Music time is 2 minutes short

Billie Eilish's Lunch Is Bizarrely Short

Post Malone and Morgan Wallen's "I Had Some Help" is 2 minutes and 58 seconds long. Tommy Richman's "Million Dollar Baby" is 2 minutes and 35 seconds long. Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" is 2 minutes and 53 seconds long. Finally, Billie Eilish's "Lunch" is 2 minutes and 59 seconds long.

Short music is the new trend?

Even on Beyoncé's new album, Cowboy Carter, which is considered a very long album, at 78 minutes, when divided evenly, each song is less than 3 minutes.

Taylor Swift's songs aren't that short, but even with Swift, the average length of songs on her albums has been decreasing over time, from Speak Now at nearly five minutes a song to Midnights at just three and a half minutes.

This is not just a trend in the US-UK. When K-pop girl group NewJeans released their mini album Get Up, fans complained that it was too short!

The mini album has 6 tracks, but the total duration is only about 12 minutes. The shortest song is 37 seconds. The longest song is 2 minutes 35 seconds.

In Vietnam, this phenomenon is very clear among young artists: from Loi Choi: The Neo Pop Punk by Wren Evans to Em by My Anh, Tu Ai by tlinh to 99% by rapper MCK, all have an average song length of just over 2 minutes.

The world seems to have lost interest in listening to long songs. Where are the heyday of rock in the 1970s and 1980s, when listening to a song by Gun "n" Roses or Led Zeppelin could last for ten or more minutes?

Along with the brevity comes the simplicity of the lyrics.

According to a study of more than 350,000 English songs published in the journal Nature, the general trend in modern songs is that the language is becoming simpler, the song structure is also becoming less complex, and the same lines are being repeated more.

Taylor Swift (Midnights "The Late Night Edition") Album Playlist with Lyrics

Are musicians getting lazier?

Many blame TikTok. The rise of instant music , quickly jumping on a catchy hook or chorus? Surely encouraged by TikTok. The decline in concentration? Also due to the spread of TikTok short video culture.

Along with TikTok, music streaming platform Spotify is often blamed for song monotony. Viewers have to listen for at least 30 seconds for streams to generate revenue for artists. So the shorter the song, the sooner it gets to the interesting part, the better.

Not to mention, listening to a 10-minute version of Taylor Swift's All Too Well only earns you as much money as the original 3-minute version of All Too Well.

So, apart from a few people who have the "privilege" of having a large audience no matter how short their music is, why do the rest of them have to compose long music?

Music now becomes an economic problem, not just a creative inspiration.

However, there was a time when music was very short. During the 1930s - 1950s, due to the limitations of 78 rpm records, songs were often short enough to fit on there.

It wasn't until the 1960s, when 22-minute LPs were introduced, that songs started to get longer, and we started to see The Beatles' 6- or 7-minute Hey Jude or A Day in The Life.

While it may be argued that in ancient times, musicians made short music out of necessity, and that this is fundamentally different from today, where musicians intentionally make short music to maximize economic efficiency, isn’t the history of aesthetic trends always a spiral?

We will always find ourselves back where we were. And who knows, in a few years, when short songs are saturated, there will be a new generation of musicians pampering us with endlessly long songs?

The truth is, songs are getting shorter and shorter. Before we can even get into the world of a song, it's over.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/thoi-cua-nhac-ngan-2-phut-20240602092817975.htm