The music kids listen to these days, eh? If you think it was better when you were young, well, that’s entirely subjective to be honest – but it was definitely more complex, as science has proven. Melodies in pop music have officially become simpler since the 1950s. A new study of the biggest chart hits identified two ‘significant’ decreases in melodic complexity, one in 1975 and another in 2000, along with a smaller decrease in 1996.
The change in 1975 could be down to the rise of new musical styles such as disco and stadium rock, while those in 1996 and 2000 could represent the rise of hip-hop and digital production, allowing the repetition of audio loops, say scientists. Researchers at Queen Mary University of London analysed the most prominent melodies – usually the vocal melody – of songs that reached the top five positions on the US Billboard year-end singles music charts each year between 1950 and 2022. Their findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports , suggest that the complexity of the melodies of the most popular songs has decreased over the last eight decades.
Madeline Hamilton, a doctoral student in Queen Mary’s School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, and Dr Marcus Pearce conducted the research. Ms Hamilton said: ‘We found that the complexity of song rhythms and pitch arrangements decreased over this period as the average number of notes played per second increased. ‘We also identified two significant decreases in melodic.