(04-06-2022, 02:18 AM)NewJagsCity Wrote: Grand Funk. Critics hated them, the masses loved them. Not saying they hold up great as a collective body of work, but after a recent listen of thier LPs E Plurbus Funk, We're an American Band and Shining On, I still liked a lot more even today than I thought I would.

Eagles. People may not recall this, but critics savaged their 1st couple of LPs. They didn't become the critics darlings till Hotel California.

Kansas. Critics seemed to dismiss them as prog rock lite, but a good bit of thier stuff holds up very well.

Lynyrd Skynyrd.  Especially among East Coast  critics, they got dismissed pretty regularly early on as a bunch of brawling hayseed simpleton Yahoo's. Critics like NYC based Robert Christgau dove a little deeper than others tho, and liked what he heard, especially the underrated lyrics.  Didn't really get widespread critical acclaim until the Street Survivors LP, which sadly, was thier last before the crash.

Alice Cooper. Critics were mostly negative at first, but started coming around after Billion Dollar Babies and Welcome to my Nightmare were released.  Cooper has released a lot of crap over the years, but his best stuff is some of the best of his era.

Boston. Primarily, the debut. I recall critics calling them a more melodic yet soulless fusion of Led Zeppelin and Yes.  If you've rediscovered that LP recently, you can see how they totally missed it. That sound redefined harmonic pop  rock, just as Van Halen would redefine the way rock guitar was played 2 years later. Sonically, that LP still stands up as one of the best engineered and recorded albums in the history of rock.  All from the basement of Tom Scholtz.

Lana Del Rey. Critics were brutal in thier reviews of her in the early 2010s, and sometimes justifiably so. But she started hitting her stride with the Lust for Life LP and she's been a critics darling pretty much ever since. Moderately popular throughout her whole career so far, more focused on atmospheric music than radio pop, she seems to be playing the long game with her music.

Some of those I'm not familiar with, but those that I've listened to, I like.  Of course as a Jax native I've listened to lots of Skynyrd, it was always on the radio.
Boston and Kansas are similar.  Along with Styx they brought falsetto and harmony back into rock.  They got those ideas from the Beach Boys.  The Beach Boys were great singers but poor guitarists.  They relied on studio musicians instead.  These later bands had the instrumental and singing chops to bring it all together.

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