Some famous and infamous put-downs from various rock critics:

"None of the three stooges in Emerson, Lake and Palmer have a commitment to either classical music or rock and roll. They'll plunder Bach, Bernstein and Berry with equal nonchalance and equal misunderstanding." - Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell from their book "The Worst Rock and Roll Records of All Time"

"The lyrics recall the liberal fantasy of rock concert as Nuremberg rally, equating sex with victimization in a display of male supremacism that glints with humor only at its cruelest--song titles like "Room Service" and "Ladies in Waiting." In this context, the band's refusal to bare the faces that lie beneath the clown makeup becomes ominous, which may be just what they intend, though for the worst of reasons. You know damn well that if they didn't have both eyes on maximum commerciality they'd call themselves Blow Job." - Robert Christgau on Kiss' Dressed to Kill album

"The worst band in all creation." - Dave Marsh on the Grateful Dead

"If this band makes it, I'm going to have to commit suicide." - Rolling Stone's Melissa Mills on Uriah Heep's debut album

"[W]hat's really interesting is not that such narcissistic slop should get recorded, but what must be going on in the minds of the people who support it in such amazing numbers. Gall, nerve and ego have never been far from great rock & roll. Yet there's a thin but crucial line between those qualities and what it takes to fill arenas today: sheer self-aggrandizement on the most puerile level. If these are the champions, gimme the cripples." - Lester Bangs on Styx's Pieces of Eight album

"[Journey's] Escape is less a testament to talent than the times. Candy bars and the dollar aren’t all that’s shrinking these days. The latest victim of inflation is the value of a Number One album. When heavy-metal light-weights like Journey start swinging from the chart tops after years on the road (you know, the old Speedwagon Come Alive shtick), there are usually at least two hummable reasons. But once you get past the single ["Who's Crying Now'] here, it’s tough to fathom why either the band or its new LP is riding such a hot streak. Journey could be any bunch of fluff-brained sessioneers with a singer who sounds like a eunuch under assault from the thrashings of a West Coast-style identi-riffer." Deborah Frost of Rolling Stone

"Oh, no. Contained within these grooves are twelve convincing arguments against the capitalist system." Paul Gambaccini on The Archies' Greatest Hits. (This is the entire review.)

"Why did I expect this album to be blank on both sides?" J.D. Considine on The Best of Kansas. (Again, this is the entire review.)

:lol: :rofl:

More put-downs! :D

"These guys are as stupid as their most pretentious fans." - Robert Christgau on Emerson, Lake and Palmer

"[America is] one of those soft-rock bands of the seventies that couldn't even work up enough energy to be mellow." - Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell

"The music can't redeem the lyrics–not only because such dehumanization is irredeemable, but also because the music is lame. Indeed, the Knack are the most nefarious sort of hacks. They're terribly competent and they have a seemingly inexhaustible storehouse of clichés... the Knack's greatest achievement is to make hard-rock clichés sound completely gutless... Fieger's puling vocals suggest that, for him, the ultimate agony would be to imagine that somewhere in the world there exists a woman who might find him sexually unattractive. Compared to Doug Fieger, Rod Stewart is a paragon of sexual humility." - Dave Marsh on the Knack's second album

"Paul McCartney makes lovely boutique tapes, resolute upon being as inconsequential as the Carpenters which in itself may be as much a reaction to John's opposite excesses as a simple case of vacuity. You could hardly call him burnt out--Band on the Run was, in its rather vapid way, a masterful album. Muzak's finest hour. Of course he is about as committed to the notion of subject matter as Hanna-Barbera, and his cuteness can be incredibly annoying at times." - Lester Bangs

Thanks for posting those. Such abysmal critics. They're dissed some of my favorite bands, in fact E L P's "From the Beginning" ranks among my all-time favorite songs, if not #1.

I think my brother had one of Dave Marsh's books of record reviews, lots of bad takes in there for sure. IIRC he rated Led Zeppelin's albums quite low.

"[America is] one of those soft-rock bands of the seventies that couldn't even work up enough energy to be mellow." - Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell

Idjits!:mad:

Thanks for posting those. Such abysmal critics. They're dissed some of my favorite bands, in fact E L P's "From the Beginning" ranks among my all-time favorite songs, if not #1.

I think my brother had one of Dave Marsh's books of record reviews, lots of bad takes in there for sure. IIRC he rated Led Zeppelin's albums quite low.

You're welcome - more to come!

I don't know if Marsh rated Led Zeppelin low, but I know that in the Rolling Stone Record Guide's first two editions - which Marsh edited - Billy Altman rated Zep highly.

I've always had a beef with guys like Marsh for constantly bashing Rush and also dismissing other AOR acts for being narcissistic, yet Marsh has consistently praised Madonna, saying that her music is "good, except when it's great." He once intimated that people who hate her are white male elitist who are prejudiced against her for being a female performer and against her audience for being predominantly female, nonwhite, and gay - it can't possibly be for the music! He's constantly attacked fans for propping up performers he doesn't like, yet he takes umbrage at anyone who would throw the records of his favorite acts in the garbage can.

Oh yeah, he's constantly praising rap and even tried to rename rock and roll "rock and rap." Christgau is slightly more broadminded.

"We are happy to report that over ninety percent of everything the Grateful Dead have recorded is diffuse, bombastic, self-indulgent, and emotionally dishonest . . .. We've had the misfortune of seeing them twice in concert, once in high school when we were smking pop, and again in college after we stopped. Guess which time we thought they were better." - Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell

"Truthfully, there simply isn't very much about [the Grateful Dead] that's impressive, except the devotion of its fans to a mythology created in Haight-Ashbury and now sustained in junior high schools across America." - Dave Marsh

"[Marsh] sure tells it like it is [about the Dead], and pretty it ain't." - Bill Shapiro

Because I know you all love Dave Marsh! :lol:

"For any rock music fan opposed to cultural hegemony or self-righteous sanctimony, it's difficult to resist gloating over the fact that U2's Pop album and its ongoing U.S. tour have bombed. The tour's most noteworthy emblem is a gigantic stage prop in the shape of a lemon, and that could not be more perfect. Billboard's most recent album chart doesn't even rank Pop among its top 200 albums . . .. Watching pop-culture bombast on the scale of U2 collapse beneath its own pretension and arrogance is indeed rewarding."

"Consumers who turn to rock bands do so precisely for what they cannot find at Kmart. It's not that rock fans automatically reject crass commercialism -- millions of Kiss and Bon Jovi fans prove otherwise -- but at least that music is supposed to be self-generated crass commercialism."

Both of this quotes are from a 1997 column he wrote about corporate and commercial arrogance. Here's the link so that I don't take anything out of context:

https://www.miaminewtimes.com/music/rattle-and-bum-6360325

And then there was Alan Niester, whose pointless negative appraisal of Rush accused them of putting out a "pointless" archival LP! :mad:

It's hard to know who music critics want us to like. It's like they don't want us to like anyone at all!

I have heard for decades the criticisms over Geddy Lee's voice in Rush. In 1977, when I first discovered Rush and they became one of my top three favorite bands in my rock "epiphany", I always thought Geddy Lee's voice was unique and impressive. As was the music. Alex Lifeson was one of my influences on guitar.

It's hard to know who music critics want us to like. It's like they don't want us to like anyone at all!

I have heard for decades the criticisms over Geddy Lee's voice in Rush. In 1977, when I first discovered Rush and they became one of my top three favorite bands in my rock "epiphany", I always thought Geddy Lee's voice was unique and impressive. As was the music. Alex Lifeson was one of my influences on guitar.


Dave Marsh wants us to like hip-hop/R&B; he never heard a rap record he didn't like. Also, he constantly defends his fellow native Michigander Madonna, calling her "undervalued" and saying that not for all the slut-shaming against her, her 1980s singles would be regarded as among the best records of the decade.

:eek2:

Marsh seems to go by the rule that, the whiter it is, the worse it is. And thus explains his quote - "Groups as hapless as the Grateful Dead and Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Edie Brickell & New Bohemians are part of the rock and soul continuum. There's no denying it; believe me, I've tried hard enough."

And there's this Marsh review of this LP:

"Two million people bought this album, which proves that P.T. Barnum was right and that euthanasia may have untapped possibilities."

:rofl:

And then there's Dave Marsh's appraisal of Queen:

"Queen isn't here just to entertain. This group has come to make it clear exactly who is superior and who is inferior. Its anthem, 'We Will Rock You', is a marching order: you will not rock us, we will rock you. Indeed, Queen may be the first truly fascist rock band."

Dave Marsh on the Doors:

"Is this the most overrated group in rock history? Only a truly terminal case of arrested adolescence can hold out against such a judgment for very long."

I honestly don't know how a rock fan could listen to "Tom Sawyer" or "Spirit of Radio" by Rush and not like what he / she is hearing. Not only has their music been highly influential, there's no doubt it will endure -- as has that of The Doors and so many other talented bands.

I honestly don't know how a rock fan could listen to "Tom Sawyer" or "Spirit of Radio" by Rush and not like what he / she is hearing. Not only has their music been highly influential, there's no doubt it will endure -- as has that of The Doors and so many other talented bands.

Alan Niester wrote the Rush reviews for the first edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide; John Swenson wrote them for the second edition, and he was much kinder to the trio. He called "The Spirit of Radio" excellent and "Jacob's Ladder" a beautiful song, and he gave 2112, Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures four stars out of five. I assume that Marsh, a classic Rush-hater, assigned Swenson the Rush reviews thinking he was simpatico with Marsh about Rush. Boy, Marsh must have been red-faced! :lol:

The only time Rush ever made the cover of Rolling Stone, right before their retirement:

The only time Rush ever made the cover of Rolling Stone, right before their retirement:

And by contrast, I can think of three or four times that Madonna made the cover in the 1980s! :mad: And to think even as Rush didn't get critical acclaim in their prime, (again, John Swenson is an honorable exception), critics like Dave Marsh would go on about how Madge's music was great and how she was subjected to such unjustified hatred. He suggested that it was because of white males' prejudice against her tastes in music and boyfriends running toward blacks and Hispanics. He was referring, I believe, to the same white males who listened to Rush - I mean the band - and were too unhip to hang out at Studio 54 because they were, what - suburban loser geeks? Critics liked Madge and like hip-hop because they think they're cool. Yeah, well, Rush's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was the revenge of the nerds. :rock:

That's the new critical weapon against people who hate "music" from "artists" like, say, Cardi B - "You're racist! You're sexist!" No, we're not, we just have taste. :mad: :p

"The quintessential seventies-Southern California- laid back-mellow-narcissistic-masquerading as country when appropriate-soft rock band." - Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell

"Conceited, sentimental woman-haters . . . they like malaise with their mayonnaise." - Robert Christgau

"The perfect band for the self-important seventies." Bill Shapiro

"Auteurs of laid-back sexism." - Dave Marsh

"Whereas the Beatles represented the heart of rock and roll, Dylan its mind, and the Stones its loins, the Eagles represented a new, parasitic entity." - Robert Draper

When the members of Starship were looking for a title for their 1987 album, they knew the critics hated them, so every time they came up with a possible title, it was vetoed when someone in the group showed how a critic could use it against them. At one point, someone said, "There's no protection from the critics," so naming the album.

It was also in 1987 that Richard Marx released his self-titled debut album, and the critics hailed him as their latest peeve, a performer they instantly loved to hate. When Marx released his second album in 1989, he, knowing it would be savaged by the press, titled it Repeat Offender.

Many pop acts whom the critics despise with a stone cold passion take care to name their albums something that the press can't use against them. When Meat Loaf composer Jim Steinman put out an album of his own and titled it Bad For Good, one critic called it "good for nothing." But what about when a band releases a debut record named for the band releasing it? That was certainly the case when former Yes guitarist Steve Howe and former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett formed GTR ("guitar" without the vowels) and issued the band's self-titled debut album.

J.D. Considine of Musician magazine offered this one-word review with the vowel removed: "SHT."

GTR broke up shortly thereafter.

And then in 1979, there was the disco singer Rudy, who released the album Just Take My Body, leaving Dave Marsh to comment, "Only if it's better than your music." :lol:

This "artist" recorded a disco version of Cream's "White Room." :eek: I'm going to guess that we're never going to see any "Rudy Is God" posters.

:eek2:


Here's a link to the album on YouTube, if you don't believe me!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIupD4SYgwA

In their book "The Worst Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time," Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell savaged members of Genesis not named Peter by their mothers or Gabriel by their fathers. Steve Hackett was one of the "art-rock has-beens" who founded the ill-fated GTR, and Phil Collins was selected as the worst rock and roll performer of all time except for Billy Joel. They weren't much more charitable toward Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, either.

When Collins - whom Guterman and O'Donnell called Banks' and Rutherford's "Live-Aid-hogging comrade" - took time off from Genesis for his solo career, his two bandmates decided to pursue their own solo projects. Each formed their own groups. Banks cleverly named his group Bankstatement, and Guterman and O'Donnell - just as clevelry - threw the name back in Banks' face in the from a zinger, saying that Bankstatement was a band that "never garnered enough interest to need one." (Interest - get it?) Rutherford, of course formed Mike + the Mechanics, which had much more success, but, because his vocalist was Paul Carrack - whom Guterman and O'Donnell also detested - they didn't let Rutherford off the hook either.

"We never thought we'd say this," they wrote, "but when we hear Mike + the Mechanics, we almost miss Phil Collins."

So what did critics dislike about Phil Collins?

They found him to be bland and unctuous, dismissing his music as bloated by synthesizers and cruise-ship-ready brass sections and his lyrics for inspiring a generation of Hallmark copywriters.

Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell called him a superstar with an empty grin, adding "Like the Cheshire Cat, Phil Collins keeps on smiling. And like Carroll's disappearing cat, the more closely you look at Phil, the more you realize there's nothing there."

Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell declared Billy Joel to be the worst rock and roller ever mainly because, when The Stranger allowed Joel to break through commercially, he "began to perceive himself as a rock and roller, a belief that bore no relation to his music, which remained predominantly smooth, Tin Pan Alley-derived pop. He had much more in common with Aaron Copland than with Aaron Neville." When Joel compared himself t his friend Bruce Springsteen, Guterman and O'Donnell noted the differences between them. "For example," they wrote, onstage Springsteen would cover Elvis Presley songs, while Joel would do an imitation of Springsteen. Which sounds more like rock and roll to you?"

Their biggest complaint, though, was that when Joel aimed at concocting a heavy rock song like "You May Be Right" and "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me," or Beatlesque studi orock like The Nylon Curtain, he was faking it, adding that his few genuine rock songs are too derivative to take seriously. "No single performer, they concluded, "has done more to encourage musicians without a shred of rock credibility to think that pretending to rock out is the same thing as rocking out than Billy Joel."

Before Dexy's Midnight RUnners had their number one hit in America with "Come On Eileen," Kevin Rowland's group issued their first album, Searching For the Young Soul Rebels, in 1980. J.D. Considine, always one to turn a rock act's own album title against them, did not disappoint here. He wrote, in response to Searching For the Young Soul Rebels, "Well, you won't find them listening to this tripe. These snotty young Brits perform like knowing the licks is the same thing as having soul, and as if a chip on your shoulder will pass for artistic vision."

Man, that's cold.

Mike + the Mechanics' "The Living Years," a song about a grown man dealing with the death of his father and wondering why they couldn't reach an understanding while Dad was still alive, is one of the best-loved songs of the late 1980s. It won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically in 1989, and was nominated for four Grammy awards in 1990, including Record and Song of the Year, as well as Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and Best Video. It also topped the Billboard singles chart. In 1996, famed composer Burt Bacharach opined that the song was one of the finest lyrics of the last ten years.

That didn't stop Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell from writing in their 1991 book "The Worst Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time" that "The Living Years" was a tale of self-pity that had "all the subtlety of Cher in a Bob Mackie gown at the Oscars." Dismissing the song for being concerned with the narrator's feelings more than what the father might have felt, Guterman and O'Donnell also took Paul Carrack to task for his lead vocal, saying that Carrack was so lackadaisical that when he sang the word "living," "you wonder if he's being ironic." :eek:

Another J.D. Considine zinger throwing an LP title back in the artiste's faces. Artiste: Yes. LP title: Talk. J.D. Considine response: "Shut up." :lol:

Or how about Considine throwing a group's name back in their faces?

Artiste: Right Said Fred. Considine: Wrong said J.D.

(Right Said Fred took their name from a 1962 British novelty song of 1962 written by Ted Dicks and Myles Rudge. It is about three moving men (Fred, Charlie, and the unnamed narrator) trying without success to move a large and unwieldy piece of furniture from an apartment.)

Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell wrote in their book "THe Worst Rock 'n' Roll Records of All TIme" that John (COugar) Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane" was one of the worst singles ever, and I happened to agree. I also agree with them that Mellencamp only proved himself as an artist when he recorded Uh-Huh and began to write and sing about what he wanted t osay, not about what his record company thought he should say.

Rolling Stone, March 15, 1969:

The popular formula in England in this, the aftermath era of such successful British bluesmen as Cream and John Mayall, seems to be: add, to an excellent guitarist who, since leaving the Yardbirds and/or Mayall, has become a minor musical deity, a competent rhythm section and pretty soul-belter who can do a good spade imitation. The latest of the British blues groups so conceived offers little that its twin, the Jeff Beck Group, didn’t say as well or better three months ago, and the excesses of the Beck group’s Truth album (most notably its self-indulgence and restrictedness), are fully in evidence on Led Zeppelin‘s debut album.

Jimmy Page, around whom the Zeppelin revolves, is, admittedly, an extraordinarily proficient blues guitarist and explorer of his instrument’s electronic capabilities. Unfortunately, he is also a very limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs, and the Zeppelin album suffers from his having both produced it and written most of it (alone or in combination with his accomplices in the group).

The album opens with lots of guitar-rhythm section exchanges (in the fashion of Beck’s “Shapes of Things” on “Good Times Bad Times,” which might have been ideal for a Yardbirds’ B-side. Here, as almost everywhere else on the album, it is Page’s guitar that provides most of the excitement. “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” alternates between prissy Robert Plant‘s howled vocals fronting an acoustic guitar and driving choruses of the band running down a four-chord progression while John Bonham smashes his cymbals on every beat. The song is very dull in places (especially on the vocal passages), very redundant, and certainly not worth the six-and-a-half minutes the Zeppelin gives it.

Two much-overdone Willie Dixon blues standards fail to be revivified by being turned into showcases for Page and Plant. “You Shook Me” is the more interesting of the two — at the end of each line Plant’s echo-chambered voice drops into a small explosion of fuzz-tone guitar, with which it matches shrieks at the end.

Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell named Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's 1988 reunion album American Dream as the fourth worst album of all time behind a spoken-word live album from Elvis Presley (!) and two double albums (Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, Bob Dylan's Self Portrait), so they consider it the worst single-disc studio album ever. Yes, it's bad, but it's not as bad as they said it is. And their comments about Crosby, Stills and Nash at the Berlin Wall a year later are just mean, though they are right about one thing - "Chippin' Away," originally on a Graham Nash solo album, was a lousy song. But Nash didn't write it; a folk singer named Tom Fedora wrote it. But the rest of their commentary was inaccurate; the audience was not sparse, they were appreciative, and the trio happened to spend $20,000 of their own money to perform there - hardly what a group out for free publicity would do.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-11-21-ca-413-story.html

And here's my own review of American Dream on my blog:

https://stevenmaginnis.blogspot.com/2022/12/crosby-stills-nash-and-young-american-dream-1988.html

Bob Dylan's Self-Portrait album is definitely one of the worst albums of all time, and the proof is in the first track, "All the Tired Horses." Jimmy Guterman's and Owen O'Donnell's description of the track is dead accurate! :lol:

Rck critics who hate the Grateful Dead despise, detest, absolutely loathe Europe '72, the Dead's triple live album. This excerpt from Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell sums up their antipathy. :eek: