What is the most overrated band of all time?

Three albums that changed the decade, and a canonisation that treats every one of them as flawless.

Named the greatest band in almost every poll ever run, which is exactly why they head every argument about inflated reputations.

Started as a funk-rock band, ended as a chart-pop delivery system.

Four decades of the same funk-rock formula, praised and dismissed for exactly that.

Four decades of being told they are important, which is its own kind of problem.

Streaming numbers nobody disputes and a critical reception nobody defends.

Pop-punk that sold 75 million records and got a Broadway musical, to the genre's lasting irritation.

Monumental and uncredited in equal measure, given how much of the early catalogue came from blues records.

Sixty-four years of touring, and a critical line that the last genuinely great album was a long time ago.

Two great albums, a Beatles debt they never denied, and a legend far larger than the catalogue.

Ray Manzarek's organ against Jim Morrison's poetry, and a mythology built mostly on dying young.

Best-selling American album of the century, and the band it is most fashionable to say you cannot stand.

Critics' perennial best-band-alive, which makes them the obvious target for anyone who finds them cold.