Something occurred to me the other day, regarding pop music, while I was jamming to Michael Jackson's greatest hits in my friend's car. I realized that as a child I loved the albums "Thriller" and "Off the Wall," and that to this day, I still sing and dance along; but I wondered whether I would've liked Michael Jackson as much if I was already older when the albums came out, like in my early twenties?

The only reason I questioned this was because now that I am actually in my twenties, I currently think of pop stars like Britney Spears and Nick Lachey, etc. and am convinced that they suck. I wondered if it's not so much that the 80s pop was better, but that I'm just older.

Then I realized, in the 80s it was not only trendy for twenty-somethings to like pop-music, but the artist were just that, they had actually been proven by coming up through the music world for years (Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson) and wrote their own songs, as well as were fully credited for the creative aspects of their videos.

Side Note -
By the way, liking pop music in the 80s was very trendy. I think mainly because all music seemed limited to big hair rock, dance pop, or Run DMC. Eventually, these early trends would evolve into modern music trends, reshaping pop music concepts.

I started to think back to when the break from pop culture took place, and ultimately, when the shift toward sub-pop culture occurred, bringing about the modern concept of pop music as being fake and selloutish. I realized that it came at some point in the early 90s during the Grunge and Underground Rap movements, with musical acts like Nirvana and Wu-Tang Clan.

Let's face it. These artists couldn't give a damn whether you liked the way they dressed, whether you bought their records, whether the radio stations would play them because their content was to overboard, whether you liked their crazy videos, or if they got signed to any real record label that anyone had heard about or respected.

The other interesting question is - when did that fire burnout leading to the decline into modern pop crap? I think for Grunge, and rock in general, it was when Kurt Cobain died; that was like the equivalent to the Beatles breaking up in the late 60s early 70s. As for Hip-Hop, I think it was when Wu-Tang made their own clothing line, and when rap started to focus much more on material items.

In conclusion, maybe I'm just full-o-@#$%, maybe pop music is purely subjective, and like that gay spectrum psychologist use, which states every one is at least a little gay; maybe pop music somehow also exists as a spectrum where Michael Jackson and Britney Spears are equal in their primes - but I'd like to believe that's not true - Shamone!