Much as I love popular music, if I was looking for words to describe it currently then two would sum up: derivative and puerile.

These adjectives are connected. The new crop emulates the musical styles my generation grew up with thirty to forty years ago. It was music which explored teenage angst and immaturity. It represented the stage in life before responsibility and commitment. Ours was the first generation in history which was able to express its immaturity in such a way. Previously, young adults had been required to conform as quickly as possible to the parental way. Onerous responsibility from large families, from very exhausting jobs, from the perils of poverty, from fighting wars and the likes ensured it.

With so much adversity consigned to the past, the now generations can live by an entirely different set of attitudes. The current one is allowed to extend its coming of age and employs the musical heritage of the previous one for its mode of expression. This has helped bring about the phenomenon of 'middle youth' where fifty year-olds can share the same tastes as twenty year-olds. Immaturity within a fully conformed adulthood is kept alive these days and in this way is more aligned to the emotional experience of teenagers than was the case before.

It also represents a split in the adult psyche. While still responsible there is also a reluctance. One is never fully reconciled in the modern age to the fullness of reality. This increases overall disillusionment, that things never quite went the way they might have. Of course they never do and never have done but in the past a full reconciliation with this hard fact of life was part of the indoctrination. The now generations don't do that to the same degree especially the so called baby-boomers who as such remain uncommitted to themselves and their own existentialist plight. It is an insincere generation, more materially successful than any other in history, but unappreciative. As a consequence it has the character of a sultry teenager manifest in the ease with which it celebrates the music of its children. It likes to put them up there and almost voyeuristically live out its own failed dreams. It summons the voice of youth to express its own disillusionment and unresolved frustrations. It takes its moral cues from puerile posturing.

In this sense my generation is disappointing. It was given a legacy of riches which it has squandered like a son of the manor who has no sense of perspective. It gorges itself on material splendour thinking there is some fulfilment in that direction which of course there never is as wiser counsel has always pointed out. Such intelligence is lost on the boomers.

I suggest this dynamic is what lies behind the success of contemporary popular music. It has lasted fifty years and might have a couple of decades left in it yet before the culture can rise above itself to some kind of genuine maturity. When this is immanent we might have moved on and once again hear music that has true innovation.