Rick Beato further mourns the decline of rock and pop music

February 12, 2026 • 11:45 am

Yep, here I go again pointing out the decline in the quality of rock and pop music. But this time I’m joined by the music maven Rick Beato, who has always had the same opinion.  In this video he compares music from 1984 vs. 2025, juxtaposing the Grammy nominees for Song of the Year from both years. Save for one song, he finds the 2026 nominees lame, so there’s no contest. Music, he argues implictly, has gone downhill in the past four decades.

I’ll list the nominees and make some comments below. The winner for both years is is at the top. My own comments are flush left.

1984

Song of the Year

Had I voted, there would be no hesitation in my dubbing “Billie Jean” as Song of the Year, but all of these songs, as Beato agrees, are good and memorable. They will last, and will still be popular years from now (they’re still listened to 42 years later!).

*******************

2026 (winner was announced on Feb. 1)

Song of the Year

Beato finds “Wildflower” the best for this year; it is, he says, a “great song”. (This is Eilish’s tenth Grammy.)  While I don’t think it’s great, it is very good, and miles above all the other nominees. And it won. I’ll put it below. He simply dismisses the other seven songs, though a few have some merit, like being “well produced.”

The reasons Beato finds this year’s songs worse are that they are in general lame, derivative, often include many songwriters (too many writers spoil the song), and sometimes include sampling from older songs.

In contrast, only one of the 1984 songs has more than one writer, and all include the singer as a composer.  (Note that one one is by Bad Bunny, and Beato can’t understand the words!)  Beato’s takeaway is that nobody will remember songs written by so many people, and nobody will remember these latest songs more than three years from now.

Beato:

“Wildflower,” live with Billie Eilish (the official release is here, and the lyrics are here). The only accompaniments are a guitar, bass, two sets of drums, and three backup singers.

5 thoughts on “Rick Beato further mourns the decline of rock and pop music”

  1. Yes, the mystery continues…

    But

    Mystery is good!

    I hope Beato applies this treatment to Classical one day. These Great Old Performers (Heifetz, van Cliburn, to name a few…) vs. now – there is gorgeous stuff – incredible performer sound, exquisite recordings – but – how much bit-tweaking is going on?!

    IMHO/nutshell : has something to do with the audience sadly not needing live performance anymore.

    Good thing is, to find out, all you gotta do is listen!

    🎼🎶

    … oh also, the 1984 nominees might have put the song together with their band or producer, but left them off the credits because it was not a big deal all ’round the room, IDK 🤔

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  2. My wife keeps up with contemporary music. I don’t know how she does it. It all seems much of a muchness to me, and not a lot of it stands out. The lyrics are banal and the recordings themselves are so overproduced that you can’t tell what’s the artist and what’s the machine. The more I hear it, the more I dig into older music.

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  3. I very much like Rick Beato.
    A couple years ago he had a YT video where he recounts how the popular music industry went downhill thru the passing of legislation during the Clinton admin. As I recall, a bill was passed that de-regulated the industry, and what happened was that a few super rich families did the following.
    1. They bought up a large % of the local radio stations across the US. This consolidation I believe has continued since then. There are not many truly independent stations left.
    2. They also bought up music studios. So now they had control over both what music would be publicly broadcasted, and quite a lot of what popular music was going to be made. What you would hear on the radio was what they had produced, and what they broadcast is according to a rigid algorithm. Meanwhile, artists that were not connected are relegated to other means to be heard.
    3. They fired the staff and re-structured the radio stations and music studios. Stations would play music that was permitted, often on the same rotation schedule, and there is now less chance for a new and unconnected artist to be heard on the radio. The music studios were staffed with their pick of musicians, and they aren’t very good and so they are cheap! This is part why the music is dumbed down and repetitive. It is also why you hear the same damn electronic loops in song after song.
    The ‘deciders’ about what you hear don’t care about high quality. They don’t care about art. They only care about maximum profit.

    I wish I can find the link to Beatos’ rant. But that is the gist of it as I recall it.

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  4. There is still good stuff being produced, but yes the mainstream (literal sense) is far more mainstream (pejorative sense) than ever before.

    I remember at the time thinking that 1984 was a big step back from the musical golden age of 1977-83.

    IIRC the guitar line in EBYT is largely down to Andy Summers, and there is now a dispute over royalties etc. Rather sad.

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