What passes for “music” and/or “talent” today is nothing more than a pathetic shadow of what it once was. With a few notable exceptions—Adele, Alicia Keyes, Christina Aguilera, and John Legend come to mind (along with a few others)—today’s musical offerings by the younger generation, in a word sucks! Badly. Most of today’s music, lacks the heart, the soul, and the substance of [the] artists of my and previous generations (The Beatles, Jackie Wilson, Fleetwood Mac, Earth, Wind, & Fire, and Hall & Oates to name a few). Today’s pop music is really nothing more than the end product of an assembly line process where television audiences vote via the latest reality TV submission to the devolving tastes and sophistication of the American public. “Pop stars” are now made, and are no longer accidentally discovered cleaning music studios or singing on a street corner. The hard work of aspiring singers working hard and rising through the ranks of already established singers has been replaced by those seeking singing for the sake of fame…or those awarded record deals simply because they were somehow connected to the current flavor of the month who happened to luck into pop music notoriety True talent of previous generations, symbolized by those who could actually play an instrument as well as sing, has been supplanted by those who simply belt out notes in a limitedly appealing manner…which we often see on the latest episode of TheNextGreatTalentedAmerican-WorldIdol. Simply said, there is a marked difference between the singing of yesteryear, and the bellowing and crooning of today’s group of “talent.” Pop music itself—and especially the videos associated with current acts—has become soft porn. The notions of love and lyrically praising those who make us feel loved have been replaced by sexual innuendos bellowed out by half-dressed “stars” (ditto) who forget that while sex sells music, true talent sells itself. Rap, a musical vehicle once heralded because of its social and political relevance to the times, has been substituted by new brand of rap offered by Southern “rappers” (to use the term loosely). They have managed to turn a once socially musically relevant art form it into an exercise in lyrically-gratuitous chest-beating by wannabe alpha males with something to prove to the world, set to repetitive beats, an equally repetitive (not to mention senseless) promotion of sex, profanity, money, getting high, and all things associated with guns. And R&B music is marginally hanging on by a thread when it comes to talented young people offering something musically substantive, buttressed only by the arrival on the scene of neo-soul artists…who not surprisingly do not receive as much airplay and notoriety as rappers and most other pseudo-artists. Predictably, most of these younger people defend the fact that their music caters to and promotes the worst aspects of society by asserting that they are just “talking about real life.” Well, a bowel movement is a part of “real life” also, but I don’t hear any of these youngsters rapping or singing about it. They simply don't or won't see that they are catering to the lowest common denominator in social mores and values. In earlier generations, we didn’t have to turn the radio dial to find good music; it was there the minute you turned your radio on!