Melodies in chart-topping music have become less complex, study finds. Changes since 1950 could partly be due to new genres such as stadium rock, disco and hip-hop. The average complexity of melodies had fallen over time, with two big drops in 1975 and 2000, as well as a smaller drop in 1996.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/jul/04/melodies-chart-topping-music-less-complex-study
9 Comments
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-64571-x
From the linked article:
Melodies in chart-topping music have become less complex, study finds
Scientists say changes since 1950 could partly be due to new genres such as stadium rock, disco and hip-hop
“Won’t you play a simple melody,” sang Bing Crosby in his rendition of the Irving Berlin classic. Now it seems his wish has come true: research has revealed the tunes of modern chart-toppers are less complex than those of the past.
Scientists say the change could – at least in part – be down to the emergence of new genres over the decades, such as stadium rock, disco and hip-hop.
However, Madeline Hamilton, a co-author of the research from Queen Mary University of London, said the results did not mean music was dumbing down.
“My guess is that other aspects of music are getting more complex and melodies are getting simpler as a way to compensate,” Hamilton said, noting that while music in earlier decades was made with a handful of instruments – meaning complexity tended to be added through vocals – modern tracks involved many layers and sound textures.
Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, Hamilton and her co-author Dr Marcus Pearce describe how they studied songs placed in the top five of the US Billboard year-end singles music chart each year between 1950 and 2022. These included Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley, Hey Jude by the Beatles, Vogue by Madonna, Poker Face by Lady Gaga and Irreplaceable by Beyoncé.
They then analysed eight features relating to the pitch and rhythmic structure of the melodies. The results revealed the average complexity of melodies had fallen over time, with two big drops in 1975 and 2000, as well as a smaller drop in 1996.
Hamilton said one explanation was the rise of different genres of music, with the first drop occurring around the time stadium rock and disco music became popular.
“The [drop] around the year 2000 [is] probably at least partially due to the rise of hip-hop, because those melodies are very distinct. They’re very simple melodies, normally,” said Hamilton.
The smaller decline around 1996, she added, could also be linked to hip-hop, although another possible influence is the rise of the digital audio workstation, which makes it easy to loop sections and phrases within songs.
Disco began right around 1975.
Lets all go back and read Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” again…
My daughter plays the Piano very well. She learned mostly by playing music from Disney films that she liked. Then she got a little older and wanted to learn to play the music from her favorite pop musicians and she was disappointed because the difference in complexity is enormous. When you strip out the vocals of most pop there is very little left over except for a really basic and repetitive baseline melody. It’s boring to play for musicians.
I have a high school trumpeters understanding of music but a fairly sophisticated understanding of complexity metrics and I do have to tip my hat to the authors for doing a thorough job of coming up with a way quantify the complexity of a melody… it might sound easy, but it’s not. (That works out to be an accidental pun.)
I think every generation essentially freezes their music preference to what they liked in high school or college. Maybe not everyone but most people. For me that’s around 2000, so my distaste for later music is both a product of my age and a vindication of my well-trained ear.
I think part of it also involves the development of technologies and techniques to enhance ambience and emotional response without really adding complexity.
I would also add that musical complexity of all music in the radio and after era is far surpassed in complexity by a lot of classical and particularly the baroque era. Modern artists are using techniques developed 200-400 years ago and for the last ~100 years refining them to be more catchy, with a larger variety of producible sounds, and less complexity. There are of course exceptions, but that is the popular trend.
Edit: Also, modern music has become more and more visually and sexually oriented. How does a Simon and Garfunkel show compare to Rammstein having a giant dildo that shoots fire, or a scantily clad young girl coming in on a wrecking ball? Jazz singers had some suggestive songs, but nothing like WAP.
I was just reading about chord progressions, and the writer of the page I was on claimed that modern music in general does not use key changes. That is a shame.
Rick Beato is right. Music is getting objectively worse.
While I enjoy complexity, when something is both more simple and yet still effective we normally call that elegant.
I love the complex stuff Matt Bellamy comes up with, and one of my favorites of all time is the Chemical Brothers. But I can still get moved to tears by a four chord song when executed the right way, you know?