At various points in the past year, I've taken to the Internet to proclaim the underrated-ness of whatever band I just got into. In March, it was Nada Surf, then when summer hit, I was all about The English Beat, and lately I've been on a huge Black Crowes kick. Each time, I've gotten a handful of responses of people agreeing with me. After all, I'm certainly not the only one who likes these bands.
But lately, I've been thinking a lot about what makes a band underrated. Oh, don't get me wrong, I still would rate all the bands I just mentioned as "awesome to very awesome," but the more I look at it the more I realized, all those bands have gotten plenty of respect. The English Beat, for instance, are acclaimed by just about anyone who's ever heard them. Their debut has a 5-star review on Allmusic, and when their career-spanning box set The Complete Beat came out in July, just about every critic was drooling over it.
That was when I realized, the Beat weren't necessarily underrated, but they were crucially underappreciated. Nearly everyone who has actually listened to their music agrees that it's awesome. the problem is, they've gone crucially underappreciated. For the longest time, their music slipped through the cracks of history. The Specials and Madness became the important ska bands of the era, and while The beat would pop in our collective conscious once in awhile, they never got the same reputation.
But of the other bands I mentioned, how do they fit into this. Well, Nada Surf in a pretty similar spot. Every time they put out a new album, the reviews are uniformly positive, with the reviewer using noting how unfortunate is that the band doesn't get more credit. Once again it's hard to call them underrated, because the people who actually listen to them rate them quite high. It's just that there aren't enough people listening for the band to get all the credit they deserve. Plus, once they signed to Barsuk Records, people started treating them like Death Cab For Cutie's triple-A affiliate. Which makes no sense, because Nada Surf were around first, but hey, what are you going to do.
As for the Black Crowes, they might be the only one of the three bands I mentioned that is truly underrated. They're certainly appreciated well-enough, as they've sold a ton of albums, and they were one of the biggest bands of the 90s. However, the critical respect has never truly been there. Maybe because they got pigeonholed as "the guys who did 'She Talks To Angels'," or maybe because critics were too busy calling them derivative to realize how good they were at it. Whatever the case is, despite legions of fans, they never got proper respect for their output, which is too bad, because between Chris Robinson's powerful bluesy vocals, and brother Rich Robinson's groovy guitar licks, they rocked like a few other bands of their time.
Knowing what we know now, let's see if we can mark a firm difference between underrated and underappreciated. If critics rave about a band, but they still aren't regarded by the rest of the public, they're underappreciated. If a band scores hits and goes platinum, but gets inexplicably overlooked, they'd be truly underrated. For the record, some bands can get stuck in both categories. Like The Beatles! When are they gonna get their due?!
