newswire: 7/21/2020
- The 20 biggest pop songs of the year so far are set to the fastest average tempo since 2009. And the lyrics are brightening up to match the tempo; after a couple of years of mournful themes, pop music is sounding cheery again. (BBC News)
- NH: We’re in a moment of sustained national stress and anxiety. But you wouldn’t know it from the pop charts. This analysis from the BBC shows that the average tempo of hit songs has climbed steadily since 2017 and is now 122 beats per minute, the fastest since 2009. Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s “Rain on Me,” Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now,” The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” Harry Styles’ “Watermelon Sugar”, Doja Cat’s “Say So”--they’re all designed to get listeners dancing the night away.
- This marks a reversal from the past few years. From 2014 to 2017, the tempo of pop hits got slower and slower. Part of the reason is that more artists were jumping on the trap music trend, but it’s also that the lyrical content was getting darker. Top 40 artists like Sam Smith, Billie Eilish, Adele, Lorde, and Drake are known for singing candidly about heartbreak, anxiety, depression, and loneliness. But now the hit songs are getting faster, and their mood (as measured according to the lyrics) is perking up somewhat too.
- You might suppose that the tone of pop culture ought to reflect (or even anticipate) the national mood. But historically the two seem to run in opposite directions. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, young affluent Boomers had it good: One of the most-discussed policy issues at the time was what would Americans do with the accelerating rise in material affluence and leisure time everyone was predicting was coming their way. Yet the hit songs were practically apocalyptic (think the Doors' "This is the End" or CCR’s “Have You Ever Seen Rain... on a Sunny Day?”). Young G.I.s were the opposite. No matter how bad things got during the Depression and global war, they felt determined to "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive."
- The oppositional relationship of pop culture and social trends may reflect the fact that young artists tend to create music that reflects their own generational archetype more than what's actually happening in the world. In a recent interview with The New York Times, 24-year-old Dua Lipa explained that she chose to go ahead with the release of her hit dance pop album Future Nostalgia during the pandemic to give her listeners an escape. But she also described her music not as made for dancing, but for “dance-crying,” since it mixes feel-good anthems with darker emotional territory. Spoken like a true Millennial pop star.
