This is just a personal opinion: a lot of people have been saying for a few years now that contemporary music sucks, that it is not as good as music was in the 80s or 90s…. And I kind of agree with that. I listen to a lot of music, I make music, but I am also a social scientist. This music below is rage against the abuses of society, about rage against the injustices of life; that’s why rock, grunge or “alternative” music hit us, music got to our hearts with complaints about the problems of society, culture, and the things we went through, as other people also went though around the world. A lot of other music genres covered the same ground. Think about pop musicians such as Michael Jackson saying we can change the world (“Change the World”, “Man in the Mirror”), or Sound Garden or Bon Jovi singing about poverty, class injustice (“Living on a Prayer”). There’s also a lot about sex, feminism, or love (think Madonna, Blondie, The Cars, The Police), but also about having fun (sometimes in a sarcastic way) despite poverty, racism, or class (musicians like Pulp, Cindy Lauper or The Smiths touched on this).

The main problem with most of contemporary pop is that most of it is about self suffering. There’s nothing wrong with that but nowadays we live in the world where there’s a lot of social suffering around us, but music is mostly about ME: about making more money, about feeling abused, about not being loved… instead of music being a synthesizer of the things happening around us every day (wars, poverty, racism, violence, politics, etc.) and the human experience in general. Of course, there are a lot of contemporary bands that are doing this very well (a lot of “alternative” music, rock, metal, etc.) but not the music that a lot of younger people listen to (pop… and everything influenced by Taylor Swift).

Music is super important for society and for ourselves, but when it doesn’t translate something that we need to understand better…. well, then it sucks. Personally, I think this is partly the reason why contemporary music is pretty terrible. I do love music from newer bands (like Alvvays, Wednesday, Wetleg, Tame Impala, Haim, and many others), but I really think most of new music is really terrible, both because it doesn’t touch us and because it’s really not fun from a musical structure perspective (that’s another conversation).

What do you think?