What Science Says About Pop Music...

09/14/12

This week, I thought I'd take a short recess from our movie discussions, and let you in on a new scientific discovery about pop music...

Recently, the Spanish National Research Council ran 50 years' worth of pop music songs through fancy mathematical algorithms using the Million Songs Dataset, and guess what they discovered?

It all sounds the same.

Scientists call that "homogenization." Okay, so maybe we didn't really need scientists to make that big discovery using fancy algorithms, especially since all we really need to do is turn on the radio and hear for ourselves that "new" songs don't sound "new" at all. However, it's kind of nice to have science back up what we already know.

I wonder why pop music keeps pumping out the same melodies, the same rhythms, the same chords and chord progressions, the same lyrical consistency. Is it because people aren't very creative anymore? Or is it because pop music consumers prefer a specific sound and they don't want anything new? It's a curious thing.

Sometimes church music sounds the same to me, too...even the "new" music. I wonder if God gets tired of hearing the same thing over and over, and that's why Psalms 96:1 says, "Sing a NEW song to the Lord." Maybe, since God's mercies are "new" to us all the time, we should find "new" and beautiful songs to sing back to him. Maybe it's not so much about newness of sound as it is newness of hearts responding to God, which results in a new kind of song.

What do you think?

You can read the scientific article HERE if you want to check it out.

Comments

+6 #9 Delightful 2012-10-06 23:33

Black Eyed Peas is all BOUT Recycling… songs. I have known that for quite a while, ever since when in 2008 I was singing "You Spin Me RightAround" and my dad was like, "How do you know that old song?"
I never sang it again. (LOL no, I did!)

And even Sean Desman's "Nobody Does It Like You" (the music vid is appropriate, BTW) and Rihanna's "You Da One" (I don't know about THAT one) sound very alike, and I was like, copycat. But you know what? As long as the lyrics, music vid, and singer are positive, I am okay.

-4 #8 rfishell 2012-10-01 18:21

Actually, that comment about reading your books wasn't from me, Randy Fishell, but it was sent to me!

+3 #7 rfishell 2012-10-01 18:20

Melanie, this isn't about music, but we just got done reading your book "Convicted" to my kids last night. Every night they were riveted by the story & groaned when the chapter ended because they wanted me to read more. When the book ended last night they said there just had to be a sequel! Any other books out there that you have written? We've also read "Unrapped" which they loved too :-)"

+4 #6 Laughter101 2012-09-29 19:45

I knew it!
I'm so glad this is true because all of my friends are obsessed with pop and I'm just there wondering, why?
I like listening to the good ol' jazz (lol) and cl[censored]ica l music. It's so much more richer and beautiful. :)