The repetitive nature of modern music, specifically pop, has caused music to become stale and boring over the past years.
In many cases, music is no longer a medium where uniqueness and creativity distinguish someone, but a place where those at the top follow a template to produce their hits.
According to a Spanish study conducted on over 500,000 songs between 1950 and 2010, the ‘timbre,’ or quality of sound, has steadily decreased over the years. In 1960 the timbre peaked, and has decreased since.
This is because music in the sixties was rife with emotion and passion. It was when folk rock, rhythm, blues and anti war music was prevalent. All of these subgenres have real passion and feeling; something the artists can connect to.
Conversely, modern music all focuses around the same few topics that artists know are popular. They do not need to relate to these topics, just sing or rap about them to gain popularity. This takes away the passion that makes music such an incredible art form.
According to the same study, choruses and rhythms have also steadily been becoming more similar since that same point in the sixties. In fact, many pop songs use the exact same sequence of notes in a given key, which makes music “less harmonically complex.”
This factors into the similar sound of most modern music, as many songs use the same notes, hence have, at the very least, the same undertones.
The study also points out that music has become progressively louder. This is done in an attempt to stand out amongst similar songs, but the increased volume decreases the timbre of the song, making it sound more dull.
Lyrical quality and uniqueness has also decreased, as lyrics are simplified in today’s music. Perhaps the most obvious similarity in modern music is the lyrics. Almost every song talks about the same things. Even if the words are in a different order, or the tempo and music varies, the song is still almost the same because of this.
So what has taken the quality out of music? What has allowed songs to become so robotically similar? Technology.
Technology has allowed people to play notes at perfect keys and create perfectly put together tracks using electronic implements. This takes the human imperfection out of songs, giving them a robotic, unrealistic feel. There is little human feeling in most modern music because the tracks are created from samples accessible to almost anyone with access to the internet.
After all of these factors we are left with music that has a steadily decreasing quality of sound, less emotion, a more robotic feel and repetitive lyrics and topics. These things combine to give us the average modern song, which has become bland, boring and in some cases even dull.
