I saw this paper cited in a recent Musicradar article, and I decided to read it (it’s free). I kept the original title but I guess a click bait title would be more interesting…
If you want to jump into a summary, you can just read the Abstract.
Our analysis presents strong evidence for two melodic revolutions in the history of popular music: one in 1975 and another in 2000. In addition, there is moderate evidence for a revolution in 1996. Regression revealed an increase in inter-feature relationship strength after the year 2000, after partialling out autoregressive behavior.
The overriding pattern emerging from these analyses shows decreasing complexity and increasing note density in popular melodies over time, especially since 2000.
I found this graph very useful too to see how the BPM trends over the years.
I wonder if the rise in the style of singing which is half rap half sung is also partially in effect. There was that video from some synth youtuber years back about how a shit load of pop songs from the current era had melodies which were essentially just hovering over the II and moving around the scale very sparingly. These were for verses, and were often tracks inspired by the melodic hip hop of the early-mid 2010’s. In these melodic hip hop songs used autotune over their vocals essentially locking the otherwise “flowing” tone of rap into a scale. This is at least my theory of how this vocal style comes out of the previous era’s pop music.
In part as well I think the influence of hip hops importance on vocal flow have influenced pop music heavily since the early 2000’s. James Murphy talks in his redbull academy lecture about how he wished there was still room in pop music for vocal performances like that of roberta flack. The rhythmic aspects of the vocals in pop music have rapidly changed. Charli xcx using triplet flow
If we look at a song like starboy by the weeknd and daft punk, most of the verse hovers one note. This is a melody, sure, but the emphasis is not on the notes. The emphasis is on the rhythm, specifically the way the weeknd’s vocals sort of dance around the choppy drums and balance out the minimal piano.
It’s not that it has gotten “less complex” just differently complex. Hamilton alludes to this at the end of the article.
Interesting. I’m pretty shocked that harmony is virtually absent from the discussion (it’s in one “tonal center” metric), or, at least, I’d be personally much more interested in the evolution of harmony.
An interesting bit from p 7:
“Timbre and onset density as new carriers of musical complexity David Temperley’s theory of communicative pressure states that increased complexity in one aspect of music necessitates increased stability in other aspects in order for the music to remain interpretable by the listener “
More:
Temperley argues that the maintenance of this equilibrium is a driving force in the evolution of musical styles: for example, the keeping of strict tempo in rock music allows it to feature pleasant syncopation, and repeating left-hand patterns in Romantic piano music provide the regularity needed for listeners to enjoy the music’s rubato.
Thus, one possible explanation for the decrease in the complexity of melodies in popular music is that it is a response to increasing complexity along other musical dimensions. Though the present study cannot definitively establish which dimensions these are, onset density is an obvious candidate, especially for post-2000 popular melodies. In addition to imposing physical limitations on the melodies vocalists and audiences can realistically sing (large pitch intervals, for example, would be difficult to sing if there are many notes per second), increasing onset density may also be restricting other forms of complexity in melodies per the theory of communicative pressure. That is, a vocal melody with a high onset density may avoid being psychologically overwhelming to listeners only if other aspects of the melody are simple, e.g., the melody features small pitch intervals, a limited range of pitches, and lots of repetition.
Alternatively, musical complexity in popular music may be shifting away from melody altogether, instead manifesting in other aspects of the music. In particular, it is possible that timbre is increasingly carrying the complexity of today’s popular music due to the expanding availability of digital instruments. In the 50s, the range of possible timbres for music production was limited to whatever sounds one could make with the
One lesson I’ve learned making music is that you can’t introduce more complexity in one part of the music (melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, etc etc) without simplifying others…
I think it is. They say something along the lines of “sometimes a trend become dominant after several years”. Essentially because they are only looking at the top 5 songs, they don’t fully understand what maybe up and coming in the following years. I guess if they exclusively did a study on the bottom 15 songs in a Top 20 list, maybe they can see this or confidently comment about it.
I had similar thoughts. Weekend is exactly what this article concludes. Short, repeating notes. And in my opinion it’s very similar to hiphop, low end and high end focus where vocals fill the rest.
I teach beginning strings classes. I am constantly searching for melodies that can be played using the limited set of notes available to my students. I create accompaniment tracks on the Digitone. My process is to start with the melody. The harmonies derive themselves from the melody. That is how I work. Not the most creative process, since I’m starting with an already existing melody. Not the only creative process, nor the “right” one. Nevertheless, I get satisfaction out of a groovy end-product, and I have hundreds of students to decide what is “good”.
As important as melody is to me, I feel, from my experience listening to music shared on this forum, that this community (YMMV) doesn’t put a lot of emphasis on melody. I put my foot in my mouth on another thread, saying that the best way to write a melody was to start by writing a melody. I also said that “bad processes produce bad results.” That was a mistake. I should have written, “Different processes produce different results.”
To use “Starboy” by Weeknd as an example of a melody: My sense is that the melody was created as a riff, over an already-made texture. The melody, when pulled away from its context, loses its meaning. Contrast that with a melody that “stands on its own”, such as one that might be whistled or hummed.
There was a recent thread about whistling. I think we’re more likely to whistle “Save Your Tears” than “Starboy” (both songs by Weeknd). The melodies of each song seem functionally different to me. The melody in “Save Your Tears” contains implicit harmony; parts of the melody constitute a broken-chord, an arpeggio. “Starboy”, on the other hand, hovers around a few pitches. Which is not surprising, as the harmony of the piece is almost static.
This is an interesting notion. A simple example, I think it was brought up in the “Trajectories” article, is that the use of rubato (espressivo) is typically only possible when making accompaniment steady.
The lack of (what I call) melody in the techno realm, is not, I believe, a result of too much complexity in other realms. Rather, I think it is because techno musicians are more interested in sounds (timbre) and beats). And, to the extent that melody is used, as in the example of “Starboy”, it seems more like an afterthought than a starting point of music.
So you may say the top 5 billboard songs are less whistle-able than they used to be? the threads are intertwined lolol
as far as the song being created before the melody, well, yeah. It’s no secret that most of the production work is usually finished before someone like the weeknd even hears the track. It’s a daft punk song the weeknd did vocals for. This isn’t a bad thing, as you said, different practices get different results.
but even then, to call the melody on starboy an “afterthought” implies a lot more negativity than is reasonable.
The fact that is synchronous with the beat to the extent that it is means that it was very much not an afterthought, rather it’s just what the artist felt the particular instrumental needed.
My personal un-researched and simple explanation is that as music making technology increased, studio corps. have seen little need to invest in actual studio bands. I mean from a money stand point, if tracks created by 5 producers make as much, or even more than those created by recording players, like the Wrecking Crew ( which could reach several dozen in members), why on Earth would you continue to keep an in house group of musicians on the pay roll if you didn’t need them?
Now from a music lovers stand point, this has caused the mass manufacturing of main stream jams, with many acts today being comprised of a sole talent, as opposed to an entire band. That face, often times has an in house group working together to churn out songs, which leads to less input and less diversity in melodies and rhythm. I mean, it seems that half of Reggaetone just recycles the exact same beat pattern.
What has been lost with the absence of studio musicians is the lack of input from them. Many of those golden oldies best melodies or moments were created in the moment by a studio player who thought that the original song could be improved upon with a little bit of flair, or style. Popular music has lost that additional sporaticness now that we don’t have close to a dozen or more trusted and revered studio players recording songs. Now it’s a handful of peeps (if that), churning out stems, gluing them together in a daw, and emailing them off to an engineer to make it ready for radio. So I see it as a lack of life-long professional musician insight, and and the death of spontinaity. Replaced by ironed out, and minimized formulas that decrease overhead while maximizing profits. Seems to be the natural progression of things now that record sales are down and many people simply are streaming their music as opposed to buying physical copies of it.
Of course my hypothesis could be b.s. and short sighted.
I’d say this is an important point, especially for music that’s for singing along with, dance music, music that’s meant to be enjoyable as a sort of background entertainment (while you’re working, chilling with friends etc.).
