Scientists Confirm That Pop Music Is Bland

I've always felt that when people said that current music isn't as good as what previously came before, that it was more of a sign of a "generation gap" rather than a serious evaluation of the music. After all, this has been a reoccurring theme since the 1920's or so that still continues to this day. But now it seems that there's some real scientific evidence that actually confirms the argument.

A study by the Spanish National Research Council has found that current music is indeed more similar sounding, and louder, than ever. The study looked at over a million songs from the last 50 years and found that pop songs have become more bland in terms of the chords, the melodies and types of sounds used. In other words, music has become just what we've always feared - more "homogenized."

One of the more worrisome things they found is that the diversity of transitions between note combinations of chords and melodies have consistently diminished in the last 50 years. And for producers and engineers, the fact that we've settled on a more limited variety of sounds.

Of course, they also verified on of the things that everyone in the industry has been complaining about for the last 20 years - recorded music is indeed louder than it ever was. No surprise there.

And what was their recipe for turning things around? To record older songs with simpler chord progressions and with different instruments, and of course, louder. That's where they lost me.

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