February 15, 2026
Is music getting worse? This is the question that every person of a certain generation faces once they reach the age where their “shit isn’t cool” anymore. This realization occurs around the same time they notice that somebody much younger than them doesn’t understand real music, because they’ve never truly listened to it. Meanwhile, their junior counterpart is coming to the steady conclusion that older people suck.
In how long of a stretch are we to look when trying to decipher whether or not the quality of popular music has declined? For instance, comparing Bruno Mars to Prince, and Prince to Beethoven are two entirely different things (though all of their outfits sometimes look similar). While this may present some intriguing debate topics for another time, I’d also like to avoid stepping on a proverbial rake and instead shift our initial focus to a broader picture: say, today’s popular music versus the classical period– American ancestry spans only about 4 generations, give or take, so this feels like an appropriate jumping off point.
Machines
Just a couple of short centuries ago, the “biggest” music was not as accessible to the general public as it is today; or at least not early on (and certainly not at the push of a button). Prior to the mid-1600’s, most music that was considered superior in Western culture, was strictly reserved for the courts and high society; but, by the late 18th century, composers such as Haydn and Mozart would begin performing their masterpieces for the general public.
Not only was live music becoming more accessible to listeners and common street fans than ever before, transcriptions of these pieces were more readily published and disseminated to players who would lay the groundwork for future musical applications and interpretation (ehem, cover bands?).
The general public was starting to become privy to what kickass music could sound like and it had a major influence on how the art form would evolve; but the oligarchs of Western culture have always found a way to capitalize on the efforts of commoners, even creatives, holding them under the thumb of the syndicate in order to preserve control over what would soon become a booming industry, ripe for the picking.
Those small aristocratic groups who possessed the vast majority of power and wealth are the reason we’re talking about Mozart and Beethoven, and not some dusty old folk tune or simple spiritual or any other style of music that had to be vastly more popular than the symphony, given the income disparity metric. While these storied songs were being performed, taught, transcribed, passed down and understood through generations of merchants, farmers and artisans; the establishment controlled the system that decided what, how, and to whom, music would be produced– and remembered.
The difference between classical music and modern popular music is negligible if we consider how music has been dictated, distributed and monetized, as publishing rights have evolved in favor of the elite. The rise of the Recording Industry Era has certainly taken this blueprint to new heights, much to the chagrin of famous composers such as John Phillip Sousa, who, in 1906, expressed his concern for the decline of musical performance as the result of the rise of “recording machines”;
– These talking machines will ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy, in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today, you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal chord left in America!
White Noise
Our personalities and our souls gravitate toward music more instinctively, more personally, than any other form of art; why is that? It seems as though Mr. Sousa may posit that people now have access to too many “obvious” choices; another thought is that it’s because music is spectacular and powerful; and, to tack on Sousa’s insight, that is why, in the present, we’re often not listening to what our personalities and our souls were meant to hear. It is at this point where accessibility seems to be hijacking our primary mode of true creative expression.
Before audio recording and other technologies made their way into mainstream society, people could only pay attention to, and enjoy music, when it was happening right in front of them; and this has been the case for tens of thousands of years. This is a significant distinction, because anyone who has attended a live performance in the modern era knows that listening to the band on headphones is a vastly different experience from being at the show.
We used to have to try harder to experience music, at least physically. Perhaps that is the nature of today’s question: “is music getting worse?”, as a substitute for “are we getting lazier?”. The latter teeters on the edge of existentialism, as we seem to be capable of exhausting ourselves much further and through incalculable ways (primarily Quixotic digital micro-quests) than by the means of our sowing arms and legs.
Is it Physical or Mental exertion that dictates the champion of today versus yesterday? It’s neither. Taking our friend or partner to a live concert is a profoundly intimate and moving experience and shouldn’t have anything to do with mental or physical effort; unless we are to consistently determine that we are simply too worn out to be uplifted any longer.
Every generation has had to endure its own set of challenges, so it seems irrelevant to propose that the artistic creations that accompany their periodic social hardships, may be evaluated on a “versus” scale.
Perhaps when we hear modern radio or a tune our grandson is listening to, we receive it with disdain, not simply because we dislike it aesthetically or that we’re unwilling to put forth the effort, but because it’s not how we were programmed. We relate to styles of music based on the nature of its presence in our life experiences as we grow and mature.
If it seems confusing, think about how we used to identify genres by decades: you know, the ‘60’s, ‘70’s and ‘80’s, etc. The world moves quicker now, changes seem to happen overnight and the once delicate nuances of fine art appear to be dissolving into a ceaseless churning ocean of content.
And The Winner Is…
Half of the songs that were nominated for Best Song of the Year at the 2026 Grammy Awards, credited more than 10 individuals as co-songwriters…per nomination. My lack of understanding as to why or how it takes more people to write a song than to perform it, shows precisely how out of touch I am with popular music today, why it appeals to so many people and what it means to be the generation that is hoisting it upon their shoulders.
If music is a reflection of the time period from whence it came, today’s music scene could easily be characterized as being both abundant and chaotic. Sure, a lot of us think it sucks, but we were programmed differently, for better or for worse; in a different, yet not so distant time. As we know, the medium is the message, so if we’re taking music in through ear pods, Instagram reels and Spotify suggestions on tiny blue screens, it is precisely that type of music which will be produced and accessible to the masses, for better or for worse.
That might sound depressing to those of us who once had to (more consciously) purchase CD’s or cassette tapes or 8-tracks; but humans have seen this all before. Given the cultural impact (both good and bad) that recording technology has had over the past century or even the past few decades, we can only imagine how quickly this next era is going to evolve in terms of how music will be experienced; and there is no doubt that our kids will eventually think it sucks too.
Is music getting worse? Is life getting harder? Are jobs more stressful? Is Lebron James better than Michael Jordan at basketball? Is the world in worse shape? To state that these are all irrelevant questions would be an inadvertent step toward nihilism; because if we study our past and understand it meaningfully enough, then we should be capable of learning from it.
Today there is so much good music out there- gobs of it, all around the world, and we can listen to it virtually any time we wish; there are applications and digital programs that allow disabled people to mix beats, compose songs, and relate to music in ways that would have certainly been unimaginable for them 200 or even 20 years ago. The good stuff is definitely out there, we just have to dig around for it.
These gems are quite often not located in the “popular” places everyone else is looking; and they only become obvious once we discover them. Just know that it will always be our curiosity and our courage that will lead us there. Those create passion and that’s really the only ingredient that matters when it comes to experiencing any music.