Most pretentious album

[Bossy Monkey]

Somehow I only put one Styx record on...

For pretentious here, I'm thinking portentous, bombastic, over the top, over-produced, over-played or over-written. Either that or Dennis DeYoung is singing. Don't think that I'm saying that pretentious is bad, exactly; just departing from the ideal slightly in the direction of taking ourselves a trifle too seriously.

[BritishHuman]

1. REM are all of those things on every album

:-)

[vi5]

5. Are you kidding?

I can't believe I'm defending REM. I loved them back in "the day" but haven't really kept up with them since about 1989. But to say that their stuff is over-played is not accurate. If anything they were doing minimalist guitar/bass/drums/vocals rock for over a decade when it was still a complete rarity. I agree Michael Stip is way pretentious, but of their first 5-6 albums I don't think you could say they were over produced or over-played.

It sounds like you just think they suck, which is fair enough. I would even agree with you at this point. But overproduced and overplayed aren't terms I would use to describe them.

[FunBobbyMucha]

2. Joshua Tree, without a doubt

Hello, I'm Bono circa 1987. Me mate Edge has this amazing jingle-jangle guitar style, and he excels at heroic anthems, so, heh heh, me and Brian Eno have decided we'll completely prevent Edge from playing that style. Hee Hee! Instead, we've written a bunch of songs with three minute intros, and at least one of them (Trip Thru Your Wires) sounds like the worst Who song ever written...y'know, like one of the ones that Roger Daltrey co-wrote! Yeah, the rhythm section will be bored stiff with the complete lack of rocking in these songs, but damn will I look messianic in the cruciform position in the videos! I'm a genius!

(Change a few words and the same review applies to "Surfacing" by the forgot-how-to-rock Sarah McLaughlin...)

[Bossy Monkey]

4. Love the screenname, and good to have another SC DUer on board

Welcome!

[mitchum]

36. The handsdown winner

god, I hate them

[mbartko]

57. Aw, c'mon...

Zooropa was way more pretenious. And horrible. And bad.

"You want lemon...?" No, I don't want lemon. Go away. Bad, Bono, bad.

[Guaranteed]

3. Are there any non-pretentious bands out there?

Or non-pretentious famous people, for that matter? Aren't you automatically pretentious if you assume that you can entertain millions of people, and that they should actually give a shit about you?

[vi5]

6. In order, every Yes album, every ELP album.....

Then every Styx album, then every Peter Gabriel era Genesis album...

oh hell every prog rock album ever recorded.

[Ishoutandscream]

33. "Yes" on Yes

And I'm sorry GenXers, but U2 is up there in pomposity.

And how about a big shout out to Rush!!! ARGGGGGGG! (sorry to my Canadian friends).

[Rooktoven]

49. Styx wasn't good enough to be prog rock.

Did I mention I hate Styx?

[electricmonk]

7. Is that ELP album

the double album they did with the London Philharmonic and each member got a side to do whatever they wanted? I voted for that one anyway even if it's not. That album was pretentious enough for 3 or 4 bands.

[TrogL]

32. you're thinking of Works Vol 1

Emerson's Piano Concerto gets performed as legitimate "classical" music so it can't be that pretentious.

[electricmonk]

38. Ok

My brother had that one and I think I listened to it once back about 1978 or so. Didn't much care for it.

[THUNDER HANDS]

8. Meat Loaf, Bat Out Of Hell

Damn if everything wasn't overdone on that album. Still one of the all-time greats though.

:)

[jobycom]

10. hehe! Yeah, Jim Steinman is a wonderfully pretentious producer, isn't he?

He's always way over the top and heavily bombastic musically and lyrically. A lot of times it works, as it did with Meatloaf and Pandora's Box. Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is still my favorite song. But when he fails it is frightening. The album he recorded for himself-- geeze...

[LTR]

15. Bat Out Of Hell

It's bombastic, overproduced, overdone, and over the top.

And yes, it is a great album!

Bat Out Of Hell II is also pretty good.

[Scurrilous]

9. I voted for Tales From Topographic Oceans.

Yes isn't bad. At least back when I was in college during the 70's. I even owned a few of their albums myself. Just about all their early stuff with the exception of 'Tales From Topographic Oceans.' I thought it sucked and never bothered to purchase it. My roomate in the dorms owned a copy though and played it almost every day. I nearly went mad.

Years and years later I saw a special Yes reunion show on PBS. Jon Anderson was talking about the breakup of the band. One of the contributing factors he mentioned was the 'excess' of 'Tales From Topographic Oceans.' He basically said the music of Yes had become excessively pretensious by the time they recorded 'Tales' and some members of the band were unhappy with the direction their music was going in.

So my vote goes to 'Tales From Topographic Oceans.' It drove me nuts and helped break up Yes.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

11. Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds...Am I right?

Prog-rock HG Wells, man. Does it get any sweeter that that?

[Rabrrrrrr]

42. That's an awesome album!

"Ulla! Ulla!"

And one of the first to be recorded with a 48 track deck, if memory serves.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

53. When I was about five years old, my dad played it constantly

Gave me the terrors. Burton's great on it though "Who would have believed..." great Welsh rumbling voice.

[NightTrain]

12. I went for 'Days of Future Passed' because...

...it was the first truly pretentious rock album. As such, it set the pace for all the other self-indulgent bullshit that followed. Thanks for nothing, Moody Blues!

[bif]

13. Yes

Tales of Topographic Oceans. Total joke. I'll bet even the band members realized at the time that it was terrible.

[RandomKoolzip]

14. Uh, where are the Tori Amos, Morrissey, or Trent Reznor albums here?!?!

Those assholes are twice as pretentious as most prog rock and make music far more self-indulgent, IMHO. Just because there aren't a whole bunch of fiddly solos doesn't mean the music isn't pretentious and horribly self-important.

Fuck, I'll take Tales From Topographic Oceans any damn day of the week over the last dreary, soggy, solipsistic "Persona is all" Tori Amos vomit bag CD. At least the prog rockers knew how to rock.

[dolo amber]

20. Ack!

Tori Amos makes me wanna open a fucking vein!!! Whiny self indulgent crap. I have to recluse myself from voting in this poll however, as I've always had better taste than to listen to any of that crap and thus cannot make an informed choice. :P

[Wickerman]

16. Any Kansas LP

well, maybe I would except the first one, cuz, well, it s was the first and the production was as heaped on. That said, can't say I have listened to any of that dreck since I were but a kid.

[progressiverealist]

31. I listened to too much of that crap when I was a kid too.

dreck is an excellent description of it.

[Iverson]

17. You haven't heard of it, so you're safe.

Elephant Steps is the most pretentious piece of @(*#% ever recorded.

[progressiverealist]

18. Styx are soooooooooo bad!

I can't believe I listened to that $hit in high school... a lot of it.

But then I'm from Milwaukee, where Bob Seeger passes as progressive.

[Ellen Forradalom]

24. I'm from Chicago, so Styx polluted my environment

far more than it should have.

[Rooktoven]

48. You pegged two bands I _briefly_ listened to

Fortunately i kicked the Styx habit by age 14. (That cornerstone album was the worst. Except for Paradise Theatre, which might have been more worse.)

[FlashHarry]

51. Styx stynx. N/T

[TopesJunkie]

19. I picked Rush for the poll, but the Beatles' White Album is my pick.

Flame away. It's as pretentious as pretentious gets.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

21. Consider yourself flamed.

And let that be a lesson for you. Bloody individual free-thinking type.

[ProfessorGAC]

26. I'll Second That Flame!

I don't see the pretentiousness either. If anything, it's a hodgepodge of ideas, from 4 guys working more individually than together, just tossing things against the wall to see what sticks.

If anything, it's more a lazy record than pretentious, no?
The Professor

[Ellen Forradalom]

27. Pass the flamethrower over here

White Album is acceptable to me. No overarching CONCEPT. Remember concept albums? You young kids were spared those. And rock operas, too.

[TopesJunkie]

39. Young kid?

I'm no young kid. And I wasn't spared anything.

[Ellen Forradalom]

54. I meant young kids collectively

as in 'Any of you younger ones out there reading.'

[HEyHEY]

22. Anything by Pink Floyd n/t

[Ellen Forradalom]

23. Oh, the Syd Barrett-era stuff was fun

but when Roger Waters took over---forget it.

[Richardo]

25. Took my answer, HEyHEY...

A more self-aggrandizing group is hard to imagine, unless it's U2.

Flame on! :nuke:

[Kolesar]

28. The Pretenders (?)

They should, by definition, be most pretentious. I think that Pretenders was a great choice of a name. Look back to 1979 and you will see that they most pretentious artists cited in this thread were quite popular in the year the Pretenders debut album came out. Along came the Pretenders with a fresh, new, rough edged sound and blew them away.

[joeybee12]

29. ANYHTING By Madonna!

[bif]

30. Led Zeppelin-"Houses of the Holy"

Flame away!

[kyrasdad]

34. GENESIS

But Trick of the Tail instead of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

But then again, nothing is as quite perfect as Dark Side of the Moon...

[Rabrrrrrr]

41. Dammit, vile heathen!!

It's bad enough to insult Lamb Lies Down, but now you've surpassed yourself by insulting Trick of the Tail!!

Next thing, you'll be going after Foxtrot!

The gloves are off!

[last_texas_dem]

35. Radiohead- "OK Computer"

This is only my opinion, and I'm prepared to take any flames that come my way... I listened over a dozen times trying to "get" this album, trying to understand the "greatness" of it that it seemed everyone else could appreciate but me, trying to comprehend all the 5-star reviews. To me, it never became more than a convoluted mess... some concept so great that no one actually gets but will fall head over heels to pretend they get, it seems. Or maybe I'm just dense. I gave the album away for free to one of my best friends who loves it to death. I'll take Jethro Tull, Styx, or Kansas any day over latter-day Radiohead.

[mitchum]

37. "Exile From Guyville"...

bullshit badly-sung generic indie rock. Liz is nowhere near as smart as she thinks she is

[Rabrrrrrr]

40. Dammit! Not a single one is pretentious, except REM

But they're always pretentious, especially after they sold out circa, what, 1986? Screw them. But then again, maybe their albums really aren't musical enough to be pretentious. Arrogant, maybe.

All those others, though, are briliant albums (well, maybe not the Styx or ELO ones, but the Lamb Lies Down, tale from Topgraphic OCeans, ELP, etc. - genius albums. Totally good unpretentious, well-done music)

[mvd]

44. REM never sold out

They just got more moody and in some cases poppy - but the music remained high quality. Guess I'll never agree with some people on DU about these kinds of things..

[Rabrrrrrr]

52. Yeah, music taste is too subjective to get agreement

except when there is already agreement. I mean, you can almost never, through argument, convince someone of the superiority of your musical tastes. It will always turn into nothing more than a pissing match of "my band rocks, your band sucks, just learn to face it and accept the total suckitude of your band, and start listening to mine".


And REM did, in fact, sell out. :evilgrin: "I've got my orange crush" my ass, to name just one of the more truly pathetic examples of their utter suckitude.

[mvd]

56. We'll agree to disagree

And that song is a favorite of mine..

[Rabrrrrrr]

59. Of course!

And from the moment that song appeared, I hated it. Still do. One of the most annoying songs I've ever encountered, besides everything in the genre of salsa/merengue/latin and almost everything in the genre of Top 40.

:spank:

I like Pennsylvania, though.

[phrenzy]

43. Morrissey / Smiths?

Morrissey / Smiths are about as UN-PRETENTIOUS as it gets! His lyrics are raw honesty and more often that not are as humorous as they are serious.

Morrissey is the opposite of pretentious. He lives to destroy such things, and when he catches himself getting overly self-indulgent he will call HIMSELF on it - in the very SAME SONG!

"So I broke in to the palace, with a sponge and a rusty spanner - she said I know you and you cannot sing, I said that's nothing you should hear me play piano."

Tori Amos on the other hand - ugh - she's SOOOO intense.. (rolls eyes)

[jayfish]

45. Smashing Pumpkins "Melancholy And The Infinite Sadness"

I love the Punkins but geez Louise.

Jay

[Feanorcurufinwe]

46. Rolling Stones - Her Satanic Majesty's Request

Jagger and crew try to pretend to be hippies. They should've stuck to being rock and rollers.

[Rooktoven]

47. I voted for Rush because

I still like the ELP a bit...

I didn't vote for Styx because they weren't even good enopugh to be pretentious. Pretention demands I finish the album.

Now if you had a poll on crappiest 70s-80s band, they'd win in a cakewalk (or should...)

[mvd]

50. I vote for..

Anything Limp Bizkit and Eminem - and in many cases Jewel. Jewel's first two albums are better than the new one, though.

[oustemnow]

55. Scott 2 by Scott Walker

has all of the qualities you listed in spades, but damn, I love that album, for those very reasons.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

62. Sailing close to sacrilege there. Scott is the man!

A deeply pretentious man, but still, The Man.

[mbartko]

58. I vote for everything on pop radio in the last five years

Honestly, I don't get what the kids listen to.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

60. "In the Court of the Crimson King"

by King Crimson.

I can't believe I actually liked that album back during my college days.

:crazy:

[Rooktoven]

61. Aww no way.

That album still holds up countless acid trips later.