To be honest i don't know which is better or worse. Where you have under produced you have low quality drum kits and a bland slate but where you have over produced you have WAAAY too many layers [Rihanna's Talk That Talk, 1D Up all night and LM Wings are perfect example of over produced]
For me underproduced easily. I kinda don't mind if something is overproduced.
What does it mean?
Too much effort put into the song, too many layers of audio such as about 5 vocal tracks, 20 instrument tracks is over produced, 1 vocal track and 3 instrument tracks is under produced, I think 3 vocal tracks and about 8 instrument tracks is where the line should be for a song.
Overproduced but well done is great, underproducing makes the song less ~strong~, if you know what I mean.
Love Yourself is a great example of a terrible song that is underproduced. I'd rather something be overproduced, personally.
I think it all depends on the artist & how they feel the song should sound. There is not necessarily any way to under or over produce a song unless you are not setting a clear goal for each track produced.
This is a totally subjective subject, decided by the opinions of individuals that listen to a track. Really, audio is nothing more than audio waves going through your ears to be absorbed by the ear drums and interpreted as an electric signal in the brain. "Good" and "bad" are just blanket terms the human mind attempts to apply to everything around it in a vain and ever-obsessive need to categorize it all. To me, there is no such thing as "overproducing" but I definitely feel like a track can be missing something in some cases.
I like to think of it like this; if the busyness of a track creates too much confusion to accurately (or properly) convey the mood that the track is trying to convey, then it is simply a question of poor mixing. But the level of busyness (basically the amount of stuff going in, in all) of the track can be crazy (seemingly overdone) and STILL be good (ie STILL convey the appropriate mood) IF it is mixed well. Masking is a big pain-in-the-butt that can ruin any track.
It's kind of like when people complain about the use of AutoTune. It kind of bugs me when they do that, because I find myself bugged about how literally EVERY hard rock song makes use of an overly-distorted guitar run through an amp to completely alter its sonic characteristics from how a guitar SHOULD sound. It is often simply said that the overly-saturated guitar sound is a staple in hard rock music - but the same could be said about the use of AutoTune in pop music.
It's just an effect used to alter the sonic characters of a sound (or the entire track) to make it fit the mood better, or to better suit the artists' interpretation of what their work SHOULD be. No biggie. Some people may not like it, others may, but at the end of the day it's all the same stuff. Tools are used all the time to alter the sound of track stems (like EQ, compression, etc) and even though they are being used "transparently" most of the time, the result is the same - the altering of sonic characteristics to achieve a slightly more pleasant sound. To me, it's not bad to have something that others would consider "overproducing" - I like stuff like this, because it makes me think.
Like... hmm... "How did they get the kick drum sounding so punchy and distorted like that?" or "What did they use to make the transients of the drum hits so prominent, even if a TON of compression was used?" stuff like that. I like the way it makes me consider stuff about the way these tracks were produced, because it gives a little insight to how other producers or engineers like to tailor their work and holds the possibility of opening my eyes to a method or technique I would never have conceived on my own.
This is why I hate millennials and the way they're growing up with music today. :@
An over-produced track is ALWAYS worse.
It's becoming more common practice with every passing decade to have extra production effects and techniques embedded into a track's raw recording, and it's sickening. It leaves no magic, no acoustics, no natural energy, no warmth, and far less room for creative control. It's painfully obvious from playback alone. You cannot honestly say that that's how sound in general is meant to be heard, because you know how labels are creating and presenting music these days:
1) Most elements pushed to the front (weak sound stage and engineering)
2) DR values that slip lower and lower due to improper mastering
3) Producers being less willing/likely to go in an original direction (both from artist and industry perspectives)
It's not a matter of what tools are being used and how many there are during recording, but how realistic and tasteful they're being implemented. This is why I don't give new artists a chance. They aren't presented properly like they deserve to be, so I'm not going to treat my ears improperly as a result.
We live in a day and age where people like Steve Hoffman are the unsung heroes, but the new album you just bought (in MP3 resolution no doubt) doesn't sound as good as you hoped because your cellphone speaker isn't loud enough so you're just gonna wait for next year's model to be better instead. Grow up, people; the industry could be so much better.