9. The Black Keys
I felt compelled to include a rock act on this list. Rock music is in a dire state at the moment, and has been for the past decade. There is simply no new blood coming through and trying to do something different. Every band seems to be overly influenced by past bands. Just like nearly all metal bands are overly influenced by Metallica, rock bands like The Black Keys are influenced by The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin etc. Those are great bands to be influenced by, but the modern bands are not offering anything new. They are just a not-as-good version of great older bands, so if I want to listen to some good rock music, Ill listen to Zeppelin or the Stones rather than a band trying to do the same thing but 40 years later. Even on the first listen, I feel like I have heard the Black Keys songs before, because they are just bland and not interesting, and sound similar to past songs by other bands. They once claimed that rock 'n' roll was dying because people became OK with Nickelback being the biggest band in the world, but in my opinion, it is because bands like The Black Keys are offering nothing new. If you want to listen to a good bit of heavy modern rock, which is hard to come by nowadays, then I have two words for you Foo Fighters.
Redeeming Feature: Any rock band does well to get good exposure in this pop and dance dominated musical environment we currently live in, so credit has to go to the Black Keys for that. They do, like most bands, write all their own songs.