This is an old proverb, hundreds of years old. Why do people think it's a quote from FDR?

And his mole.

Also with all due respect, but you're over here nominating Billy Corgan as your representative for the smartest musicians, and have been shitting on lists of actual geniuses all over the thread, so I don't know how much credibility you actually have here, lol.

Your general dismissal of musicians as of low intellect is so absurd and naive that most of the joy in this thread isn't identifying brilliant musicians, it's watching you twisted up your back trying to simultaneously shit on all musicians, create strawmen arguments about how now you're only talking about "certain genres" (while ignoring brilliant musicians in those genres), and shit on brilliant musicians with glib, "nope" kinds of comments, as though you're the arbitator of who is, and is not, intelligent. I haven't found a thread more worthy of cross-posting to r/gatekeeping in a long time, tbh.

It's not consistent with what you're saying at all. Your post called music (not any particular genre) the least intelligent of the arts, and that doesn't check out. Cherry-picking certain genres is also of no use to you, because it's just as easy to cherry-pick movie/film genres. Reality TV? Porn? Instructional videos? Straight-to-video-comedies? Kid shows? B movies? Old horror flicks? I could make an endless list of movie genres certainly not know for their "geniuses" just like you could with music.

That said, there are lots of highly intelligent musicians in every genre. I just didn't want to cover ground already covered in this thread. From Madonna and Shakira (both members of Mensa), to Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray, or Neal Peart, Tom Scholz of Boston, Prince, Dexter Holland of Offspring, Rivers Cuomo of Weezer Jeff Baxter of Steely Dan, Leonard Cohen, Weird Al, Ke$ha, Childish Gambino, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Lupe Fiasco, Bjork, Greg Graffin - tons of metal performers (like Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden or Dan Spitz of Anthrax), for the same reason as the classical musicians. As for Michael Stipe, he's not even the smartest person in R.E.M. That would be Peter Buck.

It doesn't sound like you really want a list of smart musicians at all, you're trying to make some point that you're not making well.

And also intelligent ones. Classical musicians tend to be incredibly smart. Ignoring the geniuses of the past, current performers like Yo Yo Ma, Josh Bell, Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Duamel, Itzhak Perlman, Bright Sheng etc, - a small fraction of the literal geniuses in the field - matter of fact you'd have to work real hard to make a list of dumb classical performers. Same with Jazz, really: from older guys like Herbie Hancock to up-and-coming geniuses like Jacob Collier there's a big difference between true musicians who have spent years or decades mastering the complex theory of their craft and some YouTube "finds" dropping computerized beats in Fruity Loops.

I don't actually get the point of your generalization or thread, really. There are lots of geniuses and lots of dumbshits in all the arts, just like every other facet of society. For every Oscar-winning drama with brilliant writing and performances by masters of their craft, there's 500 straight-to-video or streaming garbage loaded with dumbshit actors.

Woody Harrelson, Charlie Sheen, Janice Dickinson, Tommy Wiseau, Anna Nicole Smith, Andy Dick, Dustin Diamond, David Hasselhoff, John Travolta, Alana Thompson, Amanda Bynes, Jaden Smith, Tara Reid, Randy Quaid, Kevin Sorbo, Denise Richards, Pauly Shore, Gary Busey, Rob Schneider, Pamela Anderson, off the top of my head.

Tell me what the "most" intelligent of the arts is so I can cherry-pick a bunch of dumbshits in that arena as well.

Especially when the NARCAN snags, and you're over here trying to shake the vending machine while you're OD'ing

Nevada: "Wait, tree leaves change colors?!"

It's not just the aspens though, it's the juxtaposition of aspens against the mountain backdrop, which they don't have in Michigan.

No one goes crazy for big patches of Colorado aspens on the plains.