Yeah - understood Bit.  
 
I have several 1000 albums and 90%++ are from 70s and 80s.  
 
You have to search to find cool stuff nowadays.  

OK yesterday I was watching one of those Pensado’s Place interview videos .
I nearly fell asleep .The info was good , I just didn't have much of a reference point since most of the music I listen to is not currently chart topping ...
A lot of the stuff I dig is from way back in the day when the tunes charted .
 
So I say to myself OK lets get down and listen to what is currently sweeping the airwaves
OMG,,,,, I started w Taylor Swift and then Katy Perry and now I feel like a dirty old man 
 
I can honestly say I can't say I heard anything worth a $hit that I would listen to again ..
The thing is my eyeballs thought they sounded Great and for that alone it was worth the education ...
 
It certainly reinforced the part of that Kevin Spacey movie Beyond The Sea where his wife Sandra Dee mentioned
People hear what they see ...
IMHO , I think a lot of today's music is riding on that factor ...
Folks think that the music is good because it looks good.
Yes ? No ? what are your thoughts on that...
 
all the best ,
 
Kenny 
 

I learned this the hard way.  I always assumed audiences heard similar things to me.  When I was playing classical guitar, I suddenly realized that 80%, although they say they were entertained, knew nothing at all about what is good music and what is bad music.  They basically need to be told.
 
This makes sense in a way.  It justifies the NEED for music education.  Our ears can develop over time, with education.  It's so sad for our society that the arts are under assault.  In fact most things *higher* or *intellectual* are considered taboo now thanks to you no who!

As an extension to that, science has proven that you can't sing what you can't hear.  So, until you have ear training, your attempts at singing will suffer.  Unfortunately, this doesn't stop large portions of the population from participating in (s)karaoke... 

Growing up in the 70's I was exposed to all kinds of great music which instilled in me a taste for sophisticated harmonies, clever songwriting and interesting rhythms. We had jazz, Steely Dan, Frank Zappa, Little Feat and the Mahavishnu Orchestra playing in our home all the time. When you grow up around such music, it's really hard to concentrate on any of the bland chart topping crap that sells millions today. I've tried, I just can't. Even the artists that people keep telling me are "actually really good," like Adele or Ed Sheeran, at best I find to be "so-so." To me it all just sounds very safe and unchallenging, and my mind wanders almost instantly. 
 
Of course there is the argument that modern artists are more about the image than the music, but quite frankly I see no reason why it can't be both. Look at Kate Bush's early work. Tonight I watched the video for "Wow" from 1978, and it's got it all. She's outrageous, mysterious, sensual, artistic and kooky. But in addition to all that, the music is so well written and performed. There's something in the chords, melody and bass line which evoke the kind of colors and emotions that modern pop fails so miserably at conjuring. Yes it's got the big pop chorus, but just listen to those verses. Listen to the musicianship, the brilliance of the bass line and the arrangement of the strings. This mesmerized me when I was a kid, along with other greats such as Wuthering Heights, Babooshka, The Man With The Child In His Eyes, This Woman's Work, Army Dreamers etc. I think it might have something to do with the fact that back in the day, record companies were more likely to give quirky artists like Kate Bush the benefit of the doubt and let them get on with their own thing based on the idea that they knew their art better than anyone in an executive leather chair. But now, the entire image of these "showcase" artists is carefully planned to an exact formula by a corporation, and it's just mind numbingly sterile. 
 

Because I recently started using Lyft to travel to to work, I've been exposed to a variety of things I wouldn't normally listen to these days like, uh, anything that's not Beethoven.
 
Last Friday, the guy who drove me home was listening to Pandora and I finally heard a bunch of bands such as The Black Keys, The Killers, Arctic Monkeys...
 
It sure was much better than most of the contemporary stuff that I'd heard, but I feel that it's also completely unnecessary, and redundant. Most of it would have been genuinely unremarkable if those bands had existed at the same time as the artists they were inspired by.
 
Pop and rock are rather limited in terms of genres and options - and the bulk of the experimentation that could be done was done in the 60's and the 70's. It's already been stretched to its limits.
 
And then Freddy Mercury died.
 
But I also notice that the bad music is worst than ever. One of the kids who drove me to work was listening to a song, man... There was a (fake) clavinet solo which is possibly one of the worst things I'd ever heard. The timing was off, the way it was put together made it obvious that it had been drawn in a piano roll by someone who'd never actually played keys in their life, the harmonies were horrendous - and the whole thing was out of tune.
 
Musicians that were regarded as talentless in the 70's are fricking virtuosos by some of our contemporary standards.
 

wow, kate bush.  My gf was into her in HS.  I've never liked sarcasm though.  The rule in my family was....no sarcasm, no devaluation, and no condescension.  Sarcasm reveals a troubled soul.  Go towards the light carol anne.  A rising tide lifts all boats.

If I'm honest, the only reason I revere music from the past, like the 80's, is because it reminds me of those carefree years. Something makes it all seem so precious knowing that we can never go back. Or maybe it somehow stimulates the present.. As an older adult, like many people, I haven't been exposed to as much music due to other things going on in life, no longer clubbing or partying, etc.

Sometimes I listen to mashups of recent stuff and realize that there's some cool music out there I just never get exposed to. Robin Skouteris mixes with a fair bit of it, and you can download it for free.
 
Recently, I realized that Miley Cyrus could actually very much be my cup of tea - when I saw here singing Rebel Yell live with Billy Idol on YouTube. (Who knew?)
 
If money were no object, I'd open a dance club where you had to be in your 40's to enter, (well the guys anyway, women can be any age). Just so that us middle-aged folk could get our groove on and not stand out like a sore thumb nowadays.
 
My music collection (11.5 GB downloaded years ago) is also older stuff.

GjB
...I'd open a dance club where you had to be in your 40's to enter...

Since I started playing out live again I've discovered that there actually are places like that.
 
Not that there's a formal age minimum, which would be illegal. The only requirement is an appreciation for classic rock. While the bulk of our audience is over 40, the 20-somethings are right there with us too. They're always surprising me with their requests, which go beyond what they'd likely have heard on classic rock radio.
 
One of the tunes that consistently works with these audiences is a Patsy Cline tune from 1957, "Walkin' After Midnight". It's actually a fun song to jam on, although we do it jazzier and faster than the original.
 
Pop music has been obsessed with image since the advent of television. Along with their talent, the Beatles were also handsome fellows. Huge talents who weren't pretty had to play Country, and even they had hot babes singing backup.
 
Fortunately, Progressive Rock came along to offer them alternative employment - let's face it, Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman were never going to be clothing catalog models.

GjB
 
Recently, I realized that Miley Cyrus could actually very much be my cup of tea - when I saw here singing Rebel Yell live with Billy Idol on YouTube. (Who knew?)
 

 
I saw that vid. Looked like Billy found some way to pass nearly all of his oldness on to Steve Stevens.