Change the Station Please! (popular music just ain’t what it used to be)

Posted On February 11, 2020

First the disclaimers: I am a total musical snob. Also, I am almost totally ignorant when it comes to some forms of music, such as classical, jazz, or country (in the latter case, I am purposefully and willfully ignorant. See, I told you I was a snob.) Now, on to the theme of this essay: today’s popular music just doesn’t hold a candle to good old classic rock. 

These days, as I uber my kids around from school to volleyball games to music lessons, I cringe and hold my tongue when my kids ask me to change the radio to this station, or that station. I grit my teeth because for the duration of the car ride I know I’ll hear song after song seemingly built on this simple formula:  write some inane lyrics about how “good (or bad) you make me feel,” or “what you do (or did) to me,” or how “I can (or can’t) live without you”; find some youngster with a passable voice who can singspeak the lyrics in rapid, monotone verses; and (optional): splice some rapping into the tune, or better yet, include a guest rapper to bolster your street cred. And – oh yeah, as an afterthought – put it all on top of a repetitive musical track that my 12 year-old could have made on her tune-o-matic electronic toy – you know, the one that requires 6 new AAA batteries every other week.

I say nothing to my kids because I know it’s their music. As some wise person once said, the music our preteen and teenage sons and daughters grow up with is the music that will “stain their souls.” It’s a stain that even Tide can’t get out.

When our kids were young we had a premonition that their limbic systems might eventually succumb to the soul-sucking corporate monoliths whose job is to peddle neutered product to anesthetized demographic groups. So we acted preemptively – we played our music – pop gems from the 60s and 70s like Apple, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie and Joy to the World, Motown tunes, Beatle songs, even some harder stuff from the Moody Blues, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, etc., while the kids were captive in their car seats, secured by their 5-point safety harnesses. We thought if we inoculated their maturing brains early, they just might develop immunity to the musical pablum to which they would eventually be exposed. A few pangs of conscience stabbed at us when we realized we were no different from those late-night TV personalities, selling the 10-CD sets of oldies, except we were targeting our own innocent offspring. But the ends justified the means. It worked – for a while. But once they were assimilated into the wi-fied miasma of social media that infects every modern school kid, the battle was lost.

I consider myself very fortunate to be of the “greatest generation” – no, not that one. I never donned a military uniform. But I was lucky enough to have been born in the ‘50s. I got to grow up when folk was morphing into rock, when Dylan went electric, when the British invaded the airwaves. I experienced the psychedelic explosion of musical creativity that birthed the San Francisco sound, the un-paralleled virtuosity of progressive rock bands, and the onset of southern rock. The rock music industry was relatively nascent and infinitely more pliant back then, and for the most part, supported creativity and aligned with artists against the rising tide of commercialism. Oh, how times have changed!

It’s not all bad. I must admit it is heartwarming to hear a carload of kids synchronized in their karaoke-ing, joyfully and unerringly reproducing the lyrics of one song after another (but can someone please explain to me why they can’t memorize all the terminology for their upcoming Biology test?). And yes, I have recently heard a song or two I actually like, and a few current artists do seem to strive for a semblance of melody and musical drama in their compositions. My daughter turned me on to a few new tunes that even made it into my iTunes rotation – an honor that puts the Grammys to shame, I might add. But those are the exceptions. Rarely do I hear a song with any instrumental musical interludes, or even a guitar or keyboard solo. It’s as if today’s young artists and fans don’t know that music can have music in it. 

Sure, I’m a music snob, but am I being unfair? After all, didn’t my parents have the same concerns when I was a kid? Wasn’t their music far superior to whatever I listened to as a teen? Maybe opining about music is just inherently way too subjective to allow for any kind of fair criticism or analysis. Or is it?

As it turns out, I just might be justified in my snobbery. The authors of a 2012 research article in Scientific Reports, a Nature Research journal, published a study entitled: “Measuring the Evolution of Contemporary Western Popular Music.” They observed “…a number of trends in the evolution of contemporary popular music. These point towards less variety in pitch transitions, towards a consistent homogenization of the timbral palette, and towards louder and, in the end, potentially poorer volume dynamics.” Rough translation:  Over time, pop songs have gotten louder, with less musical variation, and tend to sound alike (you can read all the details here: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00521). One study is not necessarily conclusive, but that sounds about right to me.

My kids may never really understand what they’re missing, musically. But I have hope. They do like their new stuff, but every now and then I catch them singing along to one of my cherished golden oldies. In those rare moments it’s Joy to the World all over again.

© 2018 Laurence S. Wechsler. All rights reserved.