The difference is that past generations could not consume the entirety of musical history in privacy. EW&F were in their late 30s here.
I'm hopeful. We have artists catering to teen angst for decades, some that triangulate on the last teen demo single. But I believe there are poptimists that know the 30s-80s had great tunes, and we've only to delve deep enough to discover them.
The economics of post-napster music production mean EW&Fs will be rare. But they'll be findable.
The problem is the model for music criticism, which still only considers music offered as commodity.