Music has always been made towards youth. The only difference is that in the 70's and 60's that music happened to be rock. Young people are always the target cause they have more time to listen to music and unlike older persons, doesn't have a musical opinion completely formed. What changed was lyrics and musical innovation were completely forgotten in the process but that's how it goes. And that involves changes in the culture of this new generation, which sadly I'm a part of it. But music has always been made toward young persons.
The difference between the musicians of the 60's - 90's (excluding parts of the 80's, like hair metal) - was that most of the serious artists were competing to see who would break more ground within the music itself. Like the Beatles competing with the Stones or Beach Boys or Dylan, the doors....bands that would be noticed because of their musical power...and then later all that celebrity shit. Today, it's not about how great ure music is, it's about how many units u can sell. Of course it's always been a business, but i'm seeing (in mainstream music) less of a desire to create inspirational music, and more of a drive towards selling the most albums. Same thing with movies. Ever since Jaws, every movie has been called a failure or a success depending on its opening weekend performance. Only years later can you actually look at a piece of work and critique it in a fair and unbiased way.
Look at 90's U2. They were competing with Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, bands and musicians that took their work seriously and were mature. They could speak to kids and adults. Bono seemed more mature and wise in those days. There was no condescending. He knew he was a smart individual, he knew his fans were intelligent, and he wrote in an intelligent way. There was also a great desire (like in the 60's) to top other artists in an "artistic" way. Cuz, let's face it, today the songs are only a small part of the package. You can take a terrible song, raise the volume up and blast it in your face with a production style that's about as subtle as a brick in your face. That's what most people react to, the initial sound. That terrible sound actually sounds great to kids who don't know any better. It's like action movies with CGI effects. Great on the first viewing, with the theatre surround sound. Then actually watch it on a regular TV at home a couple times, u realize this movie sucks because the whole experience was based on how well those sound effects got thru to me.
So, in conclusion, today it's all about the bells and whistles and production style, the bling bling, the video with the choreographed dancing and the in your face attitude. Is there still good music out there? Of course, sure there is. Just not on mainstream radio. They can't sell too many units of something that would require their target audience to actually listen to more than once to understand.
All it takes is one person to step up and raise the bar. Like Dylan in the 60's. Then again, they didn't have reality television in the 60's. People actually read and were curious about life. Today the average joe wants nothing except a cell phone that will make him waffles and rub his nuts for him (that's a Carlin quote). In the past, when rockers wanted to out-rock eachother, what did they do? They rocked harder, they played harder, they got better. What do rockers do today? They tell the producer to raise the volume. What a joke. What a crock.