Ehh. I was in high school and college throughout the '90s and still think pop music quality peaked sometime between 1966 and 1986. It's not necessarily an age thing. I mean, I remember thinking that at the time too.
There are still tons of great musicians and bands making new music today, but the stuff that most people are familiar with is dreck compared to what most people were familiar with fifty years ago.
Among other things is that popular attention, once focused by a handful of local radio stations and three national broadcast networks (in the US), has been atomized by a billion channels. The stuff that gets shoved down the big expensive earball-rich pipes is pablum for broad but weak appeal, processed by self-affirming accountants and algorithms, to a degree it simply was not a generation or two ago. It's simply not the same.
You weren't around for the garbage. You're getting the benefit of listening to only the best of the best music from an entire generation with ears untainted by it being overplayed. If I pushed you twenty years in the future, made you completely forget all
music from 2010 on and played only the very best hearing it for the first time you would be convinced that it was a renaissance.
> I was in high school and college throughout the '90s and still think pop music quality peaked sometime between 1966 and 1986.
Pop music or rock music in particular? Rock is a type of pop music and it's arguable that it is past its prime and was better when it was newer.
> the stuff that most people are familiar with is dreck compared to what most people were familiar with fifty years ago.
Likely some survival bias here. There was tons of awful music that was quickly forgotten about back in the day too. I will grant that the cost of recording and distributing music is much lower today so there very well is a lower barrier to entry which means there's probably more garbage than ever.
The place of music in society. Availability doesn't mean wide impact. It often created smaller sub cultures.
The place of music in people, there are more things capturing your mind now.
The place of the industry, in the past access was granted through a tree of labels and record companies, it also had a weight in the inertia of styles and art. You went through more skilled eyes, it gives you a different legitimity.
There are still tons of great musicians and bands making new music today, but the stuff that most people are familiar with is dreck compared to what most people were familiar with fifty years ago.
Among other things is that popular attention, once focused by a handful of local radio stations and three national broadcast networks (in the US), has been atomized by a billion channels. The stuff that gets shoved down the big expensive earball-rich pipes is pablum for broad but weak appeal, processed by self-affirming accountants and algorithms, to a degree it simply was not a generation or two ago. It's simply not the same.