Whipped Hair and Stutters: the Science of Pop Music Pt. 1

Let's face it, we've all had our moments when we get caught up in the wonder that is pop music. Be it at a high school dance, in the car while playing on the radio, or at home when no one's around, we catch ourselves singing along to songs we otherwise find distasteful, or at least annoying. So what is it about this pop music we hate so much that has us falling in love? Is it the intense, introspective lyrics? Perhaps the wondrous harmony of all the timbres and instruments coexisting to create a musical masterpiece. No? Well, perhaps it is something else. I'd like to propose that it is one thing, and primarily this one thing: CATCHINESS.


Now, some people have argued that a catchy song is a beautiful one, one that took a great deal of talent to craft. I disagree wholeheartedly. Firstly, let us set down a fairly relevant definition for "catchy": "instantly appealing and memorable", as defined by our great friends at Wikipedia (whose accuracy and integrity, for the sake of this article, I will not spend time defending). 


It is indeed possible for a catchy song to be beautiful and to have taken a lot of talent and effort to produce. But it is painfully easy to make a catchy song without requiring any talent, or effort for that matter. To illustrate I will use two examples found in today's mainstream media: Willow Smith's odious single "Whip My Hair" and Ke$ha's disgustingly popular radio hit "We R Who We R". Will Smith's daughter took the liberty of hooking herself up to the string of the Hollywood puppeteers (Roc Nation to be exact) and came up with "Whip My Hair", a song that, trance music aside, breaks records for the number of times a single line is in one song....68 to be exact (yes, I listened and counted for myself. It was painful). Something catchy, as we've stated, is both memorable and appealing. For a lot of girls, whipping hair is appealing. Check. Do we have a memorable song? The world of marketing can back that claim for us. Marketers on average name their brand/product at least 3 times in the 30-60 second ad they pitch in order for our brains to process and remember the name. In the 197 second song, we hear the line "I whip my hair back and forth" not three times, not 10 times....but a whopping (or should I saw whipping) SIXTY-EIGHT TIMES! Do we have a memorable song? CHECK.


Then we have Ke$ha, the most hair-brained, sleazy drunk that Almighty Hollywood could create. In her new single "We R Who We R", it seems that Ke$ha has some problems pronouncing her words. The chorus goes:


"Tonight we're going hard hard-ha-ha-ha-hard
Just like the world is ours-ours-a-a-a-our
We're tearin' it apart-part-pa-pa-pa-part
You know we're superstars"

Is it just me, or can she not finish her words without a severe stutter? She's not the only one. The infamous and unnecessarily crazed Lady Gaga has similar phenomena going on in her tracks. Are America's 'best' musicians impaired with speech impediments? Hardly. Stutters are tools of repetition. They emphasize and further pronounce certain words or phrases. They build expectations for the listener, so that someone who's never even heard the song before can sing along, stutters included, by the time the second chorus rolls around.  I'm not sure how much thought goes into these songs, but if I sang "roses are re-re-re-re-red, violets are blu-blu-blu-blue" i'd bet you could have it stuck in your head. Heck, I could just sing the word "pots" repeatedly and you'd start catching on. It's a science.

Is catchiness important in pop music? Definitely. But that's not all.

--To Be Continued~