Your wife is crazy. Talent is talent. Great songwriting is great songwriting.
Lucinda and Waits have been at it for like five decades. Critics can hype all they want but if there is no there there acts don’t survive five decades.
I'm with you, but I'm married to her (thankfully for you.)
She says Lucinda "has a whiny voice" and well with Tom Waits it's obvious...voice is an acquired taste. He's unique.
Obviously, for me, it's not about how pretty the voice is (though I do like some voices especially...Raul Malo, Roy Orbison, Billie Holiday, the list goes on), it's about the songs and how the voice is an effective tool to get the song across.
For her, Maria Carey deserves to be a billionaire and those other artists (Lucinda, Tom, Pavement) are for music snobs who think they are cooler than everyone else.