5 times Beavis and Butt-Head were brilliant music critics

: By the time Pavement’s third album, Wowee Zowee, came out in 1995, the band had traded in its brief brush with mainstream exposure—1994’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain—for a slow-burning, bubbling-under-the-surface cult status. It also let Malkmus loosen up, to the point where he turned one of Wowee Zowee’s most cryptic songs, “Rattled By The Rush,” into a free-riffing continuum of near-rhymes like “Candelabra” / “Barbara” / “Larva” that rivals most of the MCs of that era—at least a couple of them. [Jason Heller]What Beavis and Butt-Head said: Butt-Head: Oh no, it’s another one of these. They need to try harder.Beavis: It’s like … it’s like they’re not even trying. Come on! I want you to start over again and this time try! Come on, let’s go! One, two, three four, come on. Come on, rock!Butt-Head: This is just horrible.Beavis: If you’re gonna be horrible, at least, like, kick ass. Like Jesus Lizard. I mean, they suck but they kick ass.Butt-Head: I think these guys are just lazy.Beavis: They’re too lazy to rock, and they’re too lazy to clean the tub.Butt-Head: These guys are so lazy they probably take a dump in the tub.

:I’m not sure when it became clear to me (or pretty much every rock critic on the planet, or a good percentage of diehard fans) that In Utero is the best of the three Nirvana studio albums, but it did. Some contrarian will make an impassioned plea for Bleach, someone else will argue that the band’s best songs actually appear on the odds-and-sods compilation Incesticide, and a populist or two will try to put In Utero (and, by extension, the dead singer-guitarist) in its place by championing the people’s choice, Nevermind. I’ll just say this: Each is essential. In Utero is my favorite. [Josh Modell]What Beavis and Butt-Head said: Butt-Head: Yes. Nirvana rules.Beavis: This is cool. Rock!Butt-Head: Hey Beavis, you know the bass player in this band? He looks just like a regular guy?Beavis: Oh yeah, if you just saw him at school he’d probably like, you know, get his ass kicked.

:’s career has been defined—or maybe undefined—by his sonic hopscotch. He first reached the mass consciousness via 1994's “Loser,” but only those paying closer attention realized that he released three albums that year: Mellow Gold got the major-label deal and the hip-hop/slacker-folk hits, while Stereopathetic Soulmanure went for lo-fi noise and One Foot In The Grave channeled warm, stripped folk and blues. [Josh Modell]What Beavis and Butt-Head said: Beavis: Who is this fart knocker anyway?Butt-Head: He’s like one of those dudes from the gifted class.Beavis: Those guys always, like, write words like this.Butt-Head: Yeah, really. “The sails climb high in the garbage-pail sky.” That’s stupid.Beavis: How come people in the gifted class are always stupid?

:Radiohead’s first hit, “Creep,” couldn’t have been more blatant in presenting its theme of alienation; maybe that’s why the single and the album from which it came, 1993's Pablo Honey, were so boring. [Joshua Klein]What Beavis and Butt-Head said: Butt-Head: Uh. What is this?Beavis: Don’t worry, Butt-Head, it gets cool in a minute.Butt-Head: It better start rocking or I’ll really give him something to cry about.Beavis: Check it out Butt-Head, it gets cool. Check it out. Yes!Butt-Head: Yes! This is pretty cool.Beavis: How come they don’t like play that cool part through the whole song?Butt-Head: Well, Beavis, if they didn’t have a part of the song that sucked, then it’s, like, the other part wouldn’t be as cool.