Science Says That Music Is Simpler Than It Used To Be

If you’ve ever said to yourself, “Music just isn’t as good as it used to be,” it could be that you’re either really old and stuck in the past, or you’re noticing a change in music but didn’t know how to express it. It’s a known fact that our musical discovery begins to stagnate after we hit our late 20s, but it’s really true that music is much simpler than it’s ever been, and science is here to prove it.

A group of researchers from Sapienza University in Rome took a deep dive into 20,000 song files that spanned over 400 years and came to the not-so-startling conclusion that songs have been gradually getting simpler over the years, culminating with what we’re presented with today.

Understand that this conclusion wasn’t addressed in an arbitrary fashion – it was the result of a “weighted directed network to study its structural properties.” In other words, they used science to confirm something that we all inherently knew anyway.

They determined that:

• Classical music remains the most complex of the genres studied. (No surprise there)
• Rock, pop, hip-hop, jazz, electronic, and even contemporary classical have become less complex in their construction.

Loops And Samples Take Their Toll

Currently a lot of the simplicity in music comes from the fact that songs are being written around loops, and, let’s face it, there’s just not much you can change within the chord structure of 4 or 8 bars that have been recorded for you. Another factor is that the composition tools are so inexpensive and widespread that it doesn’t take much musical knowledge to become an “artist” these day, let alone spend the amount of time it takes to become skilled on an instrument.

All that said, complexity does not equal popularity. We’re all just as likely to fall in love with a simple melody the same way that our ancestors did centuries ago.

But we are missing the sense of adventure in music today that was much more the norm of the past. I’m still amazed at the chord sequence that David Bowie came up with in “Life On Mars” as much as I love his simplistic “Suffragette City” (although there are a few surprised there as well).

Music goes in cycles and sooner or later we’ll transition away from the cycle of simplistic loops and samples to song forms that are more adventurous. We’re long overdue for a new trend in music, and here’s hope that it reaches us soon (and isn’t even more simple than today).