bitflipper
I'll challenge the old "musical tastes are carved in stone at a young age" theory. And I'll go as far as to suggest that we truly are currently at a low point in the musical landscape.
 
Most of my favorite music is stuff that came along long after my impressionable years. Yes, I still enjoy classical music and traditional jazz and 70's prog as much as I did when I was young. Even more so now, because I hear more in it that would have gone over my head back then.
 
But I also like folksy stuff that I would have dismissed when I was in my 20's. I am a late-blooming Rush fan. I enjoy (some) modern Country when it doesn't try to be formulaic. I even appreciate some of the 80's hair bands now.  I listen to a nightly radio program that features all blues, discovering that that genre has a whole lot more creativity going on than I once presumed. Ditto for Big Band and Swing.
 
My musical palette literally spans more decades than I have been alive. And most of it discovered (ior re-discoverd) during my adult years.
 
But the last 10 years have contributed very little. It all seems terribly derivative now. When Kanye West is hailed as a genius, it would seem the world's drunk some kind of mind-numbing kool-aid. 

 
Same here - though I can live with the possibility that I've become an old fart. And I too just recently "got" Rush, after decades...
 
Until relatively recently, say 8 or 10 years ago, I was constantly seeking and finding new music that I liked. I despised the idea of nostalgia, I hated tribute bands with a passion and I was adamant on the need to create instead of re-creating. 
 
That being said, I had already moved away from traditional drum-bass-guitar type of music at that point because I felt that that format had practically been exhausted. I certainly felt like I couldn't contribute anything new to it. 
 
But eventually, I've exhausted those other options as well. The talent just seemed to be diluted to a point where I could not pretend to enjoy it. 
 
Yesterday marked the 16th anniversary of one of my favorite albums ever, The Fragile by NIN. It was an occasion for me to look back and try to understand how I'd gotten to where I am musically. 
 
Retrospectively, as exciting as the early mid-90's were with the grunge movement and all, I feel like that's when rock music "died" and that it never really got out of that pit. While I appreciate that the whole movement was a reaction to the opposite excesses of the previous few years, I look back and see that, for exemple, in "commercial" rock music, that's when it became "ridiculous" to actually display any musicianship and to throw a brilliant guitar solo in the middle of a song - it's all about "texture" now. Kurt Cobain killed the idea of a traditional guitar solo. (I love Nirvana by the way).
 
I know for a fact that there are brilliant, highly educated guitar players out there underplaying, because, well, that's what music is all about these days. Of course there are exceptions, but mostly, I feel like a lot of bands are just perpetuating grunge or the music of bands such as the Deftones, Korn and all those guys. 
 
Our relation with any display of virtuosity has become so warped that one of the only way to re-integrate it into the scene is via pastiche, with bands such as Steel Panther. I guess there is a nostalgia for an era when rock was glamorous, before the likes of Pearl Jam made rock so beige and so PC. 
 
Anyway, it seems that, more or less corresponding with the iPhone age, we've finally fully embraced the idea of lowering the bar as much as possible, so much that we are now praising stupidity and not just ignoring but downright dismissing "intellectuals". I don't think such a culture is equipped to assimilate much more than a beat and some guy with the vocabulary of an 8 year old rapping over that beat.

I'm wondering how aliens would react if they'd sample our history and see how we went from Bach and Goethe to Jersey Shores and the current crop of talentless pop stars.

I agree with Sharke. I think there is plenty of great stuff (actually I think there has never been more good stuff). Look at the charts from every year of the 60's. It's no better than the stuff being made today. I think even the beatles haven't aged well.

sharke
I'm going to have to disagree with Bit here. It's not so much that music has gotten worse, it's that there is more music, period. The great music is still there, it's just hidden in a sea of crap. But that's always been the way - we remember the classics of yesteryear, but we conveniently forget the plastic pap that was around then too. Come on, there was some absolutely freaking awful music in the 70's and 80's. Leif Garrett anyone? Spagna? Jason Donovan? Yuck!

I don't think it really matters that the good stuff doesn't make the charts any more. Why, as a music fan, should I care if the music I listen to isn't splashed all over the media? And why should I care what the masses are listening to? They've always elevated the pap into the charts, that will never change.

Well, I think one way to see it is that we are going through a phase - a very long phase - where rock music and its cousins are painfully absent from the current mainstream of popular music.
 
There seemed to always be a balance of one movement reacting to the previous one. You had rock and prog rock and long jams, and then a few years into that people got bored and it was disco and punk and bands like Van Halen...
 
Likewise, whereas kids movies and Disney cartoons and whatnot used to be a way to expose kids to classical music and classical forms, kids are being fed the same auto-tuned junk that you hear everywhere...
 
I don't think we've forgotten bad music. I mean, I remember how some of us hated disco with a passion - and looking back, compared to what passes as music today, disco was brilliant. Likewise, I remember in the late 80s, early 90s - bands like Technotronics and Kris Cross and New Kids on the Block... But it wasn't long before Metallica and then Nirvana and Soundgarden dominated the air.
 
But ever since hip hop and the crap they call RnB became the dominating genres, no movement has come along to reverse the trend. Only artists that have been around for 20, 30, 40 years.
 
 

I totally agree with Mr rain!!
I suppose out of modern rock ,I would give OZRIC TENTACLES a thumbs up
Curmudgeon effect -"Is batsbrew calling me A Grumpy Old man"!!!
Ok, then I'm going outside and getting some sunshine in!!!

I've really been giving this topic a lot of thought. Everyone has made good observations but there's one thing that hasn't been really explored.
 
I feel that modern, commercial music, is really target specific. If you're over 30 and have hair on your back, then you are not the target for today's fashion oriented, beauty concious music business. It's all about beauty, power and money. Perhaps it's always been about that, but today they toss it in your face.
 
Before an album gets done they are thinking of how to market the artist. If you can't be marketed then it doesn't matter how good your music is. The veneer is more important than the substance because music isn't the final destination. They also want to sell clothing lines, cologne and perfume to the fans. Your number of Twitter followers is the current yardstick for success.
 
All of this is particularly true in America where they excel at corporate entertainment. Music and sports are both delivered in formats that are bigger, brighter and louder than ever before. 

Hey you kidz, get awf mai lawn.

"Guitar?  Nah, I don't need one.  I've got an app on my phone!"
 
*Sigh...* 

bapu
You guys all realize that 99.99% of listeners are NOT musicians and have no musical training whatsoever?
 
So why should a music producer or A&R head care or be held accountable if what they push has no true artistic value?
 
If you only turn on your AM Top 40 radio station in your car, you can only blame yourself for the state of today's music.
 
/bapuRantOver

 

Craig...you may listen to "too much" music...or is that possible??
😀

You left out Doghouse Riley.

























And not the blues band...

There's local talent?


Google time!

Moshkito

bitflipper
... When Kanye West is hailed as a genius, it would seem the world's drunk some kind of mind-numbing kool-aid. 
 
 
Kanye is a genius.  A genius at selling himself.
Selling yourself in the music business might be tougher than actually being a good musician.