350 songs analyzed

Hits have been getting simpler and simpler since the 1950s

According to a new study, hit songs - in terms of melody and rhythms - have become increasingly simple since 1955.

(Bild: AFP/Martin Bureau)

A study has now confirmed what older generations have always known: popular songs have become increasingly simple over the past 70 years. This applies to both the rhythms and the melodies, reports an English research duo.

The scientists do not want to evaluate the development: to attribute the result to the fact that newer music is "bad" or that its listeners have "bad taste" would "go beyond scientific findings into the realm of subjective opinion", they write in the journal "Scientific Reports".

350 top songs analyzed in detail
Madeline Hamilton and Marcus Pearce from Queen Mary University of London evaluated the most distinctive melodies - usually the vocal melody - of songs that were the top 5 songs of the respective year in the US Billboard Year-End Singles Charts between 1950 and 2022. In total, more than 350 songs were included.

According to the statistical analysis, the complexity of the song rhythms and sound arrangements decreased over the years, while the average number of notes played per second increased significantly. The scientists recorded two jumps in 1975 and 2000 and a smaller one in 1996, which were characterized by a considerable reduction in complexity.

The researchers link the decrease in 1975 to the emergence of new genres such as disco and new wave. In the 1990s and at the turn of the millennium, the rise of hip-hop is likely to have played a role.

Melodic complexity decreases
Hamilton and Pearce speculate that the decrease in melodic complexity could be due to an increase in the complexity of other musical elements such as the increased number of notes. This may be to prevent the music from sounding too overwhelming for listeners. The increasing availability of digital instruments could also allow musical complexity to be expressed more through creativity in sound.

Another theory is that the musical trend mirrors the linguistic trend: "The digital age increasingly demands the compression of language so that what we have to say remains within character limits and fits into headlines," write the researchers.

This reduces the complexity of messages and perhaps also the ability to digest complex ideas - it could be the same in popular music. In other words, people may no longer have the mental capacity for complex songs.

Western pop is becoming simpler and angrier
The results match an analysis of lyrics from more than 350,000 English-language songs presented in 2023. Western pop music is becoming increasingly simplistic and angry. The analysis of rap, country, pop, rock and R&B songs from 1980 to 2020 shows that the structure of lyrics has become increasingly simple. Text elements are repeated more frequently, choruses take up more space and the vocabulary used has become smaller, according to the study.

According to the research team, this development could be linked to the way songs are now consumed. Music creators produce their songs in such a way that they are "streamed, clicked and viewed as often as possible", as Elisabeth Lex from Graz University of Technology (TU) explained. Repetitive, simple and dense - this promotes the development of catchy tunes.