In response to a question about the current state of the music industry, famed music producer Tony Visconti told an audience at the annual SXSW festival in Austin, Texas several years ago that pop music “Can’t get any worse!”

Visconti claimed that record labels are simply repeating the formulas of the past, with diminishing returns. He described mainstream pop as, “a computer and a vocal that was doctored goodness knows how much…”

He insisted that “The next David Bowie lives somewhere in the world; the next Beatles; the next Springsteen…but they’re not getting a shot, they’re not being financed.”

The incredible music of the 60s and 70s grew out of a massive social movement based on rebellion, experimentation and dissent. The best artists were accomplished musicians and songwriters who understood how to put a song together.

Underlying all of this was a belief that music could actually change the world.

We also had far more adventurous FM radio programming back then. DJ’s could play whatever they liked. Nowadays, playlists are decided by Artificial Intelligence.

Plus, we had more intricately crafted tunes to listen to back in the day, with a longer shelf-life. These artistic expressions were a product of the rebellious social environment in which they were created, and it should come as no surprise that, in our crassly materialistic twenty-first century world, pop music is as inconsequential as the amoral values of our worthless, doomed culture.

The music business is clearly more about business than music. The business model demands that as little money, effort and time as possible be expended on the creative side, while still being able to sell enough units to make a huge profit. It’s all about marketing; not the artist or the quality of the music.

Today’s music is insipid and boring, with one “artist” following another in creating the same pedestrian blandness. That’s because the business side of the music industry dictates to artists what tunes will sell, instead of celebrating their artistry and giving them the freedom to truly create.

Marketing, promotion and the almighty dollar is what drives pop music these days; not artistry or talent. I give you Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Cold Play, Lana Del Rey and Kendrick Lamar as prime examples of the inherent mediocrity of contemporary music.

The late 20th Century was the ‘golden age’ of creativity and variety in popular music and culture.

It’s been downhill ever since.