ALBUMS: Eagles Greatest Hits (1976), Hotel California (1976)
MVC Rating: Hotel 4.0/$$; Hits 4.0/$$
Get over it people. The Eagles are the most maligned great band of all time. And that’s not right. And these records, both from 1976, are two of the biggest selling albums of all time.
Part of this venom comes from cooler-than-thou anti-commercial snobs. That sentiment hounds all bands that get popular or have a song or two go into the stratosphere. This whole attitude was famously and hilariously sent up in the movie The Big Lebowski when the Dude screamed to turn off the radio: “I hate the f——g Eagles.”
I believe the Coen brothers were poking fun at this superiority rip that some get on with popular music. That said, the line would not have worked as well with Beatles subbing for Eagles. Why? I seriously wonder. It’s too easy to say the Beatles were better. The Beatles were pioneers. The Eagles were hitmakers trodding on the familiar ground of country-rock.
Hotel California is a great multi-faceted song instrumentally, and lyrically it opens itself up for numerous interpretations. That’s a good thing (see Dylan). When this song came on the radio and you were 17 in high school, it meant the night was kicking in. It means the door was open for just about anything. Funny, a song about decadence and greed in a subculture of Los Angeles could find common ground with Georgia southern boys and girls. But that’s how I remember it in high school in Athens, Ga.. in 1976-77. We didn’t have ‘ a dark desert highway’ but we had pine forest backroads.
Then music emanating from a cassette tape in your car, you’d turn it up as ‘Life in the Fast Lane ‘ kicks in.
Other great songs? ‘Take it Easy,’ ‘Witchy Woman’ ‘Lyin’ Eyes,’ ‘Desperado, and on. (Not a fan of ‘Best of My Love,’ though. Too slow and syrupy.)
Madeleine Chapman on The Spinoff, a blog from New Zealand (see this hate debate has made it around the world), says this:
…. Half of the people who claim to hate the Eagles today just say so because their too-cool-for-soft-rock-I-only-listened-to-David-Bowie parents hated the Eagles. … There’s no logic besides if even my lame Dad hates them, they must be bad. And that would be totally fine if people weren’t so proud of their hate.
The Eagles get tagged with being misogynistic. A quick Google around and I saw their name linked to misogyny but no good examples. They write a lot about broken relationships. There are some obvious break-up songs e.g. ‘Lyin’ Eyes.’ Is ‘Witchy Woman sexist?’ ‘ Raven hair, ruby lips, sparks fly from her fingertips?’
“It’s a girl my Lord in a flatbed Ford turning around to take a look at me” from ‘Take it Easy.
Here’s one from ‘Hotel California:’
Her mind is Tiffany twisted, she got the Mercedes Benz/ She got a lot of pretty pretty boys she calls friend.
Dunno.