The one thing I know for sure is that today's artists have moved away from the wall of sound developed by Phil Spector and I miss that sound a great deal. Multiple instruments playing the same part, brass and woodwinds, strings over the top, and backup singers calling back or repeating what the lead sang. To my ear, the wall of sound adds so much interest to a song and I can find myself ignoring the lead and singing the backup parts (I could have been a Pip). Speaking of the Pips, the wall of sound technique was also incorporated into a great deal of Motown recordings as well. Today's music just sounds so stripped down that it doesn't hold my interest, even if the melody is decent.
Much of today's pop music also sounds very similar, because it seems like to be a hit a song has to fit into a more and more narrowly defined structure of what constitutes a hit. I'm a boomer and of course I'm biased, but I think the period of 1972-1975 had so many different styles of what was acceptable to be a hit. You had the folk rock of the Eagles and Jackson Browne, the soft rock of America and Bread, the hard rock of Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, and The Who, the pop rock of the Carpenters and Elton John, the glam rock of Bowie, and the progressive rock of Pink Floyd, Yes, Rush, and Jethro Tull, as well as a huge number of Motown acts. They were experimenting and developing and unlike today, were given more than just one album to develop their sounds.
Is there good music still being made today? Absolutely, but it's not what's being played on the radio and it's much more difficult to find. The one suggestion I have for people seeking good music is to look past the hit songs of even these artists from the period I mentioned and try to find deeper cuts because many of those deeper cuts are great as well. I find it kind of sad that even classic rock radio stations of today all have such small playlists. There's some great stuff from 1972-1975 that didn't make it big on the radio but still deserves a chance to be heard.
Much of today's pop music also sounds very similar, because it seems like to be a hit a song has to fit into a more and more narrowly defined structure of what constitutes a hit. I'm a boomer and of course I'm biased, but I think the period of 1972-1975 had so many different styles of what was acceptable to be a hit. You had the folk rock of the Eagles and Jackson Browne, the soft rock of America and Bread, the hard rock of Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, and The Who, the pop rock of the Carpenters and Elton John, the glam rock of Bowie, and the progressive rock of Pink Floyd, Yes, Rush, and Jethro Tull, as well as a huge number of Motown acts. They were experimenting and developing and unlike today, were given more than just one album to develop their sounds.
Is there good music still being made today? Absolutely, but it's not what's being played on the radio and it's much more difficult to find. The one suggestion I have for people seeking good music is to look past the hit songs of even these artists from the period I mentioned and try to find deeper cuts because many of those deeper cuts are great as well. I find it kind of sad that even classic rock radio stations of today all have such small playlists. There's some great stuff from 1972-1975 that didn't make it big on the radio but still deserves a chance to be heard.