You're both right and wrong.
I drive my friends nuts blathering on about a "well-crafted song". I LOVE a song with some musical depth. Trite and predictable songs drive me insane.
However....
That does NOT mean that current hits aren't relevant. It does NOT mean they aren't well written. They are written in the current style. They are adored by millions. And all of those millions can't be dumber than you. You are a cocky somebody if you think everyone who likes current pop hits is somehow "less than" you.
A hit is a hit. Some of the smash hits of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s were trite and repetitive. But they're still hits! So they resonated with millions! (Let's talk about Brown Eyed Girl, Old Time Rock n Roll, and countless others.) If you're able to touch millions with your art (be it a painting of apples, a three-chord song, a ridiculous comedy bit, etc.) you're still relevant. If you resonate with the masses, you have a gift. Period.
Some of the Rolling Stones' songs are unbelievably simple and trite. Some of the Beatles' hits are just stupid simple little ditties. Some of the most famous paintings on Earth are Jackson Pollock flinging paint randomly at a canvas. Eddie Murphy launched his career talking about the Honeymooners having.... sex with each other.
If it resonates with the masses, it's relevant. Period. End of story. It doesn't have to be complex or deep or even original.
That said, there are still some musically and lyrically deep songs out there today. My only problem is that they aren't exactly bar appropriate for the most part.
I agree with some of this and disagree with some.
A song can be as well-crafted as a fine mahogany desk but, if it doesn't have that x factor, if it doesn't, as you say, speak to a population of people, it's a well-crafted song that will just remain in obscurity forever. How many incredible songs and albums exist in the heaps and heaps of musical waste produced every day.
I am NOT saying the modern music listener or consumer is stupid. I have to correct you there. Culture is just an ever-evolving, mutating, growing thing. Pop music, ever since the Rhythm and Blues bands caused the grand migration of the youth market from the swing era, it's been culture by young people, for young people.
Rock and Roll is just young people playing electric guitars in rhythm and blues bands and singing obliquely about sex. This was a perfect storm of technology(electric guitar, mass media), the clashing of youth culture with the anti-sex, conservative older generation, and post war economic growth where teenagers could spend pocket money on 45s. This is all happening in a constitutionally free, but socially conservative society. This created a powder keg of fiendish fervor for pop music. A young attractive person singing obliquely about sex to fast rhythm and blues with these wild technological things called electric guitars. Can you imagine how EXCITING that must have been? My GOD. As it happens, most of that early boogie woogie rock and roll is pretty lousy from a writing standpoint, but as you say, a hit was a hit.
Culture moved on, experimented more. The Beach Boys cross-germinated with extremely popular music, vocal jazz from yester-year, and bach, making a super broad audience more open to sophisticated music in pop.
I could go on and on. Kurt Cobain single-handedly destroyed the hair metal scene. They were all caught with their leopard skinned pants down overnight. But just like the beatles, in my opinion, Nirvana spearheaded the movement because the songs were THAT strong. There were other contemporaneous grunge bands that could have been the golden idol of that movement, but I believe Kurt was because Kurt had the SONGS. Just like any british beat group could have caused a Mania. The Beatles did because they had Yesterday.
getting kind of in the weeds here. My point is, the musical landscape today isn't about the song. It's kind a fashion thing, a lifestyle brand, a celebrity worship thing, an "american idol" thing like, fame ITSELF is being sold rather than the actual art.
I know I sound like a grump. I'm really not. I'm totally fine with modern music and I understand its appeal. But I will not relent in saying the writing is generally very bad, and the reason for that is, 18-25 year old attractive kids tend not to be master songwriters. When a kid that young has that much songwriting ability it's an extremely magical thing. It's only happened a few times in history. The rest of the time, back in the 1940s all the way through the late 1990s, young attractive people did the singing, and good songwriters did the writing.
That stopped because culture decided it's VERY important that whomever is singing the song wrote it themselves. Some kind of fetish with "authenticity" or something. To me it's like expecting the woman who voiced the singing voice of Jasmine to have written A Whole New World.
the world is different and I accept it. I'm READY to like modern music whenever I hear it. I just LOVE great songs and want to hear more of them. It's a dying art. But other arts are emerging.
