This annoying ‘millennial whoop’ explains why pop songs sound exactly the same
Musicians including Katy Perry, Carly Rae Jepsen, Demi Lovato and Frank Ocean accused of using melodic cliche
IF it seems like lots of pop songs in the charts sound the same, there's a good reason why.
Many contemporary pop songs feature the same musical motif, or repeated note pattern, that one man has coined the "millennial whoop".
According to musician, product manager and data analyst Patrick Metzger, artists such as Katy Perry, Carly Rae Jepsen, Demi Lovato and Frank Ocean are all releasing songs where this pattern can be heard.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZsTN_yi-rw&w=560&h=315]
In his blog, The Patterning, Metzger explains that the musical sequence alternates between the fifth and third note of the major scale, starting on the fifth.
"A singer usually belts these notes with an 'Oh' phoneme, often in a 'Wa-oh-wa-oh" pattern,' Metzger writes.
One of the best examples of it can be heard in the chorus of Katy Perry's California Gurls song.
And it keeps turning up in songs released by artists such as One Direction and even in Frank Ocean's recent album, Blonde.
Of course, this isn't the first time in pop music that an idea has been repeated again and again.
Associate Professor Charles Fairchild, from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, mentions the Bo Diddley beat - a syncopated riff named after the American blues guitarist who came up with it in the 1940s.
"It became a really foundational piece of blues rock going forward," Professor Fairchild told AAP.
Then there's the "amen break" in DJ culture.
While this drum beat was created in the 1960s by funk band The Winstons, it became mixed, sampled and used in hip hop, techno and drum 'n' bass from the 1980s onwards.
"It was one of these things that all these DJs started sampling and it just started popping up in mix after mix after mix, until this clever guy traced its lineage and went back to the beginning and found the record," Fairchild said.
These shared musical tropes become common pretty quickly as they can trick the listener into thinking they've heard a brand new song before.
"It just sits so well with you the first time you ever hear it and part of it is deliberate because, for a lot of songwriters, that's gold to make people think that they've already heard their brand new song before," Fairchild said.
Revealing the millennial whoop might take some of the romance out of music-making but having a hit record is, after all, big business.
"Songwriters are strategic as well as creative and people do try to see how much they can imbibe from other areas and use it for their own inspiration or creativity, or try and have a hit which is, in my view, totally reasonable," Fairchild said.
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Songs with the "millennial whoop":
Katy Perry - California Gurls (2010, millennial whoop at 0:51)
Demi Lovato - I Really Don't Care (2013, millennial whoop at 1:00)
Frank Ocean - Ivy (2016, millennial whoop at 2:53)
twenty one pilots - Ride (2015, millennial whoop at 0:48)
One Direction - Live While We're Young (2012, millennial whoop at 0:53)
