While a common intuition for many, the idea that pop music has been simplified and homogenized over the years has scientific basis; a study by the Spanish National Research Council, published in Nature, found empirical data for this phenomenon. Specifically, they found that, when looking at tone, melody, and lyrics, modern pop music has become melodically less complex and uses fewer chords. Even more strikingly, they found that pop music has gradually become louder, too, at the expense of sound dynamic, a trend occurring at a rate of one decibel–a measurement of sound volume–every eight years.
Joan Serrà, one of the study’s authors, summarized this trend to Reuters: “We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse. In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations—roughly speaking chords plus melodies—has consistently diminished in the last 50 years.”
Additionally, this trend towards simplicity can even corrupt older music and erase previous musical styles. Indeed, the Research Council’s study found that modern innovations on old songs in new covers, done to bring the sound into harmony with prevailing trends, causes audiences to see these new versions as compelling. As the study puts it, “an old tune with slightly simpler chord progressions, new instrument sonorities that were in agreement with current tendencies and recorded with modern techniques that allowed for increased loudness levels could be easily perceived as novel, fashionable and groundbreaking.”
This means that, rather than preserving the original intentions and styles behind old music, our society has become okay with imposing our modern interpretations over historical music. This thus reveals a more problematic side to modern musical trends: our tendency towards homogenization erases important musical history by making even old music exist within the parameters of current trends.
Other concerning trends have been discovered in the course of homogenization, too. One such trend is music becoming sadder and slower over time. A paper, “Emotional Cues in American Popular Music: Five Decades of the Top 40,” published by the American Psychological Association, analyzed the biggest Billboard hits from 1950 to 2010, finding that the public’s taste has begun to tend towards songs with a slower tempo and those in minor, and thus sadder, keys. While not inherently problematic, the trend marks another tendency towards one kind of music at the expense of all others.
In addition to slowing and saddening, pop music has become more self-centered and resentful. Indeed, a 2011 report by the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts found that the use of the pronoun “I” has steadily increased over time at the expense of more community-fostering pronouns like “we.” Pop music has also integrated more antisocial and angry words into its lyrics, a reflection of a trend towards a simplification of pop music as a means of expression of resentment. The report accounted for this phenomenon by explaining that “[s]imply tuning in to the most popular songs on the radio may provide people with increased understanding of their generation’s current psychological characteristics.”
Finally, a recent report found that pop music has become more repetitive over time. The study utilized a tool that would allow it to “compress” the song by taking out word repetitions and seeing how much unique content remained, whittling lyrics down without losing any unique data. Analyzing 15,000 songs from the Billboard Hot 100 from 1958 to 2014, the study found that in every year of the study, the Top 10 songs were more repetitive than the songs that didn’t place. Additionally, the study found that 2014, the most recent year analyzed, was “the most repetitive year on record. An average song from this year compresses 22% more efficiently than one from 1960.” Yet again, then, has music begun to simplify and homogenize: songs are all following the same model of unstimulating repetition, and are becoming less complex. Overall, this tendency undermines the purpose of music in being a means of creative and self-expression that we used to cherish so dearly.
