You know Justin Timberlake isn’t in NSYNC anymore, right? His latest album, FutureSex/LoveSounds, recieved widespread critical acclaim and while his songs may not be life changing works of genius, they are (generally speaking) damn good pop music. Plenty of people (not just women) of all ages listen to Timberlake. (I don’t, but I feel a strange urge to defend him.)
However, it IS unquestionably true that since the late 1950s, the number of people who try to become famous and successful in the popular music industry has been immense, and drawn from a truly enormous number of people. The number of people in the English-speaking world today is almost three quarters of the number of people alive in the entire world the day Mozart was born, and a much higher percentage of those people have a chance to learn to be musicians. It seems mathematically certain to me that the modern era of popular music is likelier, by orders of magnitude, to lcoate and promote geniuses as they pop up.
And besides, when hasn’t there been some geniuses around? Was music in the 1980s bad? You had Michael Jackson, who put out some genuinely brilliant music. You had Prince; you had U2 at the height of their powers; you had the rap and hip hop pioneers, like Public Enemy, Run-DMC, and the Beastie Boys. Even without resorting to those names I can ring off any number of great albums; “Master of Puppets” by Metallica, “Back in Black” by AC/DC, “She’s So Unusual” by Cyndi Lauper. You had the Smiths, Husker Du, and Springsteen put out some brilliant stuff. Peter Gabriel, the Police, REM… didn’t the Tragically Hip first appear in the 80s? Madonna did some interesting stuff. You could talk about great 80s music all day.
I do know Timberlake has been solo for awhile and perhaps I was a bit too dismissive about his fan base. Still, this link to this article from The Onion seems fitting.
I don’t know, I disagree with that. Anyone with a good sense of the complicated nature of music should at least be able to appreciate the talent it takes to make the music*. Now, I’m not saying that about the singer’s abilities or the intent of the song. Simply that music is hard to make, and to be able to make a cohesive set of noises, takes some talent at least.
That being said, many people don’t like Tool, but the talent in the way they play their music is almost astonishing, IMHO.
*Instrumental wise, that is. None of that computer generated crap. 
I agree and Casey Casom’s [underwhelming] Top 10 (vs. Top 40?) agrees with you. But, the record labels don’t give a crap as long as people buy!buy! buy! In my opinion, good music in the rock world has been on the decline since 1986. Actually, it started after 1980 when pop music saturated the rock scene. There was a ray of hope with bands like the Cars, Police, Springsteen, Styx still trying to keep the spark alive. But, things were already on the decline. 1985-86 held the most hope with amazing returns from bands like Dire Straits, Starship, Van Halen, and Def Leppard but it wouldn’t last. Today, who’s carrying the torch? Rolling Stones (that just keep recycling tunes), an unimpressive Aerosmith, and Bon Jovi trying to get all sentimental lately, I guess.
No, there’s nothing out there to write home about. But, if you can write a song around three notes, you can be #1 on the AC chart for 11 weeks. I mean, why have a tune at all? The more monotone the music, the better!
Good news though…I hear the Jackson 5 are actually talking about touring! And, Michael will fit right in like yesterday, won’t s/he? 
…oh yeah, I guess I should give some credit to U2. But, they’re just ok in my book. Too many of their songs all sound the same. And, much of their better (earlier) stuff has been long-forgotten on the FM dial…can’t speak for satellite radio - a whole new ball of wax where, I WAG, you can find it all.
The Flaming Lips, The Replacements, Jane’s Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were all around back in the 80s.
Even in Mozart’s time, there wasn’t an equal. It’s unfair to say that, unless a Mozart arises for any given period, that period is devoid of talent/geniuses. Hell, I wouldn’t even consider Coltrane/Charlie Parker/Louis Armstrong up there with Mozart. Geniuses for me are anyone who are still making challenging music, music that has never been thought of before.
My best examples for these past few years:
Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear from Animal Collective. A one man band who made up his own musical structures/terms using samples, although heavily influenced by the pop music of the Beach Boys.
Spencer Krug - That’s a Sunset Rubdown track. He’s that band, Wolf Parade, part of Swan Lake, and half of Frog Eyes. All bands have their own distinct sound.
Matthew Friedberger of Fiery Furnaces, he’s the one that does the music. With Bluberry Boat, every track was somehow something that had never been done before. It was just so fucking good, it was like Suicide on opposite day.
Speaking as a boomer (since the OP isn’t), what happened was that we, as a generation, were slowly, subtly cut off from new music.
We who derided the bubblegum music of the 1960s and tuned into the underground FM stations, saw those stations become the album rock of the 1970s and 1980s, which became the classic rock stations of the 1980s to the present. Up until the late 1980s, at least, they were still playing new music, just less of it in the mix compared to the music of the 1960s and 1970s, and if we weren’t paying attention, we remained under the illusion that they were simply filtering out the bubblegum.
Finally, sometime between the late 1980s and early 1990s, they stopped playing any new stuff at all, and the separation was complete for most of us.
It’s become a hobby of mine lately to put together discs of post-1990 music I like for my contemporaries who are stranded in a classic-rock world. I can’t answer the OP’s question of whether there’s less good stuff now than there was back in the 1960s and 1970s, but there’s certainly plenty of good music worth listening to. I’d recommend WRNR-FM’s Web feed as a place to start.
I would argue here that while they may have filtered out less talented musicians, the bottom line was always the bottom line. You might have been a brilliant talent, but if your music didn’t make money, you weren’t a star. Today, the barriers have been broken down between the artists and listeners, so we don’t have a filter with dollar signs on it between us and the music, and I personally prefer that.
Interesting points, RT. I thought it was just a Boomer snobbery that keeps them all stuck firmly in 1978.
I hate throwing around the term “genius” to describe musicians, but some of the few I’d consider on that caliber are Frank Zappa, Tom Waits (after about 1983, with the release of Swordfishtrombones), and possibly even Mike Patton.
Even ‘cohesive set of noises’ is subjective. The outstanding genius of the last half-century, IMO, following ZebraShaSha’s definition, was Iannis Xenakis. He certainly pushed the boundaries of the ‘cohesive’ bit 
And in any case, why the connection between ‘complicated’ music and talent? The more complicated one can make the music, the better it is?
More useful Xenakis link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0URApoxPVY
Since even the term “genius” is so subjective, I’ll use my own standards to judge. For me, there are geniuses in every era, and if I can’t think of a genius for a certain time period, I haven’t really explored enough. For recent bands, I would very easily put Radiohead up as a “genius”, for The Bends, OK Computer, and scattered songs afterwards. The artistry from their best stuff is just as breathtaking to me as anything Beethoven wrote (and I love Ludwig). Roby Lakatos, an amazing violinist who incorporates a gypsy-jazz (or whatever) sound into his style, often feels transcendant, as well. Elliott Smith might get the nod from me as a recent genius composer (definitely not a great instrumentalist or singer by any means), as when he was on, he produced stuff that will also remain forever enthralling and moving for me, both musically and lyrically.
It’s easy to pick out geniuses from the past because, as someone said, time has filtered out a lot of the chaff for you. Right now, there are just so many artists out there making music, and a lot of the ones you might consider geniuses may only be playing in small venues and releasing unnoticed online albums on the other side of the world.
Agreed. If the SDMB is around in 20 years, I’ll revive this thread, so we can discuss who stood the test of time 
But a genius who only plays to a tiny audience is “lost” to the world.
Wouldn’t the world be worse off if Mozart or John Lennon’s music was only known among a small circle of people?
In each era, you need, not only geniuses, but the mechanism/environment by which they can become well known to a lot of people, if their music is to have an impact and make peoples’ lives just a little bit better for having heard it.
touché 
cough Bob Dylan cough
Again, I got sloppy with wording. I’d consider Stephen Merritt a genius as well, while all he does it make simple pop songs. I was trying to demonstrate talented people doing new things that only can really exist with the modern system, because of computers and such. There can certainly be people who are just as talented working with older mentalities. Mea culpa, for the eighth time this thread.
Stands on Jinx’s lawn
Jimi Hendrix couldn’t really sing, either. He wasn’t BAD or anything, like William Shatner, but he wasn’t any sort of talent as a singer.
Lots of the old school, “Classic” acts weren’t fantastic singers. Obviously, some were fantastic - Elvis, the Beach Boys, Janis Joplin. But what was so special about Paul and John’s voices? They could carry tunes but John Lennon wasn’t any better a singer than thousands and thousands of less beloved rock stars. The lesser voice of Simon and Garfunkel is the one who stayed popular as a solo artist. Today’s singers are just as good as they ever were.