為什么每一代人都有自己的流行歌曲？

Many parents are no doubt familiar with their teenagers’ musical tastes. Very few are probably inspired enough to launch an experiment into them.

毫無疑問，許多父母都熟悉自己年少時的音樂品味。但很少有人因此受到啟發(fā)，進行深入研究。

I listened to some of the music my oldest teenage daughter is listening to. And I was surprised at how different that music was from what I used to listen to. Natalia Komarova, an applied mathematician at U.C. Irvine.

“我聽了幾首我十幾歲大女兒正在聽的音樂，我很驚訝，這音樂與我小時候聽的不同。”美國應用數(shù)學家納塔莉亞?科馬羅娃。

Since I’m interested in evolution in general, and a mathematical description of evolution, I thought studying the evolution of music would be a good idea.

“我感興趣的研究領(lǐng)域是進化方面，并對進化的數(shù)學模型進行描述，我認為研究音樂的進化是一個好主意。”

Komarova and her team analyzed half a million songs released in the U.K. between 1985 and 2015 using online databases that describe songs’ musical characteristics, like rhythm, mood and danceability. "For example here’s a song that was high on the charts in 2014 that has high danceability: "Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift.

科馬羅娃和她的團隊分析了1985年至2015年間在英國發(fā)行的50萬首歌曲，使用在線數(shù)據(jù)庫來描述歌曲的音樂特征，如節(jié)奏、情緒和舞蹈性。“舉例來說，2014年泰勒?斯威夫特演唱的《擺脫》在舞曲方面表現(xiàn)很好，舞蹈性很高。” (背景音樂《擺脫》)

Here’s a 2014 song that has a low happiness index: Stay with Me," by Sam Smith." <>

“2014年，山姆·史密斯演唱的《和我在一起》，這首歌的幸福指數(shù)也很低。” (背景音樂《和我在一起》)

Overall, they found that songs had become less happy over the 30-year span; as well as more danceable, more relaxed—and more likely to have women behind the mic.

總體而言，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)在30年的時間里，歌曲變得不那么幸福了，以及更具舞蹈性、更輕松了，并且更有可能由女性演唱了。

But the big hits bucked a number of those trends. "The behavior of successful songs looked almost like a separate species of songs. They have quantifiably different features, their own little trends."

但是，這些流行歌曲推動了一些趨勢。“流行歌曲的成功看來是因為它們特立獨行的品質(zhì)，它們具有不同的特征和自己的小趨勢。”

The hit singles were happier than the norm…almost a throwback to earlier times. And even more likely to be sung by women. The details are in the journal Royal Society Open Science. [Myra Interiano et al., Musical trends and predictability of success in contemporary songs on and off the top charts]

熱門單曲比樣本標準更快樂，這幾乎是可以追溯到早期歌曲的，更可能由女性唱歌。詳見《英國皇家學會開放科學雜志》下刊文《音樂趨勢、當代歌曲成功的可預測性以及流行歌曲排行榜》。

Komarova’s team was also able to predict a song’s success, by judging only its musical qualities, about 75 percent of the time. "To me that’s very positive. It means that music matters, for song success—it’s not just money."

科馬羅娃的團隊還能夠通過判斷音樂品質(zhì)來預測一首歌是否能夠流行，成功率大約為75%， “對我來說，這是非常有意義的，這意味著一首歌曲的成功，不僅僅只與投入的金錢有關(guān)。”

Proving that, at least when it comes to their musical tastes… the kids are alright.

這至少證明了當涉及音樂品味時，孩子們是正確的。(背景音樂《孩子們是正確的》。)