@hallenbeck77 said:
Since I grew up in the '80s, I do tend to lean toward that period of music. But then again, I really haven't been keeping us with music within the last few years, so I'm completely out of touch with the more recent stuff.
Same here. I was born in 1980, I found lots of music I loved up until about 2000, then I just got a lot less interested in music. That might mean that music has changed for the worse, or it might just be that I have changed.
For starters, back then I had a lot more time to listen to music and seek out music because I was a kid and not a f***ing adult.
Secondly, it's arguable that the barrier for entry into music has gotten lower. And while lowered barrier of entry doesn't necessitate a reduction in quality, it almost always involves a larger amount of $hit to sift through before finding the good stuff. There was no internet in the 80s (at least not as far as the common man was concerned), it wasn't possible to just make music and put it online for everyone to hear. Now ANYONE can make $hitty ass music and present it to people from New Orleans to Paris. Of course the overall amount of crap is gonna go up, because there's less of an investment involved to get started. But that doesn't mean it has gotten worse. Right now (not necessarily this exact moment, but the modern era), there's more utter garbage on TV than there has ever been. And at the exact same time, modern TV is better than TV has ever been. This is the golden age of TV, but at the exact same time there is FAR more garbage on TV than there has ever been at any point in history. Music might be the same way, I just wouldn't know because I don't really listen to it.
Thirdly, let's not ignore human biology. Regardless of how good or bad the music is, the vast majority of people will never feel the same way about the new music that they heard at 35 as they felt about the new music that they heard at 15. Actual scientists have actually done experiments where they actually measured brain activity in response to music. Now, if you can appreciate it entirely objectively and on an analytic level, that's different. But EMOTIONALLY, the stuff you were programmed to like when you were young is gonna have a very different effect than the stuff you hear after your formative years. It's like sparking a romance or getting hooked on a new drug. This doesn't mean that new music is better or worse than 80's music. What it means is that I'm in no position to judge it fairly. Not only do I not have time for new music, but I'm already biologically predisposed to think that 80s music is better than current music solely because I'm in my 30s and the music I grew up with was stuff that was made in the 80s and 90s. I've already entered the "old fogey" stage, where I'm predisposed to think that new stuff is worse just because it's new.
Log in to comment