It's Not Our Imaginations... Modern Music Really Does SUCK [RAW]

Duration: 12:05 1398 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

The speaker argues that modern mainstream music has fundamentally shifted from creating lasting memories to merely consuming fleeting moments, resulting in a noticeable decline in emotional impact compared to past decades. While acknowledging that not all new songs are bad nor every old song perfect, the author contends that contemporary hits often prioritize immediate engagement and viral trends over deep listening or cohesive storytelling. Instead of serving as cultural touchstones that define an era like the glossy optimism of 2010s pop anthems did, today's tracks function more as background audio for tasks or short-form social media clips, lacking the communal resonance that once allowed entire groups to share in a unified musical experience. This change is deeply rooted in the broader cultural atmosphere surrounding music production and consumption. The speaker contrasts the forward momentum, nightlife energy, and sense of possibility found in pre-2020 hits with the current climate of anxiety, isolation, and doom-scrolling that characterizes post-pandemic life. Consequently, modern songs often reflect this emotional state through hazier sounds, minimalist structures, and a deliberate flattening of emotion to cope with uncertainty rather than celebrating developmental milestones or shared joy. The music industry has adapted to these conditions by optimizing tracks for instant attention retention and algorithmic safety, leading to compositions that are hyper-polished but emotionally vague, designed specifically to prevent listeners from swiping away within the first few seconds rather than inviting them into a narrative journey. Ultimately, the perceived decline in musical quality is less about technical flaws and more about a lack of genuine connection between the listener's life experiences and the music itself. Because modern memory formation is increasingly tied to survival states like burnout and economic pressure rather than open-ended growth or celebration, songs struggle to fuse with significant personal events as they once did. The environment has become disposable due to infinite access, causing listeners to crave constant novelty without forming deep attachments to any single piece of art. As a result, music today feels engineered for performance metrics rather than artistic risk or vulnerability, leaving audiences feeling detached and unable to find the same sense of excitement and reality that defined musical experiences in previous generations.

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This could be because I was born in 1989. So, I was raised on radio hits, MTV countdowns, and those mid-2000s and 2010s pop songs that everyone seemed to know. But, I don't think this is just nostalgia. I think that something in music has changed. And I've heard many people say that music doesn't hit the same way it used to. It doesn't produce the same level of emotional impact, enjoyment, or satisfaction as it did in the past. But, nobody can really explain why. They might say, "You're just old." or "You're focused on the past." or "There's still good music out there." And maybe all of these things are partly true. But, I still think music has changed. I still think it's not as good as it was before. Especially when we're talking about mainstream music, big hits, and songs that are supposed to feel like events. I'm not saying all of the old songs are classics. And I'm not saying all of the new music is garbage. But, I do think that music does feel different now. And I think it's because music has shifted from making memories to consuming moments. Rather than music having this deep, long-term emotional resonance like it used to, it's now often designed for immediate, fleeting engagement, like scrolling through short-form social media videos. It revolves around hooks and viral trends. And people's focus tends to be on highly stimulating sections of the song. Like a 15-second hook for a dance challenge. Rather than an entire cohesive album meant for deep listening. Music has become background audio for people's tasks. Rather than lyrical or melodic storytelling. But there was a time where the emotional impact of songs used to hit more. There was a communal aspect of songs. It was something that contributed to a group of people rather than a single individual. A song would be released. And then it seemed like everyone and their mother was talking about it. Or at least they were aware of it. They used to be songs you could sing in the car with your friends. They used to be a song of the summer. But it doesn't seem to be a thing anymore. They used to be songs that made you feel like you were living inside of a time period. A song released in 2010 would make you feel like, yes. This song represents 2010. Songs used to feel like cultural weather systems. A track wouldn't just be popular. It would saturate the atmosphere of a year. And back in 2010 there was this glossy neon optimism. We had early Rihanna. Taio Cruz. Kesha. Far East Movement. Katy Perry. And back then culture felt more synchronized. Even sad songs still sounded big, glossy, cinematic because there was motion in the culture. Certain songs may have felt sad, but there was forward momentum, shiny production, nightlife energy. The future is arriving vibes, emotional extraversion. But now, people are overstimulated, emotionally detached, anxious, doomscrolling at 1:00 a.m., and nothing feels real anymore. So, the sound reflects this. A lot of songs these days are hazier, minimalist, emotionally flattened, nostalgic on purpose, distorted and dreamlike, and emotionally restrained. Even upbeat songs often carry exhaustion underneath them. 2010 music said, "Tonight is going to change everything." 2020's music often says, "I'm emotionally buffering." And culturally, people no longer feel fully inside a shared era. It's more like a permanent transition, permanent uncertainty, and a permanent consumption. Because now, even if a song is doing well on the charts, and it's commercially successful, it doesn't feel like the song is huge in your life, or huge in the lives of anyone around you. Unless you're on TikTok, I just seeing the same 5 seconds of a song played over and over again. So, you're hearing these songs online. You're hearing them in clips, but do you hear make friends singing any of these songs. And even if you do, it's probably not as much as you used to. So, it's not just about the quality of the songs. It's the lack of connection. And many people feel like they love the songs they grew up with more than what they're experiencing now because they may have memories tied to those songs. And yet, maybe people aren't making any memories now as they did before. Maybe that is another reason why music isn't exciting anymore because people lack excitement in their lives now. And if your life isn't exciting, how are you meant to relate to connect to the music? So, when people say "Music was better back then." sometimes what they really mean is "Life felt more alive back then." Because a song becomes emotionally fused with summer nights, first relationships, school years, family drives, old friendships, parties, heartbreak, discovering yourself, periods when life still felt open-ended. Whereas a lot of modern memory formation seems to be tied to uncertainty, isolation, anxiety, burnout, overstimulation, doom scrolling, world events, relationship instability, economic pressure. So, songs today can become emotionally fused to survival states instead of developmental milestones. And there's also another layer because earlier eras had stronger belief in the future while modern culture frequently feels suspended between nostalgia and dread. And you can hear that in the emotional DNA of modern music. The yearning, detachment, sadness, escapism, dissociation, irony, numbness. It's less we're heading somewhere amazing and more I'm trying to feel something real again. And I noticed the shift from 2020 onwards. Before 2020, it feels like I can pinpoint a few songs that still felt big. Songs that I could still feel fully my body. And they weren't songs that were big just to me or just big online. These were songs that were big in real life. Because if you look back at the songs before 2020 on YouTube, the ones with billions of views, they were big in a cultural way. But after 2020, I noticed a lot more songs that felt thin. Even though those songs also may have been huge. And I think it's because post-pandemic, we all experience culture differently. We began to spend more time on our phones. And TikTok completely altered music discovery. And since 2020, music stopped feeling as communal as it used to. That is when songs felt less likely to define a moment and more likely to decorate it. Because the scroll affected the way songs are made these days. So if music isn't exciting anymore, why doesn't the music industry do something about it? I think it's because of supply and demand. It's because of greed. Thinner writing is winning because we reward it. Modern music isn't optimized for replaying an album for years, emotional depth, cultural permanence, artistic risk, or immersive storytelling. It's optimized for instant attention, retention, virality, playlist compatibility, short-form clips, and low skip rates. So, it's not how do we make the greatest song possible? It's how do we reduce the chance someone swipes away? And so, you start seeing hooks arriving immediately, shorter intros, fewer bridges, repetitive choruses, emotionally vague lyrics, viable for narrative, and songs engineered for snippets. A song used to feel finite. You sat with it, learned the lyrics, associated it with periods of your life, waited for it to come on the radio, built anticipation around it. Now, music can feel more disposable because the environment around it became disposable. Infinite access changed the emotional weight. When every song ever made is available instantly, music starts behaving psychologically like social media. So, it's one quick hit, and then you're left craving the next hit because it lacks vulnerability, so it lacks a sense of connection. And that is how songs have become hyper polished, algorithmically safe, emotionally broad, and instantly digestible. While memorable art needs friction, surprise, imperfection, risk, identity. Songs used to have awkward intros, weird bridges, long outros, emotional unpredictability. And it was the unpredictability that made those songs feel alive. Now, many tracks are engineered to avoid losing attention for even 5 seconds. So, the listener's subconscious starts feeling like this wasn't made to express something. This was made to perform well. Have you noticed the shift in music lately? Do songs not feel as exciting as they once did? When did the shift take place for you? Let me know in the comments and I'll talk to you soon.