepared to accept that they made the list.

But Nirvana made me listen to Pearl Jam, Metallica, Soundgarden etc.
OK Computer introduced me to Radiohead and thus lead me to listen to The Bends.
Maybe I could agree about Sex Pistols (because I don't like Punk at all) but as Michael wrote in his comment; If you're a punk at heart it's a "must have". I don't like Jazz, Soul or Rap either, but it wouldn't be right to call an album "overrated", simply because I don't like the genre.
And so on.....

So my point is that even if I agree that those albums might not be as fantastic as some want them to be, I think it's a bit (if not very) tough to label them as overrated, because they have all been important factors in MY (and others) world of music!

If I should pick one album as overrated I'd pick the debut by Franz Ferdinand. It's not really any good and I very much doubt that anyone will rate it among the best albums of all time once the hype surrounding the band is gone!