Four Chords Is All You Need: The Limited Nature of Pop Music

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2641 ^ | William M. Briggs

[mattstat]

A “comedy rock” group which bills itself as the Axis of Awesome has independently discovered the Musical Badness measure. Recall, the Musical Badness measure says repetitiveness makes for poor music. This may be repetitiveness within a song, or even across a genre.

The Axis of Awesome have researched assiduously and found that the most popular pop music has only ever employed four chords, and no others. Just four, and the same four in each song; perhaps, but not likely, occurring in a different order.

Axis of Awesome (Contains bad language.)

More seriously, we have philosopher Roger Scruton, who said,

"Countless pop songs give us permutations of the same stock phrases, diatonic or pentatonic, but kept together not by any intrinsic power of adhesion but only by a plodding rhythmical backing and banal sequence of chords. This example from Ozzy Osbourne illustrates what I have in mind: no point in copyrighting this tune, though no point in suing for breach of copyright either."

[muir_redwoods]

C, Am, F & G played in 4/4 sounds like about 80% of the music recorded between 1955 and 1965

[reg45]

Pop music went down the flusher when “loud” replaced “talent”.

[P.O.E.]

And warbling and yelling replaced singing

[Tijeras_Slim]

4 chords?

How does this explain AC/DC?

[Fiji Hill]

This phenomenon isn’t new. In 1972, a group called America released a song entitled “A Horse With No Name.” The song consists of only about five notes, and the lyrics make no sense, yet it topped the charts for several weeks and became one of the biggest-selling records of the year.

[newheart]

"There is growing, within popular music, another kind of practice altogether, one in which the movement is no longer contained in the musical line but exported to a place outside it, to a center of pulsation which demands not that you listen but that you submit.

And that would explain Rap and Hip-Hop culture.

[reg45]

And crude lyrics replaced poetic beauty.

Cole Porter's music at its worst was orders of magnitude better than the "best" music produced today.

[Colonel_Flagg]

Repeat the same chords over and over ad nauseum and you have just described Bruce Springsteen, the most overrated ‘musician’ of all time.

[proxy_user]

Black Water
There Were Six of Us But Now We Are Five
We’re All Talking
To Keep the Conversation Alive
There Was a Senator From Ecuador
Who Talked About a Meteor
That Crashed On a Hill in the South of Peru
And Was Found By a Conquistador
Who Took It to the Emperor
And He Passed It On to a Turkish Guru.

His Daughter
Was Slated For Becoming Divine
He Taught Her
He Taught Her How to Split and Define
But If You Study the Logistics
And Heuristics of the Mystics
You Will Find That Their Minds Rarely Move in a Line
So It’s Much More Realistic
To Abandon Such Ballistics
And Resign to Be Trapped On a Leaf in a Vine.

[Chode]

four... since when??? three chord rock and roll will never die

[OrioleFan]

bump

[Thermalseeker]

Bands like ZZ Top built a 30 year careers and made a fortune using only 3 cords.....

[Disambiguator]

Pop music went down the flusher when “loud” replaced “talent”.

Also, the use of distortion effects masks bad guitar playing. Learn a few chords, grow your hair out, and you can be in a heavy-metal "hair" band. Just keep the distortion cranked up!

[proxy_user]

Teachers spoke of Hannibal and Hector
Nimrod and Nietzsche were his fuel
Swastikas and pentagrams
Flourished from his tender hands
But we watched in the rain
As the bully beat him up again
When We Were Boys At School

And he said, my camouflage will hide me
I’ll be grey as the world is grey
A thousand government corridors
Behind which of a thousand doors
Will I delegate and rule
O little boys at school

All he ever wanted to do was harm
All he ever wanted to be was cruel
And sometimes when the night is still
I can feel the gathering of his will
I can feel him flex the strings of power
And grope to his appointed hour
But we laughed at the dirt
And the frayed cuffs on his shirt
When We Were Boys At School

[Chode]

when accused of playing four chord r&r in an interview, Angus bristled and said no... only three

[Thermalseeker]

Springsteen.....the most overrated ‘musician’ of all time.

AMEN, he shouts from the balcony. Never has their been a more repetitious, boring musician on scene that made millions generating ear worms. Springsteen's music is a direct reflection of his intellect which is right up there with Tom Cruise, Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Richard Dreyfuss, Babs Streisand, et al.....

[Thermalseeker]

Also, the use of distortion effects masks bad guitar playing.

Spot on. Volume also hides bad guitar playing. If you want to see really good musicians ply their craft, go to a bluegrass festival.....

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

I beg to differ with that theory.

It’s pretty obvious that David Gilmore has slightly more than just 4 chords and notes on his guitar.

[jnsun]

Well some are getting there.

Recommend reading:

The Conquest of Mexico, the journal and observations of Bernal Diaz as the Spanish marched through the incessant drumbeat of aboriginal mesoAmerica; or similarly any of the journals of the Europeans in archaic America.

And The Origins of Consciousness and the Downfall of the Bicameral Mind - Jaynes.

Hold that against a few movements of, say, Brahms.

Then put a few things together.