So, recently Madonna just said that all modern music sounds the same. Is that true?
For top 40 music, she is pretty spot-on as those songs are the ones being pushed by major labels. You can hear those songs being played repeatedly on the radio. There are only a handful of songwriters writing those songs and they kept following the same formula for every song they write. It’s not really a surprise if the final products seem to sound similar to each other.
And then there are those “rappers” who sound nothing lie true and keep mumbling shallow lyrics. If you listen to them you’ll take Madonna’s side for sure.
Madonna’s claim was actually similar to what researchers from the Medical University of Vienna discovered. From the 15 genres and 374 subgenres that they have studied, they found that as genres gain popularity, they unavoidably become more generic.
The big takeaway of the study was that simplicity sells. Since major labels put profit over anything else, you can be sure they’re going to keep pushing it even more.
Now, we won’t point all the blame to the major labels for all this. That would be quite naïve. Maybe we should put some of the blame on the general population also. If you think about it, the labels are just feeding the masses what they crave most.
It would be a foolish business strategy to sell complex things that only make thousands when you can push the simple old stuff to make billions.
So, is the verdict out? Does all modern music sound the samse?
For music outside of the top 40, Madonna cannot be more wrong. The world of music is getting more diverse by the day. Aspiring bands and artists are using whatever channel they can muster to put their work to the outside world.
If you branched out from your musical comfort zone, you can discover music that is neither dull nor repetitive. Turn off your radio and stream. When you free yourself from the top 40, you’ll be hearing modern music under a new light.
So, do you have the same opinion as Madonna or do you have a different one? If you follow her latest songs you may realize that perhaps Madonna wasn’t immune to the problem itself.
