Why is modern pop music today so terrible?

Pick any genre you want, I’ll take Country. There is what you hear on commercial radio and see on the TV awards shows, the entertainers the music business has decided to push. What they do is not actually Country, not at all. But at the same time there is an organization named the Americana Music Association which puts on it’s own awards show and has a website and Facebook page, all in the name of promoting real Country music. Artists like Buddy Miller, Jim Lauderdale, audiophile favorite Alison Krauss, Iris Dement, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Gillian Welch, Jason Isbell, Kasey Chambers, Ricky Skaggs, Rhonda Vincent, Marty Stuart, Patty Loveless, and hundreds of others. They are all making fantastic music, and touring the country.

Schubert, it appears that you didn't quite get it regarding Elvis. I am not a big fan but do enjoy some songs. White people can sing, sometimes.
Elling is junk par exelance.

stfoth...*L*  Well, yeah, that's a distinct possibility...one might argue that 'suffering for art' is a consequence that has ramifications that weren't considered initially.  Hopefully one might get the opportunity to find out what selection pissed them off the most and render an apology before having the planet scoured of the 'sentient life forms' (sic) that were responsible for it....;)

Personally, I agree with Angus McKee in "So Beautiful and So Dangerous" that the only reason they'd visit is to pick up ball-point pens.  It's the only reason...other than we're famous for being so marvelously screwed up and better left to ourselves....on a beautiful planet we're thrashing as fast as possible...

You don't mess with your neighbors...neither do they....;)

Elvis has long been accused of merely being a white man who sang like a black man. Not so. What he did, what made him so revolutionary, was that he fused the Jump Blues he heard on "Race" records and radio shows reaching Mississippi and Tennessee, and the Hillbilly, Bluegrass, and Country & Western the white southerners were listening to on The Grand Old Opry and other radio shows. His Sun Records 78's and 45's had a Jump Blues on one side, and a Hillbilly on the other. No black man was singing Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon Of Kentucky", as Elvis did. He sang with the "hiccupping" style now associated with Rockabilly music, basically creating that music and style singing. No black man sang like that. Add in the Gospel he loved so much, and voila, you have Elvis.

I've somehow arrived at an age where-in I find myself at times lecturing the younger folk around me about how great music/radio was back during my time. It's difficult to check myself but I do.  I sound boring.  

Attended a wedding for a couple of millenials a few weeks back, spent most of the time sitting with a table of strangers, watching the "kids" dance and sing, scream while smiling into one another's faces their songs, their music. Wow. I remember doing likewise a few decades ago. 

I'm 60 now, way past the time when AM radio offered a surprising diversity. Hell, I don't know if there are even music radio stations on AM radio right now.   To paraphrase Public Enemy, "Elvis never meant sh*t to me", but I have friends for whom Elvis meant everything in terms of their personal rebellions against their parents' music. For me it was the Beatles, then Zeppelin, then...

Current pop for me is virtually unlistenable, but I have to respect the "kids" and their airtime/era. I don't belong there, I won't get it because I'm all growed up. 

Worsening matters matters are the "classic rock" stations pandering to my generation. I'd rather try to listen to current pop than wallow in the past. 

It doesnt necessarily "s*ck, it just ain't for me no more.