alt Hacker NewsI just find a lot of modern music... boring. It feels perfect but just isn't interesting.
In contrast, when I check out older music from less successful musicians, it's often very imperfect; both in that it's boring, but in that there's little talent there.
Or, to translate: Gridification is modern style that doesn't make up for lack of talent; and ironically masks the talent that used to be there.
Related: I suggest checking out some of the newer Lemon Twigs albums. They're decent songwriters and excellent musicians. They went 100% analog on their most recent album, which I initially thought was a gimmick, until I read this article.
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I found that surprisingly many k-pop songs do microtonal shenanigans. Nowhere near most, but it's there. Even something as popular as Boombayah (check the 4th note, it's not an on-tune semitone).
There's also more niche stuff like Flying Microtonal Banana.
"New music's cool, but have you ever heard old music?"
Listen to the first Peppa Pig album and then compare it to one of the more recent ones, maybe the Baby Evie one. The first one I find it hard to get sick of even after my kid's 10th listen. The latter I find insufferable and I only put on one song at a time. Why? The first one sounds organic, the kid singing is far from perfect, and the production is full and rich with some real dynamics in there. The later ones sound more or less AI generated, auto tuned and snapped perfectly to tempo.
Another recommendation is jazz music. Modern music, and especially modern pop music, is incredibly harmonically simple. You rarely hear anything beyond a 7th chord. But step into jazz and all of sudden you're hearing augmented, diminished, and other more complicated chords and sounds that in just a raw way sound more complex and interesting than a lot of modern music. (Classical is even more out there, but that's a harder sell in 2026 unfortunately)