Posted on 06/15/2015 7:35:27 AM PDT by don-o
(ANTIMEDIA) A recent study served to confirm the patently obvious: song lyrics for the most popular genres of music are ridiculously obtuse — and getting worse over time. Though this might not be a revelation, the figures are distressing indicators of both an intellectually vapid societal and cultural future as well as its apparent inevitability.
If you’ve already moved away from Billboard music, congratulations, you refuse to be insulted. But if you haven’t, or if you’re concerned about pop culture trends acting as portents of systemic dysfunction, you should probably pay attention. Andrew Powell-Morse of SeatSmart studied the “Lyric Intelligence” of 225 Billboard songs in the Pop, Country, Hip-hop, and Rock genres that spent three or more weeks parked at the top of the charts to analyze any changes over the course of ten years. And change there was.
Ten years ago, the most popular songs read between a third and fourth grade level, but the inanity only increased with time, and after a five-year downward tumble ending in 2014 (the last year of the study), chart-topping hits had a reading level equivalent to second or third grade. Broken into genres, the levels measured just 2.6 for Hip-hop/R&B, a tie of 2.9 for Rock and Pop, and faring best was Country at 3.3 —
(Excerpt) Read more at theantimedia.org ...
“Happy” by Pharell Williams is in that category.
And didn’t have autotune. Heck, I could sing with an autotune, and I can’t carry a tune with a 5-gallon bucket.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXmsLe8t_gg
They just don’t write songs with this kind of depth anymore.
You’re giving me flashbacks to the late 70’s when my mom and my brother would get into big fights over his Devil Music.
He’d buy albums by Ozzy Osbourne and Jethro Tull. She would find them and smash them. He was not part of the KISS Army, but if that happened she likely would have tossed our record player out a second floor window.
It seems as though they are looking for a ruby in a mountain of rocks.
“In a gotta davida” or something like that...
"So I chaffed at them and gaily laughed..."
"Now, laughing friends deride tears I cannot hide..."
This era really accelerated when sixties Psychedelic music hit the airwaves. “Hot Smoke and Sassafras” and “Incense and Peppermints” are a couple of examples. Sounded profound at the time, but the lyrics of course were meaningless.
Like the lion tears the flesh off of a man
So can a woman who passes herself off as a male
They sang “Danny Boy” at his funeral and the Lord’s Prayer
Preacher talking ’bout Christ betrayed
It’s like the earth just opened and swallowed him up
He reached too high, was thrown back to the ground
You know what they say about bein’ nice to the right people on the way up
Sooner or later you gonna meet them comin’ down
Well, there ain’t no goin’ back
When your foot of pride come down
Ain’t no goin’ back
http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/foot-pride
Those in turn led to harder substances like parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
Now that is funny!
"Giddy up, oom poppa, omm poppa, mow mow, heigh-ho Silver, away."
“Those in turn led to harder substances like parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.”
Indeed! LOL
Rev. Lovejoy: And now, please rise for our opening hymn "In The Garden Of Eden" by I. Ron Butterfly.
LOL! I remember that joke.
It's certainly true that every generation produces some songs that are cringe-inducing. It's just that they used to be sparse enough to avoid by jumping around the radio dial.
Pop music these days is sampling some ditz singing though an Autotune “I just wanna party party party and get drunk drunk drunk” filled in with some drum machine and some screechy keyboard work.
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