My list of the most overrated bands ever.

Aerosmith

Before I heard Toys in the Attic or Aerosmith Rocks I was utterly mystified by the adoration afforded Aerosmith. I knew them from their late ’80s and early ’90s music and just couldn’t figure it out.

They probably shouldn’t really be on this list but I couldn’t go anywhere in like 1994 without someone telling me they were awesome, and it was weird.

KISS

Paul Stanley is a good singer. Ace Frehly is a good guitarist.

Gene Simmons is a bad singer and is a below average bass player for a rock musician of his stature. He’s apparently a marketing genius, though.

KISS’s songs are bad; they are dumb and they often pander to their audience to degrees that I find offensive. They have always positions themselves as this scary metal band but they play generic blues rock. (And then there’s that album when they worked with Bob Ezrin and so we got orchestras…) They’re basically a poor man’s Alice Cooper but through shomanship and marketing, they are one of the most successful hard rock bands in history.

U2

I actually like some U2 albums. One of them quite a lot.

But everywhere I went as a child and young adult I knew at least one U2 fan. U2 fans can be insufferable. The number of times I’ve been told U2 is, like, the greatest band in the history of the world, I probably cannot count.

I used to get mad because Bono would promote his charitable causes when an album was dropping. But that’s a stupid thing to be mad about. At least he’s trying.

As the cliche goes, “it’s the fans, not the band.” But they did let the media proclaim them the biggest band in the world during the press tour for All That You Can’t Leave Behind so it’s the band, too.

Van Halen

Eddie Van Halen is one of the greatest electric guitarists of all time.

Van Halen’s songs are dumb and don’t change much.

David Lee Roth annoys me. Sammy Hagar is not the performer David Lee Roth is.

Plus, Van Halen helped cause Hair Metal, one of the few genres I will actually label “bad.”