Rockers Indulge Their Malevolent Inner Critics

There’s nothing like a good, mean-spirited, convention-bucking story to get you past the Thursday-morning doldrums. A riveting recent piece in the U.K.’s Guardian Unlimited asked popular musicians (New Order’s Peter Hook, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn, and others) to pan classically revered albums from the annals of rock, which they did with evil aplomb. Pasty music-forum lurkers across the globe are predictably outraged, while magazine editors everywhere are likely fielding memos as to why they didn’t come up with the idea first.

Some choice bits:
“Tupac wasn’t up there with Dylan — Dylan was a brilliant poet. Eminem is probably the Dylan of rap, whereas Tupac just sounded like he was whining.” —Mark Ronson

“If you think you’re going to hear an utterly original, powerful and freaky record when you put on Nevermind, as a young kid might, Christ you’re going to be disappointed.”—Wayne Coyne

“I appreciated the early stuff Pink Floyd did with Joe Boyd, but [Dark Side of the Moon] is a bloated concept album that made punk necessary. It says, ‘What a crazy world it is! and ‘Everyone’s demented!’ It’s meant to be imbued with the spirit of Syd Barrett, God rest his soul. I’m amazed that it’s up there in the pantheon, because I can’t see any virtue in it whatsoever. Lyrically, it’s banal and doesn’t say anything beyond ‘greed is bad.’”—Tjinder Singh

Of course, that last one comes courtesy of the guy behind one-hit-wonders Cornershop (“Brimful of Asha”), so feel free to take it with the proverbial grain of salt.

Sgt Pepper Must Die! [Guardian Unlimited]