[meitham]

As a father of young teens I find some of the music quite disturbing and borderline soft porn. Music in the 70s/80s were more about romance, today is more about sex and drugs. I agree with article about the correlation between society in decline and I see the nature of music as one of the signals.

[defrost]

I've always been fond of that 1920s foxtrot classic that celebrated stripping down past clothing to enter into a vertical expression of a horizontal desire, Tain't No Sin

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq69ioCrX9U - George Olsen and his Music ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9bW4qauva8 - Lee Morse )

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (is all my brain and body need) by Ian Dury was originally released as a Stiff Records single on 26 August 1977.

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfp8xrNAS6I it has a nice piano break )

Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine by by James Brown with Bobby Byrd backing was released in 1970.

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VDzezv7atU .. oh, those crazy russians )

Roll that forward 30 years ... TISM- Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me the only single off The White Albun (2004).

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENnAa7rqtBM .. it's all cute rabbits animated by a future Walt Disney Studios animation director )

Hardly The Decline & Fall ...

[meitham]

I agree there were always be examples like that, but my point is kids hardly had any exposure to these, whereas kids feel entitled to listen to explicit music nowadays and when you try as a parent to enforce rules everyone else seem to say "it's okay, all kids do that", it's never okay to let kids watch or listen to these explicit Nicky Minaj or Dojo Cat songs, and I will always speak against it.

[lynx97]

I am sure there is a ton of people that used more or less your exact words 55 years ago when talking about The Doors, for instance...

Are you sure what you're feeling isn't basically a generic knee-jerk reaction many parents have when trying to shield their kids from sex?

[mdp2021]

There will also be people that identified the "Harlem Shuffle" (1963) as a gem worth of respect, "Lick my Love Pump (Trilogy in D-minor)" (1984?) as joke worth of warmth, and "I want to #### you in the ###" (~2000) as rubbish.

...With good points.

[conorjh]

every generation that has ever been has said society is in decline. what makes you correct?

[meitham]

isn't that the defintion of decline? when every generation see morales falling slowly one generation a time?

[IsTom]

You can as easily find music about romance about now as you could find sexually charged music back in 70s. It's about what you look for. Hell, in 70s disco culture was a thing.

[rsynnott]

> Music in the 70s/80s were more about romance

> today is more about sex and drugs

I mean I think you're just being very selective about, well, both eras.

There were plenty of lyrics about sex and drugs in the 70s and 80s. Some of them quite disturbing (I'm still slightly traumatised by Spotify serving me what I _thought_ was "Ca plane pour moi" but was actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_Boy,_Jet_Girl a while back - it's the same tune, but... very different lyrics). And there's plenty of fluff in the 21st century.

[specproc]

The best music is about sex and drugs.

Edit below to respond to that downvote and expand on my comment in the context of parent.

The best music is about sex and drugs, implicitly or explicitly. Perhaps the parent is worried about their children's exposure to the best bits of youth, fair enough, but I'd totally counter that the music of the 70s and 80s was in any way unconcerned with such things.

In the late 60s/70s Marvin Gaye was not being in the slightest bit coy when he suggested him and his lady should "Get it on", nor were Black Sabbath shy about their love for the Sweet Leaf. There's the Beatles with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Donna Summer was into Hot Stuff, Frank Zappa was filthy and deeply offensive by today's standards, and there's anything by ACDC. Clapton's singing about cocaine, Lou Reed is singing about heroin, reggae is huge and hugely into ganja.

And the eighties, ho-boy. You've got Prince, the Red Hot Chili Peppers (back when they were good), even more ACDC, Madonna was pretty raunchy back in the day. White Lines and the thin White Duke, Golden Brown, Passing the Dutchy pon the Left Hand Side. I'm getting exhausted just thinking about it all.

You're really going to have to justify the late 20th century as some sort of heyday of romantic and innocent music.

[mdp2021]

From the article:

> Specifically, the confusion of the genre system disturbed the means for the proper release of the soul’s passions, causing audiences to be ruled instead by their unfettered emotions and impulses

I.e.: there are more ways to tackle the same topic, to develop an artistic work about some area. And there are progressive and regressive experiences. The topic is clearly too hefty to be summarize here - but the very submission has several points of "progressive vs regressive" expression as its theme...

If the poster writes «quite disturbing», probably he means that "the progressive is not there" (as sensible interpretation).