> I think what you're saying is: Survivor bias. We are comparing the best songs of the past to all songs of the now.
I hate how quickly people are to trot out "survivor bias" or "survivor fallacy" here. It doesn't apply to his argument at all. He's saying 90% of everything sucks and this includes pop music.
He's also saying that we form emotional attachments to less than stellar pop music for reasons that have nothing to do with the music. In high school, we signal social (ie: tribal) alliances by dressing a particular way and becoming fans of particular things. People tend to like things they normally wouldn't because popular people they respect like them. Social proof. Unfortunately, social proof doesn't hold up after you leave the social structure (ie: leave high school). Hence, how we can love something in the 80's that we despise a decade later.
We also associate the music with other things that might have been happening in our lives at the time. For example, Barbie Girl by Aqua is a terrible, horrible song that deserves to die in a fire. But, it will always have a special place in my heart because of a radio show in 2004 where my co-host decided to sing both the ken and barbie parts himself on the air.
He's also saying time has very little effect on musical tastes. If you liked the musical brilliance of 80's hair bands, there are still newly formed bands pumping out new music that sound very similar. Because of that, the whole concept of "new music sucks" has no basis in reality anymore since you can go out and find whatever tickles your fancy.
As for "pop these days", I'm not sure the term even applies anymore. After digital music displaced the radio, it's much harder to figure out what qualifies. It's no longer curated through an individual system, as it was in the past.