“They Don’t Make Music Like They Used To” Is False

I recently read a statement from a girl online who, after listening to Smashing Pumpkins, claimed:”They don’t make music like they used to.”

This is a loaded statement.

My initial response to this is: Stop getting your music from the radio and MTV; good music is still here, but it’s hard to find, as the masses prefer bad hip-hop and bubblegum-pop. This begs further inspection, though.

Just what is this girl listening to that such an outrageous claim must be made? Certainly, I know of many amazing artists ‘of this generation’. Let’s take that apart.

Her favorite artists: Moneen, Fall Out Boy, Valencia, This Providence, The Starting Line, The Early November, and Jimmy Eat World. Her favorite albums and songs come from these artists, and also from Patent Pending, Cartel, The Matches, Men Women & Children, Mae, Panic! At The Disco, and Dashboard Confessional.

With that out of the way, how surprising is it that a statement such as “They don’t make music like they used to” can be made by this girl? Not very surprising. She’s comparing average bands of today to great bands of yesterday.

This happens far too often. The complete opposite statement could be made defending new music, using this same, busted logic. I could easily compare a great band of today (such as At The Drive-In) to a terrible band of the 1970s, arguing that music today is much better. This argument, like the girl’s, is completely invalid.

This is not an attempt to single out any individual, however. Many people make statements that “older music is better”. What gives?

As time passes, only a select handful of bands (relatively speaking) remain to represent their time period. No doubt, Led Zeppelin is a crucial role in identifying the 1970s–but what about the terrible bands of the 1970s? The 2000s are still fresh in our memory, so we remember the non-innovative, generic (and often bad) bands of today such as Valencia and Fall Out Boy, two of the girl’s favorites. But we forget the bad bands, just as, in time, we will forget the bad bands of the 2000s and remember the good ones.

You won’t find the real gems on MTV or on the radio–the public doesn’t want to hear it, they are content to live in ignorance with generic rock, generic hip-hop, and bubblegum-pop.

Bottom line, if you’re listening to generic bands of today, you have no business comparing them to the great bands of yesterday. At least compare apples to apples. And there are many shiny, golden apples of today just waiting to be discovered.