10 Hated Rock Songs That Are Actually Really Good

In the world of popular music, the audience is always going to be your judge, jury, and executioner. No matter how much the critics might like to think that they have the ability to sway the public opinion, it always comes down to the public's taste to see if something stands the test of time. They will always talk up the classics to high heaven, but they will not mince words when they think that something is trash either.

From every style of rock music, songs have been put through the ringer for being either not as good as what the band is capable of or just an absolute trainwreck from start to finish. Though some of them are justified depending on what you're listening to, many of these songs got thrown to the wolves for no good reason, still holding up as some of the best pieces of the band's discography.

There's always layers to this though. Sometimes you have people getting swayed on a song later in the bandscareer or they turn a blind eye to the potentially good stuff if it comes from a notoriously bad release. That's not the fault of the artist though, and none of these songs deserved to have that kind of fate. Regardless of where they came from, these songs deserve a second look rather than just being dunked on every day.

With years of hindsight, we can all collectively admit that the '90s got more than a little bit weird, right? In just a few short years, we went through the entire reign of grunge to pop punk to the lounge revival and the swing revival, and capping everything off with nu metal towards the end of things. Anything went around this time, and most people have not looked back all that fondly on Smash Mouth.

Though the memes behind the band have become more powerful than the band themselves in recent years, Walking in the Sun is still a fantastic little pop song from around this time, having that same kind of smarminess that made the '90s so good back in the day. Hell, from the opening notes, this almost sounds like a take on someone like the Doors from the '60s, until the lyrics come in and give you a pretty dire picture of what's going on around you.

There's still that little bit of goofiness from the time though, down to the chorus lines of supplies running out, almost like you're listening to some sort of infomercial ad on TV. This was the way we played it back in the day though, where rock stars claimed to be above the more superficial side of stardom. If you still have All Star etched into your brain, all of the pieces are still there. Once you dig a little deeper, this is a nice little time capsule of what we were all up to just before Y2K came in.