The Most Overrated Albums In The World … Ever!

Here at hecklerspray, we’re tired of arguing about what’s ‘best’ - besides, we’ve got countless Channel 4 bank holiday specials to do that for us (The 100 Best Chewing Gum Adverts or The All-Time Top Ten Favourite Episodes Of Quantum Leap or something).

It’s simply much more fun to call things rubbish.

BBC 6 - a digital music station - seem to share this view. They’ve decided to topple over a few towering idols in a special poll of theirs: The Most Overrated Album Of All Time.

Join us, won’t you, as we take a look at the results…

In descending order (because you like the tension, don’t you, you cheeky little scamps):

10 - The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths (CDs)

The term ‘Love ‘em or Hate ‘em’ doesn’t quite cover it. hecklerspray falls firmly into the former category, although there are clearly legions of people who collapse into spasms of rage at the merest glimmer of hearing-aids and flailing daffodils. The fools.

9 - Never Mind The Bollocks - The Sex Pistols (CDs)

The Clash were far better, weren’t they?

8 - Pet Sounds - Beach Boys (CDs)

What the word ‘patchy’ was invented for. Classic era-defining pop music nestles along tedious instrumentals and silly honking bicycle noises. Now where did that Best Of CD get to?

7 - Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles (CDs)

A Day In The Life - incredible. When I’m Sixty-Four - cack. The whole thing - not as good as Q readers would have you think.

6 - OK Computer - Radiohead (CDs)

A full-on masterpiece. A genuinely baffling entry.

5 - The Joshua Tree - U2 (CDs)

Overwrought stadium rock so middle of the road it should be wearing a reflective jacket and collecting traffic cones.

4 - Definitely Maybe - Oasis (CDs)

Slightly unfair - like picking apart an episode of 24 for its ‘lack of narrative depth’.

3 - The Libertines - The Libertines (CDs)

Want to know why Pete Doherty has become the voice of this generation? Precisely because he has nothing to say.

2 - X&Y - Coldplay (CDs)

hecklerspray is going to be desperately uncool and admit that it finds Coldplay pleasant enough. Hearing this hummable collection of light rock songs described as ‘one of the all-time great albums’ by the NME struck us as a bit bonkers, mind.

1 - Nevermind - Nirvana (CDs)

Yes, it’s good. But the fact that Kurt Cobain is still a more revered cultural figurehead than Bill Hicks - they both died within the same month - remains a crying shame.

So there we are. What albums would you like to have seen up there? hecklerspray has been left vexed by the exclusion of Pink Floyd’s borefest Dark Side Of The Moon and anything by hairy hobbit-fetishists Led Zeppelin.

Suggestions and rants below, kiddies …

Read More:

Nirvana album is ‘most overrated’ - BBC News

[story by C J Davies]