I should stop reading the comments in youtube videos. After all, they never change. I remember eight years ago people expounding upon how current music sucks and that real music was from the 1990's. I remember when I was a kid people saying the same thing, that real music was from the 1980's. Now, I read the comments and someone complains about the quality of current music and waxes nostalgic for the music of a decade ago.
Music has always sucked. Well, more accurately, most music that comes out in any genera is mediocre. That's the definition of mediocre. Occasionally you will have a great song, but most of it is instantly forgettable. That's exactly what happens. When people make those play lists for decades gone by they forget the bad stuff, vaguely recall the terrible stuff, play the mediocre stuff only occasionally, and focus heavily on the best.
But beyond that, the common themes of music change over time. They also tend to be acquired tastes. Rap commonly appears in pop songs now. This wasn't the case a few decades ago, and now some of the better songs of the past few years feature a pop artist and a rap artist that provide a counterpoint. This arrangement has be gradually eased into existence over more than a decade. These trends, well they generally mystify me until much later. It's easier to pick out patterns when you have more stuff to work with.
These two things have always happened and will always happen. Twenty years after the fact there will be a station that plays older music part the time and people will compare it to what the current popular music is. That comparison will be unfair, the older stuff will simply sound far better because the play list has been cherry picked and people who grew up with will simply have developed a fondness for the flavor of the older music more so than the newer. And you know what? Their kids will have the same experience twenty years later. It's the way the industry works.
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