I hate every single modern song and I can’t put my finger on why!

[CherriesAndBerries5]

(To start, this isn’t me trying to be ‘edgy’ I just genuinely don’t understand!)

I’m 28 and I love music. I listen to a huge range of music. I like indie and rock and also dance and fun songs.
I also have some awful dance and pop songs that I absolutely love! I know there were some really cheesy pop songs in the 10s and some I absolutely love. There are some rap songs that I enjoy too.

However… there’s not a popular song out there right now that I don’t absolutely despise. Most songs I have to turn off when they come on. And I don’t understand why because is it really much different to some of the songs in the 10s that I was indifferent to?

What I don’t understand is how all my friends are loving and singing along to all of it?

Lose control by teddy swims? God awful.
Beautiful things by benson Boone? I have to turn it off.
Too sweet by Hozier? One of the most dull and boring songs I’ve ever heard.
Tipsy? Fucking irritating.
Pink pony club? The most bang average song I’ve ever heard, why is everyone raving about it???

I’m not sure I can put my finger on it, I am open to listening to all sorts and I’ve always liked most songs but why do I hate every single one now (and why does everyone love them)??

It all seems mechanical now

I have the radio on in the background (Radio 1), and as is often, yesterday Gwen Stefani’s Sweetest Escape came on. That’s like 20 years old. No way in 2004/5 would songs from 1984/5 have been regularly heard on Radio 1. So, I don’t think it’s only you who finds today’s music lacking

It just sounds different nowadays and I also can't put my finger on it. I never wanted to be a middle aged person who dislikes modern music but here I am...but it's not me, it's the music...I'm convinced.

I thought this the other day actually. Even songs that are 25 years old are still played a lot... during the 80s, they weren't regularly playing songs from the 1960s were they?!

Too sweet by Hozier, brilliant song (im very old)

It’s because the songs produced today are overwhelmingly all crap.

Aren't they all written by one Swedish guy

Open-earedness (yes really) does wane as you age. Lots of studies.

Everyone sounds the same now. I listen to 80s music a lot.

Overproduction and auto tune on vocals.

Music by robots ! It's all so samey as well...

Too much over-production and writing by committee. Very formulaic. There's little commercial freedom to allow acts to be genuinely fresh and original.

Music is created to blend on Spotify playlists. Solo acts and "co-labs" are easier to manage than the dynamics of bands. The music industry is lazy and playing at commercially safe, not creative.

Sound is mixed to sound ok streamed on tinny phones, not to blossom on giant sound systems (RIP 80s stacker systems)

We've also got a generation of young adults raised in schools with very depleted access to the arts. That affects who can get into music and reach a break-through stage.

I wondered if it was just me getting middle-aged, but watching youtube analyses by people who actually know about music, it's not just me and my lifestage performing to cliché. There genuinely are reasons why so much current music is dull.

You are surely being exposed to the wrong kind of modern song? There are so many artists out there that aren't getting the kind of exposure that the artists you mentioned are but are great nonetheless. I advise you to get on the bbc sounds website and find some of their programmes that are about new music and new artists. I guarantee you'll find something you like.

There's always new to you music to explore too - it doesn't have to be modern but I bet there are loads of artist from previous decades that you haven't even discovered yet!

Stop listening to the radio and stop listening to 'popular' playlists on Spotify. Mix it up, listen to different genres of modern music. You have the whole world's music available to you.

I have a music producer friend who says it’s to do with fashionable studio production techniques, and modern songwriting style…Apparently most modern pop music is written by jamming lots of hooks together in the same song, and is written by committee (a few different songwriters collaborating). Add to that the invention of AI in post production and everything ends up sounding completely homogeneous.

I imagine new artistes probably start out sounding original but then just get funnelled in to the pop music sausage factory and have all the creativity shaved off the edges. You’d never get a Kate Bush, or Eurythmics keeping creative control of the production process nowadays. The artists that want to do so have to rise up through a more alternative route of gigging/funding their own tours etc.

Did you see that Kate Nash has turned to Only Fans to fund her latest tour? I’m in no judgement about her decision to do so, but it tells you all you need to know about the industry - sell your soul, or sell your titties!

One of my radios is playing up and will only tune into BBC local radio, and actually they're good at picking up on more interesting emerging new music amongst the decades old classics. It's not the death by Dua Lipa that drove me off Radio 2, and I'm enjoying the break from adverts on Greatest Hits (and I was missing being exposed to some new content)

Op- what’s the oldest songs you like? Is it just music from this year you hate or last year too, or the last 5 years?

As PP said, a lot of pop music hasn’t dramatically changed in the last 10-15 years so pop songs from the mid to early 2010s don’t sound glaringly “old” when played on the radio now. When did the change in music enjoyment hit you?

could it be - you’re late 20s, radio 1 always had “15-25” as its target audience, you are now not the person this sort of music is being written and recorded for, but music from 10 years ago hits better as you were the audience for it then, and it’s more you are remembering it rather than finding it newly now.

The 80s had a lot of Duos like The Pet Shop Boys and Eurythmics because of synthesisers becoming more affordable and enabling pairs of people to create rich and experimental music on limited means.

It's a shame that further advances in technology are becoming stiffling.

This! Not much innovation in pop music at the moment, and no-one playing real instruments. Everything is autotuned and mass-produced to within an inch of its life.

Same effect in film - Hollywood has become ultra risk averse and chases very limited markets, so sequels, franchises, Disney remakes, crap CGI/AI animation, Marvel universe, and horror films that young men will watch; and a few “female friendly” big movies, but nothing innovative or edgy in any way, not even the big family friendly films of the 80s or 90s.

Everything synthetic and heavily targeted to well-known product that sells.

As someone who was well into adulthood by the 80s, I can confirm that they absolutely were playing songs from the 60s, even on Radio 1. What I can't believe is that in 2045, they'll be playing anything from 2025. It's all so underwhelming.

It's called getting old.

It happens in stages. First the music on Radio 1 will sound like horrible noise. The DJ's will be unbearable.

Then you startt o listen to Radio 2 and discover the DJ's you like on Radio 1 when you were younger are all on there. Then eventually they will be replaced with younger DJ's who are unbearable and play music which is not music at all but in fact just unbearable noise.

And then one day you find the car stereo is tuned to Radio 4 and you quite like it........

I also find that even with upbeat songs, there's a kind of weird, depressing undertone to them.

Modern music just feels bleughhh to me. I was a teenager in the 80's and I'm still listening now at 56 . The only good bands /artists from the 90's are David Gray, dido and.... elbow!!! I have two teenage sons and they prefer the 80's music 🎶 🤣

When we sat through the trailers before Minecraft Movie recently, out of the 7 trailers, only one film was not a remake or sequel to an existing franchaise.

It reminded me why I rarely make it to the cinema anymore.

I think there's lots of great music around at the moment. I think platforms like YouTube, and even the dreaded TikTok allow unknown musicians to break through. I'm constantly finding interesting new music - but then again, I don't listen to the radio. That does seem a bit 'samey' these days. Oh, and I'm 47, so I don't think it's just an age thing.

And we had the same issues with manufactured music in the 80s - Stock, Aitken and Waterman, anyone?