At least the titles seem to have gotten less intelligent and... ruder.
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Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?
21–30 of 71 posts
Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?
#22There has been terrible pop music since pop music began. Try and make it all the way to the end of this song from the golden 60s - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhYLz63csS0
I kind of like it, the Hammond organ at least.
As far as intelligence, at least this song is trying to comment on what was current at the time with a nod towards a political message.
Who cares what games we choose Little to win, but nothing to lose
It's easy to see it as nonsense pandering now but I think people really bought into these types of songs when it came out.
Now do kids today listen to pop music with a message? I'm not qualified to say because I tend to listen to music that came out around the time of the song you cited so I'm biased. But I'm sure my parents thought music was stupider when I grew up then when they did, that's just a natural progression.
I think the author's methodology is a bit too rigid to define music as stupid or not. Without examining underlying nuance, I don't see how you can fairly judge the differences.
Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?
#23Popular music is the music listened to by most people by definition. Most people are not very smart (not to say they are stupid). Therefore, pop(ular) music will never be intelligent as it needs to attune to a lot of people that are not that smart. I got tired of the gimmicky pop years ago and switched completely to classical and folk music.
Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?
#24Popular music is the music listened to by most people by definition. Most people are not very smart (not to say they are stupid). Therefore, pop(ular) music will never be intelligent as it needs to attune to a lot of people that are not that smart. I got tired of the gimmicky pop years ago and switched completely to classical and folk music.
Indeed. It should never be surprising that the mainstream is mediocre. It has to be. That's what mediocre means. Mediocre people often prefer to refer to themselves as "average," but it's the same thing.
Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?
#25I wouldn't think testing vocabulary would be a very good indicator of music's intelligence. In my mind, music has been getting less intelligent because the tools to make music these days have made the barrier to entry almost non-existent. No longer do you need to study and practice various musical/performance skills for years to be a musician and put out a record. All you need is a computer and some software.
It's hard to say if this is a bad thing, though. I think it's good that anyone can try their hand at making music, but at the same time, the saturation of poor-quality music seems to be having a negative effect on music quality overall.
Or, maybe I'm just getting old?
Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea that rhythm is somehow less "intelligent", "complex", or "diverse" has all kinds of terrible connotations. Does your friend wear a powdered wig and perform for the ladies of the court?
No, the idea is that today's pop music is rhythmically less diverse. Where is this mainstream pop music with such complex, diverse rhythms? Let me know where to tune it. He compared contemporary jazz rhythm sections to contemporary pop as an example, vs. both genres in past decades.
I'll venture Radiohead's 'Reckoner': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wCJPm19XYQ
Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?
#27Pop Music was ever Intelligent? Seriously
Yes.
Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the idea is that today's pop music is rhythmically less diverse. Where is this mainstream pop music with such complex, diverse rhythms? Let me know where to tune it. He compared contemporary jazz rhythm sections to contemporary pop as an example, vs. both genres in past decades.
I'll venture Radiohead's 'Reckoner': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wCJPm19XYQ
I'm not sure it's fair to call Radiohead "pop". Their shtick is experimental stuff, very different from the bulk of pop.
Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?
#29Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?
#30The article doesn't answer the question it set out to answer. The poster, being a (fellow) programmer, was (probably) more focused on working out how to scrape the data than on figuring out how to determine the intelligence of a song's lyrics reliably. The methods he came up with don't answer the original question at all.
There are a whole variety of readability tests [1] and many of them consider some of the variables such as word length that he did. Mind you, readability is not the same thing as intelligence. Especially in pop music, I wouldn't expect to see a lot of "SAT words." I'm not sure how you can really measure intelligence of song lyrics but, that said, some sort of complexity metric is probably a reasonable proxy to consider.
[1] http://www.ideosity.com/ourblog/post/ideosphere-blog/2010/01...