>In the 60s and 70s, the rebellion was not against the machine, it was for betterment.

The rebellion was very much against the machine, the establishment, the norms,etc.

It's very interesting that nowadays rebellious trends tend to feed the machine. You were spot on on your first line. Whatever captures any market and pays dividends is echoed right back, amplified by the machine (which takes the dividend). There is still great music being made, but it's harder to find (if not impossible) on mainstream channels.

I don't agree about the 70's, in that assesment; even the 60's are dubious (eg "trouble coming every day" by Frank Zappa, misc protest songs, the Doors).

According to "Please Kill Me" part of what led to the creation of punk was a sense that everything was going to hell and there might not be a tomorrow. On the metal side of things you get the same sense if you listen to early Black Sabbath (eg "Wicked World", "Hand of Doom",). There's probably other examples to be had, but I can't think of them offhand.

I grew up in the 80's and I can relate to half of what you're saying about aggressive music and moshing. What I find interesting, though, is when you say "Mosh pits are the only place I can think of where this is an acceptable form of self expression". That definately wasn't the case for me, just the opposite. The messages and sentiments I picked up on were that repression was unhealthy -better to get it all out, EST style if need be.

I find it interesting that it's somehow become more taboo to express negative emotions, anger, confrontation, etc than when I was a teenager. I might be off the mark, but from what I've noticed it seems like we're collectively becoming more repressed (emotionally and otherwise) than we were 20 or 30 years ago.

The 1960s were almost apocalyptically bad— the arms race, vietnam, lynchings, inner city riots, bombings, assassinations, etc. There was plenty of angry protest music— there just wasn’t much of an angry audio aesthetic.

> it is very rare that I get to cut my rage loose, and let it flow. Mosh pits are the only place I can think of where this is an acceptable form of self expression.

At the metal shows I've been to, it's precisely the guys trying to "cut [thier] rage loose" that you want to avoid. Moshing, like football, should be about a physical form of communal fun, not expressing anger and aggression; otherwise you get safety problems.

Random observation that might be related. If you take some bands that were formed in late 60s, early 70s like Rush, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, King Crimson and follow their careers, as they became older their music became angrier and angrier lol(especially starting late 90s and into 2000s). I always attributed it to band members getting older and bitter at life but maybe as you say it’s due to times changing...

Also, its fascinating how the test of time clarifies things up. I now enjoy the music my parents listened to but rarely do enjoy the music that I grew up on

I mean, counter-cultures are complex in terms of what they question and what they absorb as immutable, etc. But arguably the 60s in the US and across the Western world were way more confrontational and itching-for-revolution than most counter-cultures are today.

I mean, let's not get distracted by the acoustic guitar, a lot of protest folk music was explicitly calling for the abolition of capitalism, the end of US military dominance, etc.

Precisely, the millenial whoop carries a little bit of bitterness because it is a minor third. It would be totally different with a major interval (then it would sound closer to some excerpt from the electro-pop era). Edit: I just got aware there are also a lot of minor third in most of the "happiest" electro-tunes, so I am off the point. Maybe it is something else then, like how it is accompanied, the drums, etc. For example, I don't feel very happy when I hear a lot of synthesizer "hand claps" and too much pitch vibrato.

The article is about "pop music", not music generally. The article is asserting that pop music—you know, the music that is considered a strictly middle-of-the-road, top-40, polished studio-establishment production; the music that is safe to play over the PA in a restaurant, and is used as an image-song for a character in the latest summer blockbuster; that kind of stuff—is what's getting sadder/angrier.

Which is surprising. It reflects a change in what people consider an acceptable emotional range for pablum. It's as if airplane food started tasting like something. It's something that deserves an explanation.

That is the basis of the 13-year cycle theory[1], but this is showing that each cycle never recovers, so to speak, resulting in a continual trend towards sadder and angrier.

[1] https://globalnews.ca/news/4082568/the-theory-of-the-13-year...

It’s a clickbait type of title because it doesn’t convey a good reason to read the article on its own — it’s enticing you to click in order to find out whether the article is of interest or not.

HN non-clickbait title:

> Evidence that pop music is getting sadder and angrier

Original clickbait title:

> Is pop music really getting sadder and angrier?

It needlessly formulated the title as a question to intrigue people to click it.

Writing the titles in this way serves no purpose but to waste people’s time by tricking them to click through.

I refuse to partake in the further proliferation of any article that practices this style of writing titles.

Clickbait titles need to die. The only chance we have of getting rid of them is to not give them traffic. That won’t ever happen of course, but at least we have the useful policy here on HN to shield us from being manipulated by the titles when we decide what we want to read and not.

Social media site in question would show a preview with the original title displaying much more prominently than my added text. Also even if they didn’t I’d still be hesitant because as soon as anyone follows the link the original title would be all up in their grill.