alt Hacker NewsTo a degree that was a sentiment, for sure. But many of us just like good music no matter what shape and size it comes in. Some of us even like bad music. I listen to a lot of bad music. I make a lot of bad music, too. But I'm having fun and I like to see other people have fun and even make money doing it.
When I was 5 I had every Backstreet Boys CD. I had Backstreet Boys action figures from Burger King. I love the Spice Girls and stadium bands like Pink Floyd. They stay on rotation. And I also really love finding the most obscure music possible and frequently dive into old, obscure artists, particularly folk and early electronic music. I love hearing masterpieces that have gone unnoticed for decades. I love hearing some stranger's brand new shitty song with 20 views on YouTube. My algorithm knows this too and very frequently shows me videos that are 10 minutes old with 5 views from accounts with a dozen subscribers. All of these things bring me different joys.
The line is when a celebrity starts actively hawking harmful things to everyday people. Doing a Pepsi commercial is a sellout move. But I still listen to the Jackson 5 all the time. It's good music.
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I'm not talking about the existence of individual anecdotes, I'm talking broadly as a culture because this is a comment section for a blog post about culture. I was an adult working in the music industry in the 1990s.
By and large if you were part of the indie music scene it was incredibly common to consider anything in mainstream commercial music "not cool." Boy bands were reviled for it, and people felt strongly about it.
From a cultural standpoint much of this sentiment has been lost entirely. This is part of the change the author is talking about.
If you had every Backstreet Boys CD when you were 5, you are probably not a reliable narrator of the zeitgeist of Michael Jackson in the early 1980s. :)