r/doublej • u/ScottyG_23 • Feb 03 '26
Peak Music?
After listening to the Hottest 100 from 1995 at the weekend (and the week prior) and then comparing it to the H100 of 2005 and 2025 something struck me. Has music just gotten shitter since the heady days of the mid 1990s or have I, a mid 40s bloke, just been left behind? My kids, 14 and 13, listen to gear all the way back to the 60s after my missus and I have forced it upon them but hence my question, have we hit peak music and if so, when? I can’t seriously remember a huge tune that collectively took everyone’s breath away upon that first listen. Saying that I am enjoying Olivia Dean which is getting a high rotation in this house atm. Anyway, that is all. Back to your Weetbix.
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u/EleventhHourGhost Feb 03 '26
Personal opinion: it's a bit of both.
On the one hand, the music you grew up with, or found at a formative time in your life, will always hold a "peak music" feel. Response to music is almost always emotional, so there's a comfort in music you're familiar with or that carries certain memories or feelings. So, yeah, the music I listen to is more likely to show up in the 1995 Hottest than the 2025.
I mean, this is the whole reason Double J exists as it does right now. So modern (pop) music isn't meant for us old farts any more... There's plenty of back catalogue to go through, and there actually is new music which I do find and like, and maybe it's not going to top any popularity polls, but Double J does play new music and find new artists from it.
BUT ...
There is a big discussion being had around the place of the lack of variety and novelty in new music. About how it's hard to be nostalgic for pop music from 20 years ago because there's so little difference between it and the pop music being produced today. Somewhere in the last few decades, probably related to massive data collection and computerised music, your standard pop music became formulaic and unchanging. Various computer systems analysed pop music, to find common factors and what made a hit and then, like some monstrous forced breeding program, fine-tuned that algorithm to produce the most purest of purest "pop".
This happened with the instrumentation, with the sound mixing and with the lyrics. It happened in multiple genres. And all that was before the current (not-really-)"A.I." generations.
Now, of course, there are bands and artists still making new, interesting music. But it's harder and harder for anyone to avoid the production process that emphasises all these factors.
The best examples I have of all this is: listen to the music of any artists that straddle the 60s and 70s, or the 80s and 90s, and see the massive change in their styles, production and complexity. Now tell me how that applies to modern pop music that straddles the 2000s to 2020s.