Is music objectively getting worse?
Science says…yeah, kind of!
Okay, hear me out: I’m not going to tell you that there was ever some idealized time in the hoary past when people were doing it FOR THE ART MAN. Despite what the hipsters tell you, that’s a load of crap and it always has been.
Music has always been a business, and no matter what time period you’re referring to, there’s always been fluffy disposable crap made for little girls to do the two-finger fillet to in addition to the good music. I’m sure that was the even in ancient Greece: while we remember the Illiad and the Odyssey, but there’s no doubt in my mind that there were poets writing sappy bullshit to make women’s peplos’ wet.
(Yes, I said “girls”. I know, I know, save your jokes about ancient Greek pederasty for the comments section).
Hell, as a musician myself, I’ve never been shy about admitting that I’ve gotten women in bed more than once by doing the exact same thing—a quick Google search to learn whatever garbage is popular today, 5 minutes of learning the incredibly simple music, and voila!
And yes, certainly there are good hardworking artistic people making good, artistic music today (*cough* and not getting paid a damn cent for it). I’m not referring to myself of course, I’m referring to much better musicians.
But to the extent that “musical crappiness” can be studied at all, it can be intimated that, yes, popular mainstream music is indeed getting worse than what it was even 20-30 years ago.
How can this be proven? We can look at studies that exist, such as they are. Take this study which shows a computer program that can predict with almost 100% accuracy which songs will be popular and not popular based on putting in a series of rote data points?
Or what about this study, which shows that pop music actually *is* becoming more musically simple, louder, and more vulgar?
So, as one musician speaking about music as a medium, I think it is pretty clear that…yeah, music *is* lowering itself into homogenized bullshit—or at least the mainstream is. Granted, we’ve gotten over the “washing machines having sex” thing that was so popular a few years back, but the powers that be have found some new crappiness to latch on to.
But hey, everybody knows this, everybody and their mother will loudly announce that THE POPULAR MUSIC SCENE SUCKS. But as a scientist, I have to ask: why? Why does it suck so hard?
Well the obvious reason is that most popular music nowadays is basically written by 2 guys. They have a style, and by god they’re going to stick to it! I don’t begrudge them for writing derivative crap: they’re getting paid.
Then again, I don’t know how they feel about the subject, all I can guess can be found in my short story The Muse.
The second reason music sucks nowadays is…well, I think tastes have changed. Some studies show that, yes, people are getting stupider and thus a stupid person is less likely to appreciate complex and artful music.
So if you think that music sucks, trust me, you’re not the only one. So what can we do?
If you have the talent, certainly write your own music, but most people don’t—hell, I don’t claim to be Beethoven myself. At the very least, patronize good music. I feel that every genre (yes, even dubstep) has SOME merit. So give them your money!
I’ve said it before and I’ll undoubtedly say it again: the only way to win (well, “win” in the sense of being a candle flickering in the darkness) is to patronize the good stuff and vote with your wallet. And yes, I acknowledge that at most we’re hoping to attract the attention of one really rich guy who can bankroll the good stuff we like, but hey, it’s better than nothing.