OT/MISC Pop music keeps getting worse over last 50 years: study

Cardinal

Cardinal

Chickministrator
_______________
thepostmillennial.com

Pop music keeps getting worse over last 50 years: study

“Our analysis shows that lyrics have become angrier across all genres, with rap showing the most profound increase in anger.”
thepostmillennial.com thepostmillennial.com

A new study looking at the patterns of lyrics and music over the last 50 years have concluded that songs have gotten more simple and repetitive over time. Emotions in the songs have also become more negative and angry.
The study, published in Scientific Reports found the English-language songs have become simpler and repetitive over the last five decades in the categories of rap, country, pop, R&B, and rock songs.

Lead author of the study Eva Zangerle and others wrote in the paper's conclusion, "We find that lyrics have become simpler over time regarding multiple aspects of lyrics: vocabulary richness, readability, complexity, and the number of repeated lines."
"Our results also confirm previous research that found that lyrics have become more negative on the one hand, and more personal on the other," it added.

Additionally, the authors stated, "Our analysis shows that lyrics have become angrier across all genres, with rap showing the most profound increase in anger." Country music had the lowest increase in anger and negative emotion across time.
The authors stated that the information gathered on the pattern in lyrics of songs could be "used to further study and monitor cultural artifacts and shifts in society."

Further, it added that these insights could signal "changing sentiment in societies and shifts in the use of emotionally loaded words and the sentiment expressed in the lyrics consumed by the different audiences (age, gender, country/state/region, educational background, economical status, etc.)."

Alongside this discovery, US reading scores have dropped to the lowest levels in decades among students. Fewer and fewer people read books in comparison to the late 1900s. Both are an indicator similar to the declining complexity of song lyrics in that reading and complex literary understanding seems to be on the decline.
The authors speculated in the study that the simplicity could be a result of more and more Americans simply music as background noise.
 
Reasonable Rascal

Reasonable Rascal

Veteran Member
We are not listening to enough Bing Crosby, nor reading enough of 'Teddy' Roosevelt's works.

Bing put people in a happier mood all around, and 'Teddy' was the most masculine little 4-eyed weakling who ever wrangled cattle, lead men into battle, or promulgated foreign policy to the benefit of the US.

RR
 
Blue 5

Blue 5

Veteran Member
Let me preface this by saying that I like at least a little of every genre of music. That being said, I've noticed a general trend toward artists recording music in vulgar pidgin English... much of what passes for lyrics would be incomprehensible to normal folks from 50yrs ago. It definitely reflects a coarsening of society in general and portends a general breakdown.
 
RB Martin

RB Martin

Veteran Member
Cardinal said:
thepostmillennial.com

Pop music keeps getting worse over last 50 years: study

“Our analysis shows that lyrics have become angrier across all genres, with rap showing the most profound increase in anger.”
thepostmillennial.com thepostmillennial.com

A new study looking at the patterns of lyrics and music over the last 50 years have concluded that songs have gotten more simple and repetitive over time. Emotions in the songs have also become more negative and angry.
The study, published in Scientific Reports found the English-language songs have become simpler and repetitive over the last five decades in the categories of rap, country, pop, R&B, and rock songs.

Lead author of the study Eva Zangerle and others wrote in the paper's conclusion, "We find that lyrics have become simpler over time regarding multiple aspects of lyrics: vocabulary richness, readability, complexity, and the number of repeated lines."
"Our results also confirm previous research that found that lyrics have become more negative on the one hand, and more personal on the other," it added.

Additionally, the authors stated, "Our analysis shows that lyrics have become angrier across all genres, with rap showing the most profound increase in anger." Country music had the lowest increase in anger and negative emotion across time.
The authors stated that the information gathered on the pattern in lyrics of songs could be "used to further study and monitor cultural artifacts and shifts in society."

Further, it added that these insights could signal "changing sentiment in societies and shifts in the use of emotionally loaded words and the sentiment expressed in the lyrics consumed by the different audiences (age, gender, country/state/region, educational background, economical status, etc.)."

Alongside this discovery, US reading scores have dropped to the lowest levels in decades among students. Fewer and fewer people read books in comparison to the late 1900s. Both are an indicator similar to the declining complexity of song lyrics in that reading and complex literary understanding seems to be on the decline.
The authors speculated in the study that the simplicity could be a result of more and more Americans simply music as background noise.
Click to expand...
Who, amongst us, didn't know that? I am glad that it's official now though. :applaud:
 
gjwandkids

gjwandkids

Contributing Member
My teens and young adults don't listen to modern music with the exceptions of Sabaton Welcome to Sabaton official homepage & headquarters! and

Clamavi De Profundis https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC8prZi7q1vnP0A3XX4EWxQ

Other than that, they have very eclectic music tastes, but it's all stuff from 1970's or earlier. My one son says back before autotune...you know when people had to be able to match pitch. I occasionally listen to music from the 1980's and if one of the kids walks in they make a face.

They like Bing, Jazz, Big Band, Irish music (A LOT) John Denver (A LOT) and classical music. I took a poll just now. Favorite composers are Bach, Des Prez, and Haydn (she plays the flute).
 
K

ktrapper

Veteran Member
Last young guy I had in our shop at work(the one I had to wake up to fire) listened to all that rap crap.
The first week he was there I let him bluetooth his music to the shop radio for a while one morning. Never again.
Some of the most foul and hateful crap I ever heard.
I went into the office to print some stuff for the shop and our coordinator asked me “Hows it going out there”
I said “Whoo! It was touch and go there for bit”
He said “How so?”
Me “I just survived three drive by’s, two gang shootings and I was almost violently raped by the Nasty P&$$y song”
“Been a rough morning out there already”

Needless to say that crap never played on my shop radio again..
 
The Hammer

The Hammer

Has No Life - Lives on TB
gjwandkids said:
My teens and young adults don't listen to modern music with the exceptions of Sabaton Welcome to Sabaton official homepage & headquarters! and

Clamavi De Profundis https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC8prZi7q1vnP0A3XX4EWxQ

Other than that, they have very eclectic music tastes, but it's all stuff from 1970's or earlier. My one son says back before autotune...you know when people had to be able to match pitch. I occasionally listen to music from the 1980's and if one of the kids walks in they make a face.

They like Bing, Jazz, Big Band, Irish music (A LOT) John Denver (A LOT) and classical music. I took a poll just now. Favorite composers are Bach, Des Prez, and Haydn (she plays the flute).
Click to expand...
I think a well-rounded taste in music past and present is good for the mind and soul. It gives depth and variety.

That said, a lot of today's popular music is just awful. There is good stuff out there, but it seems like you have to dig harder for it.
 
Melodi

Melodi

Disaster Cat
My German housemate calls the modern stuff, "I know Three Words; I deserve an award because I know three words."

This trend started before computerized music, but the computerization of modern music made it worse. Some computerized music (AI stuff) can be significantly good when edited by actual musicians. But that is recent. For at least 15 years, computers have been used to figure out "What Makes a Hit Song?" They have come up with formulas, and that's all the corporate studios allow to be recorded and promoted.

Thanks to the internet, occasionally, a real songwriter (or singer-songwriter) sneaks in the back door thanks to the internet. But it isn't enough to upset the corporate model.

In the past, from folk music to jazz, songs told a story of sorts. Sometimes it was a very short story. But there was still some poetry and thinking going on there. It isn't 3 minutes of "I love you, babe" over and over (or the more vulgar version). It's "I left my heart in San Francisco" or "Today while the blossoms are still clean to the vine." Even hard rock tends to have some stories and poetry, and Jim Morrison is a great example.

There is always some simple "I wanna hold your hand" type stuff, but good musicians can even do something very simple as high art—think "Norwegian Wood."

Anyway, books (in the future) will be written about this, I'm sure. But people get tired of junk music and tend to turn it off after a time. While I don't care for rap, the older stuff did have a lot of poetry. It has also morphed into "How Fast can I say these words, usually the same three words?" with a beat in the background.

The good news is that people get tired of junk music; they always do. Certain groups are trending toward making their own music or listening to self-produced music made by others. Of course, it doesn't pay much, and many artists can only do this part-time because today, the "Patrons" of the past have become corporate monsters whose only interest is in "The Algo says..."

One of the only "good" things about hard times (or wars) is they tend to produce a lot of good music. It is the one thing people can still enjoy, even when they are left with almost nothing.
 
RB Martin

RB Martin

Veteran Member
Hfcomms said:
Yeah, and what university received a multimillion dollar grant for this study?
Click to expand...
It appears there were several:

Authors and Affiliations​

  1. Multimedia Mining and Search Group, Institute of Computational Perception, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria
    Markus Schedl
  2. Department of Music Pedagogy, Nuremberg University of Music, Nuremberg, Germany
    Emilia Parada-Cabaleiro
  3. AI Lab, Human-centered AI Group, Linz Institute of Technology, Linz, Austria
    Stefan Brandl & Markus Schedl
  4. Department of Computer Science, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
    Maximilian Mayerl & Eva Zangerle
  5. Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Vienna, Austria
    Marcin Skowron
  6. Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
    Elisabeth Lex
Click to expand...
 
D

Deena in GA

Administrator
_______________
I agree that the stuff played on the radio across all genres is not very good at all. However, there are some indie artists out there that are really good - and original. Oliver Anthony certainly broke the mold of modern singer/songwriters and in less than a year has become loved and appreciated around the world.
 
day late

day late

money? whats that?
Long ago I noticed the change in music. When I was young the ladies were treated as such, unless their behavior proved it was undeserved. In song ladies were lifted up. Today they are commonly referred to as 'biach' or 'ho'. Quite a difference.
 
Blacknarwhal

Blacknarwhal

Let's Go Brandon!
Reasonable Rascal said:
We are not listening to enough Bing Crosby, nor reading enough of 'Teddy' Roosevelt's works.

Bing put people in a happier mood all around, and 'Teddy' was the most masculine little 4-eyed weakling who ever wrangled cattle, lead men into battle, or promulgated foreign policy to the benefit of the US.

RR
Click to expand...

Fallout fans got BOTH Crosbies!

Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, Pistol Packin' Mama, 3:01

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocOgJU0mxbg


Bob Crosby, Dear Hearts and Gentle People, 2:10

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yh9RywD_Fw
 
StarryEyedLad

StarryEyedLad

désespéré pour le ciel
There was a "song" that I kept hearing only snippets of in the last year or so, that was apparently quite popular. Much of it consists of lo, lo, lo, lo, lo...What absolute garbage! I waded through YouTube to try to find it, and the amount of similar songs is sickening. Half-naked women twerking, hideous "hairstyles". We have degraded so far that this type of trash is considered entertainment and even wins awards.

Here it is. I don't recommend listening to it.

Rema - Calm Down
Runtime: 3:39
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQLsdm1ZYAw
 
Reasonable Rascal

Reasonable Rascal

Veteran Member
gjwandkids said:
My teens and young adults don't listen to modern music with the exceptions of Sabaton Welcome to Sabaton official homepage & headquarters! and

Clamavi De Profundis https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC8prZi7q1vnP0A3XX4EWxQ

Other than that, they have very eclectic music tastes, but it's all stuff from 1970's or earlier. My one son says back before autotune...you know when people had to be able to match pitch. I occasionally listen to music from the 1980's and if one of the kids walks in they make a face.

They like Bing, Jazz, Big Band, Irish music (A LOT) John Denver (A LOT) and classical music. I took a poll just now. Favorite composers are Bach, Des Prez, and Haydn (she plays the flute).
Click to expand...

I think I may like your bunch.

I am so fuddy duddy I still have vintage turntables and the vinyl to play on them. I even have some 78's (which I don't play in all honestly, but someday). To be honest though the Grundig cabinet radio's turntable doesn't work and the cabinet stereo the folks passed on to me when they were cleaning a bit needs some tuning. But there is separate unit such as was popular in the 80's and phasing out by the 90's with turntable, radio, cassette and CD player, one of those stacked units.

RR
 
gjwandkids

gjwandkids

Contributing Member
I like my bunch. They are genuinely lovely humans that I would hang out with even if we weren't related.

We have a large collection of vinyl records too. No cassette tapes anymore, just vinyl and CDs.
 
bev

bev

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Red Baron said:
It's a totally heavy scene out there man. The revolution will not be televised,

Runtime 4:20 [Closed Captioned Available]

Lamb of God - "Checkmate" [CC]

View: https://youtu.be/lNwHjNz6My4
Click to expand...
I listened up to the start of the vocals only. the guitar was awesome, but when the vocals started, I was transported back in time to when my son was in 9th or 10th grade. He started buying “this kind” of music and we wouldn’t allow him to play it in our house. When the singer sounds like an angry demonic monster, I can’t say he’s talented, and I won’t listen. It sounds demonic. But to each his own.
 
Tristan

Tristan

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Cardinal said:
A new study looking at the patterns of lyrics and music over the last 50 years have concluded that songs have gotten more simple and repetitive over time. Emotions in the songs have also become more negative and angry.
Click to expand...


Funny, seems to match the trajectory of the Pop. as a whole.

Chicken, or egg?
 
gjwandkids

gjwandkids

Contributing Member
In the vast majority of cases that is true. My recommendation is to find a Latin Mass parish somewhere, just for the music.
 
Dennis Olson

Dennis Olson

Chief Curmudgeon
_______________
Reasonable Rascal said:
and 'Teddy' was the most masculine little 4-eyed weakling who ever wrangled cattle, lead men into battle, or promulgated foreign policy to the benefit of the US.
Click to expand...
I disagree. As far as led men into battle, Patton holds that title. As far as promulgating foreign policy, I kinda like where Trump was headed before the DS got him.
 
33dInd

33dInd

Veteran Member
My go to for uplifting music of a bygone era
John Phillip Sousa
And fall winter musuc
Christmas songs from the 49,s and 50,s
Occasionally I get a urning for old country and western like pre war
But then
The 4 seasons and the ventures have a place
 
Meemur

Meemur

Voice on the Prairie / FJB!
There was another article posted earlier that AI was being used to write some of the lyrics.

I believe it!

Look up the lyrics for Texas Hold 'em (if you dare)
 
D

Dash

Veteran Member
Delta said:
And here I thought it died on 3 Feb 1959 at Clear Lake, Iowa. (And my only lament at the time was I wasn't old enough to drive anybody's Chevy to the levee.)
Click to expand...
The Levy that McLean wrote about was a bar one town over from where I grew up. The name had changed but we used to go there sometimes just because it used to be the Levy from the song. This was in the late 90’s/early 2000’s when I was in my early 20’s. Now that I think about it, I was there on September 10th 2001 watching the Giants Monday Night Football game. The last night before so many things changed. You brought back a lot of memories with this reference.
 
J

Johnny Twoguns

Senior Member
Meh. Songs in the 70's and 80's were great with some really good ones in the 90's and a few since. I listen to quite a bit of music now and then; but if all I had to listen to was 'she be comin' round the mountain when she' done' it would drive me up the wall. Ditto for Appalachian foot stomping or Medieval music, ALL of which I listen to now and then, same as some old crooner music.

The writer should have concentrated more on rap and hip hop, which were both created by the See I ah btw.
 
ainitfunny

ainitfunny

Saved, to glorify God.
coalcracker said:
This decline is most noticeable in the realm of church music. Majestic hymns that had literally been sung for centuries have now been discarded, and for what?

7-11 songs. The same seven words repeated 11 times.

About as sacred as a trip to the dentist.
Click to expand...
I like Hymns Triumphant (the first one by birdwing records) it is the London Philharmonic Orchestra with
the London Philhamonic Choir singing a medly of the greatest hymns we all know and love.
I only want to play it on full blast volume!
I had heard that the arranger of the work wanted to see if
It made any difference if those musicians and singers were all Christians so he asked those that were not to recuse themselves from this work.

I think it made a tremendous difference.
I have bought about 20 or so of these albums to share,
and cd's and cassettes and digital versions of this album
.i played it at my mothers funeral, my husbands funeral,
And I want it played at my funeral.
I REALLY like it a lot.
That album ALONE (with the Holy Spirit)
brought my husband back to FAITH IN JESUS.

I was not allowed to talk to him about "religion".
But he was in charge of all our music because he was the
family expert in recording. I asked him if he would mind
putting the album on reel to reel tape so I could listen nonstop without having to turn the album over.
He said " No Problem".
He worked on that for about a month.
Playing it over and over again in the basement.
Trying to "get it right".
Finally, one day, he came up from the basement in tears
And said "I wanna go to church with you."
 
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