Why is modern pop music today so terrible?

I think it may have more to do with education and literacy in general.

As the public schools continue to lower their academic standards and substitute political correctness and self-esteem for critical reasoning and the search for truth and beauty, then literature, science and art will suffer.

Aristotle described Art as 'that which could be', but the current generation of students are being spoon-fed a steady diet of doom and gloom. It's no wonder this outlook should infect the music they create. The dystopia found in much of the contemporary Literature and Art is the result of their poor education.

The comic book super hero that has to rely on super-natural (impossible) means of overcoming obstacles, or the witches and wizards that tap the occult to obtain their power over others, illustrates the problem facing literature and art.

The true heroic courage of man has been abandoned in favor of absurd fantasy. The knight errant is forgotten or ridiculed in the modern arts.

Creating impossible fictional heroes will ultimately just create another new generation of cynics and nihilists.

As for music specifically; creating a melody is much more difficult to do than strumming a few cords ad infinitum, or repeating a moronic beat.

Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin et al created beautiful melodies and lyrics that speak to both truth and beauty, as do Lennon and McCartney, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel or Townes Van Zandt.

There's good music being produced today, but young female singers that flaunt raunchy sexuality and dysfunctional behavior suck most of the oxygen out of the room. Bed wetters like Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran don't contribute much of value either.

When contemporary songwriters are asked who influenced them they invariably name artists from previous generations. It's scary to think that future generations will imitate the likes of a Bieber or a Sheeran.

As we dumb-down our kids, so they dumb down the culture, including music.

-gb-

 

Lawyers, guns & money

It may have been covered in this thread already (sorry, I didn’t read the whole thing), but even in the days when the major labels had A&R staff, some good in-house producers and the wherewithal to procure and "develop" talent, much was crap. You had to be selective. Without getting into how the record business aided in its own destruction, the labels have less control than ever. And the folks that run a lot of the businesses that deliver "content" to you are more akin to Big Data than major labels.
The music is supposed to reflect the culture. I don’t mind some neo-soul or even some rap, but most of it is dreck- over using auto-tune for that phasey vocal effect might have been cool on one or two tracks, but it became as common as drum machines in the ’80s, or gated reverb.
There’s still cool stuff out there by new bands, but given how fragmented everything is--you have to dig. Yes, there are singers like Adele (whose only recording I bought sounded terrible) and others who are superstars that have some talent (Lady Gaga is talented, I’m not that "into" her).
A workman here the other day asked about what I listened to when he saw all the records. He told me he liked punk. I haven’t listened to any new punk bands lately, but recommended the great Bad Brains album "I Against I."
I think our taste often reflects what we grew up with.

Brill Building "dreck"?! Songwriters like Carole King, Doc Pomus, Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Billy Rose, Bobby Darin, Gerry Goffin, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Johnny Mercer, and Mort Shuman wrote in the tiny cubicles there, producing songs McCartney and Lennon loved. Listen to the first Beatles album---it’s half Brill Building songs! Two of our best contemporary songwriters who have expressed a love of the Brill Building songs are Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe. It’s Pop music, not Rock.

Right on, bdp24.