Are pop songs getting more repetitive? Evidence of one researcher and an algorithm suggests the answer might be “yes.” In an essay on The Pudding, Colin Morris demonstrates repetition by compressing pop songs using the Lempel-Ziv algorithm, the same algorithm that compresses gifs. The algorithm looked for repetition of lines and parts of words, then removed them, reducing the overall size of the song. The chorus of the Sia’s “Cheap Thrills,” for example, was reduced by 46-percent after all repetitions were removed. In total, Morris collected data from 15,000 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 from 1958 to 2017. After compression, the average…
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