Of course not, Mr. Strawman, it's a case by case basis. In this case, the popular product is mediocre to best and is lauded as something amazing, so that's what leads me to believe that most people only listen to them because they're popular, hence, sheep.

You do realize that you're both revealing your sheep mindset and asking me to subscribe to it when you respond to criticism of a song/artist with "uh well lotsa people like it bro!" right?

Mediocre at best? Says you. Here's where the age thing comes in. Back when they were playing those songs on the radio for the first time, me and everyone I know loved them and rushed out to buy the album, which we then wore out. This was well before its reputation grew to it being considered one of the best classic rock albums of that era, if not all time.

You guys are all looking at and reviewing the album in hindsight.

This is where the sheep part comes into play.

Yes you have a much more biased perspective, I'm aware of that. Don't they say that hindsight is always 20/20? They appeal to the lowest common denominator, and they're not that great, especially in the context of other great acts of the time.

I will say that Tommy is great though.

How do you figure. The same thing happened with albums by Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, etc. We all liked hard rock and those groups were putting out the best hard rock at the time. Who's Next is a great hard rock album.

And it wasn't just happening in my town but was happening spontaneously all over the country. Remember this was long before PCs and the Internet. You heard something on the radio and you either liked it or you didn't. Kids weren't logging in to check on the latest trends and bandwagons to jump on. And those bands weren't showing up on TV or in newspapers.

EDIT: Who's Next is the only Who album I ever bought. Never liked the early stuff. Tommy had a lot of good songs but also some pretty goofy ones. And nothing they did after Who's Next was as consistent or rocked harder.

I get where you're coming from, but my point is that "everyone loves it" isn't a good argument when defending an album.

If I told you the new Pitbull album was great, and you said you didn't like it, it would be stupid for me to say "well you just don't understand, everyone my age loves the album!" because that isn't necessarily reflective of the quality of the music, it just means that it's popular within a certain age group.

And don't get me wrong, The Who are pretty good, I'm just still a little butthurt over the Burzum comment.

Burzum >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The Who

Burzum: 326,600 listeners on last.fm
The Who: 2,612,600 listeners on last.fm

The numbers don't lie guys, The Who is obviously better.

How did we get to talking about the who in this thread?

Won't Get Fooled Again has a part where he screams.