“Hey Ya!” is a damn cool song. It’s undeniably a timeless classic, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts our kids’ll be listening to it twenty years from now.
Anyhow, with the whole “all the good music has already been made”-type argument, I must admit I was somewhat like that growing up. In my high school in Southwest Side Chicago, 70s classic rock was probably the dominant musical form – this was in the early 90s. I had virtually no exposure to indie music and “alternative” music (before it became another word for “rock”) was truly a mystery to me and many of my peers.
Even in this behind-the-times environment, I was lagging, listening to 50s and 60s rock. However, I think for many people who are raised on this type of music, the transition to modern music takes time and baby steps. I truly thought all modern music was dreck at the time.
But I was simply being wilfully ignorant and close-minded, as I believe a lot of my classmates were.
Then somebody put “Alec Eiffel” by the Pixies on a mix tape. Not their most canonical work, but it suddenly clicked. I was intrigued and began to explore what I’ve missed for the last twenty years, and my ears and aesthetic sensibilities began to really understand the music. Some bands – like the Vaselines, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Sonic Youth or loads of indie rock – took awhile to get. The values emphasized in these styles of music are different than what I was used to. Nowadays, when I listen to, say, the Pumpkin’s Gish or The Best of the Vaselines, I cannot understand what I found so objectionable about them in the first place.
I’m not saying that “Hey Ya!” fits into this category of music, but what I’m saying is that if you’re rigid and stuck in a 70s aesthetic and judge what is good music by that value system, you’re going to be severely disappointed. I find this all the time in discussing hip-hop. People who rail against rap not being music are completely approaching the music from the wrong perspective.
There still is a LOT of great music out there. Some of it is on Top 40 radio, a lot of it isn’t and takes some digging to find. But not all pop is dreck.
But for some people, I think it takes a little easing into if Led Zeppelin (still one of my favorite bands) is their last musical reference point.