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Ben Folds. He's a top songwriter, and a top musician. The key, for me, is that he can create finely observed parodies as well as his own original creations, and the parodies show how he really _understands_ the things he pokes fun at. He also displays his expertise by producing: Amanda Palmer's solo album sounds nothing like Folds' own work, which is more than I can say for some musician-turned-producers I know (*cough* Josh Homme *cough*).
I also have a lot of time for Serj Tankian (of System of a Down fame). A lot of heavy metal bands can do angsty introspective songs well, or heartfelt political songs, or silly playful songs. Not as many can do them all on the same album, and have it gel together.
|   | Subject: Which famous musicians are seriously under-rated.
Posted Apr 16, 2012 by quotes
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Is Serj Tankian really famous though? There are no end of talented performers who have not received particularly much recognition.
| | Subject: Which famous musicians are seriously under-rated.
Posted Apr 16, 2012 by Hoovooloo
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"Snow Patrol and Keane - people take the p*ss out of both for fairly similar reasons but I'd take them both over pretentious twaddle merchants Coldplay"
Calls to mind the line from Mitch Benn's brilliant single "Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now":
"This could be Embrace, Keane or Snow Patrol,
Thirteen Senses sound like this as well I'm told
It could be anyone, it's so hard to say,
Maybe this is actually Coldplay"
I'm *told* Marillion are seriously under-rated since Fish left, carrying on catering to a small legion of fans and successfully ploughing their furrow and sounding nothing like they did in the eighties and getting annoyed when everyone who interviews them hasn't heard anything they've recorded since Clutching At Straws.
Thea Gilmore should be far more successful than she is. I worry about someone who by the age of nineteen is already bitter enough to have written "The Things We Never Said".
The Art of Noise are usually, it seems to me, considered something of a novelty act, but they were massively ahead of their time in the use of technology, far more creative and complex than they might have appeared, and one of them has won an Oscar. Listening back to some of their stuff you can hear things happening that other people caught up with and duplicated about twenty years later.
Well if we're going down the Electronica route - I'd add one of The Art of Noise's big influences, Cabaret Voltaire.
I was only put onto them relatively - I'm not generally keen on Electronica. You can see that not only where they doing stuff that nobody else did until later...but they were also *listening* to stuff that nobody else listened to until later.
ah Cabaret Voltaire - I'll have to dig out my old stuff, almost forgot about them.
Marillion - well, they are like 2 different bands, aren't they? I remember when they first started getting airplay and everyone was saying "well, they're just like Genesis" (which wasn't a bad thing for me, I like both bands"
But when Afraid of Sunlight came out, I realised that without Fish they are a whole other kettle of fish (oh, sorry) and totally brilliant. Steve Hogarth doesn't hog the limelight for one, which is always a plus when the band are as good as Marillion, and obviously capable of ditching a singer who doesn't suit them in favour of one who does. (and what's not to love about the incarnation of the band who sang Cannibal Surf Babe?)
| | Subject: Which famous musicians are seriously under-rated.
Posted Apr 16, 2012 by Hoovooloo
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Oh, another electronica type act spring to mind also - Kraftwerk. Not sure they count as under-rated, but when you listen to their early stuff your first impulse is "well, this sounds like quite a lot of the other stuff that was being released in the mid-eighties", then you check the label on the box and discover it was recorded in the early seventies. Given the list of people they've influenced you could argue that eighties pop in the form we know it wouldn't have existed without them.
They're also cited as a major influence on hip hop.
In fact...let's add hip hop in general. No - it's not all good. What is? But there are still people who are, bafflingly, stuck in a 'I don't like rap' mindset.
My own kids included. 
And, no, it's *not* called 'rap'. It's hip hop.
| | Subject: Which famous musicians are seriously under-rated.
Posted Apr 16, 2012 by quotes
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>>if we're going down the Electronica route - I'd add.../
I'll add your favourites Pink Floyd, because a lot of musicians were wowed by what they were doing with electronics in the early 70's. In fact, no less than Krautrock berlin-school supremo Klaus Schulze cites bands like Floyd and Hawkwind as being important to him and his peers, over and above composers like Stockhausen and Cage, whom are often erroneously thought to be their influences.
Well if we're going down the Krautrock route...Can's 'Tago Mago' was more influential than many realise.
"Is Serj Tankian really famous though? There are no end of talented performers who have not received particularly much recognition."
He's well known within heavy metal circles. As a solo act, he certainly sells out decent sized venues, and with SoaD he would probably sell out a tour of large venues.
Thinking about it, he's probably hit something of a glass ceiling. As mature and complex as SoaD music is, I can't see it appealing at all to people who are not inclined to like metal, and those people probably already know and appreciate it. I hear he released an orchestral version of his solo album, 'Elect the Dead', and it's very good, but I haven't listened to it myself so I couldn't say whether the orchestration is enough to pull in fans of classical music.
Oddly enough, he - or rather all of SoaD - were mentioned here recently in the context of Famous Armenian-Americans. Alongside Kim Kardasian.
Marilyn Manson. Look beyond the shock tactics and there's some talented music in there.
He also seems rather intelligent.
They were talking about a new documentary about Bob Marley on 'Front Row' tonight.
I have long been under the misapprehension that the opening line of 'Trenchtown Rock' (and hence his legendary Live album) were:
 One good thing about music is it makes you feel OK.
Which is a pretty pedestrian line, if functional. Only it's not. It's:
'One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain.'
Which is *much* better. There's an obvious context. It perfectly expresses that long exhale through the nose after the third lungful.
Jaysus, but that's a great album.
Pete Doherty.
Yeah, yeah, I know...he's mainly known as tabloid shorthand for 'f*cked up, druggie waster' and he's very much the architect of his own misfortune. But The Libertines were a fine band and he's produced a couple of good songs since (and, yes, a lot of crap). And isn't Babyshambles the wittiest name for a band ever?
Underneath all that 'I'm a tortured poet, really' pish he puts one, he does actually have some poetic ability. You can tell from his lyrics that he chooses words for the way they sound and that's far more important in poetry than actual meaning.
| | Subject: Which famous musicians are seriously under-rated.
Posted Apr 18, 2012 by  Z
This is a reply to this Posting.
| | Post: 37
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Opera. Not the browser, the music. I thought it was just posh musicals, but it's actually really good. I am tone deaf, I cannot hear the difference between most musical notes, though I can hear 'high' 'low' and 'medium', I also can't remember music, so you can play me two musical sequences without words and if you played me one again I would be able to tell which it was.
But Opera's actually rather
I get much more involved in the emotional entanglement of the storyline, and the characters predicament. Much much more so than with musicals. Though I did spend most of 'Little Shop of Horrors' hoping the plant would eat more people.
| | Subject: Which famous musicians are seriously under-rated.
Posted Apr 18, 2012 by Z
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| | Post: 38
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Er... that should read 'Opera's actually rather good'...
| | Subject: Which famous musicians are seriously under-rated.
Posted Apr 22, 2012 by HonestIago
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Just mentioned him on the other thread but he's very under-rated so I'll give him a shout here: Bear McCreary.
His work for the resurrected Battlestar Galactica was sensational but gets very little respect because it was for a TV show and worse, a sci-fi show, but he managed to bring in instruments from all different cultures and styles and a dozen different languages. I defy anyone to listen to Wander My Friends, Diaspora Oratorio or Violence and Variations and not be moved.
Wander My Friends: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGcMPp7TNo4
Diaspora Oratorio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unyvw9J1Gc8
Violence and Variations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYwpt092O7U
| | Subject: Which famous musicians are seriously under-rated.
Posted Apr 22, 2012 by Mu Beta
This is a reply to this Posting.
| | Post: 40
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My musical tastes haven't really gotten out of the 1990s yet, so h#just a few more names from me to toss into the mix, while avoiding music poncery as requested:
The Cure
Fun Lovin' Criminals
The Beautiful South
Supergrass
Savage Garden. No, really.
B
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