The music industry is dead. There are no more musical heroes, no new groundbreakers, and the surviving good acts out there have aged. Songwriting has been reduced to seeing with which other so-called artist Timbaland’s fat ass can collaborate, and the indie scene is gimmick shit as far as The Arcade Fire can see. Long after the death of Kurt Cobain and before the loss of Johnny Cash, we lost someone relevant that seemed much more like that dude you went to high school with that always does open mic at the café than some  larger than life legend.

I’m referring to Elliott Smith. Elliott Smith, who got mainstream notice from his Academy Award nominated “Miss Misery” song from the soundtrack to Good Will Hunting. From There, Smith enjoyed moderate success until his untimely death by way of a self-inflicted steak knife stab wound. With his final words written on a Post It note, music lost a great. Since then, Smith has enjoyed posthumous successes, including the likes of his latest album, New Moon. From his beginning until his end, Smith perfected his simple song structures and a stripped down sort of style that is a real diamond in the rough with the sea of everything digitized. There have been few singer/songwriters out there to fully stick in the lexicon of my generation. Elliott Smith has more reason to be there than anyone.

There’s a reason I always cringe when I see some bandwagon nincompoop in a Dave Matthews Band shirt or get sad when I come across some woman that spends equal time touting Jack Johnson and her tramp stamp. As “Mr. Misery”, Smith set realistic standards with his song writing that covered life, love, and drugs in a real way. His voice was never relegated to screaming or yelling nonsensical bullshit found in your emo of today, but it was real, “Bitch, I can’t believe you’d do this to me!” overtones marked with a velvety soft voice. It was real in a way that other modern music has been yet to match. To put this theory to test, I naturally checked Myspace.com’s “Top Artists” list. And just below rapper, rapper, rapper, rapper, was Linkin Park. The following is a lyrical excerpt from their latest album:

AEGHHHHHHHHHGHGH!!!!

Now, I realize that art is hard to judge and can be even more difficult to compare, but the visual of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington digging up dance floor graves actually doesn’t sound too bad. In contrast, Elliott Smith delivers bad news in a catchy way. With two parts McCartney and Lennon, shaken with one part Nick Drake, sprinkled with the pain of your local starving artist; and a few other ingredients no one since has been able to emulate.

I urge everyone to at least check out an Elliott Smith tune or forty, learn the tragedy that became his life, and judge for yourself. But for this listener, there is no match for the spiderweb thin vocals and Beatles-esque delivery of such beautifully woeful music. Smith made songs that could really save someone. And we are left to ponder what could have been had someone saved him.