> Do adolescents today have this kind of relationship with bands?

I was stuck with Radiohead for a long time. I remember I'd get so tired of listening to a CD that I would pull the headphone jack a millimeter out of the slot. It had the effect of muting the bass frequencies and sound terrible, but it sounded different. Breathed new life into my meager CD collection when I discovered that lifehack one day in sex ed.

I happily upgraded out of the CD era as quickly as I could, but I can look back and appreciate how well it forced me to get to know the few artists I had in my collection. Though it also came with a certain destitution of choice.

Oh no no no! Why does this get repeated over and over?

Amnesiac is gold! It's really a more mature version of Kid A. Evolved. In my opinion Kid A was the v1 product and Amnesiac was v2. Much more balanced and much fewer "bugs" and issues. There's not a single weak track on Amnesiac, whereas there are quite a few on Kid A.

To be honest I find Amnesiac is one of their best albums.

This may be a bit pretentious... But if you're not listening to their smaller EPs you're missing out! (Airbag: How am I driving, is easily one of the best)

I don't know. This is by no means a "back in my day" complaint, but I miss the concept of a giant, stadium filling band deciding to throw caution to the wind and releasing something effectively "unsellable" to the public at large.

The Smashing Pumpkins did it with Adore, and Radiohead did it with Kid A (although Radiohead succeeded sending that album to the top of the charts by having at least one radio-friendly song on there). Some other bands I'm forgetting now.

The only "giant" artists I can of who are flirting with experimentation are... Kanye? Maybe Drake.

I hope they get moved by mostly indy music not known by me ;)

That's I hope what the long tail idea was good for as well.

When you have a huge audience for something, most of it is terrible because the lowest common denominator is often about the 'least disliked' instead of the best. Too many opinions find an average.

What's right in the middle – enough support both creative and financial, not too much popular pressure to be average – that's where you get the most excellence.

In other words, being extremely popular or extremely obscure tends to make things bad to mediocre. Of course there are exceptions, but it's something to think about when you're trying to be successful creatively.

Indie music went through this transition over the last 10 years. There are good things now and there were good things then, but I think there were a lot more great things in the middle as appreciation was growing but didn't quite have mass appeal.

Last semester one of my students in a college public speaking class gave an informative speech about a rapper (I can't remember who it was. it was someone who I had heard of but hasn't gotten a ton of mainstream success) and he mentioned that he felt like he grew up with this rapper.

Is it? there's a lot of homogeneity in the very few genres that are popular nowadays.

Also, the Bends was their most solid album (joking; it's not up to debate, although i miss that sometimes)

And if anything, it's far easier now to find all kinds of obscure artists playing in obscure genres. We don't have to rely on a label deciding whether or not a band is sellable to a large enough audience.