Liner Notes

Why The Eagles Suck

by The DV Staff

eagles_150This one comes with some caveats.

We at the DV try not to be needlessly negative. In general, music is a glorious thing, and in general, its creators deserve respect. Unless, that is, they prove themselves unworthy of it.

Surprisingly -- after all, we've got more than our share of classic rock aficionados on the staff -- we discovered quite by accident recently that a large percentage of DV writers have harsh feelings about the Eagles, that superstar disbanded-and-reformed musical juggernaut that produced one of the seminal albums of the '70s, not to mention the best-selling greatest hits album of all time. Granted, high concert ticket prices and near-absence of new material over the past 11 years are bound to irritate casual fans. But the vitriol of the criticism leveled caught many of us -- including the Eagles fans on our staff -- by surprise. To wit:

The Eagles suck because they, even more than the Rolling Stones, represent the face of corporate rock. Instead of crafting worthwhile albums that remind us why they were the biggest band of the '70s, we are presented with tour after tour after tour, with no new material whatsoever. They know people will pay absurd ticket prices for another "farewell tour," with unimaginative, sterile reproductions of the same 15 songs that get played every 30 seconds on classic rock radio. Then, to throw their fans a freaking bone, they release "Hole In The World," which quite possibly ranks up there with their worst tracks ever. Way to stick it to the man, gentlemen. -- Jeff Clutterbuck

The Eagles have basically always sucked to me. I marvel at sheer mentality of how the well-heeled, vacation-house-owning, covered-option-call-participating, picket-fence-lined, SUV-driving, microbrew-drinking, mid-management-working, conservative sect can even consider 90-120 minutes of a visualized radio performance to even be worth leaving the couch for -- regardless of ticket price! It's not the Eagles that suck for cashing in as much as it is the society of sheep that sucks for using the band's concerts to satisfy their "look at me!" ego at the water cooler the next day. -- Chris Harlow

"Hotel California" is all I know about the Eagles....and I hate them for it. The song has been overplayed so many times that everytime I hear it, I feel like killing myself. -- Vish Iyer

The Eagles suck because they exemplify everything that is wrong with mainstream radio today. As more and more of the entertainment world falls into the black hole known as AOL Time Warner etc., our culture increasingly becomes marketing-centric, and the Eagles -- who in another era would be just another dining hall cover band -- suddenly becomes an expensive advertisement for the sale of CDs and concert tickets. If it wasn't the Eagles then it would've been something else, and if there was nothing else available, a board of marketing gurus would've focused-grouped one into existence. It used to be that the Eagles were our price to pay in order to support dozens of less popular but more significant artists, but now everyone is essentially the Eagles. -- JB

Like Hootie and the Blowfish, the Eagles are one of those bar bands that somehow became massively popular for really no reason. They're obviously professional and talented, but they're hardly worth the adulation they've received, often at the expense of better artists. But now it's maddening to see them putting on overpriced and incredibly boring concerts of songs that weren't that great to begin with. Joe Walsh and the solo on "Hotel California" are the most worthwhile things about this band, but they are far too self-important and dull for their own good. -- Benjamin Ray

I still like a lot of their early work. They made some really great songs. Sadly, they are now as was aptly pointed out, another commodity, for sale to the highest bidder. -- Bruce Rusk

The Eagles suck because they have become exactly what they once self-righteously claimed to despise -- a soulless money-grubbing corporate machine. Twenty-six years after their last album of new material, eleven years after their much-ballyhooed reunion, they exist only as a flaccid classic rock cliché. Musically irrelevant since 1979, they cynically marketed their latest tour "Final Farewell I" in boastful acknowledgement of their intention to keep soaking the fans at $150 a pop until the last one wises up and puts their wallet back in their pocket. They can't stick it to the man any more, because they ARE the man. -- Jason Warburg

The Eagles suck because they represent everything that's horrible about popular music. All they did was take a sound that had already been done by Rick Nelson, Poco and others and homogenize it to where the average person would think it was something new and cool. Then they exploited that and wrote the same damn song over and over. There's no creativity or originality in the band's music at all; that's why people love it so, they don't like change and they know that if they shill out hundreds of dollars for a ticket on the never-ending “farewell” tour, they're going to hear every single song they like. When it comes to bland, generic ’70s FM “classic rock,” it doesn't get any worse than the Eagles. -- Pete Crigler

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