Eagles – "Already Gone" (1974)

So oftentimes it happens

That we live our lives in chains

And we never even know we have the key

The best-selling album of all time in the United States is the Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975), which contained the most popular songs from that group’s first four studio album:

It has sold 38 million copies.  (The mind boggles.)

If that doesn’t prove ipso facto that the Eagles are overrated, it comes pretty damn close.

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“Take It Easy” – the group’s first hit – isn’t bad.  And I really like today’s featured song, “Already Gone.”

  

But the remaining songs on Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) – including #1 hits “Best of My Love” and “One of These Nights,” “Peaceful Easy Feelin’,” and “Take It to the Limit” – are just awful. 

In 2016, Gersh Kuntzman correctly opined in the New York Daily News that the Eagles were a horrific band.

“The Eagles were suburban conformity, writ large — the music you mom and dad would let you play on the living room hifi,” Kuntzman went on to say.  He took special aim at “Best of My Love,” which he said “sounds even too soft for an elevator.”

Kuntzman isn’t alone in his disdain for the Eagles.  Legendary rock critic Robert Christgau wrote this about the Eagles in 1972:  

Another thing that interests me about the Eagles is that I hate them. “Hate” is the kind of up-tight word that automatically excludes one from polite posthippie circles, a good reason to use it, but it is also meant to convey an anguish that is very intense, yet difficult to pinpoint.  Do I hate music that has been giving me pleasure all weekend, made by four human beings I've never met?  Yeah, I think so. 

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When Jeff Bridges’ “The Dude” character in The Big Lebowski gets in a cab and hears “Peaceful Easy Feeling” playing on the radio, he asks the driver to change the station. “Man, I've had a rough night,” he tells the cabbie, “and I hate the f*cking Eagles!”  

The Dude is so full of sh*t that his eyes are brown, but he was right on about the Eagles.

Vernett Bader

So was Vernett Bader, who went after her roommate and his brother with a 14-inch serrated bread knife a few years ago when they refused to stop playing Eagles records.  Click here to read more about that incident.

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Click here to listen to “Already Gone.”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: