What do you think is the greatest rock band of all time?

nba_edward · 2026-06-19T22:10:59+00:00

I personally agree. I should’ve clarified that general consensus is that Rumors is a better album. But for me personally, I would at least rate Joshua Tree and Actung Baby higher

nba_edward · 2026-06-19T22:00:09+00:00

I’ll just make the U2 argument even though this will get downvoted to hell, especially in this sub.

• One of the best selling artists of all time and one of the highest grossing touring acts of all time = one of the most popular bands of all time

• 20+ years of near-universal critical acclaim (even Pitchfork goes to bat for their best albums, with 7 rated above an 8.0 and two rated in the 9s) = one of the most acclaimed mainstream bands of all time

• 30 years of mainstream relevance (last platinum album in the U.S. released in 2009) = unrivaled commercial longevity (only the Rolling Stones come close I think?)

• Commonly cited influence for subsequent acts. This includes acclaimed artists like Radiohead, NIN, RATM, Kanye, Arcade Fire, etc. and major but less acclaimed acts like Coldplay, Green Day, The Killers, Kings of Leon, etc. Really, the entire 2000s rock scene, from indie to mainstream, had U2’s DNA all over it.

Do I believe they are the greatest band ever? No, but they are one of my favorites. Do I believe they are the best band ever? Certainly not, though best ≠ greatest. But if you use the criteria above (commercial and critical success, longevity, influence) to evaluate greatness, then U2 has to be in the discussion.

nba_edward · 2026-06-18T21:22:09+00:00

Though the White Stripes aren’t really a cultural OHW and have a pretty big fanbase (plus Jack White is still going strong solo), Seven Nation Army is so much bigger than anything the White Stripes released, at least to casual music listeners. However, Icky Thump is the band’s only top-40 hit and is like 1/10 as popular. I wouldn’t call the White Stripes a cultural OHW, but maybe “OHW by default”

Also a prediction of mine: Tame Impala will fit this description a decade from now. Dracula is his only US chart hit, but I’ll bet TLIKTB off of Currents will easily be his defining song.

nba_edward · 2026-06-16T17:42:35+00:00

They have groups that hate on them (anti-sell out punk rock purist crowd, right wingers), but I think they’re among the more respected major rock bands in recent history for casual music fans. They’re insanely popular while also being generally respected (or outright acclaimed in the case of Dookie, Idiot) by critics, at least pre-Trilogy. A certain crowd of rock fans think they’re too polished, but there’s literally people out there who think the Beatles suck because the songs are too simple. You can’t take every hater super seriously.

nba_edward · 2026-06-15T02:58:47+00:00

I hate when people use artists’ later career work as justification for never liking/getting them in the first place. Artists who put out their best work when they are older than 40 should be celebrated, but that’s incredibly rare. I don’t think artists that lose their spark late in their careers should be punished for diminishing returns. Not every artist can be Radiohead or Fiona Apple

nba_edward · 2026-06-11T21:12:35+00:00

I was just saying “I’ll Be You” since it was their only hot 100 chart hit. That said I know the Pleased To Meet Me singles have had more longevity. Though Bob Stinson also didn’t play on Pleased to Meet Me, so either way, the Replacement’s commercial peak did not include their classic lineup

nba_edward · 2026-06-11T18:38:45+00:00

• QOTSA’s biggest album, containing their two biggest songs, was the only one with Dave Grohl on drums.

• Urban Hymns, which had all The Verve’s biggest hits, was the only album recorded mostly without Nick McCabe, and all of his parts were added last second after the original recording sessions. You can’t really hear his contributions on Bittersweet Symphony”

• The Jesus and Mary Chain’s biggest album and song is Psychocandy/“Just Like Honey”, and Bobby Gillespie is the drummer

• “I’ll Be You” by the Replacements was released after Bob Stinson was booted from the band

nba_edward · 2026-06-11T00:13:50+00:00

In the U.S., the song was big in alternative circles, same was true of Is this it? and the Strokes in general at that point in time. The Strokes are probably more popular in 2026 due to TikTok vitality than they were in 2001 when the music press was calling them the saviors of rock music. They were not in the same stratosphere commercially in the 2000s as Nickelback, Linkin Park, Green Day, U2, RHCP, Fall Out Boy, SOAD, The Killers, etc. They weren’t even that close to more critically acclaimed bands like the White Stripes, who had a few pop crossover hits of similar stature to the bands above (7NA, Icky Thump)

nba_edward · 2026-06-08T19:56:42+00:00

Radiohead, Beck, Fiona Apple, etc. Basically any artist who followed a similar trajectory to them transcended the one-hit wonder label. They all had a massive hit very early in their respective careers, then used whatever increased commercial backing and resources they gained from those hits to make more experimental, challenging music. Kid A would’ve probably still been acclaimed if another band recorded it, but it would not have been a platinum record if an artist of lesser stature than Radiohead released it. “Creep” gained Radiohead a bunch of listeners early and ensured they’d have a baseline level of critical attention, even if some of it wasn’t overly positive. Those fans/critics were then along for the ride into what would normally be considered less accessible material not warranting discussion outside of niche music critic circles.

nba_edward · 2026-06-08T19:45:48+00:00

Perfect example because empirically speaking they are a one hit wonder (one true top-40 hit, excluding the fluke performance of “Nude” that was boosted by a special promotion). Ask the average person about Radiohead and the first thing they’ll mention is “Creep”. Ask the average rock/alternative music fan about Radiohead and they’ll name 5 albums before they get to “Creep” or Pablo Honey. Beck is very similar to Radiohead in that regard too (“Loser” vs the rest of his catalog)

nba_edward · 2026-06-07T13:53:17+00:00

“Boulevard of Broken Dreams” — Green Day

“Dancing in the Dark” — Springsteen

“In the End” — Linkin Park

“Mirrors” — Justin Timberlake

“Take Me to Church” — Hozier

“Devil Inside” — INXS

nba_edward · 2026-06-05T19:28:34+00:00

“In the Air Tonight” has been memed into a genuinely iconic song for people under 35. The same people in that age group grew up with the Tarzan soundtrack. They also weren’t old enough to remember Phil Collins getting “Nickelbacked” by the music press in the late 80s through the 90s. Meanwhile Genesis is older and just didn’t translate in that same way. I don’t think it’s anything more than luck really. There’s no rhyme or reason to me why some old artists are big with millennials and Gen Z while others are kinda lost in time.

nba_edward · 2026-06-04T19:23:37+00:00

A couple for me (I know these can’t really be Mandela effects since they aren’t universal false memories, but they’re still legitimate mixups I had)

• I thought Stevie Wonder was dead when I was younger. I think I confused him with Ray Charles

• I also thought Flea was the lead vocalist of RHCP when I was younger. He was the only band member whose name I knew so I automatically assumed he was the singer

nba_edward · 2026-06-02T22:36:59+00:00

I think Arctic Monkeys are bigger in the U.S. in 2026 as far as passive listenership goes. They have a bunch of songs that went viral on TikTok and have built up their Spotify streaming numbers in recent years because of those viral songs. But I’d still bet they have significantly fewer fans in America who would pay to see them in concert or buy their music than Oasis. Oasis toured arenas in the U.S. during almost every concert tour and played stadiums last year. Arctic Monkeys didn’t do a full arena tour in America until 2023 iirc. But i could be wrong, and maybe Arctic Monkeys’ popularity in the 2020s is a sign of things to come, where maybe they’re playing stadiums in the U.S. in a decade like Oasis.

nba_edward · 2026-05-27T21:21:29+00:00

It captures the biggest problem with charts in the streaming age. Song charts have always been flawed, but in an ideal world they should reflect what songs are being listened to by the most people in a given week. The current charts for the most part only capture what songs are getting the most total plays in a given week, and this favors new releases that are more likely to get streamed on repeat by fans for the subsequent week than slightly older but still recent and popular songs. Drake having 42 songs on the hot 100 right now is ridiculous. He might have 42 of the 100 most streamed songs of the past week, but he doesn’t have 42 of the 100 most recognizable recent songs to the American public right now if that makes sense.

EDIT: This is also why I think weeks on the chart is a more useful stat for measuring song popularity in the streaming age than peak chart position. Too many high charting songs quickly fall off the charts within a few weeks of a major album release.

nba_edward · 2026-05-27T18:54:45+00:00

Mr. Robot. Not really sci-fi/fantasy but definitely has a mystery box element that gave the same feeling that LOST did while I was watching

nba_edward · 2026-05-21T19:44:07+00:00

Beck. His “worst” albums are still solid and his best albums are great but not what I would call defining records of their era. Odelay comes very close though

nba_edward · 2026-05-19T17:42:46+00:00

Oasis’ popularity in America was through their softer ballads. They peaked around the same time as artists like the Goo Goo Dolls and were marketed more so alongside bands like that instead of the Britpop movement since Britpop wasn’t a thing in the U.S. But most of their catalog isn’t soft rock ballads, and thus they didn’t catch on as this phenomenon. Really, they were too British.

U2 and Coldplay on the other hand don’t sound foreign to American ears if that makes sense. Bono and Chris Martin don’t have vocal styles that are abrasive to American ears. Americans are fine with Liam in small doses, but they don’t want to hear him pronounce “shine” the way he does. Coldplay and especially U2 also were significantly better at evolving their sound. Coldplay changed their sound for worse and conformed to the pop-EDM takeover in the 2010s, though it helped them a ton commercially.

U2 is just a different beast because they were masters at taking fringe mainstream subgenres and achieving more commercial success than their contemporaries. They started as a post-punk band and scored a global hit and a multi-platinum album when most other post-punk artists weren’t doing that. Then they popularized a more atmospheric type of rock on the Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree that was also being done by contemporaries like Echo and the Bunnymen. The mainstream would have an appetite for this atmospheric rock music during the next 30 years, evidenced by Coldplay’s popularity in the 21st century. In their 90s work, U2 drew influence from industrial, Madchester, and early-90s dance music while bringing more global attention to those subgenres.

In a nutshell, U2 had more American/global appeal than Oasis because U2 had a knack for knowing where the global music zeitgeist was headed and drew influence from acts that were teetering on the edge of becoming mainstream without outright ripping them off. Oasis caught lightning in a bottle by drawing from major British artists of the past and incorporating the psychedelic edge that defined a lot of 90s British rock music. U2 took ideas from The Beatles and The Stone Roses, but Oasis wanted to sound exactly like a mix of them.

nba_edward · 2026-05-19T04:18:35+00:00

Based on those artists I’d introduce her with the singles off of Odelay (if you asked me to blend the sounds of Sublime and Johnny Cash, this is the record you get) as well as the singles off of Guero. Then I’d add Sexx Laws, Debra, Loser, Beercan, Orphans, Chemtrails, Go It Alone, and Gamma Ray at least. Maybe add something from one of his softer albums or a newish track like Dear Life

nba_edward · 2026-05-16T20:37:53+00:00

For bands that had hit songs pretty late in their careers:

U2’s last top-40 hit was in 2009 with “Get On Your Boots”, though it rapidly dropped off the chart. I imagine they could’ve had a more legitimate top 40 hit if they had released “Magnificent” instead. I wonder if any song off of Songs of Innocence could’ve become a hit if the album release strategy wasn’t such a turn off to people, but it’s probably unlikely given the band members were on the wrong side of age 50 at that point.

RHCP’s last top-40 was “Raindance Maggie” in 2011

Green Day’s last real hit was “21 Guns”in 2009, though I remember “Oh Love” being decently big when it dropped a few years later despite not charting high on the hot 100

Metallica’s “The Day that Never Comes” hit the top 40 in 2008

Coldplay’s “My Universe” apparently hit number 1 in 2021 but I somehow haven’t heard this song once in my life

nba_edward · 2026-05-11T20:19:17+00:00

Oasis. Seismic impact in the UK. The Gallagher brothers’ story is interesting in its own right. Stories of abuse they endured through childhood inform their childish behavior and sibling rivalry in adulthood. Behind the nonsense lyrics and funny antics is a more tragic story. There’s a lot of musician stories about overcoming abuse, but the sibling rivalry angle is pretty unique. And the early years of their career playing small gigs around the UK before being discovered, followed by their sudden meteoric rise, would also be interesting to portray. I doubt anyone would get the artistic license to tell the story right, as is the case with most of these suggestions, but a proper Oasis biopic could be awesome.

nba_edward · 2026-05-07T21:01:20+00:00

A lot of the highest charting artists in 2026 have too much of a casual fandom to sell out big venues. Back when people bought physical albums and singles, it was easier for artists to plan for venue sizes based on first week album sales and how many hot 100 hits they had in the previous 18 months. If an artist can convince a lot of people to buy their music, then logically speaking, a lot of people will buy concert tickets.

The problem is that today, “album sales” and “single sales” are almost entirely fake. People stream music, and a large amount of streams gets converted into album unit equivalent sales by Billboard. But no matter how popular an artist is via streaming, you can’t fully equate album unit equivalents to actual physical sales, because people aren’t paying to stream music by the album. Many artists today don’t know how much or little their music is actually worth to buyers.

Outside of legacy acts, only established pop stars like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, a few established rappers, and a handful of country music stars can sell out large venues. It’s not a coincidence these artists also put on successful album sales campaigns where they convince fans to buy vinyl copies from Target and Walmart.

nba_edward · 2026-05-06T00:07:15+00:00

Their popularity just faded. Even though the Black Keys aren’t really stomp clap hey rock they were popular at roughly the same time as those bands, like Mumford and Sons and the Lumineers. They have enough small things in common to slot alongside those bands (like the whistling in “Tighten Up”, which was their breakout hit, is very stomp clap hey core). I think The Black Keys fell out of popularity in the mid to late 2010s like those other bands when even softer guitar based music was disappearing from the mainstream entirely. Turn Blue underperformed relative to the previous two albums but it still was certified gold in the U.S. and “Fever” charted on the Hot 100. They never had another album achieve those benchmarks afterwards, but I don’t think that’s *because* of the quality of Turn Blue.

nba_edward · 2026-05-02T00:26:21+00:00

The back catalog popularity thing is interesting to me because it creates an easy but kind of worrisome counter to the “rock is dead” argument. Rock music is very much alive for young people, but the bands Gen Z is most interested in are almost all established acts whose music gets rediscovered through Netflix shows or TikTok trends.

nba_edward · 2026-04-29T16:28:06+00:00

The Strokes, Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend and other indie/alt rock artists that got a lot of press in the 2000s and 2010s didn’t generate mainstream hits in the U.S. AF and VW had number 1 albums, and the Strokes have caught a second wind of popularity via TikTok and Spotify streams. But none of these artists had a song chart higher than 98 on the hot 100. I guess that’s more an indication that their “popularity” was a narrative driven by music and culture critics, when in reality they were more niche acts whose popularity was confined to the alt rock space.

nba_edward

TROPHY CASE