Four Chord Songs have salted my subconscious. Nothing good can grow there ever again.
I have a thing I do, often, where I'll start humming random notes and try to work it into a hook or a melody, and then if I manage to come up with something I like, I'll either hum it into my microphone or punch it into my MIDI editor and save a copy. It's not much, and I don't expect anything to ever come of what I create, but it's a hobby of sorts, and sometimes I end up creating some pretty cool stuff that way. But recently, I think I may have ruined my ability to do that.
You might be familiar with the famous Four Chords of Pop. Basically a lot of popular songs-and it's not just in the genre commonly known as "pop"-make use of the same chord progression, as seen in this video of three Australian singer-songwriter-comedians doing a medley of some of them. Here's the thing, though. Between becoming aware of that chord progression and being exposed to a lot more modern pop music through Todd in the Shadows, I've gotten myself in a state where every time I start making mind-music, it always turns out to be a four-chord song. And once I realize it, I can't even force myself to hum anything else.
The good news is that I have a new hypothesis: The reason there are so many four-chord songs out there isn't that most modern songwriters are lazy, uncreative, or untalented; it's because the progression itself is a sort of meta-earworm, a mindvirus even, that interferes with their ability to compose original songs. When acts as diverse as Lady Gaga, the Offspring, and Adele are all doing it, it's hard to believe it's accidental or deliberate. Technically, if my hypothesis is true, it's neither.
You might be familiar with the famous Four Chords of Pop. Basically a lot of popular songs-and it's not just in the genre commonly known as "pop"-make use of the same chord progression, as seen in this video of three Australian singer-songwriter-comedians doing a medley of some of them. Here's the thing, though. Between becoming aware of that chord progression and being exposed to a lot more modern pop music through Todd in the Shadows, I've gotten myself in a state where every time I start making mind-music, it always turns out to be a four-chord song. And once I realize it, I can't even force myself to hum anything else.
The good news is that I have a new hypothesis: The reason there are so many four-chord songs out there isn't that most modern songwriters are lazy, uncreative, or untalented; it's because the progression itself is a sort of meta-earworm, a mindvirus even, that interferes with their ability to compose original songs. When acts as diverse as Lady Gaga, the Offspring, and Adele are all doing it, it's hard to believe it's accidental or deliberate. Technically, if my hypothesis is true, it's neither.