“The Millennial Whoop”: The Same Annoying Whooping Sound Is Showing Up in Every Popular Song
28th August 2016
Read it. And do watch the video.
Once you hear it, you can’t un-hear it. It will be forever with you. Just a warning.
It’s not a secret that a lot of popular music is unoriginal. In fact, science has proven it: The combinations of notes in pop songs have been losing diversity consistently over the last 50 years. Popular songwriters, producers, and record labels found a formula people like, and the result is many hit songs sound the same.
For example, hundreds of recent pop songs feature the same chord progression, parodied by Australian musical comedy group The Axis of Awesome in their 2009 song “4 Chords” (newer performances of the song include more examples of the progression in the years since). And most mainstream American country music not only sounds similar but is linguistically homogenous (blue jeans, drinking beer, pick-up trucks).
This latest phenomenon, though, is a much more specific musical trope.