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It's a commonly held grudge of listeners who are no longer pop's core demographic that the music of the moment is not what it once was [...] But [what] happens when science attempts to prove these claims? Here are some studies that suggest your parents might have been having a lot more pop fun than you are...
[...] This followed a similar study by a team from the Spanish National Research Council, lead by artificial intelligence specialist Joan Serrà, who examined nearly half a million pop songs over a similar period (in this case 1955-2010), and looked at their tonal, melodic and lyrical content. They concluded that pop has become melodically less complex, using fewer chord changes, and that pop recordings are mastered to sound consistently louder (and therefore less dynamic) at a rate of around one decibel every eight years.
[...] The Lempel-Ziv algorithm is a lossless way to compress data, by taking out repetitions, and Morris used it as a tool to examine 15,000 songs from the Billboard Hot 100 from 1958 to 2014, reducing their lyrics down to their smallest size without losing any data, and comparing their relative sizes. He found two very interesting things. The first was that in every year of study, the songs that reached the Top 10 were more repetitive than their competition. The second is that pop has become more repetitive over time, as Morris points out: "2014 is the most repetitive year on record. An average song from this year compresses 22% more efficiently than one from 1960."
Of course, none of this means that pop songs are any less fun. They may be slower and sadder than before, but if pop songs are now simpler and louder and more repetitive than they used to be, that might make up for it. In fact, a 2011 report called Music and Emotions in the Brain: Familiarity Matters, compiled by a team led by Carlos Silva Pereira suggests that the human brain enjoys knowing what is coming next in music. Having conducted fMRI scans on people listening to songs, the report concludes that, "Familiarity seems to be a crucial factor in making the listeners emotionally engaged with music."
Source: Has pop music lost its fun?
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:45PM (1 child)
Flower Power to Corporate Raiders isn't a from-to. The whole 60's hippie thing (by which we mean the last three years, but somehow it all gets classified as the whole decade) is just as selfish and self-indulgent as the 80s corporate thing (and don't forget the "Me Generation" 70's in between). That flower power crap was all about mid- to upper-class people shirking responsibility and engaging in lots of self-indulgence. Hide out in school with no responsibilities while the ones who couldn't afford it got to go fight. The ones who really walked the walk were the ones getting beat down in Selma or in Mississippi, or were the ones crawling through the jungle being shot at. But somehow the whole decade and a whole generation defines themselves by basically two musical events. They were always looking out for Number One then, the 70s, and the 80s.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday January 18 2018, @02:06PM
No, the ones that sold out and became corporate drones were never true hippies. When any philosophy becomes fashionable, it will always be flooded by a majority of wannabes and fakes.
What? Are you somehow implying that fighting is morally superior to pacifism? True hippies aren't about harming people.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?