Unpopular Musical Opinions: What are Yours?

[Barking Spiders]

1 hour ago, Thump said:

Iron Maidens song lyrics are cringey and cheesy

 

That they sure are, and on a par with those in Rush and Asia where the writers were trying way too hard to be meaningful while trying to not to write about fast cars, doing drugs and s**gg**g and sh**gg**g in fast cars while doing drugs. No one learns owt from song lyrics surely? Do they?

[Cosmo Valdemar]

1 hour ago, Graham said:

A bit niche, but

 

The Graves era of The Misfits is just as good as the Danzig era

Possibly even... better.

[Woodinblack]

18 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

 

That they sure are, and on a par with those in Rush and Asia where the writers were trying way too hard to be meaningful while trying to not to write about fast cars, doing drugs and s**gg**g and sh**gg**g in fast cars while doing drugs. No one learns owt from song lyrics surely? Do they?

 

Rush have certainly written about fast cars, doing drugs and s**gg**g. Not sure about the sh**gg**g in fast cars while doing drugs, but probably cars that were stationary at the time, which is obviously much more responsible. 

[Newfoundfreedom]

Ok here's one that's bound to be unpopular, but still true as far as I'm concerned. 

 

80's Rock power ballads are the greatest music ever made! 🤘

[Buddster]

The 80s rock power ballad snare drum sound is man's greatest achievement 

 

👉😖👈

[Mykesbass]

42 minutes ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

Ok here's one that's bound to be unpopular, but still true as far as I'm concerned. 

 

80's Rock power ballads are the greatest music ever made! 🤘

What, all those Foreigners going around wanting to know what love is? (Great track btw).

[BigRedX]

21 hours ago, ubit said:

This is what I mean. I love everything he has done. I mean who can't appreciate the genius of these lyrics?

 

 

His lyrics are pretty good. If he chose to publish them, unaccompanied, as poetry I would have no problem with that. It's that he chooses to set them to dull repetitive music (and IMO the music would still be dull even if it wasn't so repetitive) that means they need to be judged as songs, taking both the music and the lyrics into account. And on that level it fails miserably, the music being so terrible that it completely negates the genius of the lyrical content.

[Steve Browning]

A few:

 

Eric Clapton should have never picked up a Strat. 

I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston) is possibly the best female vocal ever recorded.

Music college is pointless - if it's not intuitive, you can't do it.

100% agree re Jaco etc. Like most 'virtuosi' I can admire the technique, but the output is just horrible.

[tegs07]

3 minutes ago, Steve Browning said:

I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston) is possibly the best female vocal ever recorded.

nah give me the raw honesty of dolly parton any day. im a closet country fan.

[Mykesbass]

54 minutes ago, Steve Browning said:

A few:

 

Eric Clapton should have never picked up a Strat. 

I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston) is possibly the best female vocal ever recorded.

Music college is pointless - if it's not intuitive, you can't do it.

100% agree re Jaco etc. Like most 'virtuosi' I can admire the technique, but the output is just horrible.

 

49 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

nah give me the raw honesty of dolly parton any day. im a closet country fan.

See, unpopular already! I almost agree with you Steve, but think her first hit, Saving all my Love was a better performance.

[Newfoundfreedom]

1 hour ago, Steve Browning said:

 

I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston) is possibly the worst female vocal ever recorded.

 

Fixed it for you. 

 

Although, even though this song grates on my immensely, it's still not a patch on the nails on a chalk board vocals that Adele produces. 

[bootleg]

Never got Elbow, and Guy Garvey just winds me up. 

[dclaassen]

1 hour ago, Steve Browning said:

A few:

 

Eric Clapton should have never picked up a Strat. 

I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston) is possibly the best female vocal ever recorded.

Music college is pointless - if it's not intuitive, you can't do it.

100% agree re Jaco etc. Like most 'virtuosi' I can admire the technique, but the output is just horrible.

-What should have EC played, then?

-Mama (Thelma) Houston is 20x better than her daughter

-Music college IS pointless, if you have no intuition toward music...otherwise, it was great for me!

-Jaco...yeah, okay..gotta agree with you there

[Barking Spiders]

1 hour ago, Steve Browning said:

A few:

 

Eric Clapton should have never picked up a Strat. 

I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston) is possibly the best female vocal ever recorded.

Music college is pointless - if it's not intuitive, you can't do it.

100% agree re Jaco etc. Like most 'virtuosi' I can admire the technique, but the output is just horrible.

Eric Clapton  - agreed. Can't stand Cream myself but I accept they were among the first at what they did. In Ginger Baker and Claptout there've been two of the most unpleasant men in the music biz and that's some feat. Claptout's other music ventures are dire from the uberboring Derek and the Dominoes to his yawn-inducing solo work. 

Whitney - I blame her for the myriad of vocal acrobats that came in her wake

Music college -  many of the best and most influential musicians never went to music college but were self-taught. 

Jaco - to a man the output of (many Berklee educated) guitar and bass virtuosi is uniformly self-indulgent, boring and confined to genres with only niche appeal.

[Steve Browning]

20 minutes ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

Fixed it for you. 

 

Although, even though this song grates on my immensely, it's still not a patch on the nails on a chalk board vocals that Adele produces. 

 

Mate. this is a thread asking for opinions. How about you respect mine, even though it differs to your own? There are times I wonder just how old you actually are.

 

[casapete]

1 hour ago, Steve Browning said:

A few:

 

Eric Clapton should have never picked up a Strat. 

I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston) is possibly the best female vocal ever recorded.

Music college is pointless - if it's not intuitive, you can't do it.

100% agree re Jaco etc. Like most 'virtuosi' I can admire the technique, but the output is just horrible.

 

1 hour ago, tegs07 said:

nah give me the raw honesty of dolly parton any day. im a closet country fan.

I’m hard pushed to choose between them - both amazing IMHO.

 

I also feel that about another of Whitney’s covers. I love her take on ‘The greatest love

of all’, but George Benson’s earlier version ( despite a few near pitchy moments) is

also superb. Great song I guess.

[Steve Browning]

12 minutes ago, dclaassen said:

-What should have EC played, then?

-Mama (Thelma) Houston is 20x better than her daughter

-Music college IS pointless, if you have no intuition toward music...otherwise, it was great for me!

-Jaco...yeah, okay..gotta agree with you there

 

Clapton seems to respond to playing a Gibson far better (in my opinion, of course).

As for the rest, well we all differ.

[casapete]

1 minute ago, Steve Browning said:

 

Clapton seems to respond to playing a Gibson far better (in my opinion, of course).

As for the rest, well we all differ.

I like EC on a Strat and a Gibson, although do feel that his tone in Cream ( who I didn’t particularly

like) was wonderful. Like many others, I first heard that great Les Paul/Marshall tone used by

him on the Bluesbreakers ‘Beano’ album, and even today it still sounds incredible. His signature

Fender Strat was designed with an active preamp to try and get more Gibson-like sounds, but

didn't get that close IMHO.

[Paul S]

11 minutes ago, Steve Browning said:

 

Clapton seems to respond to playing a Gibson far better (in my opinion, of course).

As for the rest, well we all differ.

 

I feel exactly the same way.  The outro solo in 'Spoonful', for example, is played with gusto - bridge pickup, feedback, beautifully aggressive attack and phrasing.  It is almost like it is a different player to the one choosing 'tissue paper and comb' tone from the strat neck pickup neck he seemed to favour for the rest of his career.  Same old dull licks recombined.

 

Conspiracy Theory alert - it has just occurred to me - never mind Paul 'The Fab One' McCartney dying and being substituted, I reckon that happened to EC.  He even looked totally different!  

[Newfoundfreedom]

1 hour ago, Steve Browning said:

 

Mate. this is a thread asking for opinions. How about you respect mine, even though it differs to your own? There are times I wonder just how old you actually are.

 

So you don't understand the concept of discussion or banter then? 

[Grassie]

Def Leppard wrote great pop tunes (see also Van Halen).

[Leonard Smalls]

1 hour ago, Barking Spiders said:

Music college -  many of the best and most influential musicians never went to music college but were self-taught. 

Jaco - to a man the output of (many Berklee educated) guitar and bass virtuosi is uniformly self-indulgent, boring and confined to genres with only niche appeal.

 

There's 2 major points here!

Firstly, the idea of "self-indulgence" and "niche appeal". Self indulgence is usually applied to virtuosity in music one doesn't like, whereas a similar, or possibly far lower, level of skill in another piece of music could be called "genius". And those types of music with by far the highest levels of skill are also those with niche appeal - frinstance classical and jazz.

Now could this lack of appeal of more complex music be because of the first point, a failure in music education at a young age? After all, most (UK) school music lessons are an excuse to misbehave, it's not treated as a proper subject, media largely ignores any music outside of the simplest of popular warbling.

So in order to continue your musical education you have to either go it alone - often because of parents' hot-housing' efforts via private lessons - or being self-taught, or braving the school education route with all its difficulties. And by musical education I don't just mean playing an instrument, but an appreciation (not necessarily a liking!) for all forms of music.

And there's been many Berkeley alumni in all sorts of musical genres: Les Claypool, Stewart Copeland, Adam Duritz (Counting Crows), Susanna Hofs, Phil Lesh (Grateful Dead - attended for a while!), Raymond Pepperell (Dead Kennedys), Terry Riley...

[Grassie]

Red Hot Chili Peppers should never have made another album with Rick Rubin after “One Hot Minute”.

The sound of that band treading water is down to their insistence in using him  to record their albums.

[Boodang]

2 hours ago, dclaassen said:

-What should have EC played, then?

EC would sound so much better if he played air guitar.

[Count Bassy]

1 hour ago, Boodang said:

EC would sound so much better if he played air guitar.

Hardly controversial.