This is a picture of a song.
Its fingerprint.
Its visual identity.
It was generated by a tool that visualizes matching data.
And it reveals something really cool about how a song can be structured around lyrical
repetition.
By the way, this is Vince Staples “Yeah Right”, and it’s been stuck in my head
for months.
Boy yeah right yeah right yeah right.
This is Colin Morris.
He’s a computer programmer that who loves pop music.
I did a master's degree in computational linguistics.
Colin created this tool called Song Sim.
Each row and each
column is a
word
in a song from beginning to end.
But the interesting
thing
is when
you see these
structures
off
the diagonal.
Those moments off the diagonal represent some form of repetition.
I think my favorite example and one of the earliest ones that I played with was Bad Romance
by Lady Gaga.
one of the coolest things about this song is just how many different hooks she manages
to squeeze into it.
Ra ra ah ah ah roma roma ma gaga oh la la want your bad romance.
Depending on how you count, there are at least five different lyrical themes that repeat
to the point where you start running out of words to describe them.
Usually verses aren’t that repetitive.
Here, they are.
The only part of the song that is falls into a traditional song structure is the bridge.
And it really stands out.
Still, though, it’s highly repetitive.
Walk walk fashion baby work move that bitch crazy.
Bad Romance came out in 2009 and since then some of biggest pop songs every year have
only gotten more repetitive.
We’ll get back to this chart but first, I want to get something out of the way.
I really really really really really really like you and I want you do you want me to?
Yes that’s true.
But not exactly what I want to say.
You see, there’s always been a pretty strong sentiment that if a song is structured around
excessive repetition it’s uncreative, it's unchallenging or it lacks complexity.
That anti repetition sentiment goes back a laughably long time.
All the way back to November 6, 1882 when composer Ferdinand Praeger gave a case against
repetition called “On the fallacy of the repetition of parts in the classical form.”
Here’s what he said:
All will readily admit that a first impression, however striking, is weakened when followed
by an immediate repetition.
Would ever a poet think of repeating half of his poem; a
dramatist a whole act; a novelist a whole chapter ? Such a
proposition would be at once rejected as childish.
Why should it be otherwise with music?
Praeger believed repetition was beneath music when in fact, repetition is decidedly musical.
There's this phenomenon called the speech to song illusion.
Have you run across that?
That’s Elizabeth Margulis.
She directs the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas and has written a book
on musical repetition.
There’s this really interesting process where you can take a little bit of speech,
you can take a little bit of speech, you can take a little bit of speech.
Repeat it a number of times and for many people what initially just sounded like somebody
talking to you now sounds like somebody singing.
Psychologist Diana Deutsch discovered this illusion in 1995 ironically when she was editing
the audio of her CD 'Musical Illusions and Paradoxes'.
Margulis’ music cognition lab has conducted a number of studies on repetition but there’s
one that is really is pretty fascinating.
She selected music from renowned 20th century composer, Elliot Carter whose work was is
atonal and explicitly non-repetitive.
She presented a few versions to a class of 33 students who were unfamiliar with the work.
One version was the original, no alterations.
The other two versions were digitally altered just to be repetitive without regard for the
aesthetic quality of the music.
And it turned out that the excerpts that had been kind of adulterated to insert this literal
kind of repetition were viewed not only as more enjoyable and more interesting but also
was more likely to have been composed by human artists rather than randomly generated by
computer.
So repetition in music not only feels intentional to our brains we actually enjoy it.
Let’s take a look at that chart you saw earlier.
It illustrates that our love of repetition was increasingly reflected in pop music.
I was surprised by how clear the trend was.
Oh yeah, Colin made that too.
It turned out that you could basically take any 10 year period over the last 50 years
and there would always be an increase in repetition over those 10 years.
Yes, pop songs have gotten more repetitive, But repetition can be used to flip predictable
song structures to make them completely unpredictable.
And that’s really cool.
I don't know if you saw the visualization for "Formation" by Beyonce?
Oh yes.
Okay ladies now let's get in formation
It's almost like two songs glued together.
With the first half of the song you have this very clear chorus.
My daddy Alabama, Momma Louisiana You mix that negro with that Creole make a
Texas bama
Once you get to the second half - that hook disappears and Beyonce replaces it with this
catchy hyper repetitive chant.
Cause I slay (okay) I slay (okay), I slay (okay), I slay (okay),
I slay (okay), I slay (okay), I slay (okay), I slay (okay)
You can't deny the power of this song.
Repetition doesn't just make it memorable, it reinforces its central message.
But when I listen to "Yeah Right" by Vince Staples I'm reminded of the speech to song
illusion.
When Vince repeats Yeah Right over twenty times,I start to shift my focus from the meaning
of the lyric to the rhythm and musicality of it.
Boy yeah right yeah right yeah right.
Boy yeah right.
Repetition grabs a hold of our brains in a way that we often can’t quite control.
And that might feel like the music is playing us rather than us playing the music.
But if repetition makes songs like Formation, Lose yourself to Dance, Beat It and I wanna
dance with Somebody both great and memorable.
It can rule the charts forever.