Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?

mattritter.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 71 posts

Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?

#51

Post by MrScruff »

mgmeyers wrote: post #25

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…

To make decent electronic music takes considerable skill and practice.

People looking to invest the minimal amount of time required studying in order to perform is not a new phenomenon. The pop charts of previous decades were filled with pretty terrible guitar playing for example.

Sure there were some great exceptions along with a bunch of dedicated session musicians to add that professional slickness, but that's no different from today's for-hire producers.

Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?

#52

Post by ScottBurson »

cbd1984 wrote: post #45
wambotron wrote: post #20

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.

If you ever want to get some perspective, look at the songs which were actually popular, not the ones preserved in the playlists of oldies stations. https://www.billboard.com/archive/charts/1958/hot-100

Ah yes, The Chipmunks with David Seville. Real highbrow stuff there. (And I loved that record when I was 10 :-)

Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?

#53

Post by return0 »

The mainstream part of pop has always been equally stupid. I have a hunch that i can't prove, however, that the 'eclectic' part of pop has become significantly dumber. We don't have as many distinct new genres as in the 90s for example, and that may mean that music is more homogeneized in general.

Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?

#54

Post by robbyking »

mgmeyers wrote: post #25

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…

>> It's hard to say if this is a bad thing, though. [...] The saturation of poor-quality music seems to be having a negative effect on music quality overall.

Personally, I think it's fantastic. While mainstream pop has become overwhelmingly homogeneous over the last decade, underground and alternative hip hop have arguably become the two most innovative genres of music of the last 40 years.

That said, it works both ways, and as you pointed out the static to noise ratio is still pretty bad. I think the biggest issue is still the fact that the loudest voices get the most attention, and those voices still belong to the big three record labels.

Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?

#55

Post by protomyth »

cbd1984 wrote: post #48
protomyth wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

You remember the fun stuff as more fun and deep the farther you are away from it. Its polished by age. This results in people believing that things were better then. I'm sorry, but I don't write formally on HN, and I doubt if I ever will.

As to the rest, I think my example was enough to say I don't think generation has much to do with deepness or intelligence.

Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?

#56

Post by return0 »

blake_himself wrote: post #26
sanoli wrote: post #9

Earlier 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

that's not particularly rhythmically diverse, compared to , e.g. paranoid android

Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?

#57

Post by [deleted] »

harvestmoon wrote: post #32
mgmeyers wrote: post #25

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…

If anything, I think lowering the barriers to entry should result in higher quality hit songs. For a hit song to occur, it has to become popular, which means a certain amount of oomph. So with 1000 songs to choose from for the hot 100, you'd expect OK songs, but with 100,000 to choose from, you'd expect in a meritocracy much better songs. Of course, the hot 100 is hit and miss. An example of a song which was made usi…

[deleted]

Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?

#58

Post by tarentel »

cbd1984 wrote: post #45
wambotron wrote: post #20

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.

If you ever want to get some perspective, look at the songs which were actually popular, not the ones preserved in the playlists of oldies stations. https://www.billboard.com/archive/charts/1958/hot-100

That song was actually popular though. It obviously wasn't as popular as any of the songs on that list but it did peak at number 3.

Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?

#59

Post by Practicality »

Dewie3 wrote: post #36
Practicality wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Average" just means that, while "mediocre" means average + negative connotation. You're the one who is using a word with more baggage than the straightforward, "by definition" meaning (probably to do with some statistical distribution). Average is not always bad , unless you think that being non-average is inherently good. And having average music taste is about as harmless/inconsequential as average-ness goes - you…

Contrast average with "Exceptional. Special. Distinguished. Excellent. etc."

The nature of these words show a clear bias that being non-average IS inherently good, at least when you are talking about quality. Music is clearly a qualitative arena, and therefore, average means, "not exceptional," "not special," "not distinguished" and "not excellent"

Ergo, my point is, the parent to this discussion is correct, "average" music can never be exceptional as the difference between average and exceptional is what defines those very words.

I am simply trying to use the word mediocre to make more obvious what average means when it comes to quality.

To be fair, there is a non-average that is below normal as well, with related words: Poor, sub-standard, deficient, defective, inferior, etc. So, being worse than average is even worse than being average. Again, in terms of quality.

Of course, average in another arena, such as average height, for example, is neither bad nor good. But height is not a measure of quality.

Re: Is Pop Music Getting Less Intelligent?

#60

Post by Dewie3 »

Practicality wrote: post #59
Dewie3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Average" just means that, while "mediocre" means average + negative connotation. You're the one who is using a word with more baggage than the straightforward, "by definition" meaning (probably to do with some statistical distribution). Average is not always bad , unless you think that being non-average is inherently good. And having average music taste is about as harmless/inconsequential as average-ness goes - you…

Contrast average with "Exceptional. Special. Distinguished. Excellent. etc." The nature of these words show a clear bias that being non-average IS inherently good, at least when you are talking about quality. Music is clearly a qualitative arena, and therefore, average means, "not exceptional," "not special," "not distinguished" and "not excellent" Ergo, my point is, the parent to this discussion is correct, "average…

> Contrast average with "Exceptional. Special. Distinguished. Excellent. etc."

Contrast average with "Odd. Weird. Freak. etc."

> Music is clearly a qualitative arena,

Strongly disagree.

Post reply on HN