Overhyped.

(Part of this was written three months ago. Part of this is awesome.)

You think I'm going to mention Chinese Democracy in this blog entry, don't you? Well...no, not really. I'm sort of in the middle about Chinese Democracy as an album, but an album like that would never match the hype of people thinking it would be the best record ever. (For the record, it's got all the good and bad parts about the Use Your Illusions with less Slash. You decide if that's a good thing.) And plus, this is a record that's not tailor-made for this topic at all, as its hype has been built since long before the internet.

No, this references the internet's effect on building an artist or band's profile in the world of popular music. And while more mainstream examples like Katy Perry were destined to be famous without the internet (and calling random guys gay for some whiny reason), this year produced a fair amount of new names that were solely built on good word of mouth and in turn, solely built to disappoint.

- Vampire Weekend

Early in 2008, the blogosphere gave a bunch of preppy kids from New York a bunch of insane hyperbolic praise about their band's self-titled record. Vampire Weekend went from guys who made reasonably catchy music to the apparent saviors of returning African sound into music, the same sort of thing done by groups like Talking Heads back in the late 1970s and 1980s. Their self-titled album was an album with a few good songs ("Oxford Comma", "Cap Cod Kwassa Kwassa", "A-Punk") and a bunch of meandering and mediocre songs squeezed into a brief piece of recording. The Talking Heads comparison is borderline ridiculous, as vocalist Ezra Koenig has none of the neurotic flair of a David Byrne, nor do their painfully clever lyrics match the nicely pinpoint ones from the Heads. That and preppy white kids apparently are so insanely crazy for African tribal rhythms, or they could have just listened to a post-punk record or two maybe for that musical inspiration? Again, they're not bad, but they're not anything special by any means.

- Girl Talk

Hipsters love liking music because it's "different" or a "new style" of music. Girl Talk's entire reliance is on generic rap lyrics mixed to a variety of sounds, mostly bands like Yo La Tengo and Radiohead for indie kids to go "Hey, I know that song." It's funny, indie kids will take the piss out of the jukebox culture of your regular bar where every other song is a familiar track from a bygone era. Whether it's Quiet Riot or Eagle Eye Cherry, it's perceived as crap. And yet, Girl Talk's entire appeal comes from indie kids who hate rap music and yet loooooooooove when rapping is set to "15 Step" for some crazed reason.

- Dan Deacon

No square reason, really. His brand of electronic music's just kind of annoying, though. And really? Two 8-level records in a row, Pitchfork? Crazy men.

- all of those British bands that got a modicum of attention over here in between the breakout of Coldplay and the breakout of Arctic Monkeys

Franz Ferdinand has all but proven that they won't ever have a good album ever again, quite honestly, with how weak Tonight was and the fact that I can roughly remember two good songs on the first record. Keane went from sucky dreary rock to sucky dreary U2 clone to sucky crappy disco band...which, yeah, bad progression. Kaiser Chiefs only made awesome on "Ruby." The Futureheads are a good singles band, but that's not really a valid substantiation for hype. And easily the most interesting is The Bravery...which I'm told isn't from England at all, but rather New York City. Bleh. Britrock in the 2000s has had a horrible go.