You should like the Foo Fighters

One of the greatest recurring arguments in my marriage stems from the fact that my beautiful and intelligent wife--whose opinion I respect--does not like the Foo Fighters.
I never would have called the Foo Fighters a polarizing band. Marylin Manson? Sure. Any contemporary country artist? Definitely. But to me, the Foo Fighters always seemed a distillate of pure rock music. Not the lowest common denominator, but a band built around traits that any rock fan can appreciate.
And yet, apparently, it is possible to dislike them.
I have another friend who--as far as I can tell--has never enjoyed a single piece of commercial music unless it was made before he was born.
I respect all tastes in music, but as a highly logical person, I've always balked at the fact that I cannot crack the code of this friend's taste. The formula "if you like ____, they you will like ____" does not work on him. We've been trading compilations since cassette tapes were the preferred medium, and I don't think I've had a single home run in all those years.
It frustrates me, but I know what it's like to be a discerning music fan. Ask my wife. I'm excessively, dancingly opinionated about music. But for me, finding music I enjoy is a logical process. (Which is why I hate the randomness of radio--even Pandora). I'm ALL ABOUT the "if-this-then-that".
And I fucking LOVE the Foo Fighters. Having two people in my life that I can't convince drives me crazy.
Even when I was a teenaged anarchist and professed to dislike anything that made the artist money, in my secret heart I still loved the Foo Fighters.  They have a command of melody that is seldom so at home in hard rock. They exercise restraint in all the right places, and know just when and how to make energetic excess not overly excessive. The music is perfectly proportioned--they rock exactly as hard as you want them to. The lyrics are clever, but never obscure. And they have one of my favorite qualities in an artist: awareness of those that came before them. They don't create in a vacuum.
The Foo Fighters are accessible, and wildly commercial, but never pandering. And they're not sellouts, despite their massive sums of loot. They've been around 20 years, and they've never rested on their laurels or stopped challenging themselves artistically. They've grown with every album, while never letting go of their core sound.
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW DIFFICULT THAT IS?
And rare. Most 20-year-old bands are content to churn out the same album over and over, or they stop making new music all together and quietly retire into their greatest hits phase, playing 3-4 shows a year and finding new and creative ways to rerelease the same dozen songs.
Finally, Dave Grohl just seems like such a good dude. The kind you would have over for dinner, and drink beers with on the back porch while your kids played together. He is clearly a real musician who cares about music; anyone who argues otherwise is a fool. The stuff he's created over the years has a sense of honesty and genuineness that is almost extinct from popular music.
I think the main reason my friend is ill-disposed to the Foo Fighters has something to do with the fact that their music is meticulously arranged and carefully crafted.  What I call craftsmanship, my friend would call contrivance. And in a sense, he isn't wrong.
See, when an artist cultivates a particular energy in their work, it's an attempt to control how the work is percieved. And I can understand why some people find this distasteful, because when a person does this in social situations, it's vain. So to some people, trying to control an audience's perception of a work of art is also vain. But art is made to be percieved. If it is never percieved, I think it's hard to call it art. I acknowledge that there is value in art that feels off-the-cuff, raw or accidental, but as a meticulous, methodical person, I respect the learning and effort it takes to do it the other way--with craftsmanship.
For me, the problem arises when an artist crafts  their art to control the audiences economic support of it. It's one thing to craft art so that people will see it a certain way. Quite another to craft art so people will buy it. Because at its core, art has nothing to do with money. So anyone who brings considerations of money into the process of creating lowers their art.
That doesn't mean I'm against making money. As a matter of fact, I would very much like to make a fantastic sums of money from my art. But the way I see it, the process of merchandising necessarily comes after--and separate from--creation. I'm willing to work as hard at marketing as I am at creating. But I am not interested in creating just to market. Marketing serves creating, not the other way around.
I think perhaps my friend--whose opinion I respect--does not perceive this distinction between craftsmanship and contrivance. And when he hears the overdubs and double-tracked vocals of a Foo Fighters song, he hears contrivance.
I hear deliberation, knowledge and artistic vigor.
My wife, on the other hand, remains a mystery.