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Nice job! :-) I think that music (melodies, riffs, combination of sounds and notes, etc...) are getting very stupidier. I don't have tools nor skills to test this assumption, just my hears. Try to listen MTV for some month and you'll see that a lot of new songs are very similar to other ones. I mean, too much similar.
It seems like a topic that is really going to need a bit more research and analysis. I don't think a vocabulary test quite does it. Comparing something like Elvis Presley playing "Hound Dog" to Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" would make me think that modern pop is more intelligent.
> Comparing something like Elvis Presley playing "Hound Dog" to Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" would make me think that modern pop is more intelligent. And that would be the wrong answer because... ?
There 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'd argue that this is more of a subjective terrible-ness. Technically, this song more skillfully crafted than a lot of pop music today. Even on a basic level, no auto-tune = you actually need to be able to sing (to some degree).
I 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 ha…
Been plenty of great acts who couldn't play instruments well for decades, so either yes, you are getting very old or you're remembering a lot of artists being a lot better than they actually were.
Pop music from 1959 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGgaZZl_GVg Pop music is stupid because it's catchy. It's always been that way, always will be.
Pop Music was ever Intelligent? Seriously
We're all looking for that other 10%.
I 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 ha…
Now get off my lawn!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Comparing something like Elvis Presley playing "Hound Dog" to Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" would make me think that modern pop is more intelligent. And that would be the wrong answer because... ?
Oh, I would say Taylor Swift is the more intelligent writer and its right, but I'm not sure a simple vocabulary test and a large sample set is really the way to go. I do bet if you asked music critics, they would say Elvis's writer (not sure on that song or other) is more intelligent. Age polishes the fun history.
Whatever this means, it sounds like "The grass was always greener in the pastures of my memory" or some such, which is true but not relevant to, you know, actual history.
That, and it seems axiomatic among the PC crowd that Kids These Days are getting dumber and dumber, which has held true so long that it's amazing that our great-grandparents qualified as sentient beings, as opposed to, say, slime mold.