Someone, trying to start a row on social media, asserts that the four most overrated musicians of all time are, in alphabetical order:
Dylan
Elvis
Sinatra
Springsteen
Got my attention, as I like them all, and love, A D O R E , two of them. I therefore read on and see that the troublemaker has added a bauble. Three of them, he says, are merely overrated, while the fourth is "straight up bad." His entrapped readers are supposed to guess which one that is. I guessed Dylan, only because the Nobel Prize seems like it might open up the most space below. (On the theory that "overrated" is "longest distance from pedestal to true estimation of merit.") Turns out, though, that he has in mind Elvis. Guy's a philosophy professor so of course he has an argument—it's that The King, whenever he recorded someone else's song, unfailingly failed to come up to the level of the original. I don't think that can possibly be true, but I have to say that, regarding the only example he cites, he might be right. Here's Big Mama Thornton singing "You Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog." It's for a woman to sing, right?
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