Many people will swear on their lives that "nothing can beat the classics" or that "the oldies are superior to anything produced today." The main issue with this way of thinking is that "the oldies" that we listen to are still being listened to for a reason; they were the best songs from that time period. There are old songs, from the era of The Beatles and Micheal Jackson, even from the era of Mozart, that were genuinely bad songs. We just don't know about them- or listen to them- because, they were bad songs. It is this simple logic that some people cannot seem to grasp that leads to this thinking that the quality of music has some how degraded over the years.
To make a fair comparison, one must choose two songs of equal caliber in their own time period. Far too often, to show the degradation of music over time, people will put the lyrics from a Rolling Stones song next to those of a Ke$ha song. Obviously, this is not at all an accurate comparison. People do this, of course, to prove their own biased opinion, but, if one would compare the lyrics of say, Rick Astley to the modern Cold Play, they would likely find different results. This is why comparing the quality of music over time by sampling two songs of different time periods is often faulty- because you can so easily manipulate the outcome- because, the quality of music hasn't changed over time.
Another problem with discussing the supposed degradation of the quality of music over time is that the criteria for "good music" is incredibly subjective. One person's "good" is Nikki Minaj while another person's "good" is The Beatles. Also, the ideas of "good" will change over time, so this adds to the unfairness of the comparison as well.
So, my conclusion is, music is not better, or worse than it used to be. The quality of music has not changed significantly over time, at all.
To prove this point with examples (because this assignment requires it- not because I think that comparing two songs for their quality is at all accurate) I've chosen two songs- equally bad, in my opinion, to illustrate that music has not, in fact changed over time.
"True Colours" -Cyndi Lauper
"Tear Drops on My Guitar" - Taylor Swift
As you can see by the above examples, whiny, mainstream pop music has always been bad! The quality has not improved or degraded over time. Music is just as good (or bad) as it's always been.
