> Modern pop music is becoming trashier by the year.

...said everyone in every time period.

There's good pop music being made today. But most music being made in any period is bad. If you look back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, there's plenty of bad music that lots of people loved. We just remember the good stuff. The classic example is Like a Rolling Stone ('65) and Engelbert Humperdinck, who was huge in '66 and '67. Guess who we remember today?

I'll go further and argue that the only viable definition of "bad music" is "music that is forgotten". We can't know if music is good until we wait a while and see if it sticks around. Any other definition of quality is based on personal taste which is, no offense, worthless.