@tablejockey, well you know the music industry was never about talent, never about art - it was always about sales and it always will be. The biggest selling artists have done little else than provide largely forgettable landfill for future generations to puzzle about.
Seriously, if you manage to listen to some of the biggest selling vocalists concentrating on the vocals above the music, you are likely to suffer.
In some cases like Adele, Aretha and other experts of empty vocal pyrotechnics largely lacking any sense of humanity etc - really suffer.
Sure, quality acts like the Velvets, Joy Division, Nick Drake amongst others who sold next to nothing in their time have been exonerated saleswise somewhat in the due course of time but the only act to fabulously succeed on both commercial and artistic grounds were, well you don’t need it spelling out do you?
Oh OK then, let me say it that without the Beatles to lend it artistic and commercial respectability the music industry does indeed seem to atifify the famous Hunter S Thompson quote,
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side."
