There was a time—not that long ago—when music had guts. It had soul. It had something to say. The 1990s may have been the last great decade for music. Oasis wasn’t just a band, it was a mood, a movement, a shot of testosterone in a world that still knew how to roar. I used to spend hours in the darkroom with nothing but chemicals, light, and the Gallagher brothers blaring through the speakers—defiant, loud, masculine. Music had an edge. It had meaning. It was art.
Now? Now we have Taylor Swift.
What happened?
We’re living through a period of cultural blandness—lower testosterone, soft edges, safe spaces, and safe sounds. Today artists are afraid to offend people. Today’s popular music—Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish—is slickly produced, sonically bland, and emotionally neutered. The lyrics are hollow, repetitive, and soulless. There’s no poetry, no message, no anger, no rebellion. Just Instagram captions set to music. Compare that to Bob Dylan, whose lyrics are poetry. Or Warhol’s Velvet Underground—gritty, experimental, dangerous.
This isn't about nostalgia. It’s about recognizing how the soul of a culture is reflected in its sound. Art and music have always walked hand in hand. You can’t talk about the visual avant-garde of the 60s without also hearing the hum of Dylan’s harmonica or the scream of a Lou Reed guitar riff in the background. You can't separate punk rock from the DIY zines and Xeroxed art of the late 70s and 80s. And you can’t talk about the swagger of the 90s without the Union Jack and a Britpop anthem.
Since then, both music and art have spiraled into an abyss of banality. By 2010, it felt like the final nails were hammered into the coffin. We’ve traded movements for moments, legacy for likes. We’re now in the TikTok era, where songs are written to trend in 15-second bursts. People go to concerts not to listen, but to record them on smart phones. We’ve replaced experience with selfies. Nobody watches with their eyes anymore. They watch through a screen they paid a thousand dollars to carry in their pockets.
I tried to get tickets to the Oasis reunion this summer—six hours in a Ticketmaster queue, gone in a blink. Sold out across North America. And why wouldn’t it be? Even after decades, people are still hungry for something real. Something with noise and nerve. That says a lot.
Culture is a mirror, and right now we don’t like what we see. We’re living in the age of filters, where authenticity is replaced by algorithms. Where books gather dust, and deep thinkers are outcasts. There are still talented artists out there—no doubt—but they’re islands in a vast, distracted sea. Today much of the focus in art are aesthetics and cliche. There is no movement, no direction, no Warhol or Pollock to lead the charge.
We are drifting.
Art, whether painting, sculpture, photography, or music, once shaped and defined its time. Now it struggles to matter. We are culturally illiterate, scrolling and swiping past meaning in favor of dopamine.
And still, somewhere in the background, Oasis plays.
~ John Kobeck 2025