Is music becoming more and more repetitive? Part 1: lyrics
For decades, dwindling standards in popular music have been criticised. And besides: remember the good old days? Sadly, all those pessimists out there might be right. Time for me to get to the bottom of things.
It all sounds the same. Music is getting simpler and more monotonous. There’s a lack of originality and innovation. These are all statements I hear a lot. And taking a look at the Spotify charts, I get the same impression.
Sure, stray off the beaten Billboard track and you’ll undoubtedly come across exciting stuff – more than ever, it seems. So the quality decline primarily applies to the mainstream.
But is this impression correct? Is mainstream music turning into monotonous, mind-numbing mush? How would you even go about proving such a development? And should this assumption prove true, what are the reasons for it?
I have dedicated a multi-part series to these questions. This first part focuses on lyrics.
Lollipop lollipop. Oh lolli lolli lolli, lollipop, lollipop. Oh lolli lolli lolli, lollipop, lollipop. Oh lolli lolli lolli, lollipop.
Words on repeat
Lyrics are not the most important factor in music analysis. What’s more, their significance varies depending on the genre. Jazz and classical music often make do with no lyrics at all, and they tend to play a minor role in funk or EDM – if you’re dancing there’s no time to listen to the words. By contrast, long and relatively complex lyrics are the framework most hip-hop tracks are built on.
Na-na-na, come on. Na-na-na, come on. Na-na-na-na-na, come on. Na-na-na, come on, come on, come on.
Why am I starting with a closer look at lyrics? Because they’re relatively easy to analyse. The complexity of lyrics is measurable by means of a method that is not only simple but also delivers concrete results.
The method works in the same way as «zipping» or compressing a file. Although there are many compressing algorithms out there, they fundamentally all work in the same way: an algorithm searches for repetition in song lyrics and gives each repeated string of characters a numeric code. For every occurrence, the code is applied. This reduces the length of the lyrics.
The more something is repeated and the longer the repeated string of characters is, the more space is saved through the compression. A number in per cent then shows you how much space was saved by compressing the song and therefore how repetitive the respective lyrics are.
By using this method, developer Colin Morris analysed 50 years worth of songs that hit the US Billboard charts. The evaluated material comprises 15 000 songs from 1958 to 2017. The results are sobering: pop lyrics are getting more and more repetitive and there’s no end in sight.
An interesting fact is that tunes in the top 10 have always been more repetitive than the average chart song. It seems we like monotony. And the uncontested winner of the repepepetition award is Rihanna.
Throughout the years, there has always been the odd song that is extremely repetitive. Take Daft Punk’s «Around the World», for example. The song pretty much consists of the phrase «Around the World», repeated 144 times. In this case, data compression reduces the lyrics by 98 per cent. On average, pop lyrics usually shrink by around 50 per cent.
Morris factored out the 20 most extreme lyrics to prevent his statistics from being distorted.
In his report the data is nicely visualised and interactive. You can take a closer look at the results of all featured artists as well as the range of each decade. The website even lets you see just how repetitive each song from the selected artist is.
However, some of the results seem to contain errors. «Surfin» by the Beach Boys allegedly only reaches a compression rate of 5 per cent. This means that the song contains hardly any repetition; even less than a newspaper article. But the lyrics are very repetitive. I’m assuming that this is an isolated case.
The study focuses on individual song lyrics and does not compare them to others. I’m guessing the overall diversity is also lower, the simpler the songs are. But it’s also possible that the diversity is maintained across all lyrics.
In order to find out how similar the lyrics are to each other, a complex linguistic investigation would be needed – far more than a simple programme could handle. This particularly applies to the following questions:
- How often are songs about similar or identical topics – today and in the past?
- Which language is the song sung/rapped in?
- Are the same phrases and expressions used over and over?
To get a simple, automated method, you could compare the entire vocabulary of all Billboard song lyrics throughout the years. This would require an annual analysis of the same number of songs. For example, the 200 most successful ones. Unfortunately, I have not yet come across such a study.
Repetitive versus dumb
Whenever people complain about musical uniformity and constant repetition, their lament mostly goes hand in hand with the need for more intelligent songs. But repetitive does not necessarily mean dumb. One trait of a great pop song is its ability to boil down a complex subject, e.g. love, into a few lines. Lines that are repeated multiple times for three to five minutes. The chorus being a fundamental part of a pop song and repetitive by definition.
On the other hand, rap lyrics can be jam-packed with non-repetitive talk without increasing the song’s intellectual content.
So can you make assumptions about a song’s musical structure based on the repetitiveness of its lyrics? In extreme cases you most likely can. If a song’s lyrics consist of no more than «Around the World» repeated 144 times, this is a strong indication that its musical structure is probably not very complex either.
The intro features a one-bar bassline that is repeated 16 times. This is followed by a four-bar pattern repeated throughout the rest of the song. However, the pattern is consistently varied – by added vocals, the removal or addition of a simple bassline or the occasional addition of a very complex bassline. Towards the end of the song, the vocals are imitated by a synthesiser. Musically speaking, there are no two parts that are completely identical, but there is definitely a groove that persists throughout the track.
In other words, the lyrics give very little away about the musical complexity of the song. Measuring the latter would be a more complex matter. That’s why I’ve dedicated one part of this series to it. Click on «Follow author» below to receive an email as soon as the next part is online.
Image above: video excerpt from «Like a princess» by Double Take. Their song «Hot problems» was dubbed the worst song of all time by ABC News.66 people like this article
David Lee
Senior Editor
David.Lee@digitecgalaxus.chMy interest in IT and writing landed me in tech journalism early on (2000). I want to know how we can use technology without being used. Outside of the office, I’m a keen musician who makes up for lacking talent with excessive enthusiasm.
