Music- In With the Old, Out With the New
In the nature of society, progression is generally deemed positive. More advanced technologies, medicines and political systems are all signs of improvement. Yet, when newness is equated with progression, this universal fact becomes fiction. This era of new music, though contrary to its name, is regressive. The lyrics, tone, and expression of 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s era music were at an entirely different quality than the music of today. Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Drake, Mitski, Morgan Wallen and Tyler the Creator, while not necessarily bad, can’t compare to the talents of Tupac, Beastie Boys, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Guns N Roses, Led Zeppelin, NWA, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Johnny Cash and Metallica. To be brutally honest, the music prior to the 2000s wasn’t just better, it was in a different universal plane.
Some would argue that this is a subjective issue. Different people might vibe better to different forms of music. While this would initially be the rational argument, the evidence shows otherwise. The prominent music-analytics firm Management Control Record Data found that 70 percent of today's US music market is made up of old-era music. Obviously the majority has ruled, it’s just better quality. The reasons for this are numerous. Nostalgia obviously plays a part. Music that is more familiar, and subsequently associated with memories, has been shown to be more enjoyable. However this can’t account for the entire reason, as even younger generations prefer old music they never grew up with.
In reality, the music process has changed. Record labels used to give artists limited resources in order to test the initial success of their albums, and then proceed further. Now, the thought is that to make a song viral, artists should be over-producing their label as soon as they are signed on. Due to this, the style of older-era music was more methodical, testing what worked and what didn’t. Newer generation music often just lacks this depth. Another reason might be the prevalence of autotune. Autotune can be heard in almost every song on the market today. This means that the voices of artists today often just sound less authentic. From a scientific perspective, timbral variety has also gone down over the years. The study, “Measuring the Evolution of Contemporary Western Popular Music”, analyzed half a million songs overtime. The study conclusively found that music has become more homogeneous over the generations. This simply means that newer music is less original and creative.
Many readers of this article will find this take outright offensive and inflammatory. My response? Cognitive dissonance sucks, especially when you’re wrong.