The chords that can make or break a pop song

An editorial in a national newspaper is seldom considered a suitable arena for discussing the relative popularity of Rick “Never Gonna Give You Up” Astley vis-à-vis the rap stylings of Trevor “Busta Rhymes” Smith Jr. But it is not every day that the history of popular music is subjected to scientific analysis by Imperial College London and Queen Mary University of London using “cutting-edge methods including signal processing and text mining” to assess the “musical properties” of songs.

Their findings are groundbreaking. According to their research, the “most revolutionary year” for pop music is not, as we had assumed, the year of psychedelia and Sgt Pepper (1967), the year of punk (1976), the year of the New Romantic explosion (1982), or the year of Britpop (1995). It is apparently 1991, because of “the arrival of hip-hop, rap and related genres” whose artists, by and large, “use chords particularly rarely”. The dullest or “least diverse” year for pop was, it seems, 1986, with the arrival of drum machines, synth-pop and the metronomic, beats-per-minute homogeneity that made everything sound the same.

We agree with the research team that 1986 was, to employ a colloquialism, Dullsville, Arizona. But we feel that to praise the chord-free virtues of rap, in which, too often, aggressive and heftily bejewelled sexists shout unmusically about their material possessions, is unlikely to be greeted with universal acclaim.

“Signal processing and text mining” has little to say to pop fandom. If this study has any effect, it will only be to raise the volume of pub discussions about whether Dexys Midnight Runners can be mentioned in the same breath as The Smiths.