Okay, maybe I exaggerated a bit. I’m sure there’s at least 1 or 2 songs in the past couple of decades that I can tolerate for a minute or so.
Seriously, I think I can count on my ten fingers the number of ‘great’ songs I’ve heard come out since the 80s. After the 80s, nearly everything about our culture took a steep nosedive.
Problem is you’re limiting yourself to the top end of popularity, which has always been a questionable section of the culture at best. The creative section has always been that area that lacks the mass appeal (lowest common denominator) to become extremely popular. Sure periodically something really good (like say David Bowie’s late 60s/ early 70s output) manages to become popular, but that’s an accident of the masses grabbing onto something actually good. The experimentation needed to spawn truly new and creative things tends to self limit the audience. The good part with the internet age is that self limited stuff is easier to find than ever, it’s somewhere on youtube or pandora, all you gotta do is look up something you already like and pay attention to the “recommendations”, you’ll find new stuff that you like in short order.