From Queen to Bad Bunny: How music reflects cultural decline

From Queen to Bad Bunny: How music reflects cultural decline

Popular music has moved from demanding prodigious voices and complex instrumental arrangements to rewarding autotune and lip-syncing. This analysis traces a century of the record industry: from labels that allowed artists to work freely to the executives who today impose formulas, image, and choreography. The result is mass production where talent matters less than the algorithm.

The business has changed: from an industry to a hit machine

There was a time when record labels were serious industries, with artistic departments that actually understood music. Executives might not have understood the product, but they let musicians and producers do their thing because they had no choice. As soon as they started learning, the formula arrived: get on stage, wear these clothes, sing this, then get off and go home. One of the Gallagher brothers recalled this anecdote, which summarizes the shift in the business model.

The use of autotune and real-time electronic arrangements has replaced vocal and instrumental quality. Before, a certain level of skill was required; today, a well-staged lip-sync is enough. The consequence is not just aesthetic: people's musical taste has also declined. There are phenomena that become famous without anyone really understanding why.

The boiling frog theory

This degradation was not a sudden jump, but a slope. Mass music reached its zenith in the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s. From that point on, everything began to degenerate toward the current state. It is the argument of the boiling frog: no one notices the change because it happens drop by drop. Each generation believes the previous one was exaggerating. Grandmothers thought the same about the Beatles, coming from the era of the zarzuela (a traditional Spanish lyric-dramatic genre).

Some argue that the process started earlier, with liberalism and the destruction of taboos, and accelerated with the commercialization of music. Others place the point of no return in 2004: cinema, television, music, and customs supposedly entered a phase of lower quality. The exact date is debatable; the direction is not.

Reggaeton as a symptom, not a cause

Reggaeton is not the problem; it is the thermometer. It is being given a relevance it does not possess: it is like the Caribbean Mix tapes from the year 2000, but elevated to the status of a cultural movement. The difference with Queen is one of usage: Queen is played at home to listen to something high-quality; the other is played at a party where the music doesn't matter at all. That is the distance.

The industry also plays with demographics. It is argued that reggaeton was pushed from the top in Spain during the property bubble, much like eurodance with Eastern European singers accompanied another migratory flow. Music is just another medium of propaganda, shaped according to the needs of the era. One does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to see the pattern.

Talent still exists, but it is out of the spotlight

All is not lost. Joe Bonamassa has released an album every year since 2000, and in these parts, almost nobody knows him. Muse has more quality in a single track than in the entire reggaeton discography combined. The problem is not an absence of talent, but the public's inability to distinguish it. The mono-neuronal masses do not seek quality; they seek easy money.

Internet, which for 90% of people is TikTok, has served others to discover unreleased works by Vangelis or the discography of Arvo Pärt. The tool is the same; the use is opposite. Staying on the sidelines of the masses is not that difficult, but it requires renouncing the prevailing dogma of bad taste.

The comparison no one makes: ticket prices and fees

There is one piece of data missing that would settle the debate: the ticket prices and the musicians' fees in the two compared concerts. If Freddie Mercury filled stadiums with a voice that hit every note perfectly, and Bad Bunny fills them with lip-syncing, the difference in cost for the spectator should be the proof. No one has put it on the table.

The business has changed owners. Before, the artistic director discovered talent; today, the algorithm manufactures it. The question is not whether music was better in the past, but whether the current system allows anything better to exist. The answer, for now, is that it is not interested.

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Given these circumstances, it is to be expected that the gap between consumer music and quality music will widen. Not because talent is scarce, but because economic incentives reward the opposite. The prediction is uncomfortable: what seems to be the bottom today may only be an intermediate stage.