It's easy to say that it's all relative and we only remember the best stuff, but take an honest look at the quality of what's being put out there. For example, look at the
Billboard Hot 100 chart from 1980 versus
the same chart from 2010.
Sure, there are plenty of throwaways and one-hit wonders on the 1980 chart, but I can't help but see a stark contrast between the quality (somewhat subjective) and staying-power (more objective) between the artists and bands listed. Even comparing the top 20 names, it don't think anyone over 25 years old would think it's even a contest...
1980:
Blondie
Pink Floyd
Michael Jackson
Queen
Paul McCartney
Billy Joel
Elton John
The Spinners
All still in heavy rotation and loved by people across the globe. Whereas the top 20 for 2010 has only a few artists (very few bands) that will be remembered, much less played, in 30+ years. Maybe Usher, Eminem, and Lady Gaga, and even they will probably not be held in such high regard as the ones I listed for 1980.
I think that's about as apples-to-apples as it can be. Granted, we won't know how the modern artists will age, but my money would undoubtedly be on the older ones.
Why stop at 1980? Let's go for 1950!
1950 - Billboard Top 100
Let's see here... Bing Crosby, thanks to "White Christmas" a few people under 30 probably remember who he is. Nat King Cole, classic... and... hmmm. Don't think I could really tell you who Anton Karas was, or Eileen Barton, though I think I recall my aunt humming that "bake a cake" song...
What we're calling "staying power" is, to a great degree, the sentimentality of aging people. I'm 47, was a teenager in the 1980s. Those of the 1950s top artists I recognize are largely because my parents listened to them, or because there was a short-lived retro-revival interest in them more recently. My kids don't know who they are except for one or two. My kids DO know who Blondie and Queen are - but largely because their parents play them. Pink Floyd seems to be "in" among younger stoners. I have little expectation that my
grandkids will know or care about them.
At any rate, this ignores the bigger structural issue of the apples-to-apples argument; when you talk about pre- and post-digital-revolution "pop music," you are talking about totally different things. When I was a teenager, EVERYONE, just about, knew what Casey Kasem played on the top 40 countdown Saturday mornings, even if you didn't actually listen to the broadcast all the way through or weren't a fan of everything on it. The market was much more centralized and controlled by gatekeepers. If something WASN'T on the top 40, then it was genuinely fringe - nobody had heard of it.
Today, however, my kids DON'T know, or care, what's in the top 40. They consume music differently - mostly for free - and have a much more varied set of channels through which to access it. You can look at today's top 40 and say "this sucks," but it doesn't matter because it is NOT the dominant, consensus monolith of pop culture that it used to be. The niches are mainstream. People know who Gogol Bordello is even though they don't make the pop charts. Hipsters will lament that a band like that is "mainstream" since they're featured on NPR.
So in one sense, yes, I agree the current top 40 is mostly crap. No contest there. The question, though, is whether the comparison is relevant. Are we actually looking at a decline in popular music, or - as I argued - a fragmentation (re-fragmentation, really) of the music world into niche markets where the term "popular music" itself is misleading?
My pet theory is that the surge in purchasing power of younger teens and tweens is a contributing factor to the degrading quality of popular music. In the 90s, boy bands became huge because parents would give their kids money to buy CDs and pay $100+ for concerts. In the mid 2000s when those age groups got cell phones, so popular music was about creating a hook that would make a good ringtone (Crank Dat Soulja Boy, anyone?), and it kept going down that path where every kid has a smartphone, and hence access to a music store in his/her pocket. As mentioned already in the thread, the industry chases dollars and that's coming from the lowest common denominator.
It's not just the artists themselves. Look at all of the top 20 songs in 2010. Think about who this song is targeted towards. Almost every single one of them is aimed squarely at the young (under 25) female demographic. The top 20 songs and artists from 1980 were much more diverse in their audience and more universal appeal, imo.
I never heard of anyone over 25 who was buying Blondie or Duran Duran albums in the 1980s. Nor who was buying the Beatles in the 60s or Elvis in the 50s. It was ALWAYS youth music, the very notion of "pop music" is rooted in the rise of youth culture. There were records before that, of course, and some were more popular than others. Caruso's opera recordings were a big deal in the early days of record players. But popular music as we conceive of it was driven by the rise of a teen subculture - and that teen subculture itself was made possible by the phenomenon of young people with disposable incomes. That, itself, was a phenomenon of the 1950s. Before WWII, if a teenager had a job, their income was part of the family's assets that helped pay the rent. It was the extraordinary boom of postwar prosperity that made it possible for teenagers to spend their paper-route money on themselves - and so on movies and their first car and rock and roll records.
Of course, if you look at what older people were saying in the 1950s, they were saying exactly what you are - that all these free-spending teens were blowing money on simplistic, degraded music. But if you're trying to make the same case as the OP's video, that Elvis and the Beatles were geniuses masterminding the heyday of popular culture that has since degraded, that heyday was itself fueled by young people's disposable incomes.
Definitely agree that there's plenty of good music out there. Love those NPR Tiny Desk Concerts, and there are a few instances of cream rising through the charts, but overall, I think it's more complicated than to just say that it's all relative and we only remember the good stuff. That said, there are some great, older acts still touring, or going back on tour because people are realizing what great music they make. One thing that would help is for older people to spend money on good music again, so the industry will chase after those dollars more than the aforementioned demographic, and I say that as an old millennial.
As I said, I'm 47. I talked my wife into going down to Boston with me to see a show by someone I hope is a rising future star, Jessica Hernandez and the Deltas. She's young, a couple of albums out, and going to a college town like Cambridge I expected the club to be filled with college students and hipsters, and we would be the awkward older people standing in the corner. Nope. Almost EVERYONE there was our age or older. A few we talked to had heard her featured on NPR. As I said, my kids' generation generally get their music through various channels, often for free - pandora and whatnot. Ironically, I think the thing is that as the music market breaks into niches, it's often the older people who DO spend money on music. But we're less likely to get swept up in the Flavor of the Month, so older people's spending is not going to generate new superstars flying private jets. What it does do, though, is sustain those niches where, hopefully, smart musicians can make a reasonable living and get their sound out.
