In the week coming up to the first day of classes, all of my summer experiences had ended and I spent my time in reflection. I decided to lay my curiosity onto the music of the summer; I was curious what music I had listened to the most (through spotify). Using Obscrurifymusic.com, I was able to tell what albums I had listened to the most, and they came in as follows:
- The Chainsmokers: Memories... Do Not Open
- Khalid: American Teen
- Jon Bellion: The Human Condition
- Alina Baraz: Urban Flora
As I went through these artists and songs, the same parallel existed. Save for The Chainsmokers, the other three albums had received consistently excellent reviews from their release. Rolling Stone called American Teen, “the freshest.” Soundfiction called The Human Condition, “impactful and impressionable.” What’d they call Andrew Taggart and Alex Pall?
“Drab, Monotonous Whinge,” according to Rolling Stone. A “lifeless and anodyne pop record,” according to Pitchfork. “The worst album of 2017?” according to USA Today.
The album was said to be derivative and uneventful, with songs that seemed to repeat each other. There’s an infamous YouTube video of “How every Chainsmokers song is written.” In it, the maker noted several of the same structural parts of any song: the progression of major chords, the melody of every song being the top note of the chord and lyrics that just talk about how hard it is to be “white and in love.” The video went so far as to say that one could choose a random word and write a Chainsmokers song about it.
And yet, when I went to see how well the album did over the summer, I was shocked to see that Memories… Do Not Open was the Sony Music’s third best selling album of their first fiscal quarter, beating out albums by Khalid, Future, DJ Khaled, and others who are signed to the Sony label. The album helped contribute to an overall $1.5 billion revenue for the record label itself. After all, it’s all over the Shooters playlist, and every version of a Shooters playlist in every college town in America and around the world.
So the question remains: why do we listen to the repetitive, the derivative, the “basic”? After all, I did enjoy the album; I wasn’t any different from the millions of people who listened to (and ultimately bought) the album.
In an article published in Frontiers in Psychology, “The psychological functions of music listening,” researchers attempted to isolate the specific functions of music to a listener. They categorized three specific dimensions of listening: to "regulate arousal and mood," to "achieve self-awareness" and to "express social relatedness."
Memories… Do Not Open completely streamlines the same three dimensions into each song: we’re constantly enamored by someone (arousal and mood), we’re falling in love but there’s an obstacle to overpass (self-awareness), and some stakeholder (usually parents) doesn’t approve but relationships are societally expected and we need to find one (societal relatedness). The same occurs through the melody.
Take for instance, the song “Something Just Like This.” Apart from the same major-key progression of chords that takes place in most of the album, the lyrics show a character who wants to find love but doesn’t consider himself at the level of superheroes (“Achilles…Hercules…Spiderman…Batman… and clearly I don't see myself upon that list.”) The character is clearly attracted to someone (arousal and mood), wants to reject the “fairytales” and “testaments they told” (social relatedness) and wants “something just like this” (self-awareness). One can find the same basic structure in almost every song in the album.
Consider the other album’s hit, “Paris.” The song reminisces about a couple who were staying in Paris to “get away from your parents” and to “show them we are better.” Immediately, we get the same societal relatedness and social-awareness, that other forces that we can’t control don’t want the relationship to happen. The parallel continues with mentions of alcohol (“If I could take this in a shot right now.” In fact, five of the songs in the album mention alcohol specifically in the context of a significant other. The theme: every song seems to have the same motivations, and the same intentions.
Not every relationship requires alcohol, not every life experience starts out with the fleeting relationships that this album speaks of, and even though we don’t claim it does, we’ve spent millions of dollars on music that does. It’s absolutely healthy to listen to these types of albums but it’s equally important to not lose our individuality in the process. What we experience isn’t meant to be all the same, and that album imparts the same cycle of life stories to a broad audience.
This summer I realized how much the music that we create and listen to can so easily affect our thoughts, our wants and needs, our trials and tribulations, and ultimately our character. Listening too much exclusively to the Chainsmokers made me think too narrowly about what young adults are “supposed” to think like, or “supposed” to do.
For the upcoming semester, I’ll be listening to country and bluegrass, R&B, and any genre I haven’t had experience with before. We’ll see how a break from the Shooters playlist changes me.
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Nima Mohammadi is a Trinity sophomore. His column, "on my mind," runs on alternate Thursdays.