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As reported in The Economist, scientists at the University of London have analyzed fifty years of pop music, and have used statistical techniques to identify three musical "revolutions" of lasting impact.
These revolutions do all correspond with times musical critics would have said change was happening (classic rock, new wave, and hip-hop respectively), but this analysis suggests other apparent novelties, such as the punk of the 1970s, were not the revolutions that their fans might like to believe.
From the article (well worth reading):
They used Last.fm, a music-streaming service, to collect 30-second clips from 17,094 songs (86% of the total) that were (on the Billboard) chart between 1960 and 2010. Then they attacked each clip with sonic analysis and statistics.
They found that they could extract what they describe as “topics” from the music. These were coherent harmonic and timbral themes which were either present in or absent from a clip. Harmonic topics, of which there were eight, captured classes of chord change, or their absence (eg, “dominant 7th-chord changes” and “major chords without changes”). Timbral topics, of which there were also eight, were things like “drums, aggressive, percussive” and “female voice, melodic, vocal.”
The comment thread below the article is also highly recommended, and the dismissal of punk is certainly egregious.
The evolution of popular music: USA 1960–2010, published by the Royal Society, is found here.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:50PM
and the dismissal of punk is certainly egregious.
...but their analysis was based on "coherent harmonic and timbral themes" to which any self-respecting punk would say "what a fucking load of lah-de-dah bollocks!". I can easily believe that punk wasn't, musically, very novel by their analysis.
It also wasn't necessarily that popular at the time, especially if they're getting their data from the charts. It got a lot of press because of its shock value - and later because it fitted into social historians cosy narrative of the rejection of "middle class" rock. But it sure as hell influenced the "revolutionary" genres that came later.
That's the problem with using the charts: the "roots" of these revolutions go back much earlier. E.g. 1970s electronic music from Europe only had a handful of chart hits at the time (although it was turning up in film and TV scores) - but (along with a bit of punk) became the source of inspiration for 1980s synth pop as soon as musicians didn't need to be a millionaire and/or an electronic engineer to own a synth.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Sunday May 17 2015, @06:22PM
It also wasn't necessarily that popular at the time, especially if they're getting their data from the charts.
Well, TFA does say this is about "pop music revolutions". If punk was never very popular, then by definition, it wasn't "pop music". This appears to me to be an analysis of where/when the big changes happened in what was popular: when did the audiences' tastes change, and to what? The roots of where new styles came from is a tangential discussion from that. You can write lots of theses about the roots of any kind of music, and like any family tree, trace things back centuries or more. That doesn't seem to be the objective here.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday May 18 2015, @12:20AM
The real issue is that very little punk got anywhere near a chart (and mostly didn't want to), so it was left out of their analysis entirely. The few songs that did chart were more 'approachable' and so mainstream sounding.
As you point out, it's influence came later but only after it passed through other genre.