{"id":481818,"date":"2019-02-05T06:42:44","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T13:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=788045"},"modified":"2019-02-05T06:42:44","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T13:42:44","slug":"pop-hits-were-really-slow-again-in-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/pop-hits-were-really-slow-again-in-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Pop Hits Were Really Slow (Again) in 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the streaming era, major hits tend to be sluggish: Between 2012 and 2017, the average tempo of the 25 most-streamed tracks on Spotify fell<\/a> by 23 beats per minute, to 90.5 b.p.m..<\/span><\/p>\n

Why? There are plenty of theories: the utter and total dominance of southern hip-hop<\/a>, which revels in slower speeds; a bleak national mood that leaves people uninterested in brisk, peppy tracks; and streaming platforms\u2019 obsession with all things \u201cchill,\u201d<\/a> which leaves little room for anything vigorous and potentially jarring.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in 2017, songwriters and producers also suggested<\/a> that favored tempos \u2014 like everything in pop \u2014 are cyclical, and the current fixation would pass. That may be true, but for now, listeners remain enthralled by the leisurely and lackadaisical.<\/span> A new report from the company Soundfly<\/span><\/a> analyzed every song that cracked the Billboard Top 5 in 2018 and determined that the average tempo was 92.6 b.p.m. That\u2019s basically exactly the same as the average tempo of Top 5 hits in 2017: 93.2 b.p.m.. The most popular tempo for a massive hit in 2017 was 79 to 80 b.p.m.; in 2018, it was 78 to 79.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speed and popularity were not totally at odds.<\/span> Soundfly<\/span> clocked Cardi B<\/a>, Bad Bunny & J Balvin\u2019s \u201cI Like It\u201d at 136 b.p.m., and there were a pair of nearly identical fifth-gear hits produced by the Memphis beatmaker Tay Keith \u2014 Blocboy JB and Drake<\/a>\u2019s \u201cLook Alive (140) and Drake\u2019s \u201cNonstop\u201d (154). \u201cTempos up this fast can be subjectively felt at half-speed,\u201d cautions Dean Olivet, who authored the report. \u201cBut in music school, they teach you that the tie-breaker in this situation is how most people would conduct it. And in pop music, it\u2019s also how people are moving to it \u2014 the tiebreaker was in the \u2018Nonstop\u2019 video, where the whole crowd is bouncing at 154, so I went with that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n