Selection bias is huge too. You could argue that the current hits suck, and that the current hits have always sucked in every era. Lots of them do, they're disposable trash music.

The difference is that we don't remember half the garbage that hit the charts when we were young, only the good stuff survives. When I play classic bangers for my daughter, she thinks they're awesome. Some of those tracks are older than me, but with streaming services and huge libraries "hits" don't really matter that much when we can now listen to the best tracks picked out of a century of recorded music.

I'm nearly 40 and I like to blast some of the current hits, I like stuff from the 90s and I like classic rock, funk and some of the really old jazz and blues stuff. There's no reason to act like your age has to determine your musical taste.

I have no time for some of the modern rappers with no skill though, that stuff is objectively trash when we grew up with legends like Outkast, Eminem etc lol