I would say it's generally been the case that the best music is not that popular, and that popular music is generally the lowest common denominator. As Derek Schulman of Gentle Giant said, "We wanted to make great music with the likely result of being very unpopular." They actually had some limited success, but if musicianship and exceptional music were indicators of success, they would have been huge.
I was thinking of posting something of theirs. Their first album was very hard rocking and (like most of their stuff) very noisy. This cut is just beautiful, though:
