Today’s popular songs are significantly simpler in structure compared to those from 70 years ago. This could be due to the development of new genres like disco or hip-hop, as well as technical innovations that have influenced the melodies of popular songs.
From Elvis, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles, through Pink Floyd, Roxette, and Michael Jackson, to Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, some music is more popular and successful than other works. However, browsing the charts of previous decades, one tends to encounter more musically exceptional songs than in today’s uniform chart successes. Popular songs and earworms also seem to have become noticeably faster over time. Can we objectively prove this, or is it merely a subjective impression? Moreover, what has driven this development?
Comparing chart Successes
To investigate this, Madeline Hamilton and Marcus Pearce from Queen Mary University of London studied the evolution of popular earworms over the past decades. They analyzed the main melodies of over 1,100 singles that reached the top 5 of the US Billboard charts at the end of each year between 1950 and 2022. They mathematically compared these melodies based on various musical characteristics, such as rhythm and tonal structure, diversity, number, and duration of notes.
Faster, but More Boring?
The analysis revealed that the complexity of rhythms and pitch arrangements decreased during this period. Simultaneously, the average number of notes played per second increased, as did the number of repetitions, making the melodies faster and more monotonous over time.
Within this trend, two years stood out: 1975 and 2000, where melodic complexity sharply decreased. 1996 also saw a significant change in music history, although it was less drastic than in the other two years.
New Genres Changed Hit Melodies
Hamilton and Pearce suspect that the changes in 1975 could represent the rise of new preferences and music genres such as New Wave, Disco, and Stadium Rock. The “revolutions” in 1996 and 2000 could represent the rise of hip-hop and the introduction of digital audio workstations that allowed the repeated playback of audio loops.
Compared to previous studies, the researchers conclude that these musical “revolutions” took place several years later than previously assumed.
More Monotonous Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Worse
The researchers conclude that these innovations have led to simpler popular melodies. However, they emphasize that this does not necessarily mean music has become less complex overall or “worse.” The quality and combination of sounds could have developed independently of the melodies, or even in the opposite direction.
For example, simpler melodies could also be a consequence of modern songs becoming faster; artists may have avoided complex melodies to not overwhelm listeners. Artists may have focused more on sound quality or other features than melody, which only became possible with digital techniques.
The study also does not reflect the entire history of music. “Since the sample only contains the five most popular songs of each year, it cannot be said to represent US American or Western pop music in general. Therefore, we emphasize that a much larger dataset of melodies is needed to verify the conclusions of the study,” the researchers write.