Who are the most underrated bands? By underrated I don’t mean ‘unknown’ – bands that people simply haven’t heard of. I mean bands that are well known by a lot of people, and unfairly maligned. Often, the sort of bands I’m thinking about are unfairly called ‘one hit wonders’ who actually had tons of good music. And often that one hit is among the poppiest of their songs and became a hit because it tapped into the zeitgeist of a specific moment, which now makes it sound both dated and plebian. But I’m also curious to hear if people want to make a case for the greatness of, say, U2 or The Eagles or Barry Manilow or something.
I guess I should also say: I’m most interested in cases where the disdain is directed at the band itself, not just the genre it represents. Lots of people hate Justin Bieber or Iron Maiden or whatever, and I’m sure their fans would say that’s unfair. But really it’s just that people don’t like that style of music. So I want to control for that effect.
Here are some of my suggestions:
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Now, I like The Impression That I Get a lot, but it’s hardly a good representation of what the band is all about. They started out as a hardcore band with some horns – certainly not a ‘ska’ band in any normal sense. And their first four albums are really really good. Check out Toxic Toast or Almost Anything Goes if you don’t believe me. Or their cover of Tin Soldiers (which blows the very good original by Stiff Little Fingers completely out of the water).
The Goo Goo Dolls. Set aside the silly name, and pretend that their two mega-hits (Iris and Name) never existed, and what you’ve got is a band who made five or six very good records in the late 80s and 90s in the tradition of The Replacements. Seriously, Superstar Car Wash is chock-full of tracks that people would love if they had come from Westerberg. Now, obviously they didn’t have quite the songwriting chops or sonic range of The Replacements, but what they did they did pretty darn well for quite a while. Check out Girl Right Next To Me, On the Lie, Slide, Ain’t That Unusual, or Just the Way You Are.
The Monkees. A fake band invented to capitalize on the post-Beatles craze, constructed in order to act in a TV show. A lot of the early hits had only one or two of the ‘band’ involved in any way in the recording process. But over time they exerted more influence and made themselves into an actual band. And even when it was just the backing music for a TV show, written by hired guns and recorded by studio musicians, the music was pretty darn good.
Oasis. Maybe I’m overstating the degree of the backlash against all their absurdities. So it’s possibly they’re not really ‘underrated.’ But my sense is that most people think of them primarily in terms of the feuds, the megalomania, and the overwrought sense of their own importance. And then there’s the meta-backlash against the series of polls where people called Definitely Maybe the greatest album of all time, and so forth. But if you focus too much on that stuff, you’ll lose track of the fact that those first two albums really were fantastic.