The Whole Story
This all started when I saw on Billboard Magazine's website that they list the top 100 most popular songs of the year, every year. Their website only went back to 2006 at the time, so that was all the data I wrote down. I chose to do the top 20 because doing all 100 or even the top 50 for every single year would have taken many extra hours, and I felt that 20 was enough to get a good sense of what type of music was really popular each year. I went through each song, writing down what rhythm style I thought it was (I usually made up a name for the rhythm style, since not every rhythm is defined in the music world). This gave me 14 years of data, but I realized that it was only a tiny fraction of the whole story. I would have to look at more years.
With the help of Wikipedia, I managed to take it back to 2000, then to 1990, then 1980, and eventually 1940. I didn't just write down and define rhythm styles; I also categorized each song by genre, and defined each genre based on how the music sounds, not just where it originated (which is how too many genres are defined).
I then analyzed the data, tracking the progression of rhythm styles and genres throughout time. I noticed that popular music has had a tendency to go through cycles of speeding up and slowing down (I saw 5 such cycles since 1940, and sixth cycle that we are currently in the middle of). I also saw that it's fairly rare for a new rhythm style and a new genre to rise to prominence at the same time. There's usually a delay between shifts in genre and shifts in rhythm. Either the dominant rhythm style moves into a new genre, or the dominant genre changes rhythm styles.
How does this explain why popular music goes through distinctive eras? I believe that rhythm is the most important characteristic that holds an era of music together. Think about the Trap era that we're currently in. It's defined by the rhythm. The same is true for the different eras of RnB, Disco, Rock, and Pop music. The rhythm is what grabs us. The rhythm is what we keep coming back to for years, until we get sick of it and move on to a new one. As we move through this next decade, I'm incredibly interested in what rhythm will come after Trap.
What's next?
— Carl
