I'm tired of the attitude that everything today is bad and everything in the past was better.
So am I, but I understand it.
There is plenty of good music, but it's not in the mainstream anymore. Radio rock is all uninspiring rock with no real vocal hooks or catchy riffs, lots of heaviness but no substance. Avenged Sevenfold and bands of that like are quite boring to me. And pop music is now a bunch of girls who all sound similar, sing about the same inane stuff, and use the same software to make up their forgettable dance-beat backing tracks.
Compare that to say, Michael Jackson. Billie Jean is a fantastic pop song, and I'm not one who even likes pop usually. And the lyrics are actually really heavy commentary, which is not something I'd ever expect out of Katy Perry with her dancing sharks.
But there is a lot of really good music out there; you find it around the internet and if you pay attention to the live music scene. Whatever it is you like personally, it's out there and it's only a few keystrokes away.
And if there is a good college radio statio n near you there is another cool place to find good off-the-wall music. For some reason, despite the fact that there are several big universities in DC we don't have any college radio stations here, except for WPFW 89.3 which is a really cool jazz station loaded with some crazy politics. I listen to it often.
And even the mainstream occasionally scores a good one. Gnarls Barkley has had a couple of decent pop tunes on radio, although that's not my thing.