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REPEAT

                                             February 5, 2019

The lyrics of popular music have been
getting increasingly repetitive.         And there's data showing this, using
                                         compressability of lyrics as a measure
                                         of repetitiveness,

Colin Morris has been playing with a
funny technique that's obvious in              Talk title:
retrospect: he feeds the lyrics of songs
into a compression algorithm, using            "Pop Music is
"compressability" as a measure of the           Stuck on Repeat"
repetitivieness of music.

He then uses a graphical technique
borrowed from genomics research, to                 colin_morris-pop_music_is_stuck_on_repeat-tedxpenn.webm
display regions of repitition.

   This is all fairly clever, and
   it establishes something concrete:
   hit pop songs are getting
   increasingly repetitive.


         He tries to editorialize on this point,
         arguing that this is not a bad thing,
         he personally likes repetitive lyrics,
         but on this point he's unpersuasive:

         Clearly, repetition is a key element of popular music
         and has been for millenia, but it does not follow from     You can like chocolate 
         that that we should turn the dial up on repetition.        and still want to eat
                                                                    other things.
            His makes a very good point that there are              
            many different ways lyrics can repeat-- the             
            passages (the chorus) may repeat identically,           
            lines in may vary (the verses) and yet have             
            more similarity to each other than just a               And different time scales?
            rhyme, and so on.                                                                     
                                                                    DANCE


   I might add: repeated listens to almost
   anything makes people like it more ("the     Colin Morris doesn't touch on
   mere repetition effect"): that's another     issues like why repetition
   type of repetition he doesn't discuss.       might appeal.  What's "catchy"?
                                                What's "annoying"?
   You can have lyrics that
   are carefully designed not
   to repeat, but even then,     There are Sheila Chandra pieces where she's
   listening to the piece        done this very carefully-- listeners sometimes
   repeatably would make it      assume that it's improvised scat singing, but
   more accessible to you.       she makes the point that it takes some thought
                                 to avoid falling into repetition.


    Further-- a point often missed--
    there are musics that take
    repeated exposure to appreciate
    and understand: clearly there's                     PLEASED_TO_MEET_YOU
    something there you need to
    learn first.

      Still another kind of repetition is repeated
      listens to different pieces that are based
      on some shared understanding (a culture)
      that you can pick up on exposure.


         
         And yet, repeated listens                  There's a principle
         and also exhaust a music,                  of "parsimony" used
         it can wear out it's welcome.              in written works:
                                                    keep it DRY ("Don't
         The phenomena of a song that's             Repeat Yourself").
         catchy and yet forgettable 
         is very familiar at this point.            Why would it be that
                                                    this doesn't apply
             Jacking the repetition                 to music?
             is a move that can be     
             repeated too often.      
                                    
                                



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