EARLY ACCESS: Science Says: Music Is Getting Dumber

I've been watching the "This Is Pop" doc on Netflix and the 3rd episode explores this topic a little bit more in-depth. Thought it was especially interesting learning just how much Swedish influence has had over American mainstream pop, especially in the sense that they wanted lyrics to be easily understood/sang by people who are not native English speakers.

Kayla Strandell

When I think about "more complex lyrics", I think about old Elvis Costello like Watching the Detectives, or Radio Radio. Or Yes, or Jethro Tull. But people tend to gravitate toward simpler songs, because as Blues Traveler pointed out, the hook brings you back.

Fiz Gig

I had the same thought about the title and was pleased you saw the issue there as well. Right out the gate they appear to be showing bias, which is precisely what you want to avoid when trying to be scientific. Excellent work backing up your statements with data both of the individual songs as well as their chosen sample. I've had to explain to my parents a few times that if you pick the right criteria and cherry-pick your samples, you can prove anything.

Shumiry

Love these evidence loaded teardowns of shitty journalism and viral fads.

Scotiscilla Morrison

When discussing The Beatles, let’s look at another song from them. This one isn’t a hit, but it IS from Abbey Road, one of their most acclaimed albums. “The End”. At least 75% of the lyrical content throughout the entire song is “love you”. But let’s look at an actual hit song from them. One also from their later, more acclaimed era. “Hey Jude”. The last 4 minutes of this 7-minute song consists of “na na na, na-na-na na” and “Hey Jude”. This was the number-one song of 1968. I’m sure the compressibility score of those is quite high.

Eric Ortiz

That was a really good one Buckley👏

For sure, although I think if you looked back at the 50s and 60s, you'd be amazed how few of those artists wrote their own stuff, especially the pop singers, Girl Groups and Male Quartets/whatever. The Angels' "My Boyfriend's Back" for example is a perfect example of one of those songs that's effectively just session musicians and a group of young women singing something a bunch of old dudes wrote for them. Definitely a lot more real instruments used back then, but I'm coming around to the idea of how much stuff might be done with SOME instruments that are just processed to shit... Cummin' Buckets made me realize a few things with that too (I believe the drums are from a machine, but the bass track is a buddy of mine playing... the original also had a guitar in it, I might try and put that together as a "remix" haha, but either way people probably think the whole thing's just "computers").

Adam Buckley

Personally the reason I don’t like most modern music isn’t how repetitive it is, it’s the lack of real instruments being heard. It’s all done on computer now, all performed to a backing track... there are still plenty of artists writing, recording and performing their own music, and those are the ones I will listen to.

Ash Archer

The problem is with something like that is... you can just NOT do it that way. There are many other ways to communicate it, OR to simply just not. No one's mind will ever be changed by a "meme", and if it is they didn't have too much of an opinion on something either way. For example, I once got in an argument with someone on Reddit (who would reply to me within 2 minutes of me replying to him) about how "people spend too much time online now" and he had a very specific example of what they should do with their time, which was to "hike the Appalachian Trail". There was absolutely no chance of him changing anyone's mind, and yet he would reply instantly morning, noon and night to anything anyone commented. It seems that he should have taken his own advice. When someone pointed that out, he said "Yeah, I DID, last year, so I've earned my time on here". It was suggested to him that he doesn't know the history of everyone, and that perhaps they've done things offline that "earned" them the right to be online (something I didn't know needed to be earned). He didn't have an answer for that and just continued his ramblings that everyone spends too much time wasting their time. No one's suggesting "using a smartphone ever" is something that can't be criticized in this situation, it's the very specific uses of it. Spending large amounts of times posting memes on your phone about "the good old days" when you have every means of effectively living those "good old days" whenever you want during your own leisure time (obviously anyone's excused from any work-related responsibilities), you can listen to old music, turn your phone off even, watch shows you love... you can do this without spending time on the Internet going "everyone else is stupid for this" while doing the thing you feel everyone else is stupid for doing.

Adam Buckley

"I think my favorite thing is watching people who hate modern things post memes on their phones." Ugh, fuck off grandpa. Being a part of something* does not preclude someone from criticizing it. Just like I can criticize you even though I like what you do. *especially when this is defined as "using a smartphone ever"

Pim

When it comes to analyzing the change through years there was a rather digestable video "Why is Modern Music so Awful" by Thoughty a few years back and later a response to that video by Tantacrul where he was scolding Thoughty for being incorrect multiple times or not explaining his points enough. It's much more valueable than the article in question

Michał Michalski