Pop analytics spits out dumbest hits of the decade
Here is exhibit A in what a data analyst with both statistical chops and a well-developed sense of mischief this week identified as the “dumbest” popular song of the last 10 years:
“All I want is a little of the good life/All I need is to have a good time/ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, the good life.”
As all but the most inveterate rock snob likely knows, that’s the chorus to “The Good Life,” a ubiquitous alt-rock track from 2009 by Ontario band Three Days Grace.
It vanquished singles by the likes of Maroon 5, Robin Thicke, Katy Perry and Ozzy Osbourne for having lyrics that, according to an article bearing the really smart sounding headline “Lyric Intelligence In Popular Music: A Ten Year Analysis,” scored a paltry 0.8. That apparently indicates that someone who has not yet entered Grade 1 would have no trouble grasping them.
The chart is the work of Andrew Powell-Morse, who works for ticket reseller Seat-Smart but also specializes in sports-data visualization. (You might recall his ranking of every sports team in the big four leagues. The Leafs and the Raptors did not fare well.)
He did it by using something called the Readability Score, a calculation that employs five education indices to calculate the grade level of a particular piece of text.
“All told,” he writes, “I analyzed 225 songs in four different data sets, resulting in 2,000+ individual data points. How’d I choose them? If they spent at least a few weeks (3+) at #1 on the Billboard charts for Pop, Country, Rock and R&B/Hip-Hop for any given year, they made the list.”
His main conclusions: one, the average hit song over the past decade was comprehensible to anyone with a Grade 3 education. Two, over the past decade, that level has been on the decline. Three, the smartest musical genre is country.
Why? “Well, Country is the only genre generally devoid of words like ‘oh’ or ‘yeah’ repeated 20 times in a row. Sorry everyone else, but if you say it in the song, it’s counted as a ‘lyric.’
“But it’s also about the syllables. Country music is full of words like Hallelujah, cigarettes, hillbilly and tackle box.
“Add to that long place names like Cincinnati, Louisville, Mississippi and Louisiana, and Country has a serious advantage over the competition.”
The fact that this good-natured analysis so neatly reinforces the prevailing view of pop music (it’s really dumb and getting dumber every day) no doubt explains its rapid migration across the web.
Jesse Singal, a journalist specializing in social science, has written a pointed, droll takedown that punctures Powell-Morse’s very first sentence:
“‘As easy as it is to mock the quality of lyrics today, there’s some real science behind looking at how dumb they truly are,’ wrote Powell-Morse in the introduction to his post. As someone who writes about ‘real science,’ the idea that anyone would accept that sentence at face value terrifies me.”
Powell-Morse himself readily acknowledges the shortcomings of his statistical analysis, noting that the data he used “doesn’t touch on the meaning of a song, the metaphors, how the words connect with the artist’s personal story, etc. to create deeper meaning.”
In the meantime, if you’ve now got that Three Days Grace hit stuck in your head, try singing along to the song identified as the “smartest” hit of the past 10 years: “All About Tonight” by country star Blake Shelton.
“It’s all about tonight/Good times and the music and laughing and grooving to the band.”
Yeah, that’s definitely more complex than, “All I need is to have a good time/Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, the good life.” Retro/active: There’s one sure way for an old rocker to find out who his core fans are and how many (or few) of them will stick around no matter what: release an album of instrumentals.
That’s what Dave Edmunds will do on June 9 with Rags & Classics. Among the wide-ranging songs he renders wordless are Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights,” Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” and the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows.” Vinyl countdown: One of the strongest of David Bowie’s 21stcentury albums is getting the kind of vinyl treatment we wish all reissues were accorded.
A commercial comeback of sorts, 2002’s Heathen reunited Bowie with producer Tony Visconti, not to mention the upper reaches of the album chart. The new version has been mastered specially for vinyl by engineer Joe Reagoso, who also happens to be the president of the label releasing Heathen, Friday Music.
The result, pressed on translucent-blue, 180-gram vinyl, is due out June 23.
Not only are the first three Lovin’ Spoonful albums returning to vinyl, they’re also reverting to mono.
Getting the double-retro treatment are Do You Believe in Magic?, Daydream and Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful which, between them, encompass the majority of hits the band had.
All three albums have been sourced from the original mono masters and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at the highly regarded RTI plant.
Along with vinyl, CD and box-set configurations of Sticky Fingers, the Rolling Stones are also reissuing their 1971 masterpiece with the unique cover released only in Spain.
After the infamous zipper cover was banned there (during the regime of General Francisco Franco), it was replaced with a striking shot of a hand emerging from a can of treacle. That cover will adorn a limited-edition two-LP set — with the same nine studio and live bonus cuts that adorn the double-LP set with the regular zipper cover — that is being sold only through the band’s website.
For now, the June 15 release is, at least temporarily, out of stock. jsakamoto@thestar.ca