Does it feel like much of today’s music sounds the same? You might not be wrong

Flipping through the radio the other day, my scanning landed on a top 40 station. I decided to leave it there for a while to check out today’s hot hits. Without sounding like Grampa Simpson, I found the exercise disheartening. Was it my imagination, or did almost every song have a sameness to it in terms of production, tempo, timbre and vocal performance? I decided to listen a little longer. Sadly, the more I listened, the stronger my initial impression. This wasn’t the top 40 of my youth, a time when all sorts of different music made the charts. I randomly went back through the years and ende…