Isn't this extremely genre dependent? And regardless, this has been going on for a long time.
The Supremes? Good looking gals (and great music IMHO).
Grateful Dead? Sure, rough around the edges.
The Doors? Um...ever seen a picture of Jim Morrison? Dude would make Derek Zoolander blush.
Out of curiosity, I asked Spotify for modern metal music, and I got The Black Dahlia Murder --- frontman looks like a regular dude who I'd grab a beer with.
Yeah, modern pop places a ton of emphasis on looks, sure. But I think this has been pretty prominent in music for a very long time, be it the airbrushed R&B of the sixties, the androgynous glam of the eighties, or the metro sexual (guy)/model-esque looks of modern pop.
Music was better when I used to look at the back of an album and the credits were like a dozen people. I'm sorry to people who like Beyonce, Gaga etc. But you look at their albums and they have hundreds of writers, engineers, producers, mixers, etc. What do these celebrities actually do anymore? Just show up and read the lines and the crew takes care of the rest? I'm sorry but that to me isn't a good artist or musician, that's just manufactured branding.
Lol, do you think only pop star music exist? It's actually the contrary that happend. Now, more than ever, anyone can make music. This is a really bad take.
Beauty is, of course, in the eye of the beholder, but this is Richard Goodall. He's a school janitor in my town of Terre Haute, Indiana and he just won America's Got Talent. He will probably have at least a somewhat successful musical career after this. He really blew people away.
I'd like to thank this thread for reminding me to check out some new music. Just today, I have discovered MJ Lenderman and Still House Plants who both seem to be doing some cool stuff that's right up my alley. There's a new Mogwai track released a few days back and Sumac just released an amazing sludge metal album, even though I'm not really into sludge, it might convert me. A quick few image searches shows me that none of them are particularly attractive. Music has always been, and always will be awesome regardless of the physical appeal of the lead singers.
Pop is just as manufactured and fake as it always was, with the exceptional trend setter or two doing their own thing, but what's just below the surface is always just as good as it always was.
As a fan of hardcore, electronica, folk, metal, and all of the genres that fall under them, I still get new bands. I still get new releases. I get cheap as fuck concerts and still get cool merch and awesome vinyls. I have zero to complain about. Hell, Primus, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer just made an album together, in 2024.
Anyone who says music sucks now doesn't really listen to that much music to start with. Music is just fine, man. Maybe look a little deeper than the pudding skin.
Yea that's why metal fuckin rules. We got the ugliest guys ever altogether in one room and said "what you got?" and they became legends
And for anyone that might say that doesn't happen anymore, I ask: how many open mic nights or $20 shows have you been to lately? The scene is doing great in my area, but it doesn't happen by magic. Ya gotta support it, spread the word, bring your friends.
Not really related to that stupid boomer post, but ho crazy is it that that ugly british lady won music star or popstar or whatever and everyone was like: oh my god this is insane, ugly people can do things? They are almost like real people.
I don't think music has gotten any worse. However, it is much easier and cheaper to produce music today: you don't have to be able to play an instrument and professional production is possible with comparatively inexpensive software on any standard computer. This and also the changes in distribution (no more need for sound carriers, ...) have probably led to a lot more music being produced today than in the past. Of course, this does not mean that music has become better as a result, but it also does not mean that it has become worse. You just have to find the gems among the admittedly gigantic amount of junk.
Yeah no, that's just a cranky old guy thought. Just today I was watching fairly average looking people promoting music on late shows. You're probably getting a very thin slice of pop music and ignoring everything else (and hell, even pop breaks that rule sometimes).
Plus, physical beauty and music are both subjective. I try to not get all "old man yells at cloud" about how music "used to be better".
I think music staring going downhill when music was no longer an audio only thing. Once bands were expected to make videos, posters, and "act" on stage, suddenly a lot of musicians had problems getting into the business. They want to make music, not become pseudo-actors.
Marcus King ROCKS and he is not good looking. Charismatic as fuck on stage too.
I think there is about the same proportion of good music to bad as there ever was, you just don't hear the bad music of the past because it didn't last. Survival bias, I think it's called.
Listen to ugly people music (or vtuber music, same thing (na, just kidding around with vtuber insecurities (help I'm trapped inside this nested parenthesis))) nevermind, got out.
Don't forget about the halo effect. Someone on stage doing a killer set is going to seem hotter. When someone is good at one thing, we start to think they're good at everything (where being hot is a thing).