Why Modern Music Doesn’t Appeal to Me

So I’ve always been a pop music disliker, I can’t stand the stuff on the radio. Part of it is that it gets so overplayed, but that’s a different problem. (That’s more a problem with the radio than anything else, and suggests that I might like it if I wasn’t listening to it all the time. Which I wouldn’t.) The main issue is that most of it just doesn’t appeal to me.

So I decided to think about why that would be. Obviously this music developed out of the stuff that I like, so there has to be some similarities there. And many people do like music that’s popular now, so there has to be something good about it.

And the music I am talking to here is the generic stuff that you hear on the radio or at random events. I’m not talking about everyone who is popular now, but I think that at least one of the reasons why I don’t like this stuff applies to musicians popular now.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a few factors put together. First of all, like I mentioned earlier, we are forced to listen to this music all the time. Without any variety. In the supermarket, at a restaurant, with friends, anywhere. It’s different than it being overplayed because it isn’t so much that you get sick of hearing it, it’s that it follows you everywhere! And if you don’t like it, tough for you. I think just the pervasiveness of it causes a sort of knee jerk reaction away from it, and a refusal to accept it.

Similarly, there are so many songs marketed for my demographic, as in young people. There’s all of these songs about the same thing and you know it was created by a bunch of old white men trying to identify with the youth (sounds like the government…). Once again, that jerk away from it just on principle. Not everyone likes the same things, and there’s more to life than partying. Maybe reflect that in songs.

Then the most significant one, I think, is the fact that performers don’t have the same kind of passion anymore. You used to have people who loved it so much that they would struggle through it and turn down other careers for it. Now people are brought up in it, and don’t have to put that much effort into becoming a hit. And people used to get involved in every aspect of music making, now it’s just the voice that you hear that’s known. You can tell the difference between someone who takes pride and care in their work and someone who doesn’t. That has to be the biggest factor to me.

 

So that’s my view, once again, it’s not about everyone. But it’s me, and that has to count for something.