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This is a bizarre take? Really? Because I’m far from the only one that’s noticed this. Just a couple curso dry examples I found with a quick google:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9IucBIoCzc0?si=_mta-cYZ9v_t8dhR
https://youtube.com/watch?v=AsQUQ8P8c-A?si=1hpvTqFEX9Bd0Gn_
I’m not going to go out and find examples, sorry I’m just not that invested in this argument to go listen to a bunch of music I find unappealing to prove this to you. But I do find it kind of funny you think this opinion is strange or unique to this community. I guess if you’re a real music nerd you can hair split but I think you could probably find data to show variance in music has gone significantly down. Music is likely stagnating and decadent, along with all the other creative fields.
I have no idea as to overall style, but in at least one respect—dynamic range (how quiet and loud a song gets)—there is far less variance than there used to be. A quick search pulled up this article from 2017, which in turn cited this video from 2006, showing that the trend has been going on for awhile.
...And that's a good thing!
Listening to music with high dynamic range is a drag. I want to hear the quiet parts over ambient background noise without bursting my eardrums in the loud parts. Normalise normalisation!
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The loudness war refers to dynamic range within a song rather than across songs, so it's not really relevant here. I've never seen e.g. an analysis of range of maximum loudness across all songs in a given year.
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