People so often say music has gotten worse, gotten stupider; same old garbage repeated over and over.
I say to you, my huckleberry friend, that you just aren't looking outside of TikTok.
For centuries, nay, Millenia, we have been limited in our sources for music, from only finding it in churches, to paying for concerts or generally living a lavish, upper-class lifestyle to hire your own musicians.
Then electricity, recording, and the internet came along and people never really evolved alongside their technological creations. In the early days of modern times, we found our music on the radio, MTV, festivals. Music was fed to us and we, in turn, fed them with money so we could encourage them to feed us with more of their kind of music.
Unfortunately, this inevitably leads to the rise of the lowest common denominator, mumble rap, or whatever people listen to nowadays. This is where the money is, therefore, by continuing our feeding cycle, this must be where the good music is. Right?
But then we get this musical hangover as we grow up a little and realize what a terrible mess we've made of things and there's no going back. At which point, we complain about how crap music is these days, despite deep down knowing that we and our predecessors set the stage.
You only have yourselves to blame
You put us in this mess, we enabled it, we encouraged it. Now we have to live in the shit we built.
It doesn't have to be this way
This isn't actually how things work anymore. Culturally, there's no change because as I said, we haven't evolved. But our technology has. Not only do we have streaming and subscription services, but we have personalized catering to our tastes.
If only, as individual humans, we could distinguish our own tastes from one another, explorer what these services are offering us and find music that we like, as individuals, instead of just latching on to the first thing with a kick drum, we might find that music hasn't actually gotten worse, it's gotten significantly better.
But hell, you might get mocked by your friends for liking such uncool music so I guess that's not an option.
We actively choose not to pay attention to it as a society.
We listen to what we're told to listen to based on purely corporate decisions which fit to the right economic models to make the most sales, without thinking to ourselves on any deep level 'is this... good?'.
Suddenly, we find ourselves with lyrics such as
The club isn't the best place to find a lover
So the bar is where I go
Me and my friends at the table doing shots
Drinking fast and then we talk slow
Cool.
But to say music nowadays is dumb and not as good as before is kind of insulting to all the musicians out there that would frankly blow your musical heroes of the past out of the water. These musical powerhouses are mostly obscured by the vast, dark cloud of Charlie Puth's and Ed Sheeran's and Taylor Swift's, so it's now your job to find the right music.
Centuries ago, we were limited to a small handful of musicians, paid for by the church or whatever folk jesters you might see in the street. Barely 150 years ago, the number of composers was seemingly inside of 100 individuals in the Western World that anyone paid any attention to.
Now, we have millions. People can make incredible music in their frickin' bedrooms and finish it off in the cafe over a bagel. The choices are there. More than you could possibly imagine.
You just have to take a bit of responsibility for it now.
With a rise in social media, music has also become much more collaborative and community-driven, which can end in some phenomenal results. Let me show you.
Musical genius Jacob Collier released a cover of Moon River, by himself in his room with little more than his own voice... on 5,200 tracks.
To many, this is not to their taste. Sometimes, less is more, and I can totally get that in this overwhelming example.
However, I still very much enjoy it on a technically overpowering level, with chords and complexities, easter eggs, microtones, and more going on beyond which most humans can comprehend.
This music is not dumber or simpler than before. In fact, this music would most likely confuse the hell out of the likes of Beethoven and Mozart. Bach might have had a good stab at it. Who knows.
But this is not what makes this example such a positive force. The fact that Jacob made this in his own room, for fun is a testament to what you can find if you dig deep enough.
But it gets even crazier. The beginning of that video involves other famous musicians saying 'moon' in various ways including Hans Zimmer, Charlie Puth, Steve Vai, Herbie Hancock, and dozens more.
Furthermore, the music inspires others to create and cover this cover song in turn. One guy, with barely 300 subscribers on YouTube and 5,000 views for the blood, sweat, and tears he sacrificed, created a perfect re-make of this cover... on saxophone.
Hundreds of tracks, all easter eggs and microtones, and every other complexity included; note for note, all in the name of passing time under quarantine.
You just never had that kind of phantasmagorical brilliance and nonsense all in one place, for free, to be accessed by anyone at any time before.
It's all so wonderful!
So turn of the radio in your car, stop feeding the machine and spend an hour a month actively seeking out music you enjoy that you may not yet know you actually enjoy. It can be so enriching in ways you can't even yet imagine. Music is an art, art is there to be evocative and emotional, to appeal to some raw, primitive yet refined part of your soul. Don't be so intransigent.