"But listening to the top 40 of the year a few years ago sure drove home the point that our pop music was light years beyond the current crop."

It can also be exaggerated though as to how great things were 40 years ago. Lot of good stuff about then but a lot of less impressive stuff too. We've been watching the old repeats of TOTP since they stared showing them last year at 1976. Skip through most of it as it is pretty dire. Plus there is some good stuff about now too. Just because it doesn't get in the charts doesn't mean it isn't there. Kids nowadays also have easy access to so much. Much more than we did. They can go onto youtube, napster or whatever and listen to all the 60s and 70s stuff etc - and many do. They aren't all just listening to rap or dubstep. My own 17 year old son seems to be playing mostly early 70s Van Morrison, mid 60s Dylan and anything by Bruce Springsteen at the moment. What I've noticed though is it doesn't work asking him to listen to things. He likes to discover them. May seem absurd to us that someone just suddenly discovers something like Neil Young - but to them it is all new. I was kind of the same. No-one in my house played classical music but for some reason one day I bought a recording of Holst's The Planets and was blown away. To me it was new.