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Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive?
- porkbeer 3y agoI listen to a LOT of old music from 1910s to present. There seems to be a cyclic nature to complexity in pop music. From most lines repeated, to none, and back. Sure technology has always been a huge driving factor, but human nature stays the same.
- coldtea 3y agoWhen did those "cycles" happen? Because analysis I've seen points to reduced complexity over the years, not to cycles or "ups and downs". There were always repetitive songs (lyrics and music wise), but they get increasingly larger percentage of top music. Can check the top 20 of any decade between 1910 and 2020 to compare. Or check the article's "Repetition of Popular Music, by Year" plot (it covers from the 60s to today). >Sure technology has always been a huge driving factor, but human nature stays the same. Human culture doesn't stay the same though. Nor all aspects of cultural change are cyclical.
- dv_dt 3y agoAnother type of repetition in pop music that may not be surfaced with this analysis is the structural variation in the lyrics. Maybe it's because pop songs that are entirely 1-3 syllable lines personally irk me.
- coldtea 3y agoAlso even those with more lyrics, have increasingly more basic vocabulary (there was some statistical analysis on that a decade back or so).
- svantana 3y ago(2017) Unclear what has happened in the 7 years since.
- Mordisquitos 3y agoThe seven years since have been repeating.
- input_sh 3y agoThe only conclusion I was able to draw from here is that EDM became more "pop". Every decade since the '80s has some type of EDM song taking the number one spot, but '10s has like 7 in the top 10.
- sph 3y agoYour definition of EDM does not match mine. Who are those modern equivalent of Fatboy Slim or Chemical Brothers that have 7 songs in the top 10? Or do you mean more like Aphex Twin? If by EDM you mean music produced on a computer, that's even less of a genre than rock is.
- portaouflop 3y agoI feel like there are many definitions of EDM out there. GP probably means electronic music in general - to me EDM is a genre coming out of the US since maybe 2006, heavily influenced by pop, French house and UK dubstep - basically a watered down and more palatable version of underground styles of EU electronic music. But we can ask 10 people and get probably a dozen different definitions.
- mewpmewp2 3y agoMy definition is that it's electronic music that makes you dance. For dancing purposes, lyrics as in meaning matter less, so it's about what goes with the flow to make you move. EDM is about pleasant, energetic vibing, moving and energy.
- portaouflop 3y agoYea for me that is just dance music or electronic music; and EDM is more a marketing term from the US shrug
- mewpmewp2 3y agoSearching for dance music, it seems to bring similar results as EDM usually, I haven't heard the term "dance music" though. I thought it might include maybe things like hispanic dance or otherwise, but it too seems to be mostly EDM. Also I haven't heard of "electronic music" that much and it has different connotation in my head. Maybe I have been brainwashed by the US term, although I didn't even know it was a US term. I'm from Europe, but of course US brainwash has reached me, no question about the size of the radius. However to me the term EDM definitely has a certain meaning and I think it's generally for most, as when I search for EDM I get exactly what I'm looking or feeling for most of the time. Nonetheless even knowing I might be brainwashed it feels special in terms of the feeling.
- mdrzn 3y agoBeautiful visualization of data as usual, Pudding.cool never miss. It indeed appears that we're increasingly leaning towards more repetition, I suppose it's more appealing to our TikTok-conditioned minds.
- manuel_w 3y ago> Beautiful visualization of data Absolutely. The visualizations in that song text really add value.
- brabel 3y agoHow can I learn to do this? That's amazing! I wish I could use these kinds of visualizations on my programming language benchmarks analysis posts :D.
- stordoff 3y ago> Beautiful visualization of data as usual I would disagree with that to an extent for the distribution below "I excluded the 20 most repetitive songs in the dataset from the above chart. When you see what it looks like with them, you'll understand why". I had both distributions on screen so I could compare them, and was staring at them for a good while thinking I was missing something obvious. The animation that actually revealed the difference didn't start until I'd given up and scrolled the diagram most of the way off the screen. Had I scrolled a little faster to the next section (or possibly used page down/space), I would have missed the animation entirely.
- HPsquared 3y agoThey optimize for the "memorable 5 second snippet".
- fodkodrasz 3y agoNo! No! No, no! No! No! There's no limit! No, no!
- AlecSchueler 3y agoNo limits allowed, 'cause there's much crowd Microphone check as I choose my route I'm playing on the road, I've got no fear The sound from my mouth is a rap you hear No valley too deep, no mountain too high Reach the top, touch the sky They tried to diss me 'cause I sell out I'm making techno and I am proud
- vouaobrasil 3y agoIf they are, messsage in a bottle should compensate for it. I hate that song, it's so repetitive.
- bregma 3y agoPop song lyrics may be getting more repetitive, but that's the way (us huh uh huh) I like it (uh huh uh huh) [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complexity_of_Songs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complexity_of_Songs
- coldtea 3y agoYou're joking, but the claim isn't that repetitive songs didn't exist before. Just that they're an increasingly larger percentage.
- coldtea 3y agoIf we're talking about the top-100, what most people listen to, it's getting more repeatitive lyrics, and more simplified and crude music wise, and with less variety in sound.
- vdaea 3y agoWell, the top 100 is the literal lowest common denominator. It's music for people who don't like music, who make up the majority of the population. It's expected that it's shit.
- diggan 3y agoYeah, like the top 10 programming languages are the lowest common denominator. It's basically programming for the people who don't like programming. The rest of us use lisps like a real programmer.
- sph 3y agoProgramming languages are not commissioned and designed by mega conglomerates for maximum likeability and to sell conference tickets, tshirts and merchandise. At least not yet.
- couchand 3y agoYou've precisely described Java! And Go!
- diggan 3y agoWe're getting there, some of the languages that at least been commissioned and designed by mega corporations, albeit for fuzzy reasons: Go (Google), Swift (Apple), Kotlin (JetBrains), TypeScript (Microsoft) and Dart (Google) One could of course argue that these were created to solve problem X or for reason Y instead of just raising the profile of the company who created it.
- coldtea 3y ago>Well, the top 100 is the literal lowest common denominator. It's also the widest and more representative index of the tastes of each era/generation. That's despite whether there are "true Scotsman/real music lover" listening to 15th century lute music or modern free jazz albums (or the "really good obscure EDM few listen to"). Of course there are those too. That's beside the point. >It's music for people who don't like music, who make up the majority of the population. It's expected that it's shit. And yet it was excellent in the past, like the 60s and 70s, and far more complex lyrically and musicallly (outliers aside).
- willsoon 3y agoWait a nanosecond. It is assumed that you do not do this. Besides, these are the top ten, it means what the $population hears the most, especially the young ones: these two entities are sometimes not quite good. Right now a song is playing in the loudspeakers with the following lyrics: Dreaming of enhanced feelings ... words without loss of meaning ... known limits shall give away ... fresh that won't decay ... breathing craft and will. Circa 2005. And of course it is a pop song, even if it never reached the top. Catchy melody, good instrumentation, 4/4, verse verse chorus etc. I know a song about tectonic plates by a very popular guitarist and songwriter, I could summarise it using my mind algorithm: we live in an ocean of fire ¿and how about you? He also wrote a song about what it means to take your pets for a walk. The algorithm's summary could be: why ... walk ... dog.
- mydriasis 3y agoA selection from the lyrics to "Calm Down" by Rema, popular right now: No tell me no, no, no, no, woah, woah, woah, woah Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Baby, come gimme your lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-woah-woah-woah-woah-woah You got me like, "woah-woah-woah-woah-woah-woah-woah-woah-woah" Shawty come gimme your lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-woah-woah-woah-woah-woah, mhmm
- jdietrich 3y agoA selection from the lyrics to "Pastorale" by Stravinsky, popular in 1907: A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fikUELeU-S4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fikUELeU-S4
- chrismorgan 3y agoThat ain’t lyrics, that’s using the voice as an instrument.
- mydriasis 3y agoMm, don't like this either. I'd rather just hear the other instruments if the voice isn't giving a poem or actual lyric.
- dghughes 3y agoBack in the 1980s I hated Phil Collins' "Take Me Home" it seemed to be just those words, the title of the song, but I guess I am remembering it worse than it was.
- Vinnl 3y ago> The songs that reached the top 10 were, on average, more repetitive than the rest in every year from 1960 to 2015! So looks like they're filling a need. Which makes sense to me; singing along is the most accessible way of participating in making music, and repetitive lyrics make that even easier. As someone who doesn't play an instrument (and likes doing bad karaoke), I definitely appreciate lyrics that are easy to pick up.
- kmbfjr 3y agoNothing is more repetitive than disco’s Silver Convention.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]