Is it the ease with which music can now be made or was it my ageing ear? Is it an overcrowded market full of similar-sounding singers or my nostalgic preferences that muffle the sound? Whatever the reason, I can’t seem to tolerate much of modern music. I spend more time changing radio channels than listening to songs and I’ve reached the stage where I can’t distinguish one artist from another. And before I start to sound too much like Noel Gallagher, I am acutely aware of the vast array of talent that exists (I bow down to you Queen Bey), it’s just that it fails to either excite or inspire me.

It’s the recurring debate from one generation to the next of “kids today don’t know good music”. Where I fit in this debate is questionable. I am not officially old but, by the same token, I am not young. I grew up with music of the nineties, matured to music of the noughties and now find myself without a place in the current wave of music. Tastes and sensibilities inevitably change as we age but I appear to be lost in a time goneby with no hope of finding myself humming to a song released in the past decade.

Where nostalgia comes in is interesting. How much do memories and association affect our biases? Undoubtedly a lot. I can’t help but feel instantly reassured when I hear the likes of Crowded House, REM or The Lighthouse Family. As a child of the 90s, the music of that era provided the soundtrack to the safety that comes along with childhood. It’s impossible to demand that kind of emotional response from chart music that carries no subconscious weight. But, equally, I sense that the music of the time offered a richer variety and, dare I say it, more substance. Again, this feels more like a hunch than anything rooted in evidence.

Perhaps a more accurate lens to view this is through the concept of popular music. I took this opportunity to delve into the charts of 1993 – a now frightening 30 years ago – to assess what kind of music was selling records.  The charts were cross-pollinated with music genres and what was popular was seemingly everything. You could rock out to Aerosmith, groove with Boys II Men, sulk to Radiohead and get down with Snoop Dog. Will Smith and Haddaway offered some guilt-free cheese with hits like ‘Boom! Shake the Room’ and ‘What is Love?’ while Power ballads were ripe for the picking with Whitney and Meatloaf taking centre stage. And, if that all felt a bit too cliché, there was Beck’s ‘Loser’ to indifferently nod along to. It was like the wild west of music where anything could happen.

Switch to 2023 and I don’t hear the same breadth being offered by popular music. There appears to be a preference for a neutral shade of music dominated by the likes of Swift, Sheeran and Styles. Music never seems to hit a crescendo – that chord of feeling.  It exists in a lull where I can’t seem to derive any kind of excitement or participation. A recognisably oversimplified and subjective view liked to be rebuffed by many. It is entirely possible that music I might enjoy does exist just not at the flick of a radio station. It’s a song from The Revivalists that might catch me off-guard through Spotify’s Smart Shuffle – not the mainstream pop that garners the attention of a younger listener because, let’s face it, most pop music isn’t made to impress the over 35s. It wreaks of youth and messages that we can no longer relate to. That passion for music that is rife in our teens fades as we reach a point in our lives where we do not have time to keep up with the latest trends. We’re inherently stuck in the past because it’s easier for us to stay there singing along to the same old tunes.

While it might be easy for me to attribute what I perceive to be a sameness in sound to a lack of diversity, it might have less to do with the music itself and more about my age. Evidence suggests that the brain’s ability to make subtle distinctions between different chords and other musical elements gets worse with age. In effect, this means when I confuse Lewis Capaldi with James Arthur, it has nothing to do with their voice or song-style but simply because my old ears cannot process music in the same way they did as a youth.  It’s a far more plausible explanation than an entire generation of music lovers having bad taste. Equally, it must be acknowledged that I have a true layman’s ear. There is not a musical bone in it.

As to my opening questions – it seems it is a combination all of the above. The music industry is more flooded than ever making it inevitable that artists will bear similarities and ease of production will allow lesser “talent” to reach the mainstream. Similarly, what is “popular” is not an accurate reflection of all modern music being made. It just means I don’t like pop music which is not a novel concept. My ageing ear has been called into question by science and its ability to distinguish between new songs leaving me totally ambivalent to modern music. And nostalgia – in all its mysterious glory – leaves me longing for simpler times and new music simply cannot provide that solace.

In drawing these indefinitive conclusions, evidence stacking that modern music isn’t objectively bad, I still can’t help but think that, in 30 years, no one will look upon 2023 with anywhere near the fondness that many of us look upon 1993. In a year where Counting Crows released ‘Mr. Jones’, 4 Non Blondes gave us ‘What’s Up’ and The Proclaimers produced ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 miles)’, how could they? Some almost middle-aged woman will check back with you in 2053.