Pop music getting louder but blander

27th Jul 2012 | 10:06

Pop music getting louder but blander

Study finds less diversity in chords and melodies used

If you're a more mature musician who's often heard to moan that all of today's pop songs sound the same, it seems that you may now have some support from our old friend 'science'.

According to Reuters, researchers in Spain have been using The Million Song Dataset, which can analyse audio and lyrical content, to compare pop songs that were released between 1955 and 2010.

Their results are said to show that while songs have become intrinsically louder - a development that's been dubbed the loudness war - there's less variation when it comes to the chords, melodies and types of sound that they contain.


All of which might feel rather depressing if you're a songwriter - if you want to make music that's popular, are you better off copying someone else's style than you are coming up with your own? Let's hope not.

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