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My hypothesis is that you can choose any aspect of composition that musicians find exciting and note the same decline over time. You don't have to be a music th
by kleiba 4y ago
My hypothesis is that you can choose any aspect of composition that musicians find exciting and note the same decline over time. You don't have to be a music theorist to observe that by and large, today's music has been dumbed down in comparison. On a scale from "most producer friendly" to "art" it's definitely leaning heavily to the left.
You can especially note that when it comes to harmonies, and harmonic shifts (aka key changes) are not the only aspect that has been greatly simplified. Elaborate harmonies are just not a thing anymore.
And that's not just the typical effect that old generations cannot relate as much to the music of new generations. No, it's that today's taste - which, of course, has been mostly shaped by the exposure to today's music - appreciates songs that are, from a musician's perspective, much simpler in almost every aspect. The only exception that I can think of is that the performance capabilities of the singer have been put much more in the focus, so you can find songs today that are really difficult to sing well. This is mostly true for female performers, though, and the beginnings of that trend can probably be traced back to Whitney Houston and especially Mariah Carey, who made a certain Coloratura-style of singing fashionable.
I think hardly anyone will dispute the observation that today's music business is much more professionalized than it had already been since the beginning of recording technology. And that goes to tell. It really _is_ a business, and the process of producing a hit song has been streamlined tremendously.
Of course, we need to keep in mind that the focus of the article (as well as my comment) is on chart pop music. And of course, this is a big-picture kind of observation, not claiming that you couldn't cite some (however, rare) exceptions here and there. A thriving alternative scene with much more elaborate song writing has never ceased to exist, but that's not what gets played on your average top-40 radio station (for the youngens: "streams").
- kazinator 4y agoKey changes that just abruptly shift a repeating pop chorus near the end of a song by a step or half step are pretty dumb though; it's not clear that losing them specifically is a dumbing down.
- ComplexSystems 4y agoI agree. I think it's simply that this thing which used to sometimes happen now never happens, thus making the music more predictable and further lowering the entropy rate of music as a stochastic process.
- adamc 4y agoSure. But there are lots and lots of Beatles songs (for example) that shift keys in the main verse, often very early in the song (and often several times). Key changes used to be something most bands handled easily, and the best songwriters got a lot of mileage out of it.
- wodenokoto 4y agoI think we are seeing a much longer tail in music consumption. This kinda “squeezes” the top into a much less dynamic place. As everybody has a more individual selection of music, due to easy and cheap access to almost all published music ever, the common denominator becomes smaller. I don’t think music is becoming dumber overall.
- goto11 4y ago> today's music has been dumbed down in comparison. People have been saying that as long as popular music have existed. Jazz was considered dumb and unsophisticated, crooners were considered dumb and unsophisticated, rock music was considered dumb and unsophisticated. Each of these genres just discard previous measures of sophistication and introduce their own. The article have an interesting observation about "vertical" vs "horizontal" songwriting. Newer music is just different. Kendrick Lamar is not dumbed down compared to Bon Jovi just because he doesn't change the key before that last chorus.
- dwringer 4y agoAbsolutely - the criticism of most guitarists only knowing 3 chords goes back afaik to the first bard who ever strung up a lute. I also think although we remember the songs that break molds, at any moment in history most popular music tends to be relatively simple. There's nothing wrong with that I think - just as people don't (or probably shouldn't) eat caviar and filet mignon at every meal, much of the time music serves as more of an idle distraction than some intense spiritual experience.
- vehemenz 4y agoWhile I agree with your overall point, a longstanding previous trend does not indicate a present trend. This is a popular "fallacy fallacy". The metrics of evaluation can change while dumbing down still occurs. If you look at the demographics of top 40 listeners today compared to forty years ago, the popularity of the hits are more narrowly confined to teens and young adults, particularly in the working class US and in developing Latin American countries. You can also look at the ethos of the top genres, such as rap and country, which are less broadly appealing than popular genres of the past such as rock, R&B, or even jazz. This is driven by economics. Young people have more free time than adults, and they have greater access to music than they did in the pre-Internet age. So unless we think young music streamers have comparable taste to music-buying adults of the past, it seems likely that dumbing down to a certain point to meet the audience's expectations is more profitable than the alternative.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoThe business really isn't any more professionalised than it used to be. The popular music business has a long history going all the way back to popular printed sheet music in the 19th century. It's always been mercenary, manipulative, and cynical. Simon Napier-Bell - who used to manage Wham! and other familiar names - has written some fascinating books about it. They're a must read for anyone interested in the history. There are always competing forces pulling music towards simplicity and complexity. Whenever the complexity is squashed in one place it comes back in another. The biggest change over the last decade or so has been increasingly ornate production. In the 80s mixes were semi-automated, but you couldn't do much except change levels. Now you can automate everything - levels, EQ, EQ type, effects, effect parameters - with extreme precision and accuracy. So most modern mixes have constant subtle changes. They don't leap out like a key change, but (for example) the vocal tone and the effects on the vocal will often change phrase by phrase. Or even word by word.
- joenot443 4y agoI don’t think music is getting dumbed down, just that different aspects are becoming more prioritized than others were in the past. Listen to a 100 gecs or other hyperpop song and listen to some of rhythmic motifs being used. This isn’t a fringe genre either, it’s hugely popular with gen z. It may not have key changes like a rock ballad, but it has lots of musical ideas which songwriters from the last 60 years never even had access to.
- 323 4y ago> Elaborate harmonies are just not a thing anymore. I think one way to categorize music is harmony focused (European classical music) or rhythm focused (African tribal music). In the last 30 years we've seen a big shift towards more rhythm based music, especially in electronic music. I don't think it's just a fad, I think it's deeper, rhythm can put the brain in a trance like state, this is harder to do with harmonies.
- zigzag312 4y agoMy theory is that when European classical music was being written, there were no loudspeakers, amplifiers, effects or digital instruments. To fill whole auditable frequency spectrum multiple instruments were needed to play multiple pitches at once. Reason for this is that most instruments could only fill part of the spectrum. Organ being one notable exception. Still, even on organ, to fill the whole spectrum, multiple notes need to be played at the same time. So, harmony was very important to produce a full sound. Today, a single synth can fill the whole frequency spectrum by playing just one note. So, to have a full sound, harmonies aren't necessary anymore.
- adamc 4y agoYes, except that I think people relate to voices differently than other instruments; maybe our brains lock onto human voices in a special way. So harmonies that are sung still have a different effect.
- zigzag312 4y agoI agree, we definitely have more fundamental connection to a human voice than other instruments.
- lbriner 4y ago> Elaborate harmonies are just not a thing anymore. I think that's a niaive analysis of a lot of popular music. If I listen to Justin Beiber or Sam Fender or Taylor Swift, their songs often contain very rich harmony, not necessarily (but definitely including) vocal harmonies but across instrumentation, deviation from the 4-chord song and even a lot of mixing of influences in, what I have to say, are some very unique and refreshing ways that I have either not heard before or certainly not in the mainstream. I think most people just have getting old syndrome. The stuff I listened to when I was in my formative years was great and everything since then not so much. I'm personally very pleased with the quality of new music without having to like all of it.
- adamc 4y agoI listen to a lot of music across a lot of eras, and I'm not particularly fond of the 70s or early 80s (my era). I agree that "in my day" is a thing, but the criticism is accurate anyway. I think vocal harmonies affect people differently for the same reasons people find vocals so compelling: we have wetware devoted to the human voice. It isn't just another instrument, perceptually, at least for most people.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago> My hypothesis is that you can choose any aspect of composition that musicians find exciting and note the same decline over time. Even within the pop world, contemporary percussion/drumming is often significantly more complex than in the past (and outside the pop world, almost always). Some musicians also find timbre rather exciting, and the possibilities (and usage) here have also expanded significantly over the last 60 years.