A discussion about the 1990s UK kids' TV show, Biker Grove, leads to the topic of its most famous alumni: Ant and Dec. Michael explains that the now-famous presenters are so inseparable they even appear on screen in alphabetical order, with Ant always on the left and Dec on the right. This was a revelation for Hannah, who didn't know who they were before moving to the UK.

The conversation then shifts to the duo's brief music career as their characters, PJ and Duncan, who released a rap album. Michael jokingly calls this the peak of music.

Okay, now, I want you to imagine the whitest rappers you've ever seen, right? Make them whiter, younger, and with worse lyrics. That was the peak of music, in my opinion.

Hannah disagrees, suggesting music actually peaked with artists like the Spice Girls or Alanis Morissette. This sparks a debate about Morissette's song "Ironic," with Michael repeating the common criticism that the situations she describes aren't ironic. Hannah offers a counter-argument, suggesting the irony lies not in the events themselves, but in the line that follows: "life has a funny way of helping you out."

To further his point about the questionable quality of 90s music, Michael shares an anecdote about two British music producers. They made a bet to see if they could get the worst possible song into the charts. The result was a girl group called Vanilla and their song "No Way, No Way," which reached number 14. Hannah concedes the song might be objectively bad, but argues it succeeded as a conversation starter, which is one purpose of music.

Attempts to objectively rank the best musical decades often fail because the data can be manipulated to produce any desired answer. Studies claiming to use data on popularity, lyrics, or melodic complexity frequently contradict one another.

This raises a philosophical question that has been debated for centuries: what does "best" truly mean? Some, like Gottfried Leibniz, argued that if we can agree on things of great beauty, like Mozart's music, there must be a definable, measurable quality that makes one thing objectively better than another. However, all attempts to find such a universal measure have failed. A famous example is when the world-renowned violinist Joshua Bell played his 3.5 million dollar Stradivarius in a subway station as a busker. The night before, people paid hundreds of dollars to see him perform. Yet in the subway, almost no one stopped to listen, and he only collected about $32. If there were an objective measure of the best musician playing the best instrument, people surely would have noticed.

This suggests that context is crucial. The same performance can be perceived differently depending on the setting. What a person wants to hear while waiting for a train is very different from their expectations at a concert hall.

A really bad violinist just being ridiculous on the subway. That's actually pretty cool. I would record that. I'd tell my friends. But if I bought $600 tickets to see a concert and that happened, it would actually be pretty amusing as well. But I might be more upset. Bad violinists are always good. Whereas good ones, they gotta be careful. Don't be good in the wrong place, or you'll be bad, you'll be forgettable.

Since an objective measure of overall quality seems impossible, one alternative is to measure specific, agreed-upon properties of music. For instance, a study published in Nature analyzed 12,000 songs from the 1970s to the present. It found that music has become simpler over time, with less complex lyrics and more repetition. The study also found that lyrics have become more negative and more egotistical, with a rising use of words like "me," "mine," and "I." This finding was particularly popular with those who already believed that music was better in their youth.

Studies have found that pop music often reflects the socioeconomic status of a society. When times are tough, music gets sadder, and when things are going well, it becomes more optimistic. However, it's worth questioning whether this is a direct causal link. Instead of people consciously writing morose songs about the economy, other factors could be at play, such as shifts in technology.

For instance, the rise of laptops coincided with the financial crisis, enabling more people than ever to create music. This democratization of music production is a key factor. When critiquing a study that analyzed 12,000 songs over 40 years, it was noted that the timeframe is too short to identify long-term patterns, essentially just tracking a couple of generations. At the same time, 12,000 songs is too large a sample size if it includes music that isn't part of the popular zeitgeist.

By the time you analyze that many songs, you're looking at songs that do not represent the state of music in popular culture. They're not the zeitgeist.

This democratization of music isn't a new phenomenon. An oral history from the 1977 New York blackout tells a similar story. During the blackout, people looted stereo equipment, and the next day, there was an explosion of new musicians, DJs, and MCs. This pattern repeated with digital technology like GarageBand and platforms like YouTube, which removed the traditional gatekeepers of the music industry.

Previously, getting a record deal was the only way to reach an audience. Now, anyone can create music in their bedroom and distribute it online. This fundamentally changes the data pool for any study on music trends. An analogy explains this well: it's as if we used to only taste food from a great restaurant, but now we sample food from every restaurant, food truck, and even trash cans. To then conclude that food, on average, doesn't taste as good anymore is a flawed interpretation.

In 1970, you couldn't pick up a whole bunch of songs from every SoundCloud artist in their bedroom because that didn't exist.

There are several psychological reasons why people believe the music from their youth was objectively better. One is "rosy retrospection," our tendency to remember things more fondly than we experienced them at the time. Another key factor is the "reminiscence bump," a well-documented phenomenon where people over 40 recall a disproportionately large number of memories from between the ages of 10 and 30. This period coincides with significant brain development, as the brain doesn't fully mature until around age 25.

Novelty also plays a crucial role. When you are young, experiences are new and feel incredibly significant, making them more memorable. As you age, you've "been around the block," and fewer experiences feel fresh. This is compounded by "consensus bias," the tendency to think others share our beliefs, which is more common in older people who feel their life experience gives them a better grasp of reality. These factors combine to make us prefer the music our brains matured to, and to believe that our preference is a universal truth.

Ultimately, the music from that era becomes the soundtrack to our most formative experiences—our first kiss, first car, or first time in a club. These songs get physically etched into our brains along with the powerful emotions of those moments.

When it hit that period of time when I was 9 to 10 years old, the way the songs made me feel shifted so dramatically. Instead of just being a really great song, it became a song that represented this feeling of my eyes getting wider, entering the world and listening to the radio. And to popular music and being part of the world. I'm peeking through the crack of childhood into the real world. And that kind of experience, of course, it imprints onto my mind forever.

When considering if music is getting worse, it's clear there's no objective measure for a song's worth. More is at play than just artistic talent. People tend to have more memories from their teenage years and twenties, which can make them remember things from the past as being better than they were. Music from this formative period imprints on us as part of a journey we only take once.

There's also a modern obsession with progress and innovation. We expect a constant evolution in music, similar to the shift from acoustic to electric guitars. This expectation can be a fiction. We often define current music by its relation to the past, categorizing artists by their influences and genres. When new music doesn't fit the patterns we're used to, we might conclude it's getting worse. This reflects a broader tendency to see past events and changes as more significant than what's happening now. An older person who lived through the invention of airplanes might still find the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge more impressive because it was more relevant to their worldview at the time. We apply a similar "back in my day" lens to music.

Cultural conditioning also plays a massive role in our musical taste. An MIT study illustrates this perfectly. They played two chords for a remote Amazonian tribe with little exposure to Western music. One chord, C and G, is considered pleasant in Western culture, while another, C and F sharp, is historically called "the devil in music." To the tribe, both were just noise. This suggests our preferences are learned, not innate. We are most comfortable in a sweet spot between the boringly familiar and the radically new.

Social proof is another powerful factor. A study by computational social scientist Matt Salganick created a music platform where users could listen to and rank songs. He found that while a truly exceptional song would almost always become popular, most rankings were heavily influenced by what users saw other people listening to. People's preferences were shaped by the perceived popularity of the songs. What we like is often not just about the sound itself, but about what we believe others find important.

The belief that music is getting worse often aligns with a broader feeling that society itself is in decline. A study found that negativity and first-person pronouns have increased in songs, making them seem more egotistical. This trend in music is a reflection of a larger societal shift. It has become more socially acceptable to be negative, to criticize, and to speak openly about personal feelings and journeys. Music is not leading this change; it is simply following the cultural evolution that has already occurred.

Another significant factor is the changing structure of the music industry. Artists now have a direct line to their listeners. If a musician is having a difficult time, they can create a song about it and release it immediately. They no longer need to persuade a panel of executives that their personal and perhaps negative song will connect with a wide audience.