I know good modern pop music exists, I'm talking about the terrible shit that plays on radios, commercials, TV etc. The stuff that the media has decided is current pop music.
This is probably my most boomer opinion , but most of it is awful. Where have all the strong voices gone? It's all baby voiced feel good insurance commercial stuff or warbley break-up songs.
If I hear another song that sounds like 'Tonights Gonna be a Good Night." or Ed Sheeran or any of the 100 songs sung by women that all sound like infants I am going to screm.
Also anyone notice that these songs are all safe as far as lyrics go? No ones allowed to be mad or defiant in music anymore. Its all "Lets party." or "Boohoo my Boyfriend left me." Mainstream music used to have tons of "Fuck the system" songs, not any more. There seems to be no genre represented outside of singer-songwriter. Also let women have strong voices again, damn it. Also let bands that play instruments exist. Let multiple genres exist!
Anyway, Boomer_Owl out
Little of Column A, Little of Column B. Clear channel did brick radio as a whole, definitely making many stations turn into looping MP3 playlists. If you got a college radio station in your town you can still hear some wacky shit. My local college station does genre time blocks, so I've sometimes heard reggae and death metal within the span of a day. At the same time, capitalism has always required some amount of smoothing of the edges. A lot of the rebellious music we enjoyed ten or twenty years ago was usually a more toned-down version of the stuff it's influenced by. Vaguely defiant music still shows up from time to time, but it goes back to Channel Clear just being able to pull from the same three Nirvana or Rage Against songs that they've grown comfortable with. That said, shit like NPR will still let the occasional folk punk singer on for a bit. Thankfully Bandcamp, Youtube, and Soundcloud, despite their glaring flaws have ensured that the little guy and a whole lot of variety is still there. You may just need to do some hunting.