The biggest issue with modern music is how people never compose it out of passion or actual interest. It has a very juvenile and shallow appearance due to all the post-African repetitions. If you go back more than 150 years you can see that even among people like Wagner there was this notion of building a composition around the text, the core feeling of your work. This in itself determines the outcome of your composition and how much effort you put into it. It also makes it easier for others to judge at what level they are: the surface or the depth. Wagner himself called it ”das Bewusetsein vom Richtigen” and Schopenhauer described art as ”Sie ist überall am Ziele”.
When you look at the manufacturing of artists today you see it as a product of the time we live in: fame, money, sexual gratification, self-aggrandizing of the individual…the very basic and most teenager friendly tunes imaginable.