I'm going to start collecting instances of music writers dismayed at the bad taste of their idols. Musicians frequently display more open-mindedness about music than the people who write about them -- not just more adventurousness, but more open admiration for uncool music, and less inclination to care what others think; more willingness to take music on its own terms, and to unironically give themselves over to the music they enjoy.
This one's several years old, and I can't even find a byline on it: a piece in the Telegraph celebrating the re-release of the obscure 1975 Phil Spector-produced Dion album Born to Be With You. The piece hovers between the writer's admiration for the album and conviction of its neglected classic status, and Dion's utter indifference toward it. Ultimately the story becomes more about Dion's polite disinclination to talk much about the album, and an air of sad head-shaking by the author takes over; by the last three paragraphs, the author's word choices and quote selections make it clear that Dion is pitiable:
...It is certainly an anomaly next to both his pre-1975 catalogue of intuitive, streetwise New Yoik rock'n'roll and his post-1975 descent towards his doo-wop roots via gospel and Christian music. Dion "found it" with Born to Be with You, but lost it too.
Today, Dion wants to talk about religion, his daughters, The Wanderer - anything but Born to Be with You, basically. "This week, I had dinner with some dear friends and we talked about how we could be better at loving our wives," he tells me, apropos of nothing. "Life is great. I give thanks every day for being alive. We're all snowflakes, y'know."
Poor Dion descends from "streetwise" to religion, family, happiness; in case you were wondering whether the author wanted you to think Dion "lost it", the author spells it out for you, and chooses a presumed inanity ("We're all snowflakes, y'know") as the last thing we hear out of Dion's mouth, a deliberate bit of manipulative tone-setting. Also note the "apropos of nothing": presumably Dion thought it was apropos of something, though we don't know what he was responding to; we do know that it isn't what the author wants him to be interested in, therefore apropos of nothing.
I said last three paragraphs, but I only gave you two. This was the capper of the piece:
Fine. But then he really, really shocks and appalls me: he tells me that he likes the music of Alanis Morissette. Final confirmation, perhaps, that it was some higher power, and not Dion, who sang those songs after all.
Poor fanboy writer, whose idol loves his wife and daughters and Jesus and Alanis Morissette. This can't possibly be the same man who made the music the writer loves. Final confirmation, perhaps, that the writer can't learn anything he doesn't already know.