Popular music is a lot better now than it was in 2009-2011, those years were a bit of a mess with the overload of generic dance music, let's not. There is a lot more variety now, with alternative, pure dance songs (Summertime Sadness remix, Clarity, Wake Me Up, etc), midtempo pop songs, stripped down ballads, indie folk, etc. Not everything is "boring stripped down", and two years ago with the dance trend it got to a point where all the productions WERE boring, everything sounded the same.
