By Emma Weidmann | Arts and Life Editor
I’m sure you’ve heard your parents say this, and they heard their parents say it too. It’s been said of new music all the way back to the time when there was no recorded music, and the only way to hear it was to go see Beethoven himself sit at the piano.
And even then, all the music purists were probably like, “Ugh, this Beethoven crap is so bad. I was born in the wrong generation! I wish it was still cool to listen to Gregorian chants and, like, sea shanties.”
Well, this isn’t the 18th century anymore, and you don’t have to put on elbow-length silk gloves to hear some tunes, so it’s time to acknowledge that older does not equal better.
The most thrown-around piece of music criticism is that “they just don’t make music like they used to.” This is often paired with placing certain decades, like the ’70s and ’80s, on pedestals and comparing music of those years to music of today.
But, if you could take a time machine to 1985, you would hear people praise the ’50s for its nostalgic sound, organic vocals and generally clean lyrics. It’s easy to fall into the trap of looking at music in such a retrospective way, but the truth of the matter is that music is constantly evolving, and many criticisms of modern music are just pretentious and border on prejudice.
Take, for instance, the commonly-held belief that rap music isn’t real music. Ben Shapiro has said this — although it’s unclear what makes him an expert on music — so it’s even more saddening when Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead says it. It’s purely dismissive to say that rap isn’t real music but is speaking in rhythm, when artists like Kendrick Lamar and Childish Gambino exist, blending rap with melody, using rhyme and meter to their advantage and relying heavily on lyrics to carry a song.
After all, isn’t another complaint about modern music that there are no longer any good lyricists? I would argue that the most successful rappers of all time, including those mentioned above, prove that statement false. Yes, there are many rappers whose lyrics are just about money, drugs and promiscuity — but that’s also true of nearly all of the “hair metal” bands of the ’80s, who faced that same critique back then yet now seem to be solidified in culture as one of the last eras of good music.
Lamar’s lyrics deal with issues of the racism that Black people face in America, but they also address family matters and his own life story. To say that this doesn’t constitute real music says more about the critic than the musician.
Obviously, there is a ton of terrible new music being made. Every time I hear an album that’s at least 70% made up of samples (looking at you, Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj) a piece of me definitely dies a little bit. However, it’s too general to say that all samples are bad.
Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” samples from The Chi-Lites’ “Are You My Woman? (Tell Me So),” and I have never heard this song used as an example of bad modern music because it doesn’t fit that description. The presence of a sample only makes music bad when a song relies too much on sampled material instead of the artist’s own creativity and when it is done too often, especially on the same album.
Unfortunately, we have a fascination with hearing new musicians rip songs from Rick James, Cyndi Lauper, Simple Minds, A Tribe Called Quest and more. Samples get done and will continue to be done for as long as they sell.
To that point, the problem with modern music may lie in the modern audience. On TikTok, the only thing required to make a song go viral is a catchy chorus and a fun dance to go along with it, no matter how much the rest of the song stinks. Because audiences care little about the quality of music as long as it makes them dance and is relatable, that is the only thing that will continue to be made. And we have the nerve to complain about lying in the bed we made for ourselves.
On the other hand, pop and rock music are very much alive, and there are artists in both genres doing creative, original things without letting the musicians who came before them do all the hard work. Reneé Rapp, for one, is an outstanding new pop artist whose discography is catchy and relatable without being infantilizing to her audience and spoon-feeding meaning using the same played-out metaphors over and over again.
Inhaler is a great example of a contemporary rock band that does its own thing. Unlike some other bands, Inhaler draws some inspiration from music of the past without ripping it off. It would be hard not to, seeing as the lead singer, Elijah Hewson, is the son of Bono (U2). But Inhaler manages to be their own band, not U2 2.0.
The Billboard Hot 100 may be having a crisis of identity, but that doesn’t mean all music made past Y2K is bad. What’s more is that the dismissal of everything new and recent is just plain boring and limits listeners to a few decades of music, rather than allowing them to take a chance on something that could be the next classic. Ultimately, it’s up to you, but don’t be shocked when your children say they don’t make music like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo anymore.
