The Spanish Government Conclusively Proved In 2012 That Modern Music Is Shit

You know that feeling … you hate modern music because it all sounds the same and people tell you that you’re getting old … and you object to this because:

1. You still buy new releases.

2. You’re twelve years old.

3. Both.

Well guess what, it’s been proven, it really isn’t just you, modern music is a pile of steaming samey manure – and it is getting worse.

In 2012 the Spanish National Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) decided to carry out a study into modern music between 1955 – 2010, that is, before the rot really set in.

The CSIC is Europe’s third largest public institution dedicated to research into scientific and technological progress, and their results were pretty damning. But if it wasn’t for the mass digitization of music, it could never have been proven so quickly.

The researchers took 500,000 recordings of all genres of music over the allotted timespan inclusive, running every single song through a complex set of algorithms measured three distinct metrics:

1. Harmonic complexity

Since the 1960s, the melodies, rhythms and vocals of songs have increasingly sounded similar to one another, with many modern pop songs using the exact same sequence of notes in a given key: from the 5th note to the 3rd and back to the 5th.

That is, music has become less harmonically complex. sticking to similar musical sequences that music listeners are comfortable with.

2. Loudness.

No, it’s not just the metal bands or the three chord wonders doing it.

Over the last two decades, music producers have intentionally made songs louder by using compression effects in the studio – boosting the quietest parts of a song to match the loudest parts, thus reducing the dynamic range or “distance” between the loudest and quietest parts, all in order to make a song stand out among a pack of similar sounding songs – i.e., for competitive purposes.

Which brings us to the real damning part:

3. Timbral diversity

‘Timbre’ is the texture, colour, and quality of the sounds within the music being listened to. Timbre variety peaked in the 1960s and has since been steadily declining. Songs have less variety in their instrumentation and recording techniques, and this has grown increasingly worse.

Instead of experimenting with different instrumentation and recording techniques, the vast majority of pop music today use the same instrumentation: a keyboard, a drum machine, a sampler and computer software. Many of the samplers steal parts off earlier hits, many times over.

Consequently, almost all modern pop music does indeed sounds the same. Part of this is because the rules changed on allowing legal action against people copying other people’s music.

Techno, House, etc. was led by people with zero concern about the drugs laws, never mind the music copyright laws; and courts quickly became overrun with litigation about matters it really wasn’t equipped to deal with – just another part of the technology being ahead of the law.

This was the cue for ‘legislate in haste, repent at leisure.’

The problem it hoped to cure became exacerbated by cynical ambulance chasers indulging in vexacious litigation for financial shakedowns, as the Men At Work ‘Down Under’/’Kookaburra’ case showed, or the Rolling Stones making fools of themselves by litigating against everyone doing a song sounding the least bit like one of their old hits whilst the surviving Beatles kept a dignified silence.

‘Reasonable usage’ and a co-credit became the legislators’ get around. The trouble was it didn’t stop people using modern technology to copy bits of other people’s songs and use a computer to convert them to other instruments to make it harder and harder to detect.

The truly bastardly part was spreading parts of a ‘hook’ through different instruments to create the same effect to the human ear, but bloody hard to prove in court when set down in cold notation.

It’s the musical equivalent of cola drinks, where they’re mixed in such a way so you can’t tell it’s just orange and lemon juice mixed with phosphoric acid and cinnamon. You know all those songs where you’re convinced it sound like one you already know but you just can’t think which one or ones? Now you know why.

Hence why in 1994, Siouxsie and the Banshees could sue the arse off Capella for ‘U Got 2 Know’ ripping off the main guitar hook of ‘Happy House’ (1980) and speeding it up (end of crappy techno band, whole world cheered), but fast forward to 2009, and Lady Gaga – backed by some heavy duty lawyers – got clean away with ‘Poker Face’ stealing the hooks from Boney M’s ‘Ma Baker’ (1977), Depeche Mode’s ‘See You’ (1981)., Cameo’s ‘Word Up’ (1983) and Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’ (1997).

Of the five people who ‘recorded’ the song,Lady Gaga, RedOne, Gene Grimaldi, Robert Orton and Dave Russell, not one recorded a single note of original music on a musical instrument during the entire production – it was done digitally on computer.

And that, best beloved, opened the floodgates. Why be original when you can Minecraft your ‘art’?

Welcome to a world where Ed Sheeran has thirteen songs in your nation’s Top Twenty chart, and no one cares, because even if he does get sued for $100 million for plagerising Marvin Gaye, the industry will still forgive and forget someone whose last tour made $775 million.