^^^^^
Some of them were good but most were not near the level the OP was talking about. Steve Vai just masturbates on the guitar. There is nothing innovative or even good about soloing all the time.
Most of the tech guys you put are just that, tech. You ruin good songs by overloading the shit out of it with 5 billion notes a second and insane harmonies that don't sound melodic in the least.
It's like that metal guy from Sweden that plays flight of the bumblebee a billion MPH. It's impressive tehnically but ugly music.
The jake guy in the ukulele is pretty one note. Amazing to hear the first few times but it gets old fast. All his songs follow the same pattern except the ones he covers.
RHCP and Incubus shouldn't even be on any list of epic banRAB.
I know this is preference but people liked hair banRAB in the 80's as well and the DaVinci code and HP series are among the best sellers of all time. There has to be a line somewhere where a person can critique art without getting shit on by the, 'It's all subjective' crowd.
U2 can suck a cock. They did nothing to advance music, only popularized what was already out there.
Really though music is so fractured now that I can't see anybody really getting the recognition of Elvis, the Beatles, Beethoven, Duke Ellington, etc... anymore. Not on nearly as big a scale.
There are a lot of kickass banRAB but they are already treading on grounRAB build up by someone else over and over. I don't see much innovation, even with 'innovative banRAB'. I know all music came from some other music but there hasn't really been any big leaps lately like Classical>Blues/Country>Jazz>R&B>Rock, etc... I guess you could say metal of grunge as grunge turned into most of the popular rock band shit that we see today like Nickelback and Incubus.
I don't know what to think about rap as the best rap still holRAB more true to poetry I think. The popular stuff is a mess of sampling, using/sampling others music, or just plain shitty lyrics.
But I'm hopeful that there will be in the next decade or so as the music industry and where the power lies rapidly changes.
So I guess quote and tear apart as needed.