Columbia Business School released a super interesting study, where they looked at 60 years of Billboard #1 songs and broke down the data to see how similar or different these hit songs were from each other.
They were looking at 8 factors:
- Danceability
- Tempo
- Energy
- Acousticness
- Liveness
- Speechiness
- Instrumentalness
- Valence (which meant the “positiveness” of the track)
Some of the results were fairly predictable, namely that as time went on from the 60’s, tracks became less acoustic and more electronic. Also, throughout the years, a great number of #1 songs were all highly energetic, danceable, and somewhat positive.
However there was one interesting caveat:
Each decade was marked not by how similar the style of music was to the previous decade, but how different the style was. And since #1 hit songs are determined by the consumers who listen to them, it seems that every 10 years, music consumers are looking for a reset in the style of music they listen to.
This makes a lot of sense too, as 20 year-olds are usually the tastemakers for hit songs, and every decade brings a new group of 20-year olds with new musical tastes.
The 60’s were filled with Motown Soul and Flower Power folk anthems. Taking a look through the Columbia study, it’s actually interesting how many musical qualities these two styles of music shared. While the Flower Power songs generally had a more positive vibe (Mrs Robinson and Hey Jude) and the Motown songs tended to be more about venting (I Heard It Through the Grapevine and Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay), the actual instrumentation, tempo, and chord qualities were mostly the same. It was all very, very chill sounding.
The 70’s was undoubtedly dominated by Disco. People were riding the Love Rollercoaster and doing the Hustle. Cleary the kids of the 70’s were tired of sitting in their feels and wanted to hit the dance floor, so the aesthetics of the music changed drastically.
The 80’s was interesting because the #1s broke into two broad categories again. We either had super ultra happy and intense dance music like ka-ma-ka-ma-ka-ma-ka-ma Karma Chameleon and Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, or you had gut wrenching power ballads like I Want to Know What Love Is and Time After Time. One thing is for sure though, the music was bigger and bolder in every way in the 80s. And through the mass production of synthesizers, it was also decidedly more electronic.
The 90’s was dominated by Hip Hop and RnB. TLC was Chasing Waterfalls, Montell Jordan was showing us How He Does It. It seems everybody wanted to calm down from the 80s. The music was way less cheesy and way slower. People wanted to settle into a groove and scale back the grandiosity.
The 2000’s brought some more interesting things to the table, because we started to see the genre-bending that is now common place. There were songs like Crazy In Love and Hollaback Girl, that were solidly Hip Hop, but took some Motown elements from the 60s. We also got the Latin flavors mixed with Hip Hop in Get Busy and Hips Don’t Lie. 2000s was still all about dancing, but it seems the songs that made it to that coveted #1 were starting to blur the lines of genre.
The 2010’s hyper expanded on genre-blurriness. The genres were all over the place with these #1s. There was the pure EDM energy of Harlem Shake, there were the slow simmering sing-along anthems of Rolling In The Deep and We Are Young, there was the pure Hip Hop energy of Humble and WAP, but there were also the throwback jams of Uptown Funk and Happy. The music was getting bigger again like in the 80s, but that is about where the similarities stop. In no other decade were the #1 songs so extremely diverse in genre.
And that leads us right up to present day. We’re halfway through the first year of this new decade of music!
So what will the 2020s bring exactly?
One thing is for sure, we are in the post-genre world now, and the genre will not dictate the #1. Already in the last 4 months we’ve had a Christmas song, A Power Ballad, a 70’s Funk Jam, and a Trap Banger reach the top of the charts. It’s more diverse than ever now.
No one knows what the future holds, but here at Spacist Productions we can make some educated guesses:
1) The songs that resonate the most will be the most dedicated to their own sound.
Sound Design is more important than ever before. If you want to make a throwback 70’s jam, make sure it sounds as authentic as possible. If you want to blend two sounds together like trap and emo rock, blend them as cleverly as possible. The sonic branding element of a song will most likely determine if it hits or not.
2) The feeling you give the listener is crucial
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Songwriting with brutal honesty will be the deciding factor in a hit song. Olivia Rodrigo’s song resonates because it’s honest and makes you feel what she’s feeling. There is A LOT of music on the internet now, so the one’s that climb above are the one’s that a listener can immediately get the most impactful feelings from. So don’t hold back or you may get lost in the sea of content.
3) How you get the song to the listener is the most important.
We believe this might be the most important factor of the 2020s, and this is a factor that is brand new to this decade. Because of the staggering amount of content online, the way you present your song to the world is just as important as the song itself. My songwriter friend said it to me like this: “If you are a Michelin star chef, you don’t just throw some steak on a plate and dump it on your customer’s table, you plate it and present it in the most attractive way possible.” This is what the successful songwriters of this decade will do. And this is all about personal creativity.
There’s endless platforms to release music on now, so if you can stay true to your sound, also stay true to the way you want to present your sound.
Here at Spacist Productions we’re always interested in how music is evolving. Feel free to chat with us about it.
Talk soon!
