No one can say Billy Corgan doesn’t speak his mind. In a recent chat with GMA News, the Smashing Pumpkins leader bashed the music industry, saying it “operates on a dumbing down principle.”
“It’s incredible to me how sophisticated people really are when you give them the opportunity to be sophisticated,” he said. “[But] the music business essentially operates on … ‘How dumb do we have to go to sell this record to the most people?’”
Corgan did cite one band – Radiohead – that has managed to resist pressure to bow to the lowest common denominator.
“There are very few bands who are able to keep their intelligence on record, [but] Radiohead [has],” he said. “They have a very high message and are still very popular. But for the most part the charts are dominated by music that’s essentially dumbed down in melody, style, tone, texture, and message ...”