i want to clear up a point, though - i'm actually not arguing that pop music was better in the past.

i mean, you don't think that bohemian rhapsody was a big hit in the 70s, do you? or that hendrix was actually popular?

the pop music of the 60s was truly awful, too - and the 70s were dominated by disco and soul. if anything, 80s pop was actually an improvement over 60s and 70s pop.

what's different today is not that the pop music is awful; that's always been true. what's different is that the underground scene has largely evaporated, that there isn't any non-commercial music being made any more. that's what i'm looking for, that's what i'm hoping the kids can bring back.

courtney love actually write a kind of an important essay on this in the 90s (or early 00s), where she explained the problem as basically being that the major labels just bought out the underground. they just showed up in their bmws and started writing checks, and when they were done everything had been dismantled. i guess this coincided with a generation reared on neo-liberalism, that lost the plot and just bought into it. the underground never really recovered....

it's really up the kids to start from scratch, at this point, and i'm rooting for them and hope that they do.