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“It’s awful. It’s why I stick to rock music mainly. 60s, 70s and 80s because they had some excellent rock music.”
“Most commercial music from the last 10 to 15 years or so have been dreadful.”
“It’s absolute crock of shite…
And yet all the youth of today say wish we was born in the 90s”
“Today’s music is 99-9% Shit”
A few examples of many, many comments from a widely shared Facebook post. It doesn’t greatly bother me because this is what happens to every generation as they grow old. In fact, it’s the law. Whatever young people like, older people don’t. One poster happily admits it:
“Not as good as it used to be, I’ve turned into my parents”
Well, quite. Except that my mum and dad, despite both having been born in the 1920s, had a very liberal attitude towards music. And it was through them I got interested in music in the first case, listening to “long haired louts” (my grandad upon hearing the Beatles and Stones) making “a horrible noise” (grandad again). But it wasn’t a horrible noise. Lennon and McCartney were modern day classical composers, the Rolling Stones, still making new music and touring, defied all predictions that rock and roll was just a silly phase we were going through.
The critics of “commercial music” know far more about it than I do. I am hopelessly out of touch with the charts and have been for decades, frankly. I blogged just the other day just how out of touch I am, but here’s the thing. Just because I am out of touch with popular music in general and chart music in particular doesn’t mean it’s “99-9% shit”, as opposed to 9-99% shit.
I’m going to repeat what I think about music and that today is the best time for music. Why? Because we have access to all the music that’s ever been made and, actually, to new music that, in my view, is at least the equal of anything that’s come before. At least I think it is. In the last half hour alone I have listened to an “absolute crock of shite” on BBC 6 Music, including Fontaines DC, Beth Gibbons, Nadine Shah, Blood Orange, CMAT and Ezra Collective and loved it all. How it’s not as good as the music of the 1970s – you know, Benny Hill, Lieutenant Pigeon, Clive Dunn and other all time classics – I honestly can’t tell you.
In the end, it’s just music and if you get your kicks from Lionel Ritchie cranking out the hits at a race course or, like me, dad dancing to Lack of Afro at the Fleece, it’s all good, isn’t it? And if you think you are turning into your parents, or even grandparents, you can either go with the flow and hate everything in the modern world or just maybe try something new. I recommend the latter, but it’s your shout.