patrick.net

Miller was long described as a cult favorite with little commercial success, resulting in reviews with such superlatives as "critically acclaimed and quite underrated,"[26] "the most criminally unknown songwriter/performer/all-around Rock Genius in America today,"[51] "one of America's most underappreciated songwriters",[20] "the most underrated pop genius in music history,"[52] and "America's most consistently underrated singer-songwriter ... producing album after album of hook-laden and profoundly literate rock-and-roll."[53]

Rolling Stone, in a 1993 review, suggested that "mostly it's because his songs, though insinuatingly tuneful, can be maddeningly oblique, fleshing out each verse with abstruse references to long-forgotten pop songs and TV shows; at times, the results sound like Thomas Pynchon writing for Big Star."[16]

Rock critic Robert Christgau wrote that "Scott Miller was a prototypical '80s rock artist—serious, playful, skillful, obscure, secondhand." Christgau criticized Miller's musical obsessions and literary obscurities as "rendering the ostensibly public essentially private," adding, "Adepts recommend 1987's Lolita Nation, which is said to make sense, though I don't know exactly what sense." He also offered mild praise for Game Theory's "Mitch Easter-produced albums," which he likened to "dreams of the early dB's ... which isn't to say Miller and cohorts didn't also develop a groove as they got older," referring to Two Steps from the Middle Ages as an "excessive" and "funkier" album that "I kinda like".[54]

In a 1993 interview with Miller, Option wrote that success was a touchy subject for him, quoting Miller's joking example of a typical review: "Nothing good ever happens to Scott Miller, but somehow he's managed to drag his broken body into a studio one more time and make another album."[55] Miller continued that he was "past the point of fighting" discussions of how "arty or brainy" he was, but had hoped for greater emphasis "on what the songs are about—be it the boy-girl situation, or being depressed about some key failure I've had, or getting a little bit of understanding about life."[55] In another 1993 interview, Miller mused:

I don't think I'm in danger of making albums that don't age well, because I haven't ever fit into the times spectacularly well. I've always been aware of myself drawing on a musical vocabulary so broad that a lot of people don't get what I consider to be my real songwriting coups. I think they go right past a lot of people. The bad part of that is I probably won't become a big star. But the good part is that I don't think people will find the albums less useful over time. They'll sound as good in 2004 as they will in 1994.[56]
In 2012, more than a year before Miller's death, The Guardian wrote, "Scott Miller was always a little too out of time for his own good, which means his towering talent is near forgotten", attributing Miller's cult status to the contradictions of "pretty but muscular pop, characterised by a mix of acoustic and electric guitars, by literate but often non-specific lyrics, by keyboard sounds and production techniques that were sometimes unfortunately era-specific, by Miller's sometimes quavering and uncertain voice. Too spiky for the chart kids; too smooth for the alternative kids—the curse of Scott Miller was being only himself, rather than finding a movement or a trend he could be part of."[57]

Engineering career
Miller attended U.C. Davis, intending to study art. After switching majors, he graduated with a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering,[8] and obtained a full-time job in LISP compiler development at Lucid Inc.,[51] with several future Loud Family bandmates.[86] Of this period, Miller stated in an interview that his employers "let me go whenever I have to do band stuff, which is very big of them."[51] Miller described his job situation as "kind of a carrot in front of me and a boot behind me," acknowledging that his engineering work was highly paid, and noting his need to make a living.[51]

After Lucid's dissolution in 1994, Miller was a manager and software developer at Objectivity, where he became Director of Development and Technical Publications.[87] From 2011 until his death, Miller was a lead engineer at MarkLogic.[21]

U.S. Patent 7,761,475 was issued to Miller on July 20, 2010, as the inventor of a technique for object-oriented database management.[88]

Personal life
Miller lived in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife Kristine and their two daughters. On April 15, 2013, Miller committed suicide at the age of 53.[89] In response to Miller's unexpected death, friends and bandmates established a memorial fund for the education of Miller's children.[21] - Wikkid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elYXURmfmDA&t=642s