I’ve got to believe we have access to more music today than at any time in history, that the number of artists we can hear has grown ten-fold, twenty-fold, a hundred-fold in the last twenty years or so. Every day I find gems like this one. And then I get in a cab and hear dreck. I think there are radio stations that only exist to play music for cab drivers. I don’t think the drivers like it, but it’s safe and not going to get complaints.
As far as the good old days, Elvis was good, but Viva Las Vegas by the Dead Kennedys is better.
If you’re judging today’s music based on what you hear on pop radio, you’re missing a lot of great stuff. And nowadays it’s pretty trivial to find it too. People who complain about contemporary music are just being lazy.
No argument there. But, if what you hear on pop radio nowadays really is more lewd, or talentless, or homogeneous, or otherwise distasteful, than what you heard on pop radio in earlier eras, than that means… something—right?
If that’s what they’re playing on the radio, then somebody must be listening to it, either because that’s what they genuinely want to listen to or because they don’t know any better. That’s what they’re being sold as “popular music.”