There's a good programme / series about great American love songs on ITV

https://www.itv.com/itvplayer/perspectives-nicky-campbell-on-the-great-american-love-song/series-1/episode-1-perspectives-nicky-campbell-on-the-great-american-love-song

Can be viewed overseas using a VPN app. like Hola.com

Chris B.



On 18/05/2015, Grant, Tyra <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Interesting report and methodology: The evolution of popular music: USA
> 1960-2010.
>
> http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/5/150081
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> The evolution of popular music: USA 1960–2010
> Matthias Mauch, Robert M. MacCallum, Mark Levy, Armand M. Leroi
> DOI: 10.1098/rsos.150081 Published 6 May 2015
> Royal Society Open Science Publishing
>
> Abstract
> In modern societies, cultural change seems ceaseless. The flux of fashion is
> especially obvious for popular music. While much has been written about the
> origin and evolution of pop, most claims about its history are anecdotal
> rather than scientific in nature. To rectify this, we investigate the US
> Billboard Hot 100 between 1960 and 2010. Using music information retrieval
> and text-mining tools, we analyse the musical properties of approximately
> 17 000 recordings that appeared in the charts and demonstrate quantitative
> trends in their harmonic and timbral properties. We then use these
> properties to produce an audio-based classification of musical styles and
> study the evolution of musical diversity and disparity, testing, and
> rejecting, several classical theories of cultural change. Finally, we
> investigate whether pop musical evolution has been gradual or punctuated. We
> show that, although pop music has evolved continuously, it did so with
> particular rapidity during three stylistic ‘revolutions’ around 1964, 1983
> and 1991. We conclude by discussing how our study points the way to a
> quantitative science of cultural change.
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