Why is modern pop music today so terrible?

A lot of the "best" music has always flown under the mass-market radar, subsiding on a cult level; Gram Parsons, John Hiatt, Rodney Crowell, Richard Thompson, Marshall Crenshaw, Dave Edmunds, and Nick Lowe, for instance. Their ARE artists of quality with a young audience around, you just have to look below the surface, like on the No Depression site for Americana music.

Always the lowest  common denominator that just gets lower over time.  But how low can it go?

Gentlemen, gentlemen....time and tide changes all...

Tastes change, as does the medium by which one gets to play it on.  The industry (and it is) responses by modifying how and what gets 'tweaked' in the process of recording for the means of playback.  Twas always thus....

I hark back to a movie, "The Phantom of the Paradise" with Paul Williams playing the Devil (or his stand-in...and a diminutive one at that *L*).  He's in a studio, recording a man whose had all his teeth removed singing a song in a voice that's barely better than a frog croaking.

After running him through the parametric EQ's and various other 'devices' (most of which have been superseded, as it IS an old movie...), his original voice is restored to it's glory....

When I read discussions like this, I *L*, and move on to the next forum...;)

The way to find good music that flies under the radar is to listen to college radio. Can now be found steaming on internet and still on FM.

I've spent many years as part of the "unpopular" music business (a phrase coined by my friend Harvey Reid) as both a musician and concert producer/sound mixer. The brilliant singer/songwriters who work the small coffeehouse or club gigs can put out some astonishing art. A perfect example of this is when I recently saw Anais Mitchell (look her up) in a 3/4 full show at a nice venue near where I live in MA…she's a more interesting singer and a better songwriter than pretty much anybody you'll hear in "popular" (commercial? promoted?) music…and I bet almost nobody here knows who she is. And she's more well known than most (NY Times had a rave review of her off Broadway musical "Hadestown"). Pop is pop, and is anybody really worried about how lame it generally is? If you are, get out and see somebody less well known and great…follow 'em…buy their stuff…get into jazz…get off yer couch.