pop music died because youth subcultures all morphed into essentially one or two factions. Whereas in the past you had ravers, indiekids, metallers, casuals, grebos, crusties, skinheads, raggamuffins, mods, hippies, junglists - now you have your bling brigade on the one hand or your ashen faced, nu-goth wristcutters on the other (latter often beaten up by former) and this has had a catastrophic impact on pop culture. Whilst people like Peel would champion the weird and wonderful, there is noone doing that now on the internet (certainly, R1 betrayed his memory) so kids aren't allowed to give full reign to their imaginations, there is no outlet for it so everyone is just amalgamated into the same tribe, which is all done very earnestly and humourlessly. As Confuscious once said, 'the sunflower that sticks out gets chopped down'. Which coupled with the media's ruthless drive to pigeon-hole everyone means that you really have to travel far and wide to meet anyone with a personality, because you sure as hell won't at your local emporium. On a positive note, there still are youngish performers determined to send the pop industry up - the recent spoof Newport (state of mind) is a good example, see also Scroobius Pip and Mike Skinner (on his day) who are both very clever wordsmiths, but it is at least 20 years now since young people had anything to say and with all the injustice around and all the things they should be shouting about, the music desperately needs a generational kick up the rear. Maybe a Tory government will galavanise it like last time? but is x-box generation ready to do that? hmm...
FFS don't say that 