When Did Chart/pop Music Become Awful?

[Scarlett]

I'm doing a bit of research. I'd like to know, in your opinion, when was the last year that you remember listening to/enjoying pop music/thinking the songs were good? When was the last great year for pop, for you? And how old were you when this year took place?

[halfbound]

1964 was the year when I stopped listening to pop music. I was 26 years old. I have listened to it off and on since then, but it hasn't improved, not for me, anyway.

[Fanriffic]

2004 - when the X-Factor started on the telly. Just killed the music industry dead. The charts are atrocious now.
Just looking at the latest 'Now That's What I Call Music' album confirms this as all the songs are dreadful. 43 songs and only 4 decent songs among them. Why do so many artists have to 'feature' other artists on their songs? Running out of original ideas.
All the credible artists now make their money from touring as record sales no longer cut the mustard.
Since downloads and streaming became the norm for listening to music that basically killed off the sales of albums.

[anotheoldgit]

When Elvis, the Beetles and Bill Haley came on the scene and 'BANDS' mainly consisted of guitars, keyboard and drums.

[dannyk13]

1969 I was 37.

[andy-hughes]

I don't the charts 'become awful', I think they remain constant, it is their audience that alters.

When I was a teenager - I was sixteen in 1970, music was a vital part of youth. I was right in the middle of a time when music you liked was perfect if it simultaneously bound you to your peer group and seriously alienated anyone over twenty.

Now, music has changed totally - not least in the way it is delivered and consumed.

The way that pop music is now so all-encompassing means that naturally its sheer essential ingredient has been diluted completely, and it is simply never going to be as important as it once was when it created and reflected vast cultural changes across the world.

So yes, pop appears more disposable, but it has always been so. Pop music is not meant to be ground-breaking, and the fact that it has been made be ground-breaking musicians is a coincidence, rather than the basis on which it exists.

So for me, once I got into rock music, the charts ceased to be of any real interest. As a music journalist, I have virtually nothing to do with the pop charts, although my actual musical tastes have continued to broaden into music that will never trouble the pop charts.

For decades now, sales have declined - the sum total of Westlife's fourteen number one singles do not reach the sales of any of The Beatles' number one hits.

But that doesn't matter.

Pop performs a function - the same one it had when it started - it entertains, it makes money for the people behind it, and it doesn't have to mean anything.

Puis ca change ...

[Arksided]

I was never really into pop, although backtracking It seems they were some good songs that I'd missed, I couldn't tell you who's no.1 since about 1985 when I was thirteen.