This thread prompts me to post this link which sums everything up for me, especially the first few paragraphs:
"While 2008 is unlikely to go down in history as a vintage year for classic songs, it well and truly earned its entry in the Stinkers Almanac, with a tide of pop effluent that had our ears stockpiling wax and fashioning it into a musical dam.
Perhaps the biggest insult to taste and decency came in the shape of what's been described as 'flat-pack indie'.
These were bands who appeared to have been assembled on a production line to look and sound as much like "wot da kids are into" as possible, but on closer inspection were insubstantial, cynically marketed facsimiles of groups from the recent past ? minus the creative spark that terrifies record companies because it so often results in said groups making music that DOESN'T GET PLAYED ON THE RADIO.
Their MDF counterparts, however, could be relied upon to deliver perky, inoffensive, digital-station-friendly fluff that, as was discovered, people would buy by the bucketload, seemingly unaware that every record sold by the likes of The Courteeners, Hoosiers, The Wombats and Scouting For Girls is a vote for Satan and all his farting elves."
http://entertainment.uk.msn.com/musi...entid=12018683
It relates more to the UK music scene, but you could reasonably apply the same criticism to the R&B scene in the US.