
Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent? - ritmatter
http://www.mattritter.me/?p=45
======
mgmeyers
I wouldn't think testing vocabulary would be a very good indicator of music's
intelligence. In my mind, music has been getting less intelligent because the
tools to make music these days have made the barrier to entry almost non-
existent. No longer do you need to study and practice various
musical/performance skills for years to be a musician and put out a record.
All you need is a computer and some software.

It's hard to say if this is a bad thing, though. I think it's good that anyone
can try their hand at making music, but at the same time, the saturation of
poor-quality music seems to be having a negative effect on music quality
overall.

Or, maybe I'm just getting old?

~~~
harvestmoon
If anything, I think lowering the barriers to entry should result in higher
quality hit songs. For a hit song to occur, it has to become popular, which
means a certain amount of oomph.

So with 1000 songs to choose from for the hot 100, you'd expect OK songs, but
with 100,000 to choose from, you'd expect in a meritocracy much better songs.

Of course, the hot 100 is hit and miss. An example of a song which was made
using affordable DAW software is, I believe, Crank That by Soulja Boy which is
a song I personally dislike, take that as you will.

------
blfr
At least the titles seem to have gotten less intelligent and... ruder.

[https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RczjGgSu4VU/VIs3dccjucI/AAAAAAAAL...](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RczjGgSu4VU/VIs3dccjucI/AAAAAAAALes/XlZaGN81Ooc/s1600/billboard.png)

from [http://prooffreaderplus.blogspot.ca/2014/12/most-popular-
son...](http://prooffreaderplus.blogspot.ca/2014/12/most-popular-songs-
containing-most.html)

------
wambotron
Pop music from 1959 -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGgaZZl_GVg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGgaZZl_GVg)

Pop music is stupid because it's catchy. It's always been that way, always
will be.

~~~
cbd1984
If you ever want to get some perspective, look at the songs which were
_actually_ popular, not the ones preserved in the playlists of oldies
stations.

[https://www.billboard.com/archive/charts/1958/hot-100](https://www.billboard.com/archive/charts/1958/hot-100)

~~~
tarentel
That song was actually popular though. It obviously wasn't as popular as any
of the songs on that list but it did peak at number 3.

------
jerf
I think the article may have provided evidence for the opposite of what the
author seems to believe:

"My results confirmed what Briggs had described: unique words and total words
have risen over time, but the ratio has gone down significantly. This would
suggest that pop lyrics have in fact gotten less eloquent."

I'd have to disagree... this just implies that modern pop songs are more
lyrically repetitive, which is not immediately a sign of "less intelligence".
It may be less enjoyable to some of us or you might call it "more insipid",
but _given the definition of intelligence_ (italicized because that's an
important phrase in this paragraph) chosen at the beginning, it's still
pulling from a larger vocabulary, and that still implies _higher_ intelligence
by the definition.

"Smarter people putting out more repetitive/insipid music" doesn't seem too
shocking a result to me... the intelligence of a songwriter puts an upper
bound on the intelligence of the song they can produce, but no lower bound.

There are still some confounding factors that could be at play though:
Increased ethnic/cultural diversity could simply be introducing significantly
more slang vocabularies into the songs. Rather than implying that any one
performer is using a larger vocabulary, that would simply imply a certain
dialectal diaspora, which wouldn't prove anything about the individual
musicians.

So, now the part where I question the definition of intelligence being used.
"Vocabulary size" isn't a bad choice of proxy for at least a fun analysis, but
perhaps instead of graphing the years as a whole, each song should be analyzed
for things like word count, then we can look at the population statistics
instead of the summed words. If the individual songs are as a whole using more
vocabulary, I would consider that stronger evidence than if the songs all turn
out merely to have dialect differences. In fact it's completely mathematically
possible for the set of all Top 50 songs in later years to use more different
words as a whole even as each individual song is simpler than the individual
songs of the past.

And, if this really _was_ a real effect, if word gets back to the pop song
creators, the very act of observing the vocabulary has gotten more difficult
could well cause the pop songs to get simpler over the next few years....

------
seunosewa
The article doesn't answer the question it set out to answer. The poster,
being a (fellow) programmer, was (probably) more focused on working out how to
scrape the data than on figuring out how to determine the intelligence of a
song's lyrics reliably. The methods he came up with don't answer the original
question at all.

~~~
justaman
Its been proven that repeating short phrases results in a catchier tune. The
impact marketing has made on music is terrible to say the least. In recent
years especially it has become more about what sells that what has emotional
resonance.

Has pop music been getting stupider? Was it ever intelligent? Probably not. I
think the issue is pop music is more common now than ever as only handfuls of
artists can afford a solid marketing budget.

------
apeacox
Nice job! :-) I think that music (melodies, riffs, combination of sounds and
notes, etc...) are getting very stupidier. I don't have tools nor skills to
test this assumption, just my hears. Try to listen MTV for some month and
you'll see that a lot of new songs are _very_ similar to other ones. I mean,
too much similar.

~~~
sanoli
A musician friend of mine (classically trained, but works with pop music for
decades now) says that's true, and the reason is that much music today is
heavily rhythm centric, and everything else around it is ending up less
complex or less diverse (don't remember which). I don't really know if it
makes sense, as I haven't really been keeping up with mainstream stuff. Not
that I don't like it, I just don't have as much time, and I found a suprising
new love for older music that has kept strong and my music time goes towards
it.

~~~
grumblestumble
The idea that rhythm is somehow less "intelligent", "complex", or "diverse"
has all kinds of terrible connotations. Does your friend wear a powdered wig
and perform for the ladies of the court?

~~~
sanoli
No, the idea is that _today 's_ pop music _is_ rhythmically less diverse.
Where is this mainstream pop music with such complex, diverse rhythms? Let me
know where to tune it. He compared contemporary jazz rhythm sections to
contemporary pop as an example, vs. both genres in past decades.

~~~
blake_himself
I'll venture Radiohead's 'Reckoner':
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wCJPm19XYQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wCJPm19XYQ)

~~~
cheald
I'm not sure it's fair to call Radiohead "pop". Their shtick is experimental
stuff, very different from the bulk of pop.

------
protomyth
It seems like a topic that is really going to need a bit more research and
analysis. I don't think a vocabulary test quite does it. Comparing something
like Elvis Presley playing "Hound Dog" to Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" would
make me think that modern pop is more intelligent.

~~~
cbd1984
> Comparing something like Elvis Presley playing "Hound Dog" to Taylor Swift's
> "Blank Space" would make me think that modern pop is more intelligent.

And that would be the wrong answer because... ?

~~~
protomyth
Oh, I would say Taylor Swift is the more intelligent writer and its right, but
I'm not sure a simple vocabulary test and a large sample set is really the way
to go. I do bet if you asked music critics, they would say Elvis's writer (not
sure on that song or other) is more intelligent. Age polishes the fun history.

~~~
cbd1984
> Age polishes the fun history.

Whatever this means, it sounds like "The grass was always greener in the
pastures of my memory" or some such, which is true but not relevant to, you
know, _actual_ history.

That, and it seems axiomatic among the PC crowd that Kids These Days are
getting dumber and dumber, which has held true so long that it's amazing that
our great-grandparents qualified as sentient beings, as opposed to, say, slime
mold.

~~~
protomyth
You remember the fun stuff as more fun and deep the farther you are away from
it. Its polished by age. This results in people believing that things were
better then. I'm sorry, but I don't write formally on HN, and I doubt if I
ever will.

As to the rest, I think my example was enough to say I don't think generation
has much to do with deepness or intelligence.

------
baldfat
Pop Music was ever Intelligent? Seriously

~~~
mturmon
In this and everything pop, Sturgeon's law applies
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law)).

We're all looking for that other 10%.

------
recursive
I don't think unique-words/total-words can be used directly as a metric for
intelligence of lyrics. In any body of text, I'd expect that ratio to go down
as total-words increases. For some extreme example, if there is one total
word, then the ratio is 1.0. If there are infinitely many words, then the
ratio is 0.0. That doesn't really say anything about how intelligent they are.
Without knowing anything specifically about it, I'd expect unique words to
roughly scale logarithmically with total words for a constant "intelligence",
whatever that means.

------
normloman
Having less unique words doesn't mean anything. I'm sure Hemingway used less
unique words than Dickens. Does that make him stupider?

------
cousin_it
So, the post says that pop lyrics are getting stupider because the ratio of
unique words to total words has went down, though both total words and unique
words have gone up. I'm not very convinced. How do you know that the right
metric isn't something like unique/sqrt(total)? Can we figure out the right
metric from first principles?

~~~
dandelany
No. The post says that this was Briggs' original claim. This post proceeds to
"dig deeper" and concludes "I think it’s difficult to definitively call
today’s music 'stupider'".

------
return0
The mainstream part of pop has always been equally stupid. I have a hunch that
i can't prove, however, that the 'eclectic' part of pop has become
significantly dumber. We don't have as many distinct new genres as in the 90s
for example, and that may mean that music is more homogeneized in general.

------
cle
I applaud the author for not succumbing to the superciliousness of William
Briggs. The irony of the linked article "Proof That Music is Growing Worse"
made me chuckle a bit, and then made me feel a little disappointed.

Thank you for providing an interesting, objective analysis without injecting
unfounded opinions.

------
grumblestumble
Two words: The Monkees.

~~~
cmdrfred
People say they monkey around.

~~~
exarch
something something coming to your town

------
Jgrubb
There has been terrible pop music since pop music began. Try and make it all
the way to the end of this song from the golden 60s -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhYLz63csS0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhYLz63csS0)

~~~
mgmeyers
I'd argue that this is more of a subjective terrible-ness. Technically, this
song more skillfully crafted than a lot of pop music today. Even on a basic
level, no auto-tune = you actually need to be able to sing (to some degree).

~~~
logicfiction
Songs used to require more skillful performers. That skill and complexity has
in large part been reallocated to engineers and producers who actually have to
program and edit on a much more sophisticated level these days to do things
like make the auto-tune actually sound good (whether or not you subjectively
like the effect).

------
kolev
Popular music is the music listened to by most people by definition. Most
people are not very smart (not to say they are stupid). Therefore, pop(ular)
music will never be intelligent as it needs to attune to a lot of people that
are not that smart. I got tired of the gimmicky pop years ago and switched
completely to classical and folk music.

~~~
Practicality
Indeed. It should never be surprising that the mainstream is mediocre. It has
to be. That's what mediocre means. Mediocre people often prefer to refer to
themselves as "average," but it's the same thing.

~~~
Dewie3
"Average" just means that, while "mediocre" means average + negative
connotation.

You're the one who is using a word with more baggage than the straightforward,
"by definition" meaning (probably to do with some statistical distribution).
_Average_ is not always _bad_ , unless you think that being non-average is
inherently good. And having _average_ music taste is about as
harmless/inconsequential as average-ness goes - you like the music you like.
That's it. Anything beyond that is more about social signalling and
stratification than it is about the enjoyment of the music itself.

~~~
Practicality
Contrast average with "Exceptional. Special. Distinguished. Excellent. etc."

The nature of these words show a clear bias that being non-average _IS_
inherently good, at least when you are talking about quality. Music is clearly
a qualitative arena, and therefore, average means, "not exceptional," "not
special," "not distinguished" and "not excellent"

Ergo, my point is, the parent to this discussion is correct, "average" music
can never be exceptional as the difference between average and exceptional is
what defines those very words.

I am simply trying to use the word mediocre to make more obvious what average
means when it comes to quality.

To be fair, there is a non-average that is below normal as well, with related
words: Poor, sub-standard, deficient, defective, inferior, etc. So, being
worse than average is even worse than being average. Again, in terms of
quality.

Of course, average in another arena, such as average height, for example, is
neither bad nor good. But height is not a measure of quality.

~~~
Practicality
In reference to why people call exceptional things weird, odd and strange,
please refer to Albert Einstein's quote: "Great spirits have always
encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of
understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices
and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly."

~~~
Dewie3
My point wasn't that "weird" are synonyms for "excellent". They are the other
side of the coin of things that are _not average_ \-- the less desirable
things.

Something being _average_ denotes that it is commonplace. Not everything that
is commonplace is subpar to something that is _not average_. Sometimes those
things are just weird, odd, subpar or undesirable. And sometimes, they are
indeed _exceptional_. And no, something being "odd" or "weird" isn't always or
solely average people just "not getting it". Sometimes it's just subpar, weird
and odd. I know, I know, it's a profound-sounding quote by Einstein so that
means it must be relevant in every situation..

In the case of music, people with peculiar tastes will sometimes think of the
_mainstream_ music as being lame and uncultured. In reality, those mainstream
listeners might get the exact same enjoyment out of listening to their
_mainstream_ music, as those with more peculiar tastes get out of listening to
_their_ music. But at least those with special taste get some kicks out of
feeling superior, so they've got that going for them. You can call that the
smug-hipster-bonus.

Tip: if you wait a minute or so you can reply to the actual comment. There is
a short delay between a comment being posted and being able to reply to it,
for some reason.

~~~
Practicality
Thanks for the tip. It seems we agree that there is a subpar under average as
well as an above-average.

Whether or not this applies to mainstream music seems to be where we differ.

I believe the Einstein quote is still relevant to this discussion, even if it
is possible to misuse the quote. Similar to wine, art and other things of
quality, when you first start to learn something the basic, simpler things
seem better. Most people start by drinking fruity wines, enjoy simplistic art
and like pop music. Also, while you are still enjoying simple things it's hard
to understand why someone would want something more refined.

However, once you have experienced the basic level you will eventually want to
move beyond it and enjoy things of higher quality. Higher quality wine, music
or art requires that you move beyond average.

I believe a more refined musical palette will always move you beyond pop
music. Again, similar to fruity, sweet simplistic wine, that doesn't mean you
didn't enjoy the basic experience, it's just that you now want something
better.

Whether or not the things one would eventually move onto are truly _better_
seems subjective to me, hence why I think "better music" is a qualitative
thing.

------
cbd1984
test

------
hortisimo
Is the pope catholic?

