Well, I think you learn to love what is around you in your formative years. So, as a boy in the 1970s with a father that played all kinds of music around the house and in the car, I basically was introduced to early rock, classical, jazz, blues, R&B, soul and a bunch of novelty stuff. Not much in the way of country but some. 

Players were important at that point and with rock music, yes, bands had distinctive sounds that they worked on. You could certainly tell Page from Clapton from Townsend from Walsh, from Jeff Lynne to Jeff Beck. Keith Richards and the Davies boys in the  Kinks, essentially there were all different sounds and styles and that seemed by intention and a lot of work to get those sounds. 

I think, but understand I am no expert on what is popular now, there is a lot of sameness to popular music these days. It's kind of interesting to me that the types of music that are popular all seem to go for similar and simple over attempting something a bit different or original. It seem that country, rap, and the songs that use a lot of autotune are what rules the day now. 

Rock, whatever there is of it, seems almost to be mostly recycling stuff to make simple songs that remind you of a song from the past. When we moved out of the 1970s into the 1980s rock did change taking on current tech with drum machines and synthesizers. Songs that focused less on guitar solos and more on just using the tech to find a sound that gave a texture to the music. At first I did not appreciate a guy like Edge in U2 because on a technical level his playing was not as impressive as my 70s rock gods but he did different things and found sounds that gave him his unique voice on the instrument. 

Now, it can be difficult to tell if anybody is playing any instrument on a popular song.

Here's Rick Beato, who knows a lot more than me about what is going on, talking about this to some extent:

(forgive the beginning and zip a few minutes forward, Rick does not know his mic is off for the first couple minutes)