"By insensible gradations now easily traceable through the litter of songs with which recent decades are strewn, we have been able to see the decline in the popular song supply. Sentiment has been turned into sensuous suggestion. Romance has been turned into eroticism. The popular musical lilt slid into ragtime and ragtime has been superseded by jazz and crooning. Song topics became lower and lower until at last they are the dredges of the slimy bottom of the underworld."