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 ...