Shrinking musical attention spans

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Here is an interesting article from the New York Observer about the vanishing of the bridge from pop songs, and the reduction in general of songs to their essential bits.

I don't know that this is a terribly accurate trend analysis ... what do you think?

(Note: that link's probably only good till Tuesday or so.)

― Paul Eater (eater), Thursday, 12 June 2003 20:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Since when have Nirvana's songs followed a narrative???

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Thursday, 12 June 2003 20:45 (twenty-two years ago)

This moron "rocks out" to Liz Phair and gets blue balls when a Journey song doesn't give him enough frottage. 'Nuff said.

― Jay Vee (Manon_70), Thursday, 12 June 2003 20:56 (twenty-two years ago)

is this dude forgetting the 60s when most singles were less than 3 minutes?

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Thursday, 12 June 2003 22:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I'd hate to see what would happen if he heard "Don't Stop Believin'", he would've exploded by the time the first verse starts

― dave q, Friday, 13 June 2003 07:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, man, and not only have bridges disappeared, but sweeping keychanges for the last uplifting chorus! I miss the keychanges, that last semitone higher made ALL THE DIFFERENCE!!!

― kate (kate), Friday, 13 June 2003 07:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Are you SURE there's a keychange in the last chorus? I don't recall there being one...

― dave q, Friday, 13 June 2003 07:37 (twenty-two years ago)

What is the author of that article talking about? Why would "kids" listen to just the first thirty seconds of a song on some web site instead of just downloading the whole thing somewhere else? Nobody does that.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Friday, 13 June 2003 08:34 (twenty-two years ago)

I wasn't talking about Don't Stop Believing. I was talking about keychanges after bridges. It's a Pop Cliche Classic.

― kate (kate), Friday, 13 June 2003 08:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Kste you should pay more attention to Eurovision where they remain near compulsory. Iceland's song this year was a ba-ba-ba keychange classic!

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Friday, 13 June 2003 09:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Unfortunately Joe was watching something else, so I didn't get to tune into Eurovision until the scoring process started. :-(

Big huge keychanges after the middle 8 get me EVERY DAMN TIME. I love them. It's a showtune showstopper standard.

― kate (kate), Friday, 13 June 2003 09:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Aha! I have wielded my considerable hacking skills and found a permanent link to the article.

If kids were listening to 30-second snippets over and over, that would be interesting. But it seems unrealistic that they are. What were the mix CDs Matos was telling me about that contain microsnippets of 1,000 songs?

― Paul Eater (eater), Friday, 13 June 2003 15:36 (twenty-two years ago)

But the Eurovision ones are always boring "transpose the chorus one halftone up! Woo!"
We need more Madness-style keychanges in our disposable pop, dammit!

― Øystein Holm-Olsen (Øystein H-O), Friday, 13 June 2003 15:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Those goddamned, freeloadin', no-bridge listenin', hook-cravin' little bastards!

― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 13 June 2003 16:01 (twenty-two years ago)

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