Does anyone actually LIKE John Hiatt?

[RandomKoolzip]

I mean, like, really DIG the guy's music enough to buy his CDs and attend his concerts? I've never met anyone in real life who liked John Hiatt's music, but he's always always always all over adult contemporary radio, barking like a elephant seal with both The Blues and a nasty case of emphysema.

I get the feeling he's one of those kindsa guy/gals who critics and boring old white people over 50 like, but no one else does. A few musicians like Hiatt enough to cover his tunes, but maybe THERE'S the problem: he appeals to other songwriters. It's like in Nashville: a whole town of songwriters, playing in public in front of audiences of fellow songwriters, and nobody outside Nashville gives a shit.

I can't imagine an audience of people identifying with John Hiatt they way they do with U2, or Elvis Costello, or even the bigger hiphop artists. He seems like a part of that over-the-hill clique of "mature" songster/singers, like Marti Jones, Don Dixon, Sam Phillips, etc., who no one outside of the programming offices of contemparary radio stations gives a tiner's dam in Spain about. Hiatt is dead fucking boring, his music is about as exciting as getting slapped with a loaf of seven grain bread, and yet there's this illusion that people like his music. Why?

John Hiatt fans, step forward and explain yourselves.