There were other shifts I definitely noticed in earlier decades as the new music came out, I just focused on the 1990s because in hindsight it seemed like the inflection point.
Your passage on medicine hit home — from behind the pharmacy counter, the shift you describe plays out in a very literal way. The protocol gives me the standard dose for an average adult; the patient in front of me is 82, weighs 47 kilos, has declining kidney function, and takes nine other drugs. There is no protocol for her — there is only judgment. That is the part of pharmacy that metrics can't optimize: the refill conversation where you notice the tremor no interaction checker flags, or realize the non-adherence the system keeps flagging is really a swallowing problem nobody asked about. I don't think protocols are the enemy — they've kept countless patients safe — but they've quietly become the ceiling instead of the floor. And when the protocol is treated as the complete job, the pharmacist who still practices the art starts to look like a cost center rather than a clinician. That, to me, is exactly the vanishing you describe: technology meant to make the human more audible now making them redundant.
IMO the same is true for movies. The movies of the 1940's were highly creative, while the ones in the mid 1950's took that to a fine level. As some artists in music complained even back in the 1980's, the entry of "suits" ruined music. I believe this is true for movies that now mostly focus on 19 year old males.
Huge music fan here. I 100% agree with you about the fact that popular music has declined considerably over the past few decades and continues to worsen. Personally, I think a major dividing line in the timeline of popular music is 9/11. Not just because of the cultural shift, but also because of the whole situation with Napster and music piracy, the introduction of the internet, and as you mentioned, AutoTune. It is also worth briefly mentioning that it was extremely rare for profanity to appear in a number one song until around this time too.
I highly recommend watching a YouTube video called "Every Billboard Hot 100 #1 Single Ever (1958-2025)". It plays a brief snippet of each number one song before moving onto the next. It is an excellent way to experience the way music has changed over the years.
This reminds me of some things I've come across previously. Here is a quick AI generated summary when I asked if there were sources for this.
The first claim matches a widely circulated anonymous letter. The second is harder to pin to a specific MySpace series, but there are documented post-9/11 meetings between government officials and entertainment executives that are often mixed into the same conversation.
The private-prison / gangsta-rap letterIn April 2012 an unsigned email went out from an address styled as industryconfessions@gmail.com under the subject “The Secret Meeting That Changed Rap Music and Destroyed a Generation.” The writer claimed to have been a music-industry “decision maker” invited, in early 1991, to a closed meeting of about 25–30 people at a private residence outside Los Angeles. Attendees were asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. The letter says company representatives explained that their employers had invested in privately owned prisons paid by the government per inmate, and that marketing music which promoted criminal behavior—rap being the preferred vehicle—would help keep those prisons full and protect the investments. Employees were also told they could buy stock.The letter named no one and gave no verifiable details. It spread through hip-hop blogs and forums and has been reprinted many times, including by New York Magazine in a 2013 conspiracy-theory roundup and later by sites such as Utica Phoenix. NPR’s 2020 podcast Louder Than a Riot opens with it and treats it as an unproven urban legend that tracks real overlapping histories (the rise of commercial gangsta rap and the growth of mass incarceration and private prisons), not as established fact. Academic and industry commentary (for example Rap Rehab pieces and a 2022 American Music article) notes overlapping corporate ownership between some media firms and private-prison companies, but not a documented 1991 directive to rewrite rap. Ice Cube publicly denied involvement when later social-media posts tried to place him at the meeting.Primary circulating text and discussion: New York Magazine summary, NPR episode, full letter reprint.
The post-9/11 entertainment meetingI could not locate a surviving series of MySpace posts by a named former BET staffer that matches the description. MySpace content from that era is largely gone, so the posts may have existed and simply not been archived under searchable terms.What is documented is that, weeks after the attacks, White House adviser Karl Rove and others held meetings with Hollywood and music-industry figures about content and support for the “war on terror.” A separate, quieter October 2001 gathering—the Entertainment Industry Task Force—brought roughly 30 film and TV people (including Oliver Stone, David Fincher, Dick Wolf, and John Singleton) together with military officials to brainstorm attack scenarios. Reporting on both appears in contemporaneous and later accounts (Jeff Chang’s April 2002 NOW Magazine piece “Hiphop’s 9/11 Blues” notes the Rove meetings and a narrowing of commercial hip-hop content; TheWrap later detailed the Pentagon session). Clear Channel also circulated an informal list of songs radio stations might avoid. None of these sources describe a single order to “completely change” Black music or media in the way the letter-style claim does, and none are attributed to a BET insider writing on MySpace.If the MySpace posts used a specific name or handle, that would narrow the search further.
Physicians seldom touch their patients. I see several, as does my husband. We have still avoided cell phones, mRNA and social media. Socially, there is so much to miss, and so very little to look forward to.
I recently went back to a chiropractor that I first saw around 30 years ago (he was right out of school then and luckily, he has not retired yet). I truly believe the laying on of hands, which of course is essential to the adjustments, is a significant part of the success of chiropractic therapy.
Lack of touch could be one reason why medicine is failing. You were smart to look up your previous successes. My P.C. of 17 years wants to bump elbows while he wears a mask. It has become very disappointing.
This was a great read, and unexpected. I grew up with analog music and had hundreds of LPs at one time, and I played guitar and wrote my own songs, and recorded them in my home studio on two Teac reel to reel machines, so when CDs came out I could definitely hear the difference and I still can. I find most of the "music" today annoying frankly. There's also another component to new music in addition to what you mentioned too that started decades ago when record companies realized they could make people think a song was "good" with more repetition which programs the brain so people find themselves singing or humming a song and it makes them think they "like" it when in reality it's only the constant repetition of a phrase that makes them think that. It's essentially the illusory truth effect in action, if you hear something enough times you come to believe it's true. We're seeing that today big time pretty much across the board. The good news is we're waking up to the manipulation, programming and control mechanisms across the board and it's beginning to change. I'm seeing evidence of that in music as well. I've seen some very good new artists over the past few years who write their own songs (most "popular" music isn't written by the singer) and I think that's going to continue, so the future looks bright to me.
I love the subject matter in this article - will wait until tomorrow to read it thoroughly but I want to say that I just retired because I could see how AI was going to take over some of the things that I enjoyed most about my work. And I have experienced what I think you're talking about - the relational feeling of being and am working my way back into that fullness of experience. I already have things in place to support that and just spent a couple of hours prepping the wonderful veggies I've had in my fridge from the last 2 visits to the farmers market. Went and walked with a friend earlier and then hit some balls at the practice range in the wonderful sunshine. More of this! And at this stage of my life, I definitely am asking myself and my creator how I want to use the time I have left. Thanks for this forum!
I'm surprised that you found old music to validate your observations. They are re-mastering virtually everything and almost everything available on the Internet is now auto-tuned. We're losing the humanity that made music special.
My husband was a roadie for Cheap Trick and Great White amongst others. He is finally selling his rare tube amps because they are becoming paperweights. The difference in sound is enough to make one cry. My soaring soprano voice in the acoustics of our 1909 home may not be perfect but it is engaging.
As for rapid change in society: a news story that hit the mainstream news a few decades ago, was the correlation between change and addiction. A survey of statistical relevance found that almost all the homeless and / or drug addicted people in society, which includes many high performing people who rely on the usual caffeine, alcohol, nicotine etc. - pursue the addiction to maintain a mental foothold on certainty.
The gist of the survey results were that for every technological leap, and shift in ways of living, there was a fallout of those who cannot cope with the change. Any change, is not necessarily a change that people want or can comfortably adapt to in a short period of time. So it was certainly known then as now, that any technological change results in an uptick of addictive behaviors in society.
These people then are either forgotten about, phased out or drugged away somehow as the fallout for Progress. This truism of how humanity does not on the whole like rapid change, should be well known and respected. The Amish for instance respect this, and consequently don't have our societal ills. Our DNA is adaptive, but not adaptive for the crazy tech it's being subject to.
great article. I like that your stuff is long, but I will pretty much always choose reading an article/transcript rather than watching the video. & AI writing is difficult to read, grating to my sensibilities and I can pretty much detect it just by the tone.
Music is a perfect example. I'm infinitely grateful for the life and craftsmanship of Bill Collings who dropped out of med school to build guitars in his garage, and ended up being a sort of legend as far as American luthiers go. I have three of his mandolins, and each is different in a very enjoyable way, even if he started with a CNC rough of the spruce top and neck and such – lots of different radii and widths that are noticeable.
The point is, even "crunchy granola" acoustic musicians forget (and get sucked into the social media game of constant "content production") that music is first and foremost for playing, not producing, not consuming (although most of us do the latter, to the exclusion of either former).
Go play some tunes, better yet with friends if such relationships still exist nowadays!
Another way to approach this topic is by the modality of *care* which of course AI cannot abide by. The "uncanny valley" has become ubiquitous, and it's as flawless as it is careless; thus unrelatable. A philosopher like Emerson might say AI lacks sympathetic intelligence, which is required for genuine intersubjectivity – these sorts of discourses go deep, but great post here!
I resent it when I'm presented with a document of info that has been "analyzed," i.e., chewed up and spat out by AI and we're supposed to assess it. Why not feed it into a different AI/SI program and just have the AI/SIs duke it out?
In music, it's the difference between '60s "Do You Love Me? (Now That I Can Dance)," and '80s "Pump Up the Jam (Get Your Bootie on the Bus)." Definitely something to be said for music played by real musicians instead of machines. Interestingly, it seems to me as if modern versions of [great] old songs flatten them melodically and also emotionally.
If you have ever heard the song "Down By the Whipping Post" ,you would shudder t the heavy slashing of the guitar strings at the end when you realize it's the sound of the whip hitting the boy's back. Yes, the music is insipid and they can't play an instrument so they just cut and paste somebody else's work.
I just want you to know how very much I appreciate you and all that you do… how much of your hours, days and life you gift us with your care, concern, interest, curiosity, compassion and kindness. You have taught me so much and also made me cry in a good way at your genuine concern for all of our mental, physical and emotional health.
Reading this article, I just began to cry, literally wail, at the reality of what I have been feeling and, I think, many others have as well.
Being rooted to Mother Nature and Life itself is the Source of feeling nurtured, cared for, safe and wanted… Without this life force nourishing our bodies and souls, there is no “life” … just simulation, imitation and a sterile and plastic environment.
Prayers up that we return to Mother… I Love Her so xo
I agree. Maybe that’s why the music of the 50’s and mid century era sound so good to me. They resonate humanity.
There were other shifts I definitely noticed in earlier decades as the new music came out, I just focused on the 1990s because in hindsight it seemed like the inflection point.
Your passage on medicine hit home — from behind the pharmacy counter, the shift you describe plays out in a very literal way. The protocol gives me the standard dose for an average adult; the patient in front of me is 82, weighs 47 kilos, has declining kidney function, and takes nine other drugs. There is no protocol for her — there is only judgment. That is the part of pharmacy that metrics can't optimize: the refill conversation where you notice the tremor no interaction checker flags, or realize the non-adherence the system keeps flagging is really a swallowing problem nobody asked about. I don't think protocols are the enemy — they've kept countless patients safe — but they've quietly become the ceiling instead of the floor. And when the protocol is treated as the complete job, the pharmacist who still practices the art starts to look like a cost center rather than a clinician. That, to me, is exactly the vanishing you describe: technology meant to make the human more audible now making them redundant.
IMO the same is true for movies. The movies of the 1940's were highly creative, while the ones in the mid 1950's took that to a fine level. As some artists in music complained even back in the 1980's, the entry of "suits" ruined music. I believe this is true for movies that now mostly focus on 19 year old males.
Huge music fan here. I 100% agree with you about the fact that popular music has declined considerably over the past few decades and continues to worsen. Personally, I think a major dividing line in the timeline of popular music is 9/11. Not just because of the cultural shift, but also because of the whole situation with Napster and music piracy, the introduction of the internet, and as you mentioned, AutoTune. It is also worth briefly mentioning that it was extremely rare for profanity to appear in a number one song until around this time too.
I highly recommend watching a YouTube video called "Every Billboard Hot 100 #1 Single Ever (1958-2025)". It plays a brief snippet of each number one song before moving onto the next. It is an excellent way to experience the way music has changed over the years.
This reminds me of some things I've come across previously. Here is a quick AI generated summary when I asked if there were sources for this.
The first claim matches a widely circulated anonymous letter. The second is harder to pin to a specific MySpace series, but there are documented post-9/11 meetings between government officials and entertainment executives that are often mixed into the same conversation.
The private-prison / gangsta-rap letterIn April 2012 an unsigned email went out from an address styled as industryconfessions@gmail.com under the subject “The Secret Meeting That Changed Rap Music and Destroyed a Generation.” The writer claimed to have been a music-industry “decision maker” invited, in early 1991, to a closed meeting of about 25–30 people at a private residence outside Los Angeles. Attendees were asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. The letter says company representatives explained that their employers had invested in privately owned prisons paid by the government per inmate, and that marketing music which promoted criminal behavior—rap being the preferred vehicle—would help keep those prisons full and protect the investments. Employees were also told they could buy stock.The letter named no one and gave no verifiable details. It spread through hip-hop blogs and forums and has been reprinted many times, including by New York Magazine in a 2013 conspiracy-theory roundup and later by sites such as Utica Phoenix. NPR’s 2020 podcast Louder Than a Riot opens with it and treats it as an unproven urban legend that tracks real overlapping histories (the rise of commercial gangsta rap and the growth of mass incarceration and private prisons), not as established fact. Academic and industry commentary (for example Rap Rehab pieces and a 2022 American Music article) notes overlapping corporate ownership between some media firms and private-prison companies, but not a documented 1991 directive to rewrite rap. Ice Cube publicly denied involvement when later social-media posts tried to place him at the meeting.Primary circulating text and discussion: New York Magazine summary, NPR episode, full letter reprint.
The post-9/11 entertainment meetingI could not locate a surviving series of MySpace posts by a named former BET staffer that matches the description. MySpace content from that era is largely gone, so the posts may have existed and simply not been archived under searchable terms.What is documented is that, weeks after the attacks, White House adviser Karl Rove and others held meetings with Hollywood and music-industry figures about content and support for the “war on terror.” A separate, quieter October 2001 gathering—the Entertainment Industry Task Force—brought roughly 30 film and TV people (including Oliver Stone, David Fincher, Dick Wolf, and John Singleton) together with military officials to brainstorm attack scenarios. Reporting on both appears in contemporaneous and later accounts (Jeff Chang’s April 2002 NOW Magazine piece “Hiphop’s 9/11 Blues” notes the Rove meetings and a narrowing of commercial hip-hop content; TheWrap later detailed the Pentagon session). Clear Channel also circulated an informal list of songs radio stations might avoid. None of these sources describe a single order to “completely change” Black music or media in the way the letter-style claim does, and none are attributed to a BET insider writing on MySpace.If the MySpace posts used a specific name or handle, that would narrow the search further.
Physicians seldom touch their patients. I see several, as does my husband. We have still avoided cell phones, mRNA and social media. Socially, there is so much to miss, and so very little to look forward to.
I recently went back to a chiropractor that I first saw around 30 years ago (he was right out of school then and luckily, he has not retired yet). I truly believe the laying on of hands, which of course is essential to the adjustments, is a significant part of the success of chiropractic therapy.
Lack of touch could be one reason why medicine is failing. You were smart to look up your previous successes. My P.C. of 17 years wants to bump elbows while he wears a mask. It has become very disappointing.
This was a great read, and unexpected. I grew up with analog music and had hundreds of LPs at one time, and I played guitar and wrote my own songs, and recorded them in my home studio on two Teac reel to reel machines, so when CDs came out I could definitely hear the difference and I still can. I find most of the "music" today annoying frankly. There's also another component to new music in addition to what you mentioned too that started decades ago when record companies realized they could make people think a song was "good" with more repetition which programs the brain so people find themselves singing or humming a song and it makes them think they "like" it when in reality it's only the constant repetition of a phrase that makes them think that. It's essentially the illusory truth effect in action, if you hear something enough times you come to believe it's true. We're seeing that today big time pretty much across the board. The good news is we're waking up to the manipulation, programming and control mechanisms across the board and it's beginning to change. I'm seeing evidence of that in music as well. I've seen some very good new artists over the past few years who write their own songs (most "popular" music isn't written by the singer) and I think that's going to continue, so the future looks bright to me.
I love the subject matter in this article - will wait until tomorrow to read it thoroughly but I want to say that I just retired because I could see how AI was going to take over some of the things that I enjoyed most about my work. And I have experienced what I think you're talking about - the relational feeling of being and am working my way back into that fullness of experience. I already have things in place to support that and just spent a couple of hours prepping the wonderful veggies I've had in my fridge from the last 2 visits to the farmers market. Went and walked with a friend earlier and then hit some balls at the practice range in the wonderful sunshine. More of this! And at this stage of my life, I definitely am asking myself and my creator how I want to use the time I have left. Thanks for this forum!
I'm surprised that you found old music to validate your observations. They are re-mastering virtually everything and almost everything available on the Internet is now auto-tuned. We're losing the humanity that made music special.
My husband was a roadie for Cheap Trick and Great White amongst others. He is finally selling his rare tube amps because they are becoming paperweights. The difference in sound is enough to make one cry. My soaring soprano voice in the acoustics of our 1909 home may not be perfect but it is engaging.
Hang on tightly to your platters and tapes. Somebody wants to remaster them and destroy them.
As for rapid change in society: a news story that hit the mainstream news a few decades ago, was the correlation between change and addiction. A survey of statistical relevance found that almost all the homeless and / or drug addicted people in society, which includes many high performing people who rely on the usual caffeine, alcohol, nicotine etc. - pursue the addiction to maintain a mental foothold on certainty.
The gist of the survey results were that for every technological leap, and shift in ways of living, there was a fallout of those who cannot cope with the change. Any change, is not necessarily a change that people want or can comfortably adapt to in a short period of time. So it was certainly known then as now, that any technological change results in an uptick of addictive behaviors in society.
These people then are either forgotten about, phased out or drugged away somehow as the fallout for Progress. This truism of how humanity does not on the whole like rapid change, should be well known and respected. The Amish for instance respect this, and consequently don't have our societal ills. Our DNA is adaptive, but not adaptive for the crazy tech it's being subject to.
That is really interesting, had never heard of that, but supports a lot of these ideas. Thank you.
great article. I like that your stuff is long, but I will pretty much always choose reading an article/transcript rather than watching the video. & AI writing is difficult to read, grating to my sensibilities and I can pretty much detect it just by the tone.
Music is a perfect example. I'm infinitely grateful for the life and craftsmanship of Bill Collings who dropped out of med school to build guitars in his garage, and ended up being a sort of legend as far as American luthiers go. I have three of his mandolins, and each is different in a very enjoyable way, even if he started with a CNC rough of the spruce top and neck and such – lots of different radii and widths that are noticeable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivKvboCYLqA
The point is, even "crunchy granola" acoustic musicians forget (and get sucked into the social media game of constant "content production") that music is first and foremost for playing, not producing, not consuming (although most of us do the latter, to the exclusion of either former).
Go play some tunes, better yet with friends if such relationships still exist nowadays!
Another way to approach this topic is by the modality of *care* which of course AI cannot abide by. The "uncanny valley" has become ubiquitous, and it's as flawless as it is careless; thus unrelatable. A philosopher like Emerson might say AI lacks sympathetic intelligence, which is required for genuine intersubjectivity – these sorts of discourses go deep, but great post here!
I resent it when I'm presented with a document of info that has been "analyzed," i.e., chewed up and spat out by AI and we're supposed to assess it. Why not feed it into a different AI/SI program and just have the AI/SIs duke it out?
In music, it's the difference between '60s "Do You Love Me? (Now That I Can Dance)," and '80s "Pump Up the Jam (Get Your Bootie on the Bus)." Definitely something to be said for music played by real musicians instead of machines. Interestingly, it seems to me as if modern versions of [great] old songs flatten them melodically and also emotionally.
If you have ever heard the song "Down By the Whipping Post" ,you would shudder t the heavy slashing of the guitar strings at the end when you realize it's the sound of the whip hitting the boy's back. Yes, the music is insipid and they can't play an instrument so they just cut and paste somebody else's work.
The missing link is the concept/definition/understanding of the 'spirit (of man)'.
We need to redefine/rediscover the word/meaning 'spirit' in the concept of Anthropology and apply it in reality to
Body-Heart-Mind-Spirit of a human being(person) in context to
Stones, Plants, Animals, Man, and Nature.
"Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in"
--Leonard Cohen--
I just want you to know how very much I appreciate you and all that you do… how much of your hours, days and life you gift us with your care, concern, interest, curiosity, compassion and kindness. You have taught me so much and also made me cry in a good way at your genuine concern for all of our mental, physical and emotional health.
Reading this article, I just began to cry, literally wail, at the reality of what I have been feeling and, I think, many others have as well.
Being rooted to Mother Nature and Life itself is the Source of feeling nurtured, cared for, safe and wanted… Without this life force nourishing our bodies and souls, there is no “life” … just simulation, imitation and a sterile and plastic environment.
Prayers up that we return to Mother… I Love Her so xo
Blessings and Gratitude, as always