What was the worst year for popular music?

Pick any year this century.

 

Appetite For Destruction technically came out in July 1987, though it didn't really break big until the following summer when "Sweet Child O' Mine" was released as a single/video.

 

"Ghostbusters" and "Masters of the Universe" for me. And the NES ran non-stop on the weekends and during summer vacation.

 

The first calendar year after I started to yell at those kids to turn that noise down.

 

In the mid-to-late 60s there seemed to be a feeling that pop/rock music was getting better every year (after 1963).

As I remember it, 1973 was the first year there was a general consensus that things had taken a step backward.

 

Saw something on Facebook earlier today that read, "It's not that I'm getting old. Your music actually just sucks." Thought it was apropos of this thread.

 

1895.

 

I was born in 1976, but I saw the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in theaters. Twice. Also bought the soundtrack.
Saw the second one once. Me and my two friends were the only ones in the theater.
Once owned the soundtrack for the third, but have never seen it. I just bought it for that Baltimora song.

 

I would make a strong case for 1962.

Many of the great rockers of the 50s were either sellouts (Elvis), dead (Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran) or in deep trouble with the law (Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis).

The great British bands that revolutionized popular music in the mid-60s were still in their infancy and the great soul labels (Stax/Volt, Motown, Atlantic) were still on the fringes of popular music, although '62 did see the release of "Green Onions," the groundbreaking hit single by Booker T and the MGs.

But for the most part, pop music in 1962 was dominated by white-bread singers like Pat Boone and doo wop groups that just didn't have much to offer. There was some good music being made that year by Bob Dylan and other folk artists, and there was some excellent jazz being played at the time, but I would hesitate to include them as popular music.

 

1997. It gave us "MMMBop," four minutes and one second of aural torture that I believe was used interchangeably with waterboarding. This was also the year in which the Spice Girls hit their peak, such as it was, and "Barbie Girl" was a top-10 hit. It was the year that drove me from popular music forever. I couldn't tell this generation if their music sucks, because I've barely paid attention to anything made since then.

 

The mid- to late Nneties were it for me, too. I started listening to pop music pretty steadily at age 3-4 in about 1961-62, and kept up pretty well up to Green Day, but lost contact after that.

I've got a nephew 15 and a niece 13, and when I ask them which groups or artists are big with th their friends, I've barely heard of 95% of them.

I would suppose the near-simultaneous collapse of video music and AOR-format rock radio probably something to do with it, too. The cancer-spread of fecal-quality reality teevee dogshit literally chased video music off the airwaves.

 

I love listening to the Back in the Day replay on Sirius XM 90s channel on the weekend. It's night in my wheelhouse ('92 HS grad/'96 college). I annoy my wife by trying to nail the top 10 of a certain countdown before we get there. Stumbled on the top 30 of '96 a couple weeks ago. It was unlistenable, and for someone with admittedly shitty taste, that's saying something.