Do you ever wonder?

Come on, you are a smart guy. Does it actually puzzle you that the music buying public is composed of morons?

One thing is clear: mainstream tastes almost always favor the ignorant masses who just want something mildly pleasing that won't make them think too hard. God forbid, they might hurt themselves.

Phaelon: Are emotion and intellect really that separate? Wouldn't you say that profound emotion has enough depth to be analyzed almost endlessly? Take Bach, Coltrane, or Schoenberg for example...there is enough there to think about AND feel until the end of time! You really can't separate them if the art is that pure..

Yes Audiofeil, I do have a list for you. However I do not listen to (or really even think about) pop music, so it is jazz and classical.

I cannot understand how Winton Marsalis or his brother ever could be considered great jazz figures. They are both second rate revisionist imitators, makers of 'parodies' and farces. In the classical world, I cannot understand the adulation given to the Kronos Quartet. They playing sucks the life out of anything that is not 'obvious', and they 'mainstream' anything they touch.
And of course, I cannot understand why people do not see through Keith Jarrett. New age fluff, nothing more.

Tiny Tim is a misunderstood genius. However he should not actually be listened to at all in order to understand this. The music is superfluous to what he is. Given this, I think he is way way better than Eric Clapton or the Beatles.

Yes they did. It was called "Bucktooth National", and was released on Atlantic in 1977.

What about Wynton Marsalis, the revisionist fraud who made a career off of the supposition that innovation was dead and the 'art of jazz' should be about copying the past? He is not a traditionalist. A traditionalist works in a tradition which is based on INVENTION. He invents nothing. He merely gives echoes of bygone sounds.