Hmmm. i actually watched both Scrap's vid in the OP and your piss-take vid, Mo. Have to to say that was a fair cop. But also have to say that he picked an easy target. I've heard much better arguments, to similar effect . And I also find the point about familiarity (which Jack picked up on) interesting. And its hardly controversial to suggest that commercialism has a detrimental effect on music. To what extent the evil old Music Industry dictates what we hear nowadays is an intersting question, on which i wouldn't trust that vlogger's opinion, but neither would i dismiss it out of hand.
Like you, I vowed not to fall into that Old Fogey mindset, but my position there is complicated by the fact that i never, ever liked more than a tiny fraction of chart-topping music, not even as a teenager, and couldn't stand Radio 1 (which was apt to de;iver a torrent of chart hits, still does, i believe) And I seem to gravitate towards similarly minded people. So, now it turns out that I don't like rap and synth pop , I suspect that I'd have hated that stuff just as much when I was in teens (if I'd been exposed to it then) Indeed my son shpws very similar tastes to myself, dislikes nearly all the chart-topping stuff , same as me, and is apt to believe that music was much better in the sixties and early seventies. Though he certainly does like quite a lot of newer music (and often introduces me to new stuff that that I like) , it tends to outside the mainstream , eg post rock and various indie Canadian artists ( I swear he likes all things Canadian though, even the crappy stuff )
That said, I think the perception that pop music has slid downhill is greatly exaggered by the fact that the crappiest bands are swiftly forgotten, so we tend to look back through rose tinted spectacles. I mean, for example, I don't think I've heard any of the Bay City Rollers hits played these past 3-4 decades not even at those awful Wedding discos; bands like Slade and Wizzard only get resurrected at Christmas; and who the heck remembers the Sweet or David Cassidy anymore ? (sorry if you'd mercifully managed to forget them, before I said that. )A lot of the really gppd artists that other people remember from the seventies (and earlier) eg Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, Dire Straits didn't reallly get much of a look -in next to that other crap , (because they didn't appeal to teeny-boppers, i suppose) they just out-survived the crap and developed an ever-growing following.
I was disappointed to find out that it was a lot harder to find bands thart i actually liked in the eighties and nineties and started to suspect myself old fogeyism. But then it eventually struck me that most of my friends had reached that stage in life when you're way too busy with family stuff to hang out in your mates 'bedrooms,playing the latest gem you picked up from the Virgin Superstore . So i just wan't exposed to such a wide range on non-mainstream stuff as i used to be. Still I developed a taste for The Fall, Nirvana, Laurie Anderson, Joy Divison , Radiohead, Nick Cave and a few others during these decades...and a growing distaste for Techno ( which i found interesting at first, but it rapidly started to all sound the same to me) sp its not like my tastes got totally stuck in the seventies. Gotta say the noughties were the pits for me musically, though, but then that might be mainly for social reasons again.
Anyways, I might be getting to be a genuine old fogey at last , in that i'm starting to prefer tp listen music that's easier on the nervees than some the old post-punk / metal stuff that i used to listen to quite a lot, and I recall one of my (somewhat older) friends observing "That's young person's music" of one such band (i forget which) ; which observation I thought to be pretty absurd at the time . But he might have had a point. Maybe the anger, angst and sheer screaming energy do wear a bit thin with age
. But, still, I don't like crass pop with stupid lyrics any more than I ever did.
