Most overrated Band ever? | Page 26 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I’ve heard My Favourite Things from his early period and Giant Steps. The former seems a little cliché for me, nothing about that albums stands out. It has its nice tunes but I would say his love songs sound a little shallow, like I feel he’s in love, but I don’t feel I’m in love when I listen to them. I always assumed that it’s because I’m not a saxophone player, like if I understood the instrument it would be easier to empathize with the emotions he was trying to convey. I’m not saying that you have to, but I would go the extra mile to see what comes out of the other end.

And Giant Steps, be it the title track or a track like Countdown, it’s to technical to me. I like playing jazz, but I’m not into that “sudden tone change every five seconds” kind of jazz listener. I like some of its songs at first, but he was kind of a show-off, and that ruins a lot of his solos for me. His solos usually start fine and then just derail. It is impossible for him to stay on topic, which is fine, but it’s not my kind of thing.

Probably my favourite Coltrane album would have to be Olé Coltrane (not that I’ve listened to that many Coltrane albums to begin with). I like how it’s structured as this three piece opera. The title track is fantastic, it’s groovy and unassuming and it’s probably Coltrane’s best riff. The improvisation feels concentrated and not that bloated. And I like how he sounds like Mingus on that track, he’s so angry and strong, it’s a very nice feeling, that’s why Mingus is one of my favs. Side B is also smooth and pleasant. Even if the first track track has some spots improvisationally that can turn me off. The second track though, I enjoy a lot. It’s that kind of Bernard Herman’s Taxi Driver sexy vibe, I definitely f**k with that. It’s not a perfect album either. But I like it, more stuff like that would be great.

Of course I’ve heard A Love Supreme. That album is kind of a turn off for me because, it’s probably his most memorable album, that’s for sure. I’ve been in the shower chanting “a love supreme… a love supreme… a love supreme…” but I found the performances to be too distant. Like the drummer was killing it, on Acknowledgement the drummer just goes nuts and it’s amazing (Elvis Jones), but then Coltrane’s saxophone seems to play off key (which I bet it was on purpose), and the chants themselves sound lazy, like the men singing “a love supreme” aren’t even trying. It could be a great song if it just had more punch to it. I’d bet if Kamasi Washington were to play that song he would improve a lot of the issues, given he has a particular taste for texture that I always found Coltrane lacking. I like Resolution, the motiv is creative and the song is well structured, but it’s not “best jazz album of all time” material in my book, if you know what I’m saying. And Psalm, I don’t know, I mean, it just doesn’t click with me, but not because I can’t love a good climactic piece of music, it’s just not worth it when the rest of the album doesn’t entertain me the same way. What’s a good ending to a not-so-good movie? Though I’ll give him credit because Psalm is truly an expressional track, and it really feels passionate (which Acknowledgement does not). Conceptually, it is welcome, and probably the best track on the album.

And with Ascension… Well, I can’t say I haven’t tried. Some nut recommend it to me when I told him I didn’t enjoyed A Love Supreme. Which seems crazy to me because Ascension is a way harder listen than A Love Supreme. I guess he was trying to show me Coltrane could be even more difficult, and I would love A Love Supreme after listening to Ascension even if I disliked it. I don’t know, it’s too avant-garde. Probably the weirdest album from the ones I’ve mentioned. I don’t get it at all, I never got the praise for Ascension, it’s an annoying album. The rest of Coltrane’s discography I’ve heard even if it doesn’t sound outstanding to me, it’s pretty pleasant if I just chill, but Ascension is too on the nose. I can’t shake this feeling that he’s cashing in on his biggest fans that will love anything he puts out even if it’s that weird. Maybe is just me but I don’t like that type of music. It would be a vastly better album if this sentiment of awe was instead portrayed by a 40 minute version of Psalm, that would be ten times better.

And it’s not that you have to pick a favourite between Trane and Miles. It’s just that I think there being a Miles Davis in the first place is what distances me from John Coltrane.

And yes, fusion Coltrane is one of my all-time wonders, given how much of a love-hate relationship I have with the guy’s music and how much I love stuff like In a Silent Way and Agharta. Although I would put my money on Eastern music, I think that was more of a Coltrane thing to pursue given he didn’t seem like much of a rocker. Miles was way cooler in terms of his acceptance of new sounds. Of course I’ll check out those albums you mentioned and take for granted I’ll revisit Trane’s discography more thoroughly!

QuarryMan said
I’ve decided to stop putting on the front of saying that I don’t like Coldplay. There are much better and more interesting bands out there, but they do have a great deal of songs I really like, and I respect any band that can change their sound as much as they have and still remain relevant and successful.

This song in particular is pretty great, and it’s a great example of how rock music can still be sonically adventurous in this day and age. 

Let me tell you about my father.

I’ve had the same discussion with him for years now. Coldplay to me is one of those musical acts that don’t offend me. There are bands that I hate, generally not bands like f*****g The Shaggs or something like that, but bands like GVF (which I find nauseatingly unoriginal) or Imagine Dragons (their amount of popularity is just not justified and it’s clearly all a marketing scam), also throw in Nickelback if you decide they still matter But Coldplay to me is a band that had it good for almost a decade, and now it’s just wondering on the inertia of their success and they are not nearly as interesting as they used to be. Their last albums are dispensable at best.

My father was born in the 60s, he has the most pristine taste when it comes to music from that era, he introduced me to a lot of beautiful music, mainly Pink Floyd. I can’t play him a Pink Floyd song without him getting all excited. Once I played Mother on the car and we almost crash on the road, it was kind of scary and hilarious at the same time. He’s a guitarist, he once played on a Led Zeppelin tribute that a friend of his organized. He always tells me how much he respects the Beatles, he keeps saying they were geniuses. Sometimes I think he’s exaggerating because he knows how much I love them, but the man knows the importance they hold, and I really value that he doesn’t say they’re just “overrated” like some people I know

But he has a problem with his taste in music. He doesn’t value simplicity, or at least diminishes it. And he is not exposed to any recent music. He doesn’t know anything about Godspeed, or Arcade Fire, or any other progressive bands he would love (I’ve told him about them, but he doesn’t pay much attention and usually just nods). He doesn’t know how to handle his taste on current music because he’s not very good with the internet. Like I tell him he can look up good musical acts, and rating pages and critics on the internet, but whenever I show it to them, he automatically shuts them down because they praise hip hop, which is something he just cannot handle. I’m ok with that, hip hop is far too different from the genres my dad grew up with, he’s a white, 50 year old, not-English speaker from Argentina, so it’s totally understandable.

But the problem with the view he has of music annoys me. He loves Coldplay. Like he thinks they are the best band of this generation. I, for one, do not think that, not even from afar. He has this notion that whatever music sounds gargantuan and explosive it’s automatically better than, say, a simple acoustic album. I’ve had many discussions trying to explain to him why no, “Coldplay is not today’s equivalent to Pink Floyd”, but he can’t see the difference. And he can’t enjoy stuff like In the Aeroplane Over the Sea because to him “that’s just a guy playing guitar”. He loves Wish You Were Here tho, but whatever he hasn’t heard in his childhood that isn’t Coldplay he just cannot appreciate. And it is infuriating because any song that doesn’t have a big orchestra, explosive piano notes echoing through the ceiling and this ambitious ambient atmosphere flowing through the song can’t be some of the best music ever made. Whenever I show him a simple song that I like and I tell him it is one of my favourite songs he usually says stuff like “well, yeah, but it’s no Dark Side of the Moon” like f**k, why not, why can’t it be? It’s just because it doesn’t have does crazy synthesizers and polished background music? But that is not my main issue issue, my main issue is that that mindset has led him to believe Coldplay is just as good. He used to justify himself whenever talking about this subject with “then how do you explain Coldplay having billions of views on this YouTube video?”. He has gone back on that argument tho, since I showed him a Drake video with almost twice as many views to prove my point and he automatically backed down

Once, he told me he liked them better than LZ, because Zeppelin “was too much riffing and no innovation”, which pisses me the f**k off because Zeppelin were SO innovative within their own catalogue. It is, in fact, how they DID use the same instruments album after album, and still came up with fantastic, new melodies, chord progressions, ways to variate, great concepts, that they are regarded as one of most important rock bands to ever walk the Earth, an opinion that I most certainly agree with. And Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti are fantastically experimental not only in song-writing, but in sound as well, more than Coldplay ever was. The only problem is, Coldplay is more emotional, therefore it’s better

I usually argue with him trying to show him people don’t think of Coldplay nowadays as people thought of Pink Floyd back in the day. Like, Pink Floyd was a big fat light of creativity pushing down on a culture that couldn’t fully handle it because it was immersive, it was outlandishly beautiful, balanced, ground-breaking and with an ambition so true and respectable it was unbelievable. And people look up to them as if they were saviors of sound and they just invented universes with every new release they put out. Coldplay, at best, gets fans cheaply emotional. Coldplay is a pop-band that makes hits for people that don’t know any better, and therefore think they are the best. They are the best of the mediocre. Coldplay would be that one band everyone knows about, but it isn’t taken as seriously (as far as artistry is concerned). Pink Floyd nowadays is the equivalent to something like K Lamar, artistry AS WELL as popularity (there are no longer rock bands as respected in quality in the 2010s as Pink Floyd was in the 70s). I think that is because of hip hop being the main genre promoted right now, and bands in general are not as prevalent as they used to be the same way solo artists are filling the musical landscape nowadays). [Also I couldn’t think of a 70s band equating Coldplay, if anybody can think of one please reply]

Like, to me, thinking Coldplay is the best band of this generation, is like saying Post Malone is the best solo artist (I think that comparison is spot on!, even if Post is quite new). He is good, he is recognizable and he does put in effort. But if you listen to his discography, you get tired of him pulling off that same goddamn epic trap vibe he always does still, it’s just not interesting after the first two albums. Fans get very emotional to Post’s music, because it is designed to cause that feeling in the listeners, and for them to go “oh, he’s so deep, he doesn’t just talk about cars and money, he is truly the best, he doesn’t even use autotune, he really cares about music duude.” But they don’t realize that is just what Post wants you to think of him, and it isn’t really that authentic. It is a cheap way of convincing people you are ground-breaking; they just market an audience that isn’t used to listening to anything outside of their mediocrity bubble. That is Coldplay, a band good enough to make ignorant people think they are the leaders of quality.

I’ve tried showing him stuff like the Rate Your Music catalogue of “best ever”, and I’ve tried explaining to him that he should give it chance since is the biggest rating musical community out there and generally there are well-versed recommendations on their top lists [for the record, I disagree a lot with RYM, and I don’t fully agree with the way their “top lists” are balanced, but it is still a pretty good site for people to share their opinions]. And when I tell him Coldplay is not on those lists, he flips out, and tells me how Coldplay is the only super-band right now, and everybody knows about them, and since their music isn’t complete trash, his brain makes the connection that people who listen to music are on his side rather than mine (even though I think it’s the other way around, I think I hold the popular opinion here, but he will never know that, since he doesn’t go into the internet outside of Coldplay YouTube videos, which of course are filled with comments praising them).

My point is that’s my problem with Coldplay in general. Not that they are bad band at all (in the 2000s I think they were pretty good), but in their last four album I struggle with how much their material annoys the hell out of me. I don’t mind my father liking Coldplay as much as he does anymore, but that is what Coldplay does to people. It convinces them that just because they have a very clean and perfectly assembled reverb gigantic production, it means their compositions are out of this world too. Their musical catalogue is pretty thin and repetitive if you ask me. On their last records they have little to no experimentation, but basic people think they are still one of the top 10 contemporary bands and even of all time, and that’s what bothers me. Their discography doesn’t back that up not even a little. Coldplay, at best, has enough songs to fill a 40 minute PLAYLIST of great, innovative material. They have a handful of songs that I think are excellent, and yes they do have some simple songs, but on the radio the last months I’ve heard a thousand times that Orphans track, which I think it’s just terrible. That song is terrible, because if you take that expensive sounding production out of it, you have generic, half-assed, corny, stupid song-writing.

And if you ask me for that track you linked @QuarryMan I’m sorry but I think is the kind of fake deep vibe I got from the rest of the new album overall. But coming from you I don’t mind, because I know you wouldn’t say they are at the level of the best bands nowadays.

The difference between Coldplay and any other band that is better is: any top band can have a bad song, but it is usually out of a failed experiment, Coldplay is just hella cliché now, they can’t handle experimenting anymore [and with experimenting I don’t mean making weird music, I mean just coming up with a quality in the melody or the structure of a track or album that catches my attention, that to me is already experimental, but Coldplay doesn’t even go that far and it’s not much to ask for].

That’s why I hate Imagine Dragons also, tho to a much greater degree. Coldplay to me is O.K. But the fact that they have brainwashed my dad for him to think that “Pink Floyd = spectacle, Pink Floyd = quality, Coldplay = spectacle so Coldplay = quality / Coldplay = Pink Floyd” is what bothers me. So many people think they are fantastic, and I don’t think they are (anymore, as their first couple of albums are somewhat innovative). I think they have a good ear for production, the singer is great and the band in general plays with taste; BUT with NOT AS GOOD compositions to back it up, it immediately makes their performance worthless. Coldplay is the quintessential example of how epic doesn’t always mean good. And I get that is their aesthetic, but an artist is great to me when he can grab his aesthetic and be challenging within that aesthetic, Coldplay hasn’t been doing that for a long time tbh.

Which only makes me doubt if I agree at all with my dad’s love for Pink Floyd. Because I don’t think I love Pink Floyd for the same reason he does. I don’t love them because they had an “epic” sound, I love them because of what they DID with that epic sound, how much they could fluctuate and morph and re-invent themselves. 2010s Coldplay to me is like having enough talent to emulate a sound as epic, and just wasting it in meh music.

Do I think Coldplay is overrated? I don’t know, it depends on the circles that you know. In my experience, I’ve found a lot of people share my opinion on Coldplay (many I see on this very forum), so I don’t think they are that overrated. Besides, Pitchfork has been s******g on their albums for quite some time. And for the record I agree with that reaction (as I’ve said, Pitchfork usually surprises me with how much I agree with them from time to time). To say that Coldplay is overrated would be like saying Drake is overrated. Like yeah, he has millions of people that love him, but the community of listeners I read on the internet usually s***s on him quite often. Same with Coldplay (Coldplay is ten times better than Drake, to clarify), a lot of people already think they are overrated and I am within that group, so they are lowkey balanced within us opinionated folks that don’t overrate their music in the first place.

Excuse me if I’m being to harsh, Coldplay is a decent band, but the comparison to Pink Floyd just puts me in a bad mood. Like Coldplay does have taste, and they do have personality, but their amount of success makes people think things that are just not true. If I had to recommend an album by Coldplay it would be the debut, Rush of Blood and maybe Viva la Vida (I’m not into X&Y, and everything else is just boring). Still none of those albums go past a seven out of ten. An eight out of ten if it’s a good day. More like a great, great day. Like sun shining, birds singing, a choir awakes me, world peace resumed, found a million dollars on my backyard, just made love to Claudia Cardinale, God himself fixed me a drink type of great day.