“Everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974, it’s a scientific fact.”
– Homer Simpson
Everyone of a certain age is going to be nostalgic for the music of their youth. But even so, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that mainstream pop and rock has devolved significantly in the past 20-30 years. Can anyone honestly say that Nickleback are as good as Led Zeppelin, or Justin Beiber is in the same league as Abba?
Now a team of scientists gave gone and proved it.
The combination of turning up the volume when recording the songs mixing with fewer varieties of notes and chords makes today’s musical appetite for creativity a shrinking lot. Joan Serra, who headed up the team of researchers at the Spanish National Research Council, told Reuters that you could call this trend a “homogenization†of today’s popular music. “In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations — roughly speaking, chords plus melodies — have consistently diminished in the last 50 years.â€
To further this sameness, our timbre — the term used to explain the same note sounding different on varying instruments — palette has also shrunk substantially, giving us an even greater reduction in the variety of sounds (and instruments) we hear, according to the evaluation released in the journal Scientific Reports.
Yes, it just proves what we’ve known all along. It’s the obvious end result of the focus-group driven approach taken by the corporate end of the music industry. Anything that a substantial minority of potential buyers might not like has to be removed. Any kind of instrumental solo? Throw them out! Interesting chord progressions? Debbie won’t like it! And don’t even suggest time signatures that can’t be danced to.
Debbie, by the way, is “The Archetypical Imaginary Pop Music Consumer & Ultimate Arbiter of Musical Taste for the Entire Nation“, as described by the late, great Frank Zappa way back in 1984. And things have got far worse since then.
It’s pure sausage factory. Yes, there is an enormous variety of vastly superior and more adventurous music out there, but almost all of it is completely off the radar screen of those who take all their cues from the mass media.
I suppose you could say that those who are willing to be spoon-fed rather than seek out good music for themselves deserve the thin gruel they get. But I can help feel that we all suffer from such an impoverished mainstream cultural landscape, where almost everyone who actually cares about music has opted out of the mainstream altogether.
What do you think?
I admit, my taste in music is completely unsubtle. I like what I like, and a lot of what I like is brainless pop music because I can zone out listening to it. I don’t grasp “chord progressions” and all the other things by which aficionados like you describe what distinguishes good music from bad. (I mean, I grasp what they are, obviously, but such nuances just don’t register on me when I am listening.) So yeah, I enjoy Led Zeppelin, but I also listen to Nickelback because, eh, sometimes I am in the mood for loud catchy ballads.
OTOH, I do like prog rock and have enjoyed a lot of the bands you have recommended.
The corporates will try to sell more of whatever is in the charts and proven to sell. Can’t really fault them on just doing what other businesses do. But I do think they are making a mistake to only sell that. It risks undermining the independence of the chart mechanism by feeding back only the same thing. How can consumers express choice if nothing else is available ? Of course, it is, which is where the mass media do us all a disservice by selecting essentially the same stuff for playlists. Proving that information – knowing about what is available – is a major part of the problem. Piracy is causing trouble, but so is consumer apathy. Can anything else properly explain why the album charts are breaking records for some of the worst weekly totals to reach number 1 and, at the same time, the chart contains an album that is one of the best sellers of all time? There are over 4 million proven purchasers out there – and probably very many more, but a lot of them seem to be looking at the current chart and saying “no thanks”.
Honestly, who’s going to remember Nickleback and Justin Bieber in 30 years? Music historians, I suppose. Either way, time allows us to filter out the mediocrity. That being said, these guys did at least compare a more diverse base of past pop to present pop, which a lot of people don’t seem to do. The thing here is that in the 1960s, there wasn’t nearly as much of an independent music ‘industry’, and culture was a lot less fragmented. Hence, the mainstream was bigger and could afford to occasionally cater to a greater variety of interests.
Nowadays the underground and the mainstream almost exist in separate universes. There used to be a lot more crossover than their is today.
I think a lot of this is down to the way radio playlisting works today, with records played to death before being officially released, which more or cuts the general public out of the loop when deciding what’s a hit. It’s harder for things that don’t fit a small number of commercial formulas to break out their respective underground ghettos.
Direct-to-fan sales mean independent music can be economically viable without breaking into the mainstream, but I feel an impoverished mainstream isn’t a good thing.
I am sure you are right about radio playlisting shepherding the masses to buy certain records.
Gabe is right about history allowing filtering of mediocrity. I couldn’t help snigger at your comparison of Led Zep and Nickleback, but for all that there is clearly rubbish now was the 70s any better? I am sure there would have been masses of dross then, but we filter that out and remember what appeals to us.
There is dross in every decade, and great music in every decade too. And the dross does get forgotten. But there’s still evidence to suggest there’s far less crossover between the underground and the mainstream than there was in the 70s and 80s. Is an equivalent of David Bowie or Kate Bush even possible now?