There’s a difference between saying “some popular music sucks” ( which is certainly true) and “all popular music sucks”, which I contend is certainly not true.
I think there are probably brief brief windows where that could be argued. Maybe a month or two in 1978. But you’re right. At its worst these days I could probably find a few songs Im neutral on and one thats genuinely good. Usually whenever Adele rears her talented head.
I’m not nearly confident in my musical sophistication to say what’s good music (I mean, I actually like “Afternoon Delight”; I seem to be the only one). But I’ve been able to find music I enjoy in just about any decade, not just the 90’s that would be expected of a Gen Xer. Billie Eilish, Fiona Apple, Avril Lavigne, Shakira, Delta Rae, Colbie Calliat, Evanescence, Adele, Veela, Anna Nalick, Ingrid Michaelson, Sara Barielles, Mazzy Star - all these artists emerged after “my time”, and I find myself listening to them again and again. Also picked up something of a taste for vocal chill and trance music. In fact, at this point I prefer newer music just because I’ve heard “classic rock” so often that I am utterly bored with it - if I never hear a Beatles or Rolling Stones song again, my life will not be lessened.
I strongly suspect there’s good and bad music in every generation, and in every genre. It’s just a matter of being open to finding it.
Absolutely. That’s my point.
You know, Spice_Weasel, I’m glad to see your opinion. A lot of people (including Richard Thompson, one of my favorite musicians) say pretty disparaging things about 80s pop. I disagree. IMHO, a lot of factors came together to make this one of the best decades for pop…and this is from someone who was in his 30s at the time.
Thanks. I’m not really a music expert, I just like what I like. And I love the 80s.
I think my favorite performers to come out of the last two decades are Lady Gaga, Hozier, Billie Eilish and White Stripes. And God help me, I really like Maroon 5. Which surprises me because their chief musical influences appear to be like 70s funk and disco, and I have never cared for that genre.
Is there good stuff out there currently? Yeah, there must be. But I don’t even listen to the radio anymore, just Spotify playlists of Rush and REM and 90s alt rock (and let’s get real, half the time it’s children’s nursery rhymes.) Occasionally I’ll hear someone’s name enough times that I’ll look into what the fuss was about. I did that after I saw Megan Thee Stallion on a talk show. Not really my thing, but I can respect it.
I think one thing worth pointing out is that pop music is often the domain of youth. It tends to focus on superficial topics (not always) like partying and sex, whatever teenagers think is cool and edgy. The older you get, the less that sort of thing has an appeal. At least that’s how I feel.
I agree as well, and I also was in my thirties in the 80s. I went to a Thomas Dolby/O.M.D./Depeche Mode concert at the Rose Bowl in 1988, and I think it was my favorite concert ever (The Golden Age of Wireless is still one of my alltime favorite albums), plus there were natural atmospheric special effects!
I love 80s music. If I had to pick, I’d say it was my favorite era. I was in my 20s.
But I can, and have, found great music from every era, including today’s.
Oh, yeah, definitely, but I have strong, positive memories of 80s music.
Hell, 80s music is some of my favorite stuff too, and I was in my 40s then. I’ve found that the older I get, the longer it takes me to come to appreciate the music of the decade. I didn’t “discover” Nirvana until Cobain was long dead, for instance. Same for Foo Fighters. But I’ve heard today’s emo and hate it. Hate the message of angst and feeling sorry for oneself, hate that kids like my granddaughter are embracing being miserable, etc. For what it’s worth, I’ve found value in pretty much every other type of music that’s come along in my life until now.
Is “today’s emo” even a thing? I always associated emo with the late '90s/early 2000s.
My kids, aged 13 and 16, talk about emo (while not embracing it), so I guess there’s “today’s emo”.
I think this is natural, because teenagers are feeling complex feelings for the first time and it’s hard not to take that utterly seriously. I do still love a lot of 90s music but it’s funny, as an almost forty-year-old, remembering how seriously we took ourselves as teenagers.
My husband and I have a running joke from one of the angstiest bands of the early 00s, Papa Roach. “My weakness is that I care too much.”
(I would also argue this has a sincerely beneficial purpose for kids dealing with complex feelings to be able to process them through the words of music, when they may not have their own words, or may otherwise feel like they can’t express themselves.)
Slight clarification to my previous post…
I consider the “80s” to start about 1978 and end about 1988. Think of that era as being bookended by The Cars, Blondie, The Police, and others on one end, and by Nirvana and alt rock bands on the other. (In fact, the change in the late 80s was so severe that I switched to country music for the 90s.)
A lot was going on in this period. Lots of new rhythms were being introduced in pop (i.e., new and unusual to pop music). Polyphonic synthesizers were becoming widespread after their introduction in the mid-70s. CDs were now a thing, retaining the classic album format and artwork in a much higher quality medium. MTV changed the market tremendously, primarily by providing a route for bands to immediately increase exposure (and sales) without touring. Showmanship and brand became a huge factor. This meant that more unusual groups and music could get a foothold in the business. Plus, groups and record companies saw the potential and massaged older groups into forms that made them suit the new wave movement. Yes, Cheap Trick, The Moody Blues, and many other classic groups were quite successful in the 80s when most of the industry considered them past their sell-by date.
Was there garbage music? Sure. But that’s true of any musical period. A lot of us who were actively listening to radio in the 60s and 70s sometimes forget the losers and fondly remember the winners.
Added Bonus: Virtually no disco.
My grandson, a high school junior, calls these kids “the cry for me bunch”. He says that if you show any sympathy, they will latch onto you and try to drag you into their supposed misery.
“Shake 'em off” I guess? Those kids are probably going through shit your grandson can’t imagine. Rates of depression and anxiety have skyrocked in adolescents in the last twenty years or so, and many have to endure abusive home lives (which they can’t talk about), neglect and other troubles. So if the worst thing they do is listen to angsty music to get through it all, I can’t fault them.
On the flip side, I do believe we have a cultural problem with learned helplessness and narcissistic tendencies that are exacerbated by cultural attitudes toward mental illness. (Namely, that it should always be accommodated at everyone else’s expense.)
Lots of ways to look at it, I guess.
I wanna rephrase this because it’s not what I’m going for. What I’m trying to say is, I think we have a cultural tendency to encourage people to wallow in their problems rather than solve them. I think adolescents often encounter a lot of problems they can’t solve (abuse, neglect, etc) on top of being a teen just generally sucking for most people, so it makes sense to me that we wallow at that age, and angsty music is useful for processing difficult feelings (I still listen to it sometimes for that reason.)
But, you know, one man’s “processing” is another man’s “wallowing.” One of my favorite angry angst bands is Chevelle, a nu-metal band from the early 00s. When I’m feeling upset about something, listening to Chevelle mope and scream usually makes me feel better. But when I played it for my Aunt she said, “This music makes me want to shoot myself.” So we had two very different emotional responses to the same music. It made me feel better. It made her feel worse.
If you’re an adolescent and aren’t listening to some angsty music at least from time to time, then I view you with a bit of suspicion. I’m only slightly exaggerating. To this day, there are times when I wanna sit back and just fill myself with Joy Division, Slayer, Fugazi, The Replacements, Portishead, Gang of Four, Xiu Xiu, etc. and just get lost in the atmosphere and sadness/angst/etc this music expresses so beautifully and uniquely. Hell, whatever the kids were calling “emo” in the 90s and 00s was way too cheerful for me (I’m not sure what “emo” is today – it’s more a late-90s, 00s genre for me). (I also listened to acts like Paula Abdul, Madonna, Phish, and the B-52s at the time – there’s a time a place for every mood.) As for you with Chevelle, it’s cathartic.
And there’s a lot of wonderful music going on today. I was listening to Olivia Rodrigo’s album Sour from 2001 yesterday in the car. Her and Lorde’s Melodrama are exquisite expressions of teen/young 20-something musings about emotional and physical worlds.
Whereas my Aunt’s processing music is stuff like Ed Sheeran, which depresses the hell out of me.
I like some pop. I have always been a Lady Gaga and Madonna fan. But by and large I have not been that interested in pop music as a whole, because it tends to be peppy and party all the time. I’m not really into partying, never have been. I’m a wallflower. Pop music is not music for wallflowers.
I like 80s pop because even though it has an upbeat sound, it’s usually either full of angsty lyrics or blatantly silly.
I’m not a big fan of blatantly silly, though I’ll take it from time to time, but for me Top 40 pop in the 80s seemed to be a lot more expansive, and there was a LOT of musical innovation happening from the late 70s to the 80s, with analog synths giving way to digital synths (and back), the nascence of hip-hop, thrash metal, industrial, electronica, samplers, drum machines, etc. The music itself was quirky and seemed not to revolve as much around 4-chord loops in the songwriting, but had more complex harmonic structures. And, just in general, lots of experimentation.
I feel like it was easier to get exposed to some of these genres on the radio than it is today. They might only peek into the Top 40, but they’d show up there. Now I personally don’t think there’s any less variety in music today in general, but insofar as radio play and charts go, it does feel somewhat more constrained stylistically. I swear one of our alternative radio stations has a playlist of about three songs right now: “Ramon Ayala” by Giovanni and the Hired Guns, “Oxygen” by Beach Bunny (a local artist), and “Love Brand New” by Bob Moses. It’s not really that bad, but it feels like it, as on every morning drive with my kid to school I will hear at least one, if not two of those songs. These playlists-by-committee drive me bonkers.
But then you go fishing on Youtube, and there’s just all sorts of crazy music being made out there, stuff I never would have had access to in the 80s, unless I knew a “tastemaker” or lived at the local record store. It’s a wonderful time to be a music fan, and some of the stuff these kids make today is bonkers crazy.