OK, you're not imagining it, and here's what happened. We always had "pop" music. From musics onset we had it. Whether it was George M Cohan or Gershwin or Elvis, it was pop-ular music. People knew it, people sang it, as a culture we were all on the same page.
This lasted until the 70's when a few things happened. First, like depicted in the movie The Wonders, major labels don't have a clue what's good. They exist to make money and have lunch with Suzanne Pleshette and they relied on local indie labels to find talent. Now back then they didn't care if bands were one hit "wonders", because they knew some new kids would come along next year. All they cared about was having the #1 song that summer, or holiday, etc...
America and the world underwent not only recession in the 70's but a massive change from the lifesyles of the past where many blue collar jobs vanished forever as many white collar jobs began to be invented. This poor economy killed off most of the indie labels, and on top of that the waters of pop music got poisoned by the hippy drug culture of the late 60's which the mainstream didn't want to hum along to. As a result the majors had nobody finding new talent for them, and as the 70's wore on even many of the majors began tanking.
To survive, the majors found a new formula. Instead of offering the best new bands (which they were incapable of doing) they found one artist or "genre" and mass produced it. So insead of selling a hundred thousand albums by 10 bands, they'd sell a million Madonna records. As far as they are concerned it works, and that is what they now do.
However, in response to the state of things punk music invented itsef in Britain in the mid 70's. It might have been angry and not always played well, but underneath it was undeniably pop music. Inspired by it came people who would form bands such as The Smiths, New Order, The Cure, Echo & The Bunnymen, Flock Of Seagulls, The Human League, Modern English, and many more etc... which would start what was essentially the 2nd British invasion during the 1980's.
But the US majors DID NOT LIKE THAT ONE BIT. What's worse, an upstart little music channel called MTV which had no sponsors was actually playing this music. So instead of jumping on this opportunity and returning to their roots by offering this new source of great bands to everyone, the majors decided to go to war instead and kill the offenders.
At first they tried to ignore them and not sign them, but import records were flooding in and every one bought meant one less sale for them. That was not acceptable. So they began signing these bands, and then burying them and not pushing them. Doing this then made all their import copies illegal, and they could force the feds to crack down (which they did) and places like Tower Records got raided constantly in the mid to late 80's because of this harassment policy.
It didn't shut the tap completely because die hards like me who knew what they wanted could find it at tiny record shops in large cities, but the public was now blind.
Eventually, time took it's toll, by the 90's that British scene had tanked, MTV had been taken over by the majors, and US bands inspired by their UK counterparts like Nirvana, Green Day and Smashing Pumpkins began appearing. The majors then did their most brilliantly evil thing. They swooped in, signed these bands, and presented them as a new genre: Alternative. What it was an alterntive to I don't know because they were all you could hear, but people bought into it thinking they were being given a choice when in truth they were not.
Then the majors decided to push rap and the entire thing fell of the cliff of sanity and good taste. That's where we stand now.
However, there ARE bands like the Wonders today, a bunch of kids who come along and make one brilliant album and then go on with their lives. The majors don't want you to know about them or buy their music, and if it weren't for the internet they'd have their wish. Thankfully however the internet did save it, and there has actually been quite a vibrant new scene going on since the late 90's, but it is world wide, with most of the best stuff coming from Scandinavia. But it's all sung in english, and it's all like the pop ditties you used to know and love. Only you have to do the work to find it now, but places like my website can help.
It's all about the music...
