Nerd History is taking a bit of a weekday absence, providing you instead with some weekend treats. I've also been battling a pretty bad cold all week, so you'll have to settle for some interesting stuff about how pop music has changed in the last few decades:
In the 1960s, 85 percent of the songs were written in a major key, compared with only about 40 percent of them now. Broadly speaking, the sound has shifted from bright and happy to something more complicated.
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America’s popular songs have also become slower and longer. When the researchers analyzed the beats per minutes (BPM) of each song, they found a decrease from an average 116 BPM in the 1960s to approximately 100 BPM in the 2000s. Songs in the 1960s tended to run under three minutes, whereas more recent hits are longer, around four minutes on average.
If pop music is more complicated, great! My ears still can't handle Rihanna (but perk up at Shonen Knife) so what do I know, though?
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