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Post by countjohn on May 4, 2020 19:43:16 GMT
Well, Radiohead are my favorite band and the problem with them is that a lot of their best songs are album tracks so you don't know them unless you're a fan. So they're underrated but not really. For them I think you have to go to the B-sides. They had so many good ones in the Bends/OKC era Banana Co. might have actually been recorded in the Pablo Honey sessions but was released as the B-side to Street Spirit. It's really the perfect counterpoint to it, those two songs could have been together on a very different album. This is about as superficially "pretty" as Thom Yorke's ever sang, it has one of Greenwood's best guitar solos, and the tack piano is a nice touch and the kind of thing RH almost never does. On some days I'd have this on the lower end of my top ten RH songs but even some big fans haven't even heard of it, so I definitely think it qualifies as underrated. Talk Show Host is maybe a stretch to include since it is somewhat famous from being in a couple movies but if you're listing great Radiohead B-sides it kind of has to be on there. One of their best songs. They also sort of had to release it as a B-side since it sounds like Ok Computer but they recorded it during The Bends, so it would not have fit on the album. Palo Alto is another one that is very critically acclaimed, but unless you're a big RH fan you probably haven't heard it so it counts I think. Clearly better than some of the songs on OKC so I don't know why it didn't make the album. Making it the opener and having Airbag as the second track as some have suggested would have been a great idea. Especially since it's a song describing a futuristic city and then Airbag is about getting in a car accident in a futuristic city. It would have been perfect. Some of the best guitar tones they've ever had.
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Post by DeepArcher on May 4, 2020 19:52:22 GMT
Well, Radiohead are my favorite band and the problem with them is that a lot of their best songs are album tracks so you don't know them unless you're a fan. So they're underrated but not really. For them I think you have to go to the B-sides. They had so many good ones in the Bends/OKC era Banana Co. might have actually been recorded in the Pablo Honey sessions but was released as the B-side to Street Spirit. It's really the perfect counterpoint to it, those two songs could have been together on a very different album. This is about as superficially "pretty" as Thom Yorke's ever sang, it has one of Greenwood's best guitar solos, and the tack piano is a nice touch and the kind of thing RH almost never does. On some days I'd have this on the lower end of my top ten RH songs but even some big fans haven't even heard of it, so I definitely think it qualifies as underrated. Talk Show Host is maybe a stretch to include since it is somewhat famous from being in a couple movies but if you're listing great Radiohead B-sides it kind of has to be on there. One of their best songs. They also sort of had to release it as a B-side since it sounds like Ok Computer but they recorded it during The Bends, so it would not have fit on the album. Palo Alto is another one that is very critically acclaimed, but unless you're a big RH fan you probably haven't heard it so it counts I think. Clearly better than some of the songs on OKC so I don't know why it didn't make the album. Making it the opener and having Airbag as the second track as some have suggested would have been a great idea. Especially since it's a song describing a futuristic city and then Airbag is about getting in a car accident in a futuristic city. It would have been perfect. Some of the best guitar tones they've ever had.
While on the subject of Bends/OKC era B-sides I have to shoutout one of my personal favorites "Pearly" ... a song that captured my teen angst so well (lol) and is in general one of their most angst-ridden, directly emotional songs in a way that feels genuine and is intense in a way they're usually not as well:
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Post by DeepArcher on May 4, 2020 21:32:52 GMT
Joy Division are known for releasing only two LPs in their tragically short run and for both of those albums being masterpieces that influenced alt./indie rock for 40+ years to come ... and what's remarkable is that they produced a lot of songs that didn't feature on either of those two albums including a lot of their very best tracks.
The compilation album Substance is arguably on the same level as their two studio LPs and it's full of great deep cuts. Of course most of the attention goes to Love Will Tear Us Apart, Atmosphere, and Transmission but there are a lot of tracks better than any of them. The opener "Warsaw" (also the band's original name) is one of them, also the opener to the very first EP they ever released, and is probably the most "punk rock" song they ever released before coming into their own ... in classic Joy Division fashion the lyrics tell the story of a Nazi defector and not much else, since who needs complicated songwriting.
A fun burst of energy before transforming into the dark & brooding act that we know them as today ... and if this one isn't "underrated" enough then I'll just have to go with a deeper cut next time I guess...
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Post by pacinoyes on May 5, 2020 9:39:11 GMT
"C*cksucker Blues" (1970) - The Rolling Stones aka "Schoolboy Blues"
The greatest act of self-sabotage and f*ck you in pop music history (at least) - this song was the Stones last single for Decca records (who they hated) which they were contractually obligated to deliver a song.......well Decca never released it which was the point: imagine that - never releasing a song by one of the biggest bands ever - from their (or anyone's) greatest artistic era.
It is not only underrated - legally it doesn't even exist.
The song is genuinely shocking - which is surprising since it's precisely designed to shock - and specifically graphic (which is why Decca refused it of course) but it's actually a great song in a way - once you get beyond the outrage of it - and the obscenity. It takes what the Stones did best (better than anyone) the Blues and applies the other thing they did better than anyone (addressing sex) and fuses them together. It maybe gets closer to a queasy dark heart of the Blues and a dark humor than any white guys have a right to........ it's a total joke......yet it's not a joke.
It's a legit act of rebellion by millionaires, an act of Art and of anti-Art - it's about money and not remotely about money. It is also, apparently Jagger performing this song alone without the band backing him but submitting it AS the band - which makes it even more unbelievable that this song actually happened.
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Post by countjohn on May 5, 2020 22:55:28 GMT
It's a little hard to call anything The Beatles did underrated given the praise they've received over the years, but I have a few picks. Sexy Sadie is certainly a well received song. But to me it's one of their ten best and no. 2 on White Album behind Happiness is a Warm Gun. Every element works, the piano riff, backing vocals, and blues-y guitar. And then it's one of John's meanest lyrics and vocal performances. Originally the lyrics were "you fucking c***" instead of "what have you done?" but even they could not have gotten away with that back then. Beatles For Sale gets crapped on a lot because it's almost half covers after they had their first all original album with Hard Day's Night. But it's a big leap forward to me because the first three tracks were their three best songs up to that point and really the first great songs they ever did, IMO. Linked to I'm a Loser because it's my favorite. Probably a top 20 Beatles song overall. A couple originals from the Yellow Submarine soundtrack are also good picks here since those aren't nearly as famous. You haven't heard them unless you're a Beatles completionist or have seen the movie. Hey Bulldog is another excellent song where everything comes together. Good, snarling vocals from John, a screaming guitar solo from George, and maybe Paul's best bass line. "What makes you think you're something special when you smile" is another great, mean line from John. Sounds like something a classic punk band would have said. Then It's Only a Northern Song is just funny. For backstory Northern Songs was Lennon and McCartney's music publishing company, and they owned the rights to all the Beatles songs, even George's. So he did this song with clanging piano and atonal horns, and sang it flat just to flip them the bird. "It doesn't really matter what chords I play, what words I say.......it's only a northern song"
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Post by pacinoyes on May 6, 2020 10:02:37 GMT
"Sidewalking" - The Jesus & Mary Chain
In their amazing initial run - from 1985-1988 - this single is '88 - I always felt they were the most Rock and Roll of any new band in the world back when that mattered. There were other great-ish new bands in that time but none that link to the history of the genre like them - and if you stop them right here - they would be even bigger legends. Much bigger actually....2 great albums and this single.....
This song - because it was a non-album track - seems to be both underrated and yet sums up their whole history and their mystery - this song sounds like pop music, and like Pop (Iggy) music. It sounds like cotton candy crossed with drugs (drugs being their whole schtick) and very precise and utterly fuzzed out at the same time - like it should be a huge hit but could never actually be a hit single.
You didn't get it unless you GOT it - and they used this song for their somewhat formulaic, somewhat thrilling entire 3rd album when the magic was mostly gone because they couldn't go back to this because they had done it so definitively.
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Post by DeepArcher on May 6, 2020 19:02:52 GMT
Alright, have I posted enough "filler" to be allowed to post about The National again ... "Humiliation" may appear on their most well-known album but it's the least-played on Spotify of that album and it's awkwardly sandwiched between the band's most famous song and their best song ... even fans of the band don't talk about this song nearly as much as it deserves. It's the longest song on TWFM at just over 5 minutes but it doesn't feel like it at all ... the instrumentation is light but the drumming keeps it propulsive from start to finish so that it moves with an insanely smooth grace. The real standout though are Matt's lyrics and vocals, it's one of his most cleverly written songs and it ends on a repeated refrain that may have special resonance for cinephiles! Unlike the first National song I posted this isn't an anomaly for them, in fact quite the opposite it's sort of a quintessential National song for their post- High Violet period and certainly won't win over any new converts ... but that's also part of what makes it so unique and special and great. The more I listen to it, which is a lot lately, it's become one of my favorite songs on Trouble Will Find Me. All the L.A. women Fall asleep while swimming I got paid to fish 'em out And then one day I lost the job...
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Post by countjohn on May 6, 2020 20:10:23 GMT
Their best ballad and pretty much tied for my favorite song from them with Gimme Shelter. Don't see too many people rate it that highly and the Stones ballads are under discussed in general.
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Post by DeepArcher on May 6, 2020 20:22:53 GMT
Their best ballad and pretty much tied for my favorite song from them with Gimme Shelter. Don't see too many people rate it that highly and the Stones ballads are under discussed in general. This is my favorite song of theirs (though I'm not exactly fluent in their discography) and I'd rank it highly among my all-time favorite too -- I don't think it ever dawned on me as underrated since I rate it so highly, lol.
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Post by countjohn on May 6, 2020 21:26:12 GMT
Their best ballad and pretty much tied for my favorite song from them with Gimme Shelter. Don't see too many people rate it that highly and the Stones ballads are under discussed in general. This is my favorite song of theirs (though I'm not exactly fluent in their discography) and I'd rank it highly among my all-time favorite too -- I don't think it ever dawned on me as underrated since I rate it so highly, lol. You never see it on lists of even like the 20-25 best Stones songs so I'd say it's underrated since it's top two for me.
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Post by DeepArcher on May 7, 2020 17:51:15 GMT
Apparently, Michael Stipe advised The National before their recording of High Violet that they were at the point in their careers where they had to either record a hit or choose to be a band that never recorded a hit. Seven years later they'd have their highest-charing single with "System Only Dreams..." which is probably the closest they've ever come to true mainstream success, yet most would probably say that The National have chosen to be the latter type of band. Though I'm not sure if when Stipe said that he was taking into account that with indie rock music these days you can't have the type of "hit" anymore like "Losing My Religion" or like, for example, Radiohead's "Creep"... Thom Yorke is another artist who has taken advice from Michael Stipe close to heart before and furthermore Radiohead is another artist who has actively chosen to be a band that doesn't release "hits." Their breakout success with the biggest song they'd ever have by a long shot with "Creep" (a song I really don't like btw) made them a band that they ultimately didn't want to be, and it took some pretty drastic left turns and experimentation to entirely redefine themselves -- even still, the strong majority of people seem to know them as the band that did "Creep." Because of the legacy that song left on the band, I think Radiohead is the only band I know of who has ever decided to not feature a song on an album because they thought it would be too much of a hit. And that's exactly what happened with the song "Lift," which was written and even recorded leading up to OK Computer, yet the band decided to not put it on the album because they feared the song would blow-up and turn them into a band that they didn't want to be. The song then went down in the band's history as this sort of mythical thing that never was. I actually don't love this song -- and maybe it's because of that traditional Britpop-y nature of it -- but I think that's mostly because when they did finally release a studio-recorded version on the expanded 20th anniversary edition of OK Computer it felt underwhelming and in a way ruined the mythos of the song. But those live performances of it will still always be special and are still the definitive form of the song to me ... these rapturous performances of the massive hit that never was. Blabbermouth Noel Gallagher (or maybe his brother idk) loves criticizing Radiohead and I think he said once that they became bad after The Bends (a horrendous take) because they couldn't write any hits like "Fake Plastic Trees" anymore. If "Lift" and its story is evident of anything, it's not that the band lost the ability to write a cathartic, crowd-pleasing hit like that ... but they chose not to. Instead, we have only glimpses of a very different band that could have been something else entirely:
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Post by pacinoyes on May 7, 2020 20:11:45 GMT
As anybody knows a lot of my favorite bands made a single album only - Johnny Thunders/Heartbreakers, The original Modern Lovers, The Exploding Hearts, to a lesser extent even The Sex Pistols..........and my number 2 album of the whole 90s (gulp) The La's.
But the La's are more underrated than all of them because they are seen as a "one hit wonder" (they most certainly, are not) absent of any scene or movement at all essentially they replicated with a scary, almost clinical precision the vibe of Beatles/Stones/Kinks/Who....... but 25 years later.
Their most underrated song to me is also their heaviest - this is them as The Who - with a volcanic bass riff - some marvelous and cryptic lyrics from lead genius Lee Mavers who was crucially underrated in that regard - he was almost as lyrically gifted as he was adept at melodies.
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Post by countjohn on May 8, 2020 18:43:11 GMT
In contrast to The Beatles The Kinks are a band where you could call almost any of their songs "underrated" outside of a handful of their big singles. They were defined by the deep cuts and even their "classic" acclaimed albums are under listened-to by the GP. Shangri-La is their best song and like top ten song of all time tier for me. Arthur the album and that song in particular were the crown jewel of the their late 60's sound. Ray Davies considered it the best Kinks some himself, but generally speaking I don't think music critics have it up there with their famous singles. Two Sisters (an album track from Something Else) made it onto National Review's infamous "conservative rock songs" list and I'm pretty sure feminists would not like it at all. However, as was the case with most Kinks songs, Davies was really writing about himself and in this case he and his much wilder brother. Although I like a lot of that 60's baroque pop, The Kinks were better at it than nearly anyone because their recordings were so detailed. This one starts out twee but doesn't stay that way because the hard driving drums comes in, and they save the strings to the very end for maximum impact. I've talked about these last two before and they both due similar things. Dead End Street is great because it takes sunny pop cliches like brass and a jaunty music hall piano riff and makes them melancholy and sad din the context of a song about being a loser. Then Village Green does the same thing with the "la la la la la" backing vocals that sound like a Gregorian chant here and weeping harps. Also, like Two Sisters, it's such a detailed recording for something a lot of bands would have done as a simple twee piano ditty. They throw so many different things into a two minute song.
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Post by pacinoyes on May 9, 2020 10:59:04 GMT
I'm one of those people that basically can get along with everyone - you don't have to share my interests...... but for people who don't "get" The Ramones of their first 3 Godlike albums - I really don't think pacinoyes is your kind of guy. You're not likely to get my sense of humor for one thing and you probably think we're both d-u-m-b too but you'll also underrate this tremendous ballad (!) - which many do - and the way they use the word "time" in 3 lines in a row with 3 different shades of meaning. You'd wrongly think that we both just don't have a wide vocabulary or maybe that kind of genius is by accident....which makes you sort of makes you d-u-m-b..... well about the Ramones at least.
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Post by countjohn on May 9, 2020 20:17:22 GMT
I just came in and did my Kinks post yesterday without looking at the thread and did not see that pacinoyes did them right before me and said essentially the same thing about them being a "deep cut" band.
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Post by countjohn on Jun 5, 2020 4:36:28 GMT
Posted this in other threads. This isn't EC's best song but it might be his best melody. I could listen to that chorus all day. Pretty sure it was an album track and certainly not one of his most acclaimed songs.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 5, 2020 8:23:57 GMT
Posted this in other threads. This isn't EC's best song but it might be his best melody. I could listen to that chorus all day. Pretty sure it was an album track and certainly not one of his most acclaimed songs. One of his very great songs - No Action - like all 3 album openers on his first 3 classics - involved his great early songwriting trick: You hear only his voice without any music at first which sets an oddly compelling lyric against a jarring background which makes it memorable within 5 seconds - what song started - much less started an album - with the singer overtly denying his feelings like that: "I don't want to kiss you, I don't want to touch" ..........it was quite brilliant - the inverse of Rock songwriting which is often declarative and direct - it's ingeniously constructed and in how it plays on a listener too.
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 21, 2023 20:37:45 GMT
The Kinks - The Way Love Used To Be this is one of Ray Davies best and most lovely songs - though he has so many that are special ones that sounds stupid to say.......but it mostly fell through the cracks - if people know it, they're by definition Kinda Kompletely A Kinksfanatik
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Nikan
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Post by Nikan on Apr 21, 2023 20:56:51 GMT
This one from Morrissey. Love the randomness of it's topic, the sound of it, the length especially... makes me wanna listen to all of Viva Hate every time I give it a go.
"Friday nights 1969, ATV you murdered every line..."
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