Any fans of Nightwish here? I can’t get enough… I binge, burnout, go back for more.
Just heard about these guys from an npr segment (Viking’s Choice).
This song is like something straight from the 80s NWOBHM.
(Personally, I think every day’s a good day to live lol, but music worth checking out.)
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Listening for the first time now!
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What is the most pretentious rock band?
I know that many here like them. I tried to listen. I looked at reviews to see what I might be missing. I listened to older albums to try and figure out their development. I still think they are pretentious garbage. So what bands do you think are pretentious garbage? Overrated. Annoying. Dare I say wankers with instruments? Please add to this list, but here are my candidates in no particular order. And Nickelback didn’t even make the list.
Iron Butterfly
Tool
Yes
Ok in order of number of characters in their name…
And the most pretentious “rock” song?
MacArthur Park - Richard Harris
American Pie - Don McLean
Take it Easy - Eagles
The Gambler - Kenny Rogers
Imagine - John Lennon
Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
I don’t necessarily dislike these songs like I dislike the pretentious groups. The pop psychology can be amusing, lyrics are, I think more amenable to analyzing without having to actually listen to awful music.
Band: You are going down the Prog Rock hole and could add Rush and Pink Floyd to that list. But pretention, artiness, and surrealism was Prog Rock’s thing so I’d not call them overrated. Check out modern day Muse’s album covers for similar art.
I’d put many concept albums in the pretentious garbage category. I was saddened by The Who smashing pinball machines in the Tommy film. It was a horrible movie and a waste of good pinball machines. Many Kink’s albums also received more attention than they deserved. All the bands/performers who rested on their laurels became awful too, starting with the Rolling Stones and continuing to the creaky old retirement tours.
Anything overtly preachy is a fail in the rock/metal genre.
Metallica will always the be most pretentious rock band, purely due to Lars Ulrich’s response to Napster and early streaming concepts.
“We don’t want them as our fans if they don’t comply with our copyright demands.”
See South Park’s satire.
This was said after the liner notes of their own Garage, Inc album went into detail about their own copying of records!
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Bands: Queensrÿche
Songs: anything by Queensrÿche
I agree with your song list… you can’t really get more pretentious than “Imagine”
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Prog Rock hole - yes it is a deep hole, and Rush is in it, but I think better music. Pink Floyd has ups and downs. The early stuff with Barrett I love, and I think that Barrett brought genuine insanity into the mix. Masie, or Baby Lemonade are not pretentious. (Yes I know, Syd on his own).
Never saw the Tommy Film. But The Who did prog right in The Who Sell Out. I can’t think of Metallica without thinking of Beavis and Butthead.
Iron Butterfly - they were a bad copy of Led Zep. Let’s make even our name heavy and light. They wished they were a copy of Led Zep.
And thank you @Audiophool for your vote of confidence in the song list.
I had another idea for a more upbeat list, but after these two bombs, I thought I’d rest.
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Are we talking through their lyrics and music or the band members out in the real world? If the latter, Slipknot is up there for me. Their frontman is always preaching his opinions and politics as fact. Also, U2, Metallica, Megadeth, Pearl Jam, Rage Against The Machine, etc.
So many bands are pretentious these days, possibly because what’s trending on social media is low hanging fruit and easy enough to take a side and write about. I personally like the more creative concept albums that tend to stay away from mainstream topics.
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Exact clone of Zep that confused many: Kingdom Come’s Get It On
Couldn’t exist without Zep: Greta Van Fleet
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You mean like Rick Wakeman’s Journey to the Center of the Earth? 
Make that almost any English language band with an umlaut in its name.
Operation Mindcrime – when I finally got around to listening years after hearing fantastic word of mouth. What is this? A bunch of paint-by-numbers literal songs cribbed from a Hitchcock psycho thriller? Fan fiction? Of course, some Lëd Zëppëlïn songs were Tölkïën fan fiction too.
I heard the Donna Summer disco remake before the Richard Harris version. It had a beat and you could dance to it. The Harris version isn’t rock, it’s old-school pre-rock general pop. I took it as a dry humor novelty song crossed with pretentiousness and laughed.
Why the hate here? I took them as disposable radio pop.
So you don’t have to watch the whole thing:
That makes three of us. “Imagine there’s no iPhone. Imagine there’s no Facebook. Imagine all the happy people eating whirled peas.”
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Every Stones song i care to listen to is on Hot Rocks. Lol.
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I don’t even dislike “The Gambler”. I find the “Take it Easy” to be more annoying than endless airplay of Hotel California. Both are full to bursting with pretentious pop advice. And not in a good way like Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty.
You had me laughing so hard with that that I coughed.
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Lol, I actually like that album; more for the musicality than anything else, though.
I don’t understand your criteria for ‘pretentious’. It looks likes you’re just listing bands you don’t like.
Can you provide a list of bands or singers that you don’t regard as pretentious, to give us some more context?
Otherwise, I’d say that you could argue that anyone who doesn’t limit their lyrics to drinking, smoking and girl/boy problems would land in the pretentious category.
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I love that album. I remember getting it on tape as a teenager, I played it to death. Still do love it.
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Oh my. You’re going to make me think and try to define why some are pretentious and some aren’t. And it’s true, I don’t like the bands I listed (although I do like some of the pretentions songs). But let me try and list some of the art done right.
Both Lou Reed and his wife, Laurie Anderson do arty music, sometimes pretentious, but good and innovative.
Yoko Ono. I don’t like her music, generally. But I don’t think of it as pretentious.
Iggy Pop. David Bowie. Of course there are some of the elements in The Man Who Sold the Moon, and of course, Ziggy. But I get the feeling that Bowie is about his music, and enjoys it, not trying to sell me a bill of goods about his virtuosity.
Phil Glass has pretentions and non-pretentious periods. When he gets over himself he’s tolerable, but ye gods, the one more arpeggio and I’ll throw up period I can do without.
I don’t mind a message. Early Dylan. The Byrds. Even Joan Baez although she walks the line…
I don’t know what to make of Tracy Chapman. And since I said Byrds, I’ll say Yardbirds.
Lizzo isn’t pretentious. Ludacris would be if it weren’t obvious he was making fun of it at this same time.
Queen Latifa. Tito Puente. Carlos Santana. The Osborne Brothers. Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs
Alpha Blondy - can be very arty with multiple languages, hell for that matter so can Pink Martini, and neither one is pretentious. Listen to Pink Martini’s “Hey Eugene” and you get art, and yes it’s self conscious, and maybe has a message or not, but it’s a heck of a perfect vignette … oh wait, that’s drinking and girl/boy problems…
The Doors aren’t pretentious, but “The Celebration of the Lizard” absolutely is. It’s also way cool.
Tabla Beat Science. Debashish Bhattacharya, MJQ, Brubeck, Turrentine, Wayne Shorter. Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin.
OMD gets pretentious. Soft Machine gets pretentious.
So there. Just some stream of thought in my poor old brain. Maybe it's like the Supreme Court's Justice Potter Stewart on Pornography. I know it when I hear it.
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