Lucky art isn't about making money. That's what seperates the true artists from that top 10 list there. Taylor Swift is FAR from a musical genius, there is nothing progressive or genius about the simple arrangements her songs are made up of. Madonna was actually a good song writer, and there are plenty of vocalists better the Carrie Underwood, if I want to listen to music just for vocal performance I listen to opera not pop because really, she's a good vocalist compared to pop vocalists and nothing else.

Taylor Swift is the highest selling artist of 2009. Million's will disagree with you.

Millions of people who don't know any better. The point I'm making is all of the genre's represented in that list have artists producing great music that is much better then that commercial stuff. Artists who are pushing foward artistically and making unique music. Artists who understand more about music, past simple verse chorus verse formats, ones experimenting with different time signatures, advancing lyrically, etc. You rarely find that in commercially driven music and you very rarely find great music that is commercially successful, and the great musicians who are commercially successful tend to come from an age before the record industry became what it is now. As a musician myself I simply find it appauling how poor the popular music of the past decade+ has been.

Oh the millions who don't know any better? I can't wait till Taylor gets like 50 nominations tomorrow. lol I guess the experts don't know better either right?

The experts work for the record industry.

You're right they do... and?

And, award shows are advertisement. They want you to buy music, it has nothing to do with art. the award shows are as commercial as it gets, it has nothing to do with expression. Just a way to push more album sales.