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It’s hard to complain about the state of modern pop music without sounding like an old man yelling at a cloud, but a new study asserts mainstream tunes have actually gotten dumber and more repetitive over the past few decades.
Music is an incredibly diverse and constantly evolving art, and it’s pretty foolish to make any sweeping generalizations about the industry as a whole when you consider it’s hard to take every facet into consideration.
Of course, that has never been enough to stop the never-ending cycle propelled by Old People who perpetually bemoan the current state of affairs while complaining “They don’t make music like they used to” as well as Young People who become convinced they were born into the wrong generation after discovering classic rock.
I’d be lying if I said I’ve never found myself sharing a similar sentiment, and as I’ve slowly but surely reached the point in life where I struggle to understand the appeal of the music that’s popular with Kids These Days to the point where I’ve largely stopped keeping tabs on it, it’s gotten harder to avoid joining the choir of washed detractors.
With that said, The Guardian reports a new study examining “popular music over five decades and five genres” would appear to support the gripes of anyone who thinks music has become increasingly dumbed down.
The paper in question was published in Scientific Reports earlier this week by a team led by Eva Zangerle, an assistant professor specializing in computer science at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. The researchers focused on around 12,000 songs that were released between 1980 and 2020, which included tunes under the pop, rock, country, hip-hop, and R&B umbrellas.
It asserts “pop music lyrics have become simpler and easier to comprehend” based on a decline in the diversity of the vocabulary harnessed in lyrics and also claims “lyrics are becoming more repetitive” thanks in no small part to the rise in rap songs featuring artists saying the same things over and over again.
While 12,000 songs certainly isn’t a tiny sample size, it’s also kind of a drop in the bucket when you’re talking about five decades worth of music. I certainly think there’s something to be said for the results of the study, but there are also still plenty of artists who are the exception to the general trends.