@mattbrowne Being “cool” is relative. What’s cool to the stoners may be lame to the overachievers and vice versa. By definition, then, it is impossible to rule out the possibility that it could be cool to listen to “completely dumb, mind-numbing, boring, unimaginative, sterile, uninspired, and uninventive” music. There’s also the problem that, from the perspective of those you are criticizing, your answer is completely dumb, mind-numbing, boring, unimaginative, sterile, uninspired, and uninventive.
It’s the same noise that every generation of parents repeats to every generation of children, after all. Read the article that @thorninmud linked to above. Some of the same research is presented in the book This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin. Both point out, even if only implicitly, that your ability to discern whether or not a particular bit of music is intelligent, has a melody, or has interesting harmonies is heavily before you reach your twenties.
It can be especially difficult if you have little or no formal training in music. Many of the complaints I hear about contemporary electronic music—that it’s just repetitive noise and so forth—are the same that have been lodged against avant garde music of the 20th century and even the late 19th century. Cage, Webern, Boulez, and even Wagner have all been targeted with the same criticisms that you make against popular music of the present day. That music cannot be reasonably called unintelligent, and it has rather interesting harmonies regardless of whether or not everyone can appreciate or even discern them. Similarly, quite a bit of contemporary popular music has more depth than most give it credit for.
Not all of it, of course. But if we return to modern electronic music as an example, a great deal of it has roots in formal music theory and much of it is created by people who know what they are doing. Some are formally trained, others are not. But one need not have formal training to know what one is doing. Indeed, the demand that musicians “really play” an instrument raises the question of what counts as “really playing” and threatens to rule out artists like the Beatles (who were self-taught). Moreover, the demand for a distinct melody would force us to reject centuries of brilliant contrapuntal music (including works of J.S. Bach). Such a definition of “good music” could not possibly be accurate.
Of course, the question of what would count as “good music” is notoriously intractable. No one has ever succeeded in coming up with a definition or theory that includes only what they want to include and excludes only what they want to exclude. This is why so many philosophers, including those who work in the area of aesthetics, have come to accept that de gustibus non est disputandum. Understanding breeds appreciation, as the saying goes; but by the same token, ignorance breeds disapproval. Perhaps we will never come to regard Britney Spears as the height of musical achievement. That is no reason, however, to cast out an entire generation’s music as without merit and historical value.
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