Song of the Day 2/11: Greta Van Fleet, “Highway Tune”
Last night’s Grammy Awards got the Song and Record of the Year right — Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” won both — but no Grammy Awards ceremony would be complete without some shocking snubs and undeserved victories.
No victory was more controversial than Best Rock Album winner Greta Van Fleet, a young Michigan quartet featuring three brothers and an ability to sound almost exactly like a cover band doing recently discovered Led Zeppelin tunes. For example, here’s their breakthrough from last year, “Highway Song.”
For this act of musical sacrilege, Pitchfork gave the album that just won the Grammy, “Anthem of the Peaceful Army,” 1.6 on a scale of 10 and a review so savage it became an instant internet classic.
So yeah, the singer sounds a whole lot like Robert Plant, but that’s sure not Jimmy Page and John Bonham behind him. Yet it’s not the band’s pedestrian chops that have drawn so much wrath. Critics have rather taken offense at the very idea that a bunch of kids playing derivative music so quickly became popular, as if it’s the band’s fault that a major-label A&R guy offered them a contract and found an audience for their music.
From a less aggrieved standpoint, the main problem seems mostly due to the band’s lack of experience. Last month it appeared on “Saturday Night Live” and got swallowed up by the sparse stage, leading to more vicious reviews from critics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B0QHAwtvbE
For these sins, Greta Van Fleet has earned a dubious honor from writers for mainstream outlets, who have dubbed them the new Nickelback.
A musician told me about the band, I in turn told other musicians, we all love it. As for critics, well…. I could care less. The band does remind me of Zeppelin, the singer in particular . Suggest you take a look at their live gigs, their evolving to some extent, the vocalist in particular.
As someone who loved Zep’s music (and hated most of their fans), I haven’t heard anything to make me think there’s a John Paul Jones on board, but they’re not talentless. They were literally plucked from the boondocks of Michigan.
At this point they don’t play like prodigies, just a good bar band, but let’s see what they grow into. But man, does that kid sound like a young Plant. Even Plant has noticed:
https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/music/2018/03/31/robert-plant-greta-van-fleet-led-zeppelin/475696002/
God, I’m so over this Baby Boomer nostalgia crap.
Just think..if, back during the Zep hey-day, someone had been covering music THIS OLD, they’d have been singing Al Jolson songs.
2018 – > 48 years 1971 (Stairway) -> 48 years 1923 (Al Jolson: Toot Toot Tootsie)
The math checks out.
Nostalgia always sells. Remember the Scott Joplin boomlet after “The Sting” came out?
Yeah, why can’t we just all listen to Drake and be “happy”.
You mean Pharrell?
OK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM
I like some of everything. I have this problem at the ice cream shop, too.
Toot, toot, Tootsie, good-bye!
Toot, toot, Tootsie, don’t cry
The choo-choo train that takes me
Away from you no words can tell how sad it makes me
Kiss me, Tootsie, and then
Do it over again, watch for the mail, I’ll never fail
If you don’t get a letter then you’ll know I’m in jail
Don’t taunt me. I can go a lot farther back than that.