Edit: you want pretentious? Try prog rock from the 70’s.
Some of it can be, to be sure.
However, there’s plenty that’s interesting, complex music that’s clearly more than being clever for the sake of it.
I doubt if any here can understand the effect that hearing King Crimson’s 21st Century Schitzoid Man for the first time had on a sixteen year old who had no records, and had only heard what was played on the radio.
Which did include Tangerine Dream on a Sunday afternoon Jimmy Saville programme from Germany.
I have little liking for jazz, although jazz inflected is fine, like Steely Dan/Donald Fagen/Gentle Giant, most of what passes for modern chart music leaves me massively underwhelmed; autotune is the work of Satan.
I don’t have much time for Nashville ‘hat-acts’, the rhinestone and tassels C&W acts, but I have no issues with actual roots country, like Kasey Musgraves, or Karen Dalton, it’s only another form of folk music.
Not interested in most electro, disco, d&b, or dance music in general; I want a tune, dammit.
That still leaves a huge amount of stuff from ABBA to Zappa, and includes both.
Basically, there’s stuff I like, and stuff I don’t like, the stuff I like others don’t, like ABBA, for example, (perfect pop songs, no other reason needed), and the stuff I don’t that others do.
I fail to understand the massive dislike of the Beatles, unless it’s because of a lack of understanding of their historical importance to music, and the massive contributions they made to cutting-edge studio techniques along with George Martin.
Most modern music wouldn’t exist in a way we understand with out them showing the way, failure to understand this simple fact shows an amazing amount of ignorance of music history over the last century.
