Unpopular Opinions - Music Edition

[VirginiaHamilton]

I wholeheartedly agree with this. If anything, Phil Collins made Genesis listenable - no easy feat considering how they started out by making unintelligible noise. That man's music (both solo and with Genesis) was one of the bright spots of my childhood.

Since we're on the subject of Phil Collins, I'll offer two unpopular opinions:

1. Phil Collins deserves as much respect as Peter Gabriel. Yes, the man was about making a shamelessly commercial sound (though I suspect that some of the backlash against him had to do with his unabashed love and respect for R&B music and artists, as opposed to the majority of his peers that would publicly shun it while jacking it), but he did it just as well as Peter Gabriel did in introducing African music to a pop audience.
   
2. I think that this song (which Phil Collins co-produced) is miles better than anything that ABBA put out:
   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz5DkTF2RW8

On another note:

1. While I consider Teena Marie and Michael McDonald to be the Queen and King of blue-eyed soul, as well as Hall and Oates to be the best blue-eyed soul duo of all time, I honestly believe that the singers across the pond have snatched the torch from American singers over the past decade. UK labels/execs are a lot more permissive in allowing singers like Amy Winehouse and Adele to sing true R&B in a way that American label execs aren't willing to do with Christina Aguilera or Justin Timberlake (well, before he decided to pretend to be an actor).
   
2. Since I am on the subject of Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake: not only could I not stand their teenybopper sh!t (as well as 99.9% of whatever that sub-genre shat out), I have no problem considering Stripped and Justified as the beginning of their careers as that was the first time that I heard them shine on good songs.
   
3. On the flip side, I have no problem regarding Missundaztood as the start of Pink's career, as it was a 180-degree turn from the wack R&B that she was trying to do when she first came out. Had she stuck with the latter, she would've ended up in the bargain bin with Willa Ford and Aaron Carter.
   
4. The 0.01% of teenybopper pop that I actually liked came from Robyn, as she managed to make that music listenable in a way that I wouldn't have found it with anyone else. Show Me Love is still my song almost 15 years later.
   

[DRW50]

I love ABBA to pieces and I always will, so I can't say he's better, but I do think that record showed a very different and very natural side to Frida, a direction she was going in over time anyway. It is, again, the epitome of 80's pop goodness, along with the gloriously trashy and bombastic theme to "Against All Odds" that he did.

I know why people have such respect for Peter Gabriel, but I never understood the whole idea of his purity and how Genesis was ruined without him. I'm not sure if Genesis would have stayed away from pop even with Gabriel - he certainly went for that element with "Shock the Monkey" (trading on quasi-masturbation slang) and the videos and songs of the late 80's like Big Time and Sledgehammer.

American labels are all about melisma and oversinging. British artists are able to just feel and breathe songs, instead of beating them into the ground.

[AllMyDaysatGH]

India Arie and KT Tunstall should be the Queens of todays R&B/Soul music right now.

I love folk music. LOL

"LMFAO" are mediocre as hell and I know it

[I Am A Swede]

I think ABBA is better than The Beatles, and Björn and Benny are better songwriters than Lennon/McCartney.

[VirginiaHamilton]

1. I like the 'melisma' just fine, as it adds a lot more character to a song than the dreary singers that sing it straight without any personality. My issue is the fact that American labels can't loosen their leashes on their artists enough to go into a pure R&B direction. It always has to be watered down even though the quality of the music suffers as a result, which is too bad because the American singers that can sing deserve better.
   
2. I think that liking Peter Gabriel offers music listeners a safe space to enjoy his pop music without ever being guilty of enjoying unapologetically pop music. Anyone can point to his working with 'world music' artists as a reason why he is more 'genuine' than the 'artificial' Phil Collins.
   

[Becki]

I've never liked Madonna. I don't think she can sing all that well.

Never was a fan of Elvis. I appreciate his music and his legend though, even if I don't completely understand them.

Carrie Underwood's voice is like a Siamese cat screaming. Or worse yet, like nails scraping on a chalkboard. UGH!

I'll go to my grave believing that Trisha Yearwood has the finest country female voice of my generation.

[VirginiaHamilton]

More unpopular opinions:

I prefer Celine Dion's version of If You Ask Me To over the original Patti LaBelle version, as the shrieking (which I normally love) at the end of the latter just takes me out of the simplicity of the song.

The older I get, the more that I prefer Gladys Knight's 80s music over her 60s/70s classics. I find songs such as You're Number One in my Book and Save the Overtime For Me as a more genuine depiction of her personality than the Motown/Buddah standards that she sang.

I do not care that it was a number one hit, I cannot stand the sound of Timmy Thomas' Why Can't We Live Together. The music/beat/singing just clashes, making that song a hot mess to my ears. (Mista sampling it for their song, Blackberry Molasses, is probably why I've never liked their song, either.)

If Miguel is the best that today's mainstream R&B is promoting as their twenty-something crooner du jour, then they need to go back to the drawing board. I'm sure that D'Angelo and Maxwell had their fair share of detractors, but the music that they released as twenty-something artists were miles better than the sh!t (that a lot of girls/women are inexplicably falling over themselves for) that I've heard from that guy.

Aside from Outkast, Scarface, and the occasional TI song, I can't stand Southern Rap and have never been able to hop on its bandwagon. It supplanting both East and West Coast Rap to the point that both East and West Coast rappers were adopting its sound/flow (well, if you could even call it a flow) is one of the reasons why I dropped hip hop like a bad habit eight years ago and never looked back.

I think Big Pun was a better rapper than people gave him credit for. I wouldn't go as far as to call him the greatest of his time, but I believe that he was far more than mediocre-ass Fat Joe's meal ticket/the Boricua Biggie Smalls that he was made out to be while he was alive.

[DRW50]

I don't like Maxwell's cover of "This Woman's Work." I actually get very annoyed that many on reality TV love to act like his is the only version of the song.

I don't like falsetto. The only person I like it on is Roy Orbison and sometimes the Bee Gees.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

1993's janet. album remains Janet Jackson's best and most diverse work.

The Velvet Rope album was all over the place and heavily over-produced in some instances, and while the singles from Rhythm Nation hold up well, a lot of the album is pretty dated (as is all of Control, though still enjoyable).

[DRW50]

I don't like that spoken word stuff on Rhythm Nation.

I don't know if that ever works - I remember being so confused (sometimes I liked it sometimes not) when that was on Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. I haven't listened to the whole album in years though.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is one of the most overrated albums of the past 20 years.

[DRW50]

What would you say is the most overrated?

[Y&RWorldTurner]

There's so many.

I think the last time it really got to me was with (S)Norah Jones's Come Away With Me album, an album where you were constantly told how good it was and why you had to own it. In all actuality, there was nothing special about it. I think I enjoyed the album better before it became "popular."

[DRW50]

I kind of felt that way about a lot of the Lilith Fair-era material (I know she wasn't Lilith Fair). It seemed more like marketing to try to start and then cash in on a trend. I always thought Paula Cole's voice with too many listens sounded like a harpooned whale.

[VirginiaHamilton]

I actually prefer Maxwell's version of This Woman's Work (as Kate Bush's voice grates on my ears) - although I choose the Unplugged version (where he first debuted it) over the eventual studio version.

Speaking of those Janet Jackson/Lauryn Hill interludes, I miss having those on albums in general. I'm not sure when they "went out of style", but I've always felt that they were the string that united every track together as a song storybook of sorts.

As much as I adore(d) The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (as it was the soundtrack to my senior year of high school), I think find that she has skated far too long on its prestige. I don't mean as far as her subsequent music is concerned, but in regards to the disregard that she has for her fans. The latter is the reason why I eventually removed my rose-colored glasses and recognized her for the unwarranted egocentric that she is.

Both L'il Kim and Nicki Minaj are and always have been terrible. The reason why I cite this as an unpopular opinion because there's an ongoing old-school vs. new-school war regarding these two and I feel the same way that some feel about Madonna and Lady GaGa - I couldn't stand the punani rap that Kim (as well as Foxy Brown, Trina, etc.) brought to the forefront back then and I can't stand it now in the form of Nicki.

Though I'm not disgusted by Timbaland's decision to solely make music for the "Sex and the City girls and Desperate Housewives" as some are, I still believe that his earlier work with Missy, Aaliyah, and Ginuwine surpasses anything he's done in the last decade.