Billboard, Bach, and Bad Songs: Are The Hot 100s Worse Than Before?

“Music just isn’t what it used to be”

If you’ve lived on this planet for long enough, you’ve probably heard someone — your wistful parents, your pretentious jazz-obsessed roommate, or even your inner-contrarian — echo this all-too-familiar sentiment before. Beyond serving as a dubious badge of cultural sophistication, it’s a proclamation that implies a widespread regression in the quality of music as an art form, and by extension, our collective ability as a society to appreciate and cultivate this art.

In some ways, it can be easy to understand why: The charts seem to be cluttered with consumerist filler. Autotune — an often misunderstood and mischaracterized tool — has never been more prevalent, and songs themselves seem to be shrinking into bite-sized TikTok jingles.

At first glance, the entire medium can look less like an art form and more like a factory line, churning out glossy commodities masquerading as art. But this cynicism collapses quickly when you realize that the same accusations were levelled at every “golden age” of music, each flooded with their fair share of mediocrity. Dismissing music on these grounds isn’t just cultural critique; it’s lazy nostalgia.

“The Hot 100 sucks. I don’t even know any of these songs.”

For more than a century, charts — in particular, America’s Billboard Hot 100 — have reigned as music’s “scoreboard,” supposedly dictating the taste of the general public. These charts, which rank the most streamed, downloaded, and radio-played songs of any given week, can shape — and sometimes warp — our perception of what’s important. Given the prestige and fame that is inextricably bound up with an artist’s chart performance, it’s no surprise that we’ve become conditioned to perceive these rankings as a universal indicator of quality, appeal, and cultural importance.

But the truth is simpler — and much less glamorous.

The Hot 100 is not supposed to be a symbol for artistry or taste. It’s a business metric, reflecting what labels and companies successfully market, not what the public loves most deeply.

This notion isn’t shocking or new. Music is, and will always be, a business. Some of Bach’s most famous works, including the Brandenburg Concertos, were composed to appease wealthy patrons, just as countless modern hits are engineered for algorithms and clicks. The songs that dominate the charts are not necessarily the best “art” — they’re the best products.

“Pop music all sounds the same.”

We are not the first generation to hate popular music. And we are certainly not the first generation to frame our disdain as evidence for cultural decline. In fact, the rejection of anything and everything “popular” has birthed most of the artists and genres we now celebrate.

In the ’50s, rock exploded as a rejection of jazz, pop, and post-war consumer culture at large. In the ’80s, hip-hop emerged as a counterpoint to mainstream, commercially controlled music and the cultural exclusion of marginalized communities. Even today, we are seeing an entire generation of indie artists seek to distance themselves from the highly commercialized, sanitized music that dominates radio waves and streaming playlists.

What we call “popular” has always been a synonym for “basic,” “safe,” or “manufactured.” But when people long for the “popular” music of the past, they often forget that this “old” music has been selectively filtered for our benefit. Just like the formulaic, bland songs currently crowding the charts, much of the Motown assembly-line music from the ’60s and commercialized disco hits from the ’70s has been relegated to the periphery of cultural memory.

There were bad songs then, just as there are now — we’re simply stuck enduring the bad songs of today.

“Music doesn’t bring people together anymore”

Yet paradoxically, music is more embedded in daily life than ever. According to The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the average person spends over 20 hours a week listening to music, making it the art form with the most global engagement. That’s more time than most people spend talking to their parents.

But despite this ubiquity, it can still feel like we are less “united” by music compared to previous generations. And quite frankly, that might be because we simply don’t listen to the same music anymore.

The dramatic evolution in the way we consume music — from primarily live performances, to physical vinyl, cassette tapes and CDs, to the current digital streaming era — has allowed us to expand our tastes in mere seconds. Whereas listening to new music once meant committing to ownership — whether through buying a concert ticket, record, or CD — there is no longer a financial cost associated with trying a new genre.

Even the creation of music has radically democratized. Where once you needed a royal patron in the Baroque era, or enough money to afford studio equipment in the 20th century, today anyone with a laptop and an internet connection can share their music with the world.

And whilst this immediacy and accessibility may make music less “special,” it has ultimately created one of the most diverse musical landscapes we have ever seen. Even if commercial music can feel formulaic and trite, the majority of songs and artists have become truly “genre-less,” unable to be categorized by any defining element.

There is no doubt that we are entering a scary age of music. Especially with the proliferation of generative AI and the recent signing of the first “AI artist” on a multi-million dollar record deal, it’s understandable that people in both the industry and general public feel uneasy about the future of music.

However, the idea that “music is dying” is the most recycled lie in human history. Music has been declared dead for centuries. And yet, here it is — louder, more accessible, and more diverse than ever.