To be clear: I have spent the years to memorize and be able to perform a few Beethoven sonatas (not to mention the years required to even get to that point). I

To be clear: I have spent the years to memorize and be able to perform a few Beethoven sonatas (not to mention the years required to even get to that point). I can also play them drunk (though not as cleanly, and wouldn't do that in any paid/professional performance situation). I literally did this sort of thing for a living before deciding to use my CS/Math degree to be able to better provide for my family (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonlatane/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonlatane/). And none of that makes Beethoven "better" than Chappell Roan. Because there is no objective assessment of "better/worse"ness in art. That's not how art works, or what art is. On the other had, your inability to correctly spell the name of an influential contemporary artist, with 40+M listeners per month, replying to a comment that did correctly spell her name, is a pretty objective reason to not trust anything you have to say about art (or, perhaps, much else, at least until you address whatever underlying issues/pathologies have you thinking this way). Perhaps this will offer you some perspective: back when I did music for a living, I often did think this way. I thought most contemporary music was trash if it didn't offer the harmonic or contrapuntal complexity of classical, or even jazz. Really, being a young man from a poor background, I believe it was more a survival instinct (trying to gaslight myself and others into measuring me as "good enough" for gigs). It nearly ruined music for me, though. It required me being dishonest with myself about what I really enjoyed. Letting all that go has been a multi-decade process, and it's made me a much more well-adjusted individual. It also applies in many ways to the software world (as long as you stay out of Google-/Meta-/Oracle-type bigtech misery-inducing rat races).