Did anyone else watch this last night? I thought the premise was interesting – scientist with no background in pop music attempts to identify what makes a hit by feeding thousands of songs through computer algorithms to come up with a formula for producing one.
And it had some interesting ideas. There was an argument that the true musical revolution of the late 1970s wasn’t punk at all, but actually occurred with disco. The programme rapidly fell down though. The presenter’s ability to predict a hit was apparently ‘proved’ by fooling a single Radio 1 producer as to what track his computers had tipped for future success. And he offered advice on producing a song by an unsigned artist, while a bemused Trevor Horn tried to explain why this track wasn’t suitable for such treatment. Interesting viewing, but ultimately a very flawed experiment.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08gk664/the-secret-science-of-pop
There’s more about it here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2017-02-secret-science-of-pop
Watched it too, as you say it was an interesting premise but ultimately unrewarding.
Would have liked to have seen more of the giant charts linking the music together. Lots of factors were left out, chart buying to get your record in the charts etc.
I thought that the computer would produce the ultimate chart hit with no human input.
Agree about all the factors not taken into account. In many cases the music has little to do with chart placing, a good example being Mr Blobby at no. 1.
An interesting and enjoyable show, though.
The science of this is presented at: http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/5/150081
As with all “big data” studies, what it gains in big picture it loses in detail, context, and regression to the mean. An extension of the study and methodology looking at cult bands of alleged massive influence (Velvet Underground, for example – did they ever get into the Billboard top 100?) would be interesting.
Didn’t see it, but I agreee with its stance on disco versus punk. Punk was always just garage band thrash with more anger and bigger amps and added nothing really new. I’d go so far as to say that every revolutionary sound in pop since the Seventies has come from dance music of one style or another.
Queued for the planner later though.
I watched it to the end, but didn’t enjoy it.
To try to quantify any art form is always going to be impossible & the final “we can’t really work it out, sorry!” left me feeling I’d wasted my time.
As well as the Velvet Underground, he cited Cabaret Voltaire, who had 4 minor uk hits between 87 & 90, none of which made the top fifty – hardly affecting the stats.
To dismiss the Beatles would have gained column inches, but there’s been enough on this site to say how important they were.
I was surprised they didn’t have Pete Waterman, as the SAW hit factory in the 80s had the formula sorted then. Or Bill Drummond/James Cauty as the KLF manual was used & worked for Eidelweiss.
Perhaps the most telling thing was The guy able to click through thousands of off the peg raps & find one at the right tempo to fit the song.
Sounds like a pointless idea. Those big hit manufacturers like Xenomania (that’s probably a very out of date reference but I’m not a pop kid) have the formula and they churn stuff out in a very efficient way and I’m sure there are lots of others making the hits of today doing a similar thing
p.s as much as love Cabaret Voltaire, the ‘hits’ in question would have been while they were briefly signed to EMI in the late 80s when they flirted with mainstream electro-pop and reflects the marketing budget and low dealer prices offered to record shops (the Cabs reputation is built on the stuff they did for Rough Trade and Virgin some years before that)
An interesting idea but frustrating. At the risk of sounding like an old git the song that they were trying to tart up sounded just like every other song that gets in the charts nowadays, only it didn’t.