I agree with Steve on the point songwriting has dropped in standard. IMO opinion this comes from the fact artists can't do this as a living. The days of a good band getting 200,000 US to write and record and album are done. Artists do there writing in between regular work ect. Not that there are not great songs and some really great albums, 2012 was a great year, but there is more "OK" music in todays era.

Also Laurents point of a filler being hidden in an album with a huge hit. This is true because new rock really doesn't air play and we see no monster hits. When I listen to Skull Sessions podcast they go over classic bands and there catalogs. I was surprised to find that even a classic album has 4 exellent songs and the rest are OK to filler. But as Laurent said the 4 songs were so huge they masked the OK ones