Music So Cheesy It’s Good

Can anyone else think of music that they find so hilariously cheesy that they actually occasionally enjoy listening to it, bad as it is?  For me it's Journey.  Awful as they are, I can't listen to "Any Way You Want It" without bursting out laughing.  Did anyone ever take these guys seriously?  Alice Cooper works too, as well as any number of 80's hair metal bands (except Van Halen and Guns N' Roses; I don't like either band but neither is bad enough to descend into self-parody).

Damen wrote: Europe - The Final Countdown

Europe started as a progresive rock band, that influence is still audible in that album.

great stuff

I pulled out Love Beach for the second time ever last night (the only other time I listened to it was this past winter when I bought it, before I'd heard anything else by ELP except Works v.1) and I really enjoyed it. It's a decent album if you don't look at the title or cover and don't compare it to any other ELP album.

Also, I find The Gray Album (a mixture of Jay-Z's Black Album and The Beatles White Album) to be very funny, even though it horrible disgraces The Beatles' original album.

kingofbizzare wrote: I pulled out Love Beach for the second time ever last night (the only other time I listened to it was this past winter when I bought it, before I'd heard anything else by ELP except Works v.1) and I really enjoyed it. It's a decent album if you don't look at the title or cover and don't compare it to any other ELP album. Also, I find The Gray Album (a mixture of Jay-Z's Black Album and The Beatles White Album) to be very funny, even though it horrible disgraces The Beatles' original album.

Shack Man wrote: video killed the radio star!

Whoever thought these guys would sound good in Yes deserves to be put on the list of worst ideas ever.

I enjoy Journey's music, but I think most AOR bands of their ilk tend to be cheesy a fair bit, particularly late period Styx ('Mr Roboto') and all of REO Speedwagon's stuff.

The whole 'hair metal' genre is cheese in excelsis- the lyrics, singing, solos and even the song/ album titles and band names themselves are just unintentionally hilarious. I have my doubts whether any of those bands can even play or sing- the solos seem to be a flurry of notes glued together. I can tolerate Twisted Sister's early stuff, because that's heavier than most bands of that genre, and Motley Crue's first two albums- after that, there were too many lumpen power ballads ('Home Sweet Home').

I never put Van Halen in that category, as they were superb musicians that had the 70s hard rock sound of bands like Montrose and Ted Nugent but with more polished execution, and the songwriting was usually top notch. Sure, you can blame them for Poison and Warrant and all that stuff, but VH were in a different league to the bands they influenced.

Guns 'N' Roses are perhaps the metal band that everyone except me thinks are brilliant- I find Axl Rose extremely irritating, and to me the 'Use Your Illusion' albums are the most pointlessly excessive albums I've ever heard in rock, but at least 'Appetite For Destruction' showed they could play and write decent songs, even if I rarely play it...

'Drama' was a decent album imo, but had a high cheese quotient- 'I Am A Camera' for example...'Machine Messiah' was a great track, but that was the highpoint of the album. Still, it's far better than most Yes stuff since that album.

Any song by ABBA.

salmacis wrote: Judas Priest just released a 13 minute ode to the Loch Ness Monster, and again I love it- it has an extremely heavy and slowburning riff. But, the chorus is outrageously bombastic and OTT, and has gained a plethora of damning reviews. Funny- it's my fave track on the album!

I have to agree with you on Loch Ness.  It's not my favourite song on the album, but I do like it, and don't agree with the bad reviews.

AngelRat wrote: Any song by ABBA.

There's nothing cheesy about most ABBA songs (I'll grant you I have a dream). Very underestimated band.

I'm not an Abba fan at all, but I wouldn't really call it cheesy as such- they did have good musicians in the band and could pen a good pop hook.

Genesis in the 1980s defines the term 'cheese'- 'Invisible Touch', 'In Too Deep' and 'Illegal Alien' being the worst offenders.

Uriah Heep did quite a few cheesy numbers in the 1980s. Sure, they are my fave band of all, but it's hard to defend rubbish like 'Stay On Top', 'Weekend Warriors' or 'Rockerama', where they seemed to turn into a Def Leppard tribute act.

Ah, Def Leppard- one of cheesiest rock bands ever, but that is their appeal, and they have no pretension of being serious. 'When Love And Hate Collide' is perhaps the most ham, and cheese, filled sandwich of a ballad, but everything I've heard of theirs, such as 'Let's Get Rocked', is dumb in the extreme. Still, I do own their greatest hits CD, and their first album was a good NWOBHM album.