Here's the thing.. WHile all those awful songs were on the radio - on tv - or otherwise charting, so was decent, talented music.
The 90s was littered with teen-bop crap like boybands and spice girls and mouseketeer starlets, but bands like Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews (in his prime), Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Bjork, Beck, Tool, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Radiohead, REM, Smashing Pumpkins, Metallica and Guns N Roses (before either were joke), BLind Melon, Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine, and so forth got on the air..
What's rock now? "Sail" and 20 Black keys knock off bands? - none of which, including the Black Keys can make a solid, front to back album. Oh and forgettable generic crap like Caged the Elephant.
As far as rap goes - 80s and 90s had a much wider vareity of rap in the popular sphere - things like Public Enemy and KRS-One ended up on air, spiritual or conscious music became #1 hits by people like Joe public or Arrested Development, and it wasn't written off as some "white boy backpacking underground bullshit". It charted. Tracks that favored lyricism like MC Serch and Nas and Busta Rhymes charted. Now every single time people talk about "talent" and substance in mainstream hip hop it's this endless circlejerk about Kendrick Lamar. Congrats. Your generation has a whole one person to save an entire genre in the pop sphere.
When it comes to pop - when it comes to radio, tv, and new internet mediums where what is and what isn't pop is decided - where's the variety? Where's the rock? where's the rap with lyricism and substance?
Did crappy dance music always exist? Sure. Did dumb 2 minute, hook heavy love songs always exist? Sure. Has sex always sold? Absolutely. But I would also argue that the pop-sphere has been increasingly sexualized with every passing generation. The crap people like Shakira, Beyonce, Rihanna, Minaj, the twerking craze and everything else being pulled has nothing on the 80s, strip club loving, glam metal era. It makes all sexuality that came before look innocent and like child's play.
But for every moron who throws around " /r/lewronggeneration " to point out some nostaliga bias - there's 5 of your mother fuckers who act like every generation is exactly the same as the one before it, that trends, that markets never change. You're just as biased by thinking everything new glitters and that everything now is relatively no different than what came before it (two thoughts that live in contradiction i might add). ignoring shifts in trends, ignoring shifts in market is just as blind. In your rabid defense of the now you intentionally succumb to a willfull ignorance just to double down on stupid.