When do you think music went downhill?

I don't really think music went downhill IMO. It just changed, and I liked the changed that's been going on with music. I really think 2017 has been such an amazing year for music and hip-hop songs. There are lots of songs I like in this decade. I agree that 2002 was a meh for music, I also think 2014 has been one of the worst years for pop music in this decade. But other than that, I pretty much like the 2000s and 2010s for music

Music went to sh*t in 2012 when the annoying a*ss Call Me Maybe sh*t was everywhere on the radio and Gangnam Style gained popularity for no reason. The only post-2012 year I liked for music was 2013.

Music's decline is multilayered, having various roots from different sub-eras.

1997 - Popular music experienced an extreme reversal in tone and substance compared to the previous year. The American and Canadian backlash against manufactured pop had finally dried up when the Spice Girls took North America by storm at the beginning of 1997. Although I personally love the majority of pop music released in the late 90s and beginning of the 2000s, countless people have bashed it as a negative turning point for music as a whole, again probably because Hanson, Aqua, the Backstreet Boys, and so on blew up only a mere year after the pop charts were more bohemian than they had ever been before or since. Meanwhile, hip hop went an industrial makeover with not only the quirk ascension of glam hip hop via Puff Daddy and Mase's #1 smash "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down," but also Master P's No Limit label cementing itself as the new epicenter of gangsta rap, replacing Death Row's philosophy of funky, melodious backdrops with aggressive repetition, an ideology which would eventually blossom into the Flanderized dreck it's known as today. Also around 1997, file sharing mp3 sites were starting to become popular with the rise of the Internet; this controversy is one of the primary reasons for music having become so overwhelmingly commercialized and focus-grouped in the 21st Century, since record executives are far more reluctant to take risks with convention-breaking artists who may or may not turn in a significant profit.

2001 - This was the year conventional pop began moving increasingly in the direction of hip hop, a dangerous precedent that would lead to a fair amount of strong material later in the 2000s, such as Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado's 2006 albums with Timbaland, but also quickly threatened the diversity of the top 40 with a particular over saturation of rap songs. With too much of the same thing dominating the charts and hardly any room for the chirpier, more melodious counterpoint acts like S Club 7 and the Spice Girls provided, much of the creative ambition of new music was limited, ultimately paving the way for some of the insanely bottom-of-the-barrel music to emerge during the second half of the 2000s.

2005 - The year ringtone rap took over. Not only were American radios suddenly polluted with a slew of the worst and cheapest songs to ever hit the pop charts, popular music itself started turning more into a meme-fisted joke than a wholesome form of escape. This was what made possible the worldwide success of "Crank That (Soulja Boy)," itself a harbinger of the awful Vine-rap craze of the mid-2010s, as well as music celebrities such as Jake Paul. On the flip side, 2005 also solidified social media as a viable launching pad for independent bands and musicians to cultivate fanbases, thanks to Arctic-Monkeymania in the UK.

2011 - Although 2009 and 2010 finally broke up a bit of the prevailing monotony in popular music by making dance-electronic elements more influential to hit songs as opposed to just rap, as well as revitalizing the role of melodic composition in hit songs (despite the over-saturation of the I-V-vi-IV progression), in 2011 the repetitiveness took on a whole new form, as well as a whole new level. Particularly woeful was the more-or-less complete death of real rock music in the mainstream, as well as the increasing influence of trap music, the latter of which has only gotten more and more dominant the longer this decade has progressed. The Calvin Harris feat. Rihanna song, "We Found Love," also heralded in an age of astoundingly generic EDM music, which suffers from stale and unoriginal backdrop layers, overpowering bass, excessively bloated synthesizers, formulaic structures, and generally dull melodic progressions that bank on preexisting trends and suitability for clubs to save from having to push the envelope. While I do love more than a handful of 2010s EDM songs, such as Avicii's "Wake Me Up" and "Hey Brother," as well as pretty much anything by the honest-to-goodness original Clean Bandit, the vast majority of dance songs this decade leave me feeling completely indifferent and I tend to forget them. Looking back on the British Now 28 and Now 30, which both have second discs dominated by eurodance and house songs, it's amazing how much more memorable those two albums are from track-to-track than a typical made-for-the-club disc is on a more recent British Now album. I actually think the 2013-2014 school year was a decent period for music, but that stretch of time was a fluke more than anything else; most school years since I started college in 2011 have been solidly subpar.

2015 - Although I think music's decline had already reached the point of no return before this year, 2015 was roughly when all of the negative attributes of modern music converged into a giant pile of rubbish. Even though EDM started getting a bit less samey in the 2013-2014 school year, the fatal qualities of bad late 2000s music returned with a fiery vengeance the subsequent school year. The result is that not only is music still more safe and homogenous than it has ever been since the early 1960s, it's once again barely tuneful whatsoever, dependent on lowbrow shock value to sell records or garner streams as opposed to artistic integrity. This is how we wound up with the handsome Liam Payne claiming to have "matured" with a song called "Strip That Down," as well as dirt road-related sexual metaphors being the primary draw of the biggest country song since "Cruise." Even independent music seems to have lost its general appeal since the mid-2010s, with bands as high-profile as Arcade Fire and the Black Keys selling out and indie songs being much more associated with big business commercials than grassroots social media movements.

At the end of 1980 with the advent of the New Romantics then once dance and rave took over and consequently hiphop, indie and similar borefests followed, it hit rock bottom and has remained so ever since.

Although since I am older than most of you and remember when music was good, this could be age speaking! I haven't followed the charts since the mid 1990s and don't feel inclined to return to them.

No song from the last 25 years will be fondly remembered and respected as a classic in the way that genuinely good stuff like 'Hey Jude', 'Imagine' and 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' and similar will. The music all sounds the same to my 45+ ears!

Last night, I was watching a "Top 20: Songs of 2001" countdown with my Dad on a music channel and I was astounded at how blatantly obvious music had declined during the Y2K Era. There's even a massive difference in overall quality between 1999 and 2001, in my opinion. I couldn't get over it.

I guess our perception of the state of music solely depends on our own personal tastes, as well as how we grew up. For instance, i'm not a fan of hip-hop, so i'm naturally going to think that mainstream music declined sometime in the Early 2000s. However, someone who is a fan of hip-hop probably really likes the 2000s and 2010s for music and would think that music is still good.


I can completely understand why you would believe that music declined in 1980. I'm not sure if the launch of MTV had something to do with it, but '80s music generally sounds distinctively different from '60s-'70s music and not just in terms of overall sound. It's hard to really explain, but I believe '80s music seems more commercialised and less "raw", if that makes sense.

Even as someone born in the Late '90s, I agree that songs from the past 25 years will never hold a candle to great songs such as "Hey Jude" or "Imagine". Those songs will still be fondly remembered and respected in another 50 years time, in my opinion. Acts such as Nickelback or One Direction won't.


While I agree that 1997 was a negative turning point in the form of popular music, i'm not sure if it was really the start of music's overall decline. I would personally view the rise of file-sharing MP3 sites, as well as acts such as Hanson, Aqua and the Backstreet Boys as indications of "what was to come", rather than the overall substance and tone of music declining as a whole.

For the most part, I believe the Late '90s were the last era in music where music was generally innovative and had a lot of substance. Sure, teen-pop and nu-metal may have emerged onto the scene during this time, however I view those genres as purely being a sign of their time. With the new millennium approaching, there was always going to be "upbeat", bubblegum pop music during that time. It was just the case of what form it would take. Although, even if you don't take those genres into account, I believe rock music and pop music were still in a pretty healthy state at the time. 

Me too. As depressing as it sounds, I would prefer to listen to anything released during the Mid-Late 20th Century over the songs that are on the Billboard Hot 100 right now. At least most of the songs which were released during the Mid-Late 20th Century were thoughtfully composed and creative, unlike the songs of today, which are purely record-label inventions and offer no outlets for creativity. 

Just on this topic, I remember on a thread on inthe00s you mentioned that 1997 must have felt like a massive step down in quality from 1996, due to the emergence of Hanson, Aqua, the Backstreet Boys and the ilk. While I do agree with what you mentioned, I personally think that 2000 was an even bigger step-down in quality. Many people believe that 1999 and 2000 are almost identical in terms of pop culture, however there's actually a fairly noticeable difference between the two. 

For the most part, I believe 1999 was the last year overall which still supported style and substance over image. Alternative-rock and pop rock were still quite popular that year and the music industry had yet to become over-reliant on hip-hop. Even though teen-pop and nu-metal were huge in 1999, it seems like 2000 was the first year where music became over-commercialised and image-focused. It must have been disappointing going from songs such as "Kiss Me", "She's So High" and "Unpretty" in 1999, to "It Wasn't Me", "Who Let The Dogs Out" and "Say My Name" the following year. I can completely understand why my Dad stopped following the charts in 2000/2001. Music dropped quite considerably in overall quality during that time-span, in my opinion.

At the end of the day, I guess it's all subjective. I personally think that 1955-2000 was one, great era for popular music and music has never reached the same heights as it did during the Mid-Late 20th Century, but people have different opinions on that.