i kinda think "overproduction" is when you rely more on the studio tricks than you do on the material. like if you took Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and tried Snap to Grid and put some FX on it. you would absolutely lose the song, no question.

on the other hand, songs that are created with production in mind can't be "overproduced". Peter Gabriel's "SO" album is very very produced, but it fits the material perfectly. I don't think you could record those songs lo-fi and make the same impact.

so in my mind, Britney Spears and the Flaming Lips and all the new Emo/Hard Rock bands aren't overproduced -- the production was in mind when crafting the song.


on that note, I think G Love's "Electric Mile" and Ben Harper's "Diamonds on the Inside" were both overproduced -- those guys should never Snap to Grid. Ever.

all the best,
nick

Pet Sounds is pretty overproduced and man, doesn't that album just suck the balls?

(sw)

is that the one with that "rollin! rollin! rollin! WHAT?" track on it?
that was one well polished turd.


theres a definite difference between heavily or over using the studio as an instrument to accent the content & not having any content to begin with & building a bunch of production tricks around some weak hooks.

BT comes to mind as a really slick contemporary producer who has some clever tricks up his sleeve. he can make screaming chickens sound good. he's been employed to put his waxy gloss on people from Bowie to NSync.

OK computer one of the biggest albums in recent history is heavily produced but it serves the material.

Peter Gabriel 'UP' i think it depends on the track. personally i think 'Growing Up' is perfect the way it is. but the 'Barry Williams Show' is a weak rehash of the groove & production tricks used in 'Steam' & 'Sledgehammer'.

There are some heavily produced songs where i end up liking the acoustic version better than the official version with the big string section & big budget studio production. see: the cult - edie, INXS - never tear us apart. but thats just a case of having a really great song.

-1 for Evanessence!!! thumbsup

I call this "barf on a disc."

Cheers
Adam

Oh yeah, the greatest radio pop of the last 10 years... bad songs LoL

those we're some of the slickest pop songs and production... also to throw NSync in a pot with "Baby Boy", "Crazy In Love" is not exactly very differentiated

I would agree though that on could call some NSync and BSB overproduced in the same way that many great pop productions are...

Awesome. Love Mutt.

You could say For Those About To Rock is overproduced relative to Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap... but in a way you'd be totally wrong...

Best overproduction: Mutt Lange, Roy Thomas Baker- in general.

Overproduced is when it has all that but the music and performances aren't worth it, or they're exhausted and out of spirit. Queen could not be overproduced- they ate that stuff up. Freddie Mercury could do vocal doubling and make it FLANGE with itself. How can you overproduce talents like that? You're just running to keep up. You're applying half the treble gloss because the vocalist's actual voice has THAT MUCH presence that there's less for you to do. You're not having to apply a tight ambience on the snare to make it airier because the drummer is doing a hihat sting with every backbeat, and it's part of his regular sound...

Overproduced is using all your cleverness to try and FAKE that.

Def leapard is a perfect example! the one after pyromania is even worse. the one with pour some sugar on me

the one with a record setting SEVEN number one hits?

I find "Tiny Music" to be STP's "middle finger" record. The record that stated in capital letters that they weren't just a "heavy" band, or a "grunge" band or whatever. They where "artists". In heavy music things have to get heavier and heavier and heavier. Otherwise, it isn't "heavy" - is it? STP took a step back and created an album that the accountants, lawyers and A&R people probably didn't want them to make. I'm sure they wanted another Core or Purple. I'm sure glad they didn't. Whatever happend to the artist responsibility of challenging their listeners? Not everything has to sound like a Nickleback record or have screaming guitars to be "good". STP first impressed me when they mentioned they where big Glen Campbell fans (...check out their cover of Witchita Lineman) - that was one of my first influences when I was a kid. I think "indie" is simply a reflection of the times - smaller. No one's making the big money they once where, sales of houses are down despite the "great" economy. People (...we'll most around these parts) don't identify with "excess" because it's not part of their daily lives. I was one of those who at first didn't get "Tiny Music" but that's the one record that's stayed with me long past when they others faded. Songs like "Tripping on a Hole in a Paper Heart", "Pop Loves Suicide", "Art School Girlfriend", "Ride the Cliche" and "Seven Caged Tigers" are really good songs. The main difference was things like Vox amps as opposed to VHT Pitbulls as far as guitar tones go. To me, that's a good thing. I agree, there's no point in debating "underproduced" or "overproduced". It all boils down to the statement that's being made. If they are merely trying to make crap sound good than I'd call that "overproduction". Otherwise, give a great song and I'll probably be able to look past a few "shortcomings" should they be there. If they're dressed up like it's Friday night I wouldn't kick em' out of bed either...

I'd agree with that statement. I'd say that "bad production" is when the production detracts...or distracts...from the music. When I'm listening to music for enjoyment I try to listen without my engineer hat on. When I'm pulled away from the music by production I don't like it.

When I think of "overproduced" albums the two that come to mind most readily are "...And Justice for All" by Metallica and "Songs for the Dead" by Queens of the Stone Age. In both cases the first thing I remember noticing when I heard them were the drums...that super-clicky kick drum on "Justice" and the huge snage on "Songs". They were very distinct sounds but I think they were the sounds that the artists were going for. I wouldn't lump them into the poorly-produced category, though...when it comes to "overproduced" in a bad sense I generally think of '80's hair-metal bands, drenched in reverb...and Yes's "Union", where it seems like whomever was in charge got some rough tracks from the various members of the band and then had a bunch of session guys come in and finish it up. Although there are a few songs on there I really like.

Metallica's "St Anger" comes to mind first for me as far as poorly-produced albums are concerned. I love raw albums, but I think they tried to hard to make that album sound raw that it just wound up sounding bad.

-Duardo

Duardo came closest to what I was gonna say.

If the amount of production makes the song worse, then it's overproduced.

The better the artist, the less you need. Good song, sympathetic players and you're most of the way there. Unfortunately, the more successful the artist, the bigger the budget, the more at risk, and...

I love it when a producer does a reset on a great artist and lets their true self come through again (Rick Rubin on Johnny Cash, Nigel Godrich on Paul McCartney come to mind).

js

Totally agree. The keyboards are louder than anything!

These days, to me, overproduction is best represented by any song where the Autotune could legitimately be given credit as the lead singer. And i hear these songs everywhere, every time i walk into a department store or turn on the radio...whatever. Antares is the hardest working singer in America these days. And i hate him.

And see my point above about how "Fall Out Boy" should be renamed "Babyface". heh

I think only a few people are getting what I am saying by overproduced. I don't mean Boston. And I certainly don't mean Peter Gabriel's "So". Personal taste always comes in to it, but I am trying to find out if there are any albums/songs that the majority of us agree have suffered that fate. Maybe "produced to death" would be a less loaded term?
Thanks to everyone for your contributions,
David

Even if I love Trevor's production, I have to admit that some of his work is overproduced. Simple Minds – Street fighting years and Frankie Goes To Hollywood are examples of this.
IMHO overproduced is simply when the production is so obvious that it perverts the original intend of the artist.

I think the balance between the production and the song/artist is in the equation. That's why Seal is "very produced" but not overproduced. The balance between Seal's voice and Trevor's production is perfect. On Simple Minds or FGTH, production was all over the place and it completely overwhelms the artist and therefore distracts the listener of the original intend. However I like these albums because of the production, which means I was distracted by the production...
I do like this era but I think overproduction was the norm in the 80's (I didn't say everything was overproduced). This period was clearly in favour of the production. Stock, Aitken & Waterman is an example of this drift. The hits came from the production, the artistic substance was nonexistent and the artist was just a puppet (Did I define the 80's here? heh ). If you want to have an 80's sound, just overproduce it and it should be right.<o:p></o:p>

I see two reason of this.
The first was technical. 80's was discovering sequencer, lexicon, sampler & digital editing (synclavier, emulator, akaï, …), hormonizer, SSL … All these tools gave much more power to the production and therefore the means to push the balance in favour of the production.<o:p></o:p>
The second reason is marketing. Production was a way for the labels to insure a recurrent success of their artist.<o:p></o:p>

Finally, albums like Talk Talk – Spirit of Eden or Nirvana – Nevermind showed the decline of the overproduced 80's (as the punk did for the progressive rock). I didn't say that the music was less produced today, it's just less obvious...

I dont draw a line between composing a chord progression on a nylon string guitar and tweaking the input on a distressor.popular music is what comes out of a set of speakers full stop. you cant say something is over-produced.tutt its misleading.its a contradiction in terms.if a song has been produced in such a fashion that it hasnt reached its full potential then has been under produced. different strokes i guess.as an engineer/producer i find it almost nihilistic to advocate under production.spontinaity doesnt work for 90% of popular music.i guess what im trying to say is i think def leppard rock!!!!!

I dont draw a line between composing a chord progression on a nylon string guitar and tweaking the input on a distressor.popular music is what comes out of a set of speakers full stop. you cant say something is over-produced.tutt its misleading.its a contradiction in terms.if a song has been produced in such a fashion that it hasnt reached its full potential then has been under produced. different strokes i guess.as an engineer/producer i find it almost nihilistic to advocate under production.spontinaity doesnt work for 90% of popular music.i guess what im trying to say is i think def leppard rock!!!!!

IMHO overproduced is simply when the production is so obvious that it perverts the original intend of the artist.


fair eneogh if the artist is elton john. you dont want to hi-jack the session becuase he's a genius BUT! .what about the avrils and fall out boys of this world. dont get me wrong.i love avril and she rocks BUT!. i dont know if i want to hear what she originaly intented.im all for perverting artists intents if they are in need of guidance.thats why we have producers isnt it.
I

Sure. I noticed in my post that I like some album that was overproduced and I'm not sure I would like it without the production...
However overproduction often mask the limitation of the artist.

Not always. As you said, when you have a real artist, the producer is the person who emphasizes his composition/interpretation.

that "keep it in the closet" tune he did with the new jack swing guy was awesome, not overproduced in the least. would've been nice to get to the big hook a little quicker, though.

balls to that! listen to "tip of my tongue" by the tubes, or the streisand version of "somewhere"; excellent examples of foster at his best. i'll agree he does often lay on the cheese a little thick for my taste, but he achieves a sound that's pretty much the definition of a genre (for better or worse, i suppose).

trevor horn? dude, his work on 90125 and "pleasuredome" alone qualify him as an hombre supremo, and those are both probably within the oeuvre of "overproduced", proving again that much of this discussion is a matter of taste.

now, if any of you remember a quickly-forgotten album called "passion crimes" by the group "darling cruel", it's one of my picks for "overproduced". or at least, "over-reverbed". i saw those guys live after that album came out, and their songs were fantastic. nothing like mixing all the life out of a track...

even more so, the Hysteria album. Pyromania sounds conservative by comparison.

but my nominee for most overproduced album in my collection has got to be "Tales from Topographic Oceans". That one suffered from a lack of life in all aspects, most notably the songwriting. The performances are dull, the tracks are all overworked, and the payoff is shy of expectations. A truly sad day in Yes' career. nice album cover, though.

Pyromania was OK to me - I was a big Def Leppard fan back in the day - and it was still a logical step from On Through The Night and High and Dry. But Hysteria was the biggest pile of **** I've ever heard. I've heard disco records that were heavier.

i have vault the best of def an i enjoy it allot. i wouldnt consider it over produced.its very very ott but thats what the music is all about.u wouldnt say nirvana was too raw and you cant say def are over produced. i think they rock in a pleasant kind of way.

can you elaborate on what about this record strikes you as "overproduced"?

Great production. The Stooges "The Weirdness" released today. "She Took My Money" is a classic Stooges song. Lots of great stuff. I am so in to this album.

I wish I'd caught onto this thread earlier as this is a response to a 311 defense:

Soundsystem is the most overblown un-neccessary album of the recent era. That album is over-produced, and if you listen to the arrangment, rhythms and, god forbid, lyrics - that album should have sounded like my grandmother farting on a snare drum.

I really liked Grassroots - but the novelty wore off and it became bad poetry - lyrics that had all the nuance and art as a carpet soaked with bong water. That movement should be forgotten.

"My computer is future shockin, download it, and let's start talkin"
"evolution has exponential timing"

My point being, that was their worst "effort", yet sonically, it had all the detail and clarity you'd hope a well written album would have (but doesn't).

I think bands like "The Libertines" and "Caribou" have unique sounds that more or less, go against the huge studio sound of corporate radio. I personally like having the time/budget to do more heavy handed production as the label and band have an option.

Rarely though(actually only for R&B and Rap) have I had revisions asking for more "touch". I think the trend, in my world at least, is leaning towards the less is more dictum.

...don't even know 'em.

anything pop.
where production is more important then vibe. If the vocals arent autotuned to sound like a synth.. it sucks.. i hate all that crap. pop music is just gay to begin with. back in the day it was great but now country music sounds like overproduced pop. vibe is all gone away and replaced by stacks of vocals that you can tell were not sung, just pitched in protools or sung by hired singers.
ok i better stop before i go off on how gay music has become.
its just sad..
its all because the only people really buying music is 12 year olds. so if it doest sound like hanna montana or whatever that crap is.. it wont sell..
ahhh
i hate music now
sorry if i offend those who only like music they can pat their foot too...