Periodically I hit the “Browse” tab on Apple Music to see what’s happening in the broader—or more accurately narrower—world of mass musical culture. The featured music is usually quite dull, musically. (See Rick Beato’s video, “Why Today’s Music Is So BORING. The Regression of Musical Innovation.”) Lacking musical skill and creativity, the artists instead focus on the excitement of crass, racist, hyper-sexualized, and violent language. This is not new, one could find such songs throughout my lifetime and before. The popular music, however, relied more on innuendo and suggestion, and generally not gaining widespread listening without a catchy chorus or hook.

What is relatively new, I suspect, is that while the writing and musicianship is gone, nearly every single charting song is marked “Explicit.” Take a look at today’s Apple Music US Top 100:

My screen size limits me to capturing the top 12. Every one of these tracks is marked explicit. This is not an anomaly. Nearly the entire list is saturated in filth. Only 15 of the top 100 tracks in America don’t need a warning label. 85% of today’s popular music is considered unsuitable for children. (Yet here is a horrifying turn of events: what is considered suitable for “mature audiences” is in truth immature; mental children embrace the “explicit” while the adults eschew it – but that’s a topic for another post.)

I am not pining for a return to the 1950’s. (I don’t like that music either!) But something terrible has happened where as a culture we cannot express thoughts and feelings without verbal excrement. Music, poetry, and literature are how ideas are transmitted to the masses. (See Fritz Baue’s The Spiritual Society for a great discussion on this.) What is being transmitted here is more gasoline on the fire already kindled.

It took me awhile to accept it, but services like Apple Music and Spotify put at our fingertips musical libraries that von Bingen, Bach, and Beethoven couldn’t imagine. Those geniuses are there, alongside Pärt, Coltrane, Miles Davis, and a host of new great composers and performers in all genres. (Check out my favorite new album so far this year, Max Richter’s Voices 2.) But the masses willingly choose the worst these services have to offer.

This has to be more than just an old-man rant. The soul of our culture is is not just declining, it’s on life-support. At this point, the mass culture cannot be changed. The only thing we can change is what we put into our own minds and the minds of our children. Pull them out of public schools, NOW. Take away their smartphones NOW. Expose them to great music, literature, and art. That will be the vaccination against the likes of “Moneybagg Yo” and “Doja Cat.”

When they’re old enough to handle it, perhaps a dip into Thomas Dolby wouldn’t be so terrible. Start with Dissidents. Because that’s what they’ll be.