The 10 Most Over-Hyped Bands of the Decade

It was no less an authority than Chuck D who yelled out, "Don't believe the hype!" but the fact remains that music and the language of hyperbole go hand in hand. Even before Andrew Loog Oldham asked the question "Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?" the practice of creating a buzz existed in one form or another.

Yet be that as it may, some bands suffer from too much hype. Whether they fail to deliver on the goods or get distracted by the usual rock 'n' roll temptations, there remains a trail of chancers, wannabes and ne'er do wells that have been left with enough egg on their faces to make an omelette. Join us, dear reader, as Spinner guides you through our pick of the most over-hyped artists of the 2000s. Be warned, the Darkness and the Bravery may appear ...

1. Sandi Thom
While the likes of the Libertines and Arctic Monkeys were harnessing the power of the Internet and mobile communication to cultivate an ever-growing fan base, the unsigned Sandi Thom hit upon the idea of webcasting gigs from her South London basement flat to an audience so big that she could have filled Wembley Stadium. Er ... not quite. It turns out that she already had a publishing deal in place and her publicist had concocted the whole idea. It wasn't too long before the tale was discredited but sadly not before 'I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)' hoodwinked its way to No. 1. Thom vanished as quickly as she appeared, pausing only to cheekily release a 'Best Of ...' album, which also sank without a trace.



2. The Bravery
Hard to believe now, but once upon a time the Bravery – a no-hope bunch of desperate Duran Duran wannabes from the Big Apple – were actually seen as serious rivals of the Killers. Or at least, they were in the head of singer Sam Endicott, a man who'd paid his rock 'n' roll dues with ska-punk Skabba the Hut (no, us, neither). But while Las Vegas' finest U2 tribute band went to conquer the world, the Bravery shuffled quietly out of view, and the albums that followed their eponymous debut weren't even released in the UK. Bizarrely enough, Endicott has been revealed as the composer of Shakira's 'She-Wolf,' which pretty much tells you all you need to know about these opportunists.



3. The Vines
Given the horrendously moribund state of music at the turn of the decade – the New Acoustic Movement, anyone? Anyone? – it becomes a little easier to understand why the Vines were laughably hailed as the Second Coming of Grunge. The NME worked its tongue so far up singer Craig Nicholls backside that it was licking his teeth clean, but the honeymoon period soon came to an end. Diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, Nicholls' erratic behaviour had less to do with rock 'n' roll excess and more to do with a serious illness while the music became little more than just a tired retread of what Nirvana has delivered a decade earlier.




4. Lily Allen
The blogs! The updates! Wow! Lily Allen was sooooo 21st century and down wiv ver kids that middle-aged men in the music industry worked themselves up into a frenzied lather over what had to be the zeitgeist made flesh. Only that wasn't the case. Lily, offspring of loudmouthed thesp and former member of comedy group Fat Les Keith Allen, dropped an album of reheated reggae beats and grating mockneyisms. She followed this with a dog of a talk show on BBCThree and, in keeping with the times, recorded a second album of electropop. Rather kindly, she's now promised to drop out of music altogether. Now, that's news to make you smile.

5. The Ordinary Boys
You'd have thought that the clue was in the name. After all, would you buy anything from a band called Quite All Right? Or The Fairly Good Chaps? No, you wouldn't and despite an onslaught of orgasmic gushing from people who should know better, the Ordinary Boys' blend of mod revivalism, tepid Madness tributes and – as is beloved of the secretly posh – mockneyisms (see Lily Allen). In an attempt to raise the band's profile, singer Preston appeared in Celebrity Big Brother, but the press focus on his relationship with non-celeb Chantelle Houghton served only to break the band up as well as his engagement. And to think the press gets such a bad name ...



6. The Thrills
One of the decade's greatest mysteries remains how the Thrills managed to release one album, let alone three. Relocating from their native Ireland to California to seek inspiration, the Thrills elected to look back at the 1960s through rose-tinted spectacles that were never theirs to look through to create an album of turgid '60s pastiches. Their weak spot was singer Conor Deasy, a man whose voice resembled less the sweet harmonies associated with the Sunshine State and more a used tea bag being strained through a pair of underpants that hadn't seen the launderette in several months. The Thrills were dropped in 2007 after third album, 'Teenager,' stiffed at 48 in the UK charts.

7. The Darkness
In essence, the Darkness were heavy metal for people who hated heavy metal. Led by the rampaging ego of erstwhile jingles writer Justin Hawkins, it was initially difficult to decide whether the band was serious about its art or simply some kind of postmodern prank. Their debut album, 2003's 'Permission to Land,' gate-crashed the charts, and with just one album under their belts, the band headlined the Reading and Leeds festivals in 2004 whilst scooping Brit Awards and approving nods from the heavy metal press. The band imploded in a blizzard of cocaine and believing its own publicity after its second album, 'One Way Ticket to Hell ... and Back,' died at birth.



8. Starsailor
Hailing from Wigan, Starsailor were once touted as the heirs to the Verve's crown. Reading that back, it's amazing how hindsight can induce involuntary shudders not least because we all know how slight and underwhelming their output is. Still, the warning signs were there as early as the debut single, 'Fever,' when frontman James Walsh was busy warbling about freeways when the M61 would've been closer to the mark. Despite an attempt at working with producers Phil Spector and John Leckie, Starsailor failed to set the charts alight and the news that Walsh is to perform with the Lightning Seeds' Ian Broudie in the – ahem – intimate environs of London's the Borderline only confirms the band's now selective appeal.



9. Babyshambles
Following the release of their second, self-titled – an experience akin to an eight-year-old sitting on a landing and crying whilst Mum and Dad row drunkenly into the wee hours – the Libertines broke up with a whimper rather than a bang. Much was expected of Peter Doherty and his new band, but his private life came to dominate the column inches instead of his art: Model girlfriends, drug busts, incarceration and death kept the scribes happy, and it became too easy to forget what is was that Doherty was supposed to be famous for. And when we were reminded it was thanks to an unholy collision of skiffle and ska that grimly held on to a loose concept of melody. Still, at least that explains Razorlight's popularity.



10. The Twang
There are few things that certain sections of the music press love more than class tourism, and so it is that the earthy saltiness of Birmingham's the Twang was given to an unsuspecting public in 2007. The NME was so enamoured of the band that it presented them with the Philip Hall Radar Award for best newcomers at the 2007 NME Awards. The public had other ideas, having decided that baggy beats tugging at the Edge's trouser legs were something to be treated with the contempt they deserved. Amazingly, the Twang released a second album that entered the album charts at 20 before plummeting faster than the British economy.