The Science Behind Why Pop Music Doesn't Suck
It's another one of those headlines that make you just face-palm right off the bat. The article entitled "The Science Behind Why Pop Music Sucks," begins with an eyebrow-raising bang:
Unless you’re a dedicated listener of Top 40 pop music, you’ve probably found yourself at one point or another complaining about the current state of mainstream music and how it’s too simplistic and unoriginal. Well you might be surprised to find out that this is more than just an opinion. There’s actually scientific evidence to back your hypothesis up. Something else that we have been saying here at Saving Country music for years is that people can enjoy good, creative, complex, and thought-provoking music better than they can most pop music—that the experience of listening to music with a more artistic focus can be more fulfilling, more enjoyable, and longer lasting than the short-term sugar rush of a catchy, but fleetingly-potent simplistic beat set to inane, repeating lyrics.
Why is it always taken as a given that pop music can't be intelligent and profound? Alright, I sort of get what he's attempting to say. But if one wants to bemoan unoriginal, kitschy, formulaic music, then why not attack that discrete idea rather than straight-up straw-manning your way to the conclusion that "modern pop music sucks?" Let's not forget about the fact that what we refer to as "pop music" is a nebulous collection of genres, constituting essentially anything that isn't classical, jazz, world, or ethnic music; a category which gladly lumps together The Backstreet Boys, Elvis, Joanna Newsom, Nine Inch Nails, Deadmau5 and Mumford and Sons.
The statistics. First of all, not to go all ad-hominem, but I doubt that Trigger over at Savingcountrymusic.com could legitimately parse the extremely technical jargon of the Nature article on which he bases this smug assertion. I'm having some serious trouble with it myself (I mean, just look at those ridiculous diagrams!). The study draws upon the data of the Million Songs Dataset (MSD), which was compiled by mining The Echo Nest database of computer-analyzed music for the "top 200" terms, and then, according to the MSD website, taking "a random walk along the similar artists links starting from the 100 most familiar artists."
The first problem is that The Echo Nest, founded in 2005, is weighted toward contemporary music, while older pop music is necessarily reduced to the highly-unique and iconic acts which are digitally available for computer-analysis decades later. What is "familiar" today, will not necessarily be familiar (or, for that matter, "in print") a half-century from now.
That said, the chart in question measures "frequency" of timbre signatures, as measured by The Echo Nest analytics, where the value of β goes up when frequency of use goes down. This means that, even assuming that the study's authors corrected for the disparity in the volume of data points for various years (because there wouldn't be any reason not to, AHEMpublishableresultsAHEM), there is inevitably some form of selection bias at play (IE - what music has been digitized and submitted for analysis).
Even if there is a statistical increase in "copycat" bands, that doesn't mean there isn't still a wealth of other deeply rewarding and unique music being produced today, even under the umbrella-ella-ella of the miserably undefined super-genre of "pop." What about Of Montreal? What about Radiohead? Regina Spektor? Kanye West? The Dirty Projectors? LCD Soundsystem? The Flaming Lips? I hate to get all metaphysical, but these few artists and bands often confront intangible qualities of the human condition, drawing themes from classic literature, philosophy, and theater, as well as breaking down the concerns of modern existence: depression, anxiety, gender/racial politics, drug use, religion and existential issues, not to mention pride, happiness, and even virtue. Between them, they use so many instruments, song forms, orchestrations, performance technics, and production technology, that it's difficult to justify grouping together such distinct artistic voices solely because of their degree of popular appeal.
I get it. It's annoying to have to say "unoriginal, kitschy, formulaic music" every time you feel like being an crotchety old coot. But between the out-of-context statistics, the trumpeting of the repeatedly disproven Mozart Effect, and another aggravatingly simplistic pop-sci take on dopamine, we've got another curmudgeonly circle jerk about how music used to be SO much better. (Shit howdy, those were the good old days, huh boys! Put on Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. again and get somewhat high off of this dry, 1960s reefer.) It's too easy to forget that in our buckshot criticisms of "pop music," it's not just Katy Perry and Justin Bieber at whom we're taking aim.
Towards the bottom of the page, however, Trigger does offer up one shiny pearl of insight that is worth highlighting:
If there is any wide arcing conclusion to take away from what we know about how music effects us, it is that education is key to creating music listeners who understand the value of what to listen for in music...healthy music listeners and a healthy music environment is possible by spreading the knowledge of why we love music, and why it effects us like it does.
Preach.