By Stephen Smoot
A study from Austria’s University of Innsbruck examined music over the last half a century and came to a conclusion that most older individuals will not take issue with.
Music has gotten “dumber.”
In an article published by Scientific American, Eva Zangerlie, computer scientist at Innsbruck said of modern music, “There’s more rhyming lines and also more chorus,” She explained also that “We basically found that lyrics [have gotten] easier to comprehend.” This trend, observed across five of the most popular English-language music genres (pop, rock, rap, R&B and country) since 1970, hints at how shifts in music listening habits, platforms and production may be shaping pop culture.”
Through machine learning, they analyzed more than 350,000 tunes made since 1970, finding a gradual “dumbing down” of especially lyrics in the time frame. That includes the fact that the popular music of the 1970s saw a rise of less complicated themes in the aftermath of the turbulent 60s.
This trend extends back even farther. The most enduring hit from the 1920s, Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust,” featured lyrics such as “Sometimes I wonder, how I spend/The lonely nights/Dreaming of a song/The melody/Haunts my reverie/And I am once again with you.”
Four decades later, Frank Sinatra made “Summer Wind,” oft considered the best American popular music tune, a smash hit with lyrics like “The autumn wind and the winter winds, they have come and gone/And still the days, those lonely days, they go on and on/And guess who sighs his lullabies through nights that never end/My fickle friend, the summer wind.”
Even the era of rock music saw examples of tremendous lyric production, such as from Led Zeppelin and Metallica.
Hollywood has also allowed the bar to descend toward the lowest common denominator.
Willem Dafoe recently told Variety that streaming has created a market dynamic that skews movies away from the more challenging.
“The kind of attention that people give at home isn’t the same,” Dafoe was quoted as saying. “More difficult movies, more challenging movies can not do as well when you don’t have an audience that’s really paying attention. That’s a big thing. I miss the social thing of where movies fit in the world. You go see a movie, you go out to dinner, you talk about it later, and that spreads out. People now go home, they say, ‘Hey, honey, let’s watch something stupid tonight,’ and they flip through and they watch five minutes of 10 movies, and they say, ‘Forget it, let’s go to bed.’ Where’s that discourse found?”
Last year, Martin Scorcese bemoaned Hollywood’s increasing reliance on superhero and “franchise” films that often regurgitate the same plots, characters, and themes endlessly.
He also told the Los Angeles Times that he fears for the future of Turner Classic Movies, the flagship source of great cinema.
One of the problems lies in the erasure of the distinction between “high” and “low” culture. “High” culture refers to art, music, film, or writing that aspires to excellence in every way. It showcases the best of the artists’s mind and his desire to connect with the audience in challenging and stimulating ways.
This often runs against what entertainment companies think will sell. As Billy Joel sang in “The Entertainer,” “it took me years to write it/they were the best years of my life/If you’re gonna make a hit/you’ve got to make it fit/So they cut it down to 3:05.”
That said, the time busting song “American Pie” runs nearly three times that long and relies on sophisticated lyrics to drive the tune.
Music’s problems also stem from the decline of traditional influences. Great writers, of literature, non-fiction, and also music, are also great readers. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant took heavily from Tolkien, as well as English history and folklore, for their music. The impact and influence of growing up in the church influenced the music of countless artists every generation.
With reading and church membership in decline, so is their powerful and positive influence.
High culture has its place, but so does low. There is nothing wrong with culture that doesn’t require much thought or complex analysis to enjoy. Sometimes you just want to laugh at a “Caddyshack,” or sing along to catchy bubblegum pop.
But there is a line between the two, and trying to pretend there should not be does a disservice to both.
At the end of the day, however, culture is a free market. Companies will encourage artists to create what the market wants to consume. If the market wants better, it must not only demand better, but also consume better.