More proof for the decline and fall of rock and roll

I informed you so! Rock reached its apogee within the Sixties and has been going downhill ever since. Today’s fashionable music for younger folks is pathetic: autotuned, repetitive, trite, and with out a lot creativity or inventivity. Look on the Billboard Top Ten this week, that includes Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift. Yes, readers ship me teams that, they declare, are pretty much as good because the Beatles. They typically are okay, however they’re positively not pretty much as good because the Beatles. Or The Band, or Hendrix, or Clapton, or Joni Mitchell, or Steely Dan, or. . . . advert infinitum.

But don’t take my phrase for it; I’ve already defended my views extensively. Now SCIENCE itself proves the decline of rock, summarized within the article within the Guardian under, and based mostly in a paper within the respectable journal Nature. You can learn each by clicking under:

I’ll merely present an excerpt of the Guardian article:

You’re not simply getting older. Song lyrics actually have gotten less complicated and extra repetitive, in accordance with a examine revealed on Thursday.

Lyrics have additionally grow to be angrier and extra self-obsessed during the last 40 years, the examine discovered, reinforcing the opinions of cranky ageing music followers in all places.

A group of European researchers analysed the phrases in additional than 12,000 English-language songs throughout the genres of rap, nation, pop, R&B and rock from 1980 to 2020.

Before detailing how lyrics have grow to be extra primary, the examine identified that US singer-songwriting legend Bob Dylan – who rose to fame within the Nineteen Sixties – has received a Nobel prize in literature.

. . . . “What we’ve got additionally been witnessing within the final 40 years is a drastic change within the music panorama – from how music is offered to how music is produced,” Zangerle mentioned.

Over the 40 years studied, there was repeated upheaval in how folks listened to music. The vinyl records and cassette tapes of the Nineteen Eighties gave solution to the CDs of the 90s, then the arrival of the web led to the algorithm-driven streaming platforms of in the present day.

For the examine within the journal [Nature] Scientific Reports, the researchers regarded on the feelings expressed in lyrics, what number of completely different and sophisticated phrases have been used, and the way typically they have been repeated.

“Across all genres, lyrics had an inclination to grow to be extra easy and extra repetitive,” Zangerle summarised.

The outcomes additionally confirmed earlier analysis which had proven a lower in optimistic, joyful lyrics over time and an increase in those who categorical anger, disgust or disappointment.

Lyrics have additionally grow to be way more self-obsessed, with phrases equivalent to “me” or “mine” changing into way more fashionable.

The variety of repeated strains rose most in rap over the many years, Zangerle mentioned – including that it clearly had essentially the most strains to start with.

“Rap music has grow to be extra offended than the opposite genres,” she added.

The researchers additionally investigated which songs the followers of various genres regarded up on the lyric web site Genius.

Unlike different genres, rock followers most frequently regarded up lyrics from older songs, slightly than new ones.

Rock has tumbled down the charts in current many years, and this might recommend followers are more and more trying again to the style’s heyday, slightly than its current.

Another manner that music has modified is that “the primary 10-15 seconds are extremely decisive for whether or not we skip the tune or not,” Zangerle mentioned.

Previous analysis has additionally instructed that individuals are inclined to hearken to music extra within the background as of late, she added.

There you go. If self-obsessed, offended, repetitive, and less complicated songs are higher songs, then you definitely don’t have ears to listen to. Further, “rock followers most frequently regarded up lyrics from older songs, slightly than new ones.”

My prediction is that “oldies” stations will proceed to play music of the sixties and early seventies, and also you received’t be listening to Ariana Grande even when the youngsters in Generation Z or Generation Alpha develop up. Yes, folks could want the tunes of their youth, for that was the musical background for his or her rising up, but it surely so occurs that my youth occurred to coincide with the best flowering of rock music. (Purely a coincidence, I guarantee you.) Like artwork, classical music, and opera, genres of artwork are inclined to put on themselves out and grow to be senescent. Nowhere is that this extra evident than rock music.

I discovered the article in Nature Scientific Reports on which the piece above was based mostly. Click to learn; I’ll not undergo it because it’s lengthy and sophisticated:

The summary:

Abstract

Music is ubiquitous in our on a regular basis lives, and lyrics play an integral position after we hearken to music. The complicated relationships between lyrical content material, its temporal evolution during the last many years, and genre-specific variations, nonetheless, are but to be absolutely understood. In this work, we examine the dynamics of English lyrics of Western, fashionable music over 5 many years and 5 genres, utilizing a large set of lyrics descriptors, together with lyrical complexity, construction, emotion, and recognition. We discover that pop music lyrics have grow to be less complicated and simpler to grasp over time: not solely does the lexical complexity of lyrics lower (as an illustration, captured by vocabulary richness or readability of lyrics), however we additionally observe that the structural complexity (as an illustration, the repetitiveness of lyrics) has decreased. In addition, we affirm earlier analyses exhibiting that the emotion described by lyrics has grow to be extra unfavourable and that lyrics have grow to be extra private during the last 5 many years. Finally, a comparability of lyrics view counts and listening counts reveals that in the case of the listeners’ curiosity in lyrics, as an illustration, rock followers largely get pleasure from lyrics from older songs; nation followers are extra all in favour of new songs’ lyrics.

QED.

h/t: Jez

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March 29, 2024 at 05:55PM