Coldplay
Ed blummin' Sheeran
Adele - faux cockeney princess
Duran Duran
Stereophonics - 2 good songs
Over to you
You can view it that way. Or join in
Def Leppard - why?
Def Leppard – why?
Mutt Lange
'Unwarranted' is totally subjective. Is your question really 'what successful bands don't you personally like'?
Taylor Swift would be my contribution.
Aside from a couple of memorable songs ("Shake It Off" is actually quite good) it's all bland, saccharine pop yet she's somehow wildly popular. I don't understand.
Def Leppard – why?
Mutt Lange
High ‘n’ Dry, Pyromania, Hysteria - epic albums of their time.
Def Leppard have written some great songs so I’m not with that one.
Robbie Williams on the other hand is a shocking singer, he sings painfully out of tune live.
Some artists are huge despite not being great singers, musicians or dancers. It’s often inexplicable.
Yeah. Like Bob Dylan, leonard cohen, the ramones, wreckless eric, billy bragg...
Michael Jackson
Renée & Renato
There are many, but a couple immediately come to mind:
Frank SHOUTY Turner. Thought I'd heard the back of him until he appeared on 6 recently.
Kaiser Chiefs - a (bad) pub band that some moron signed.
Any one who got famous from being on the X Factor or any other show of that ilk. Taylor Swift is a bloody good song writer and a savvy business woman. Ed Sheeran, not for me but the lad can play guitar well and write a decent tune. He’s just a bit bland and safe.
NWA and other gangsta rap for me. You had A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Blackalicious, Public Enemy etc with a genuine message and something worthwhile to say. Yet the middle class pretending to be gang members become the most popular and we end up with the shitty mainstream rap we have now. Meanwhile the good stuff is the underground stuff. Utterly backwards.
It doesn't feel right having a thread like this without DezB
Some artists are huge despite not being great singers, musicians
So you're saying Ed Sheeran isn't a good musician?
Can you explain what makes some a good musician?
What happened to DezB?
He got fed up and buggered off. Hopefully doing something more fun but I think he'd have loved a slagging off any music I've ever heard of thread 😀
Most of the ****ing warbling you hear on the mainstream radio stations.
Agree on Sheeran.
Renée & Renato

but the lad can play guitar well
Not really. Very basic playing. Relies heavily on his looper. He's a very basic player
Ed Sheeran - Supermarket Flowers. I can barely listen to that song without it getting dusty.
Foo fighters
Abba or is it beegees all same oh and Slade ohhh and that ska band though not The Specials!
Anything climbing to be punk and released after 1979. Punk is dead
New Order - tedious. JOY Division, except they're not really popular so don't count. People pretend to like them.
Happy Mondays. Dennis and Lois is good, everything else is like a kindegarden band
Not really. Very basic playing. Relies heavily on his looper. He’s a very basic player
Then you’ve seen a very limited amount of his playing. Most folks I know who play either personally or professionally grudgingly acknowledge that he’s both skilled and versatile with an excellent knowledge of chords, technique, melody and ingenuity. Many of them don’t like his music either, but don’t dismiss his skill either instrumentally, vocally or creatively.
Swift and Sheeran are similar in this, though I’d argue that Sheeran is more creative and Swift has better range.
What’s more is that they both seem to be genuinely nice, happy, fun people who really enjoy what they do.
Anything climbing to be punk and released after 1979. Punk is dead
Bollocks - Greenday started in 1987.
Not really. Very basic playing. Relies heavily on his looper. He’s a very basic player
He can pen a catchy tune though. The best and most interesting imo from his generation is Ben Howard. A very good player who did a Pearl Jam and refused to play the industry game and does his own thing. All his albums are interesting and a bit different
The Beatles, never understood their success
Lol at anyone dismissing Taylor Swift as untalented or that her success is unwarranted. Just to take one example, her latest tour set list is three hours long. Throughout the concert she sings her own music and lyrics in tune, whilst dancing non stop to difficult routines and basically holds up to 100,000 people in the palm of her hand - for 3 hours....night after night. She burns as many calories as a marathon runner whilst holding a tune and performing in front of more people than she can see.
But yeah, no talent
Bands/Artists that are strangely successful….[s]and it’s unwarranted[/s] because I dislike them.
FTFY.
Lol at anyone dismissing Taylor Swift as untalented or that her success is unwarranted.
Agreed.
And I'm not a fan. But she's got talent.
Well if we're going down that route, banksy!
Frank SHOUTY Turner. Thought I’d heard the back of him until he appeared on 6 recently.
Kaiser Chiefs – a (bad) pub band that some moron signed.
in interesting, I put frank on the other thread as not as big as he should be, but I guess if we all liked the same stuff it would be dull and the world would be ruled by ed sheeran
fully agree on kaise chiefs though
I never understood the appeal of Oasis. I genuinely think I can only name one song of theirs off the top of my head. I am aware that I might be in a minority on this one
it’s all bland, saccharine pop yet she’s somehow wildly popular. I don’t understand.
I think you've just described McDonald's or any other thing that is consistently not shit but not great either.
My era, the charts were full of Stock Aitken Waterman manufactured pop. It was truly bland sameness.
But if you look at the charts from the 50's and early 60's the charts were also full of derivative songs, and loads of covers.
I just think that a lot of people have terrible taste, my mom for example loves Barry Manilow and Kenny G. But then she also loves Motown so maybe not all bad.
I never understood the appeal of Oasis. I genuinely think I can only name one song of theirs off the top of my head. I am aware that I might be in a minority on this one
They came out the year I left school and started work, it's just timing for me. I'd never even heard of the likes of the Stone Roses and they were only a few years before. Probably apt that one of their albums was called Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. But there were loads of very average bands that got caught up in the Brti-pop era that were no where near as good as Oasis IMO. Elastica and The Lightning Seeds come to mind.
The Beatles, never understood their success
Ozzy Osbourne described the effect of the Beatles best IMO, he said something like "it was all black and white before the Beatles then it was in Colour"
https://youtube.com/shorts/3TV-0uL-LDk?si=BiMkdyF7QTwWjxcF
The problem with music is it's hard looking back to understand what a time and place can have on someone's connection to music and an artist.
Imagine being from Liverpool as a teenager when the Beatles came out? It must have been incredible.
Some artists are huge despite not being great singers, musicians or dancers. It’s often inexplicable.
People like stuff other people don’t. Heart FM playlists are composed entirely by stuff I’m convinced is created by AI, same goes for Radio One, it’s incomprehensible to me that people can actually listen to that stuff for hours a day.
But if you look at the charts from the 50’s and early 60’s the charts were also full of derivative songs, and loads of covers.
A lack of comprehension regarding the charts of the 50’s and 60’s, I feel; songs were written as an industry, for the record companies to offer to acts to perform, if an act or artist turned a song down, it would be offered to someone else. If a song became popular, then other artists would take the song and record it themselves, which is why a song could be in the charts by three different artists at the same time, often written by Goffin and King, (that’s Carol King), Holland, Dozier, Holland and others. The Brill Building was a song writing factory. Dusty Springfield had hits with songs by Continental writers, for example; she never wrote her own songs, neither did Tom Jones, as another example.
Most artists just didn’t write their own music and lyrics - Buddy Holly did, the Beatles didn’t to start with, neither did the Stones, it just wasn’t how the industry worked.
It took the Beatles to break that formula, followed by the Stones, then others realised they could do it too.
Didn’t stop the recording industry shafting most artists through dreadful contracts, especially Black artists. Many artists who had lots of big selling records earned bugger-all, because of corrupt management.
leonard cohen
Is it only me that has to say this name in the Monty Python "Lemon Curry?" voice...?
Yeah. Thought so.
He got fed up and buggered off.
Pretty sure he’s still around