The tempo of songs released by many popular musicians increases until they are in their early 30s and then steadily declines, falling below their teenage level when they reach their 50s.
鈥淲e saw this very clear downward trend,鈥� says at the University of Jyv盲skyl盲 in Finland. 鈥淲e are confident that tempo really does decline over the lifespan.鈥�
The number of beats per minute, or the tempo, is a key property of music that can be used to convey different emotions, says Luck. 鈥淪o if that is changing across an artist鈥檚 lifespan, it means the effect their music will have on fans will necessarily change as they age,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t might partially explain why younger fans don鈥檛 connect so well with older artists.鈥�
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Luck and , also at the University of Jyv盲skyl盲, started with that included the company鈥檚 analysis of each track鈥檚 tempo. The pair then excluded any artists whose careers spanned less than 20 years, who had released fewer than three albums, who were born before 1955 or whose birth date was unknown.
The researchers also tried to exclude songs that might skew the analysis, including live performances, Christmas songs, classical music, soundtracks and remixes. That left them with nearly 15,000 songs from 207 artists, including Pearl Jam, Kylie Minogue, Cyndi Lauper, Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, Kenny G, Tech N9ne, Judas Priest and Juan Gabriel.
They then assessed how the age of these musicians was linked to the tempo of the music they released. With bands, they only looked at the lead singer鈥檚 age.
According to their results, the tempos of songs by these musicians averaged around 120 beats per minute in their teens, rising to almost 123bpm in their early 30s. It then fell by nearly 2bpm per decade.
, Luck examined how the tempos of these individuals changed over time. The clearest declines were in songs by Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and Whitney Houston.
Madonna and Elton John had the greatest variation in tempos over time. In Madonna鈥檚 case, this may reflect her work with different collaborators and styles, says Luck.
In future studies, Luck aims to create better methods for analysing even bigger data sets to address further questions, such as whether the genre of music affects the rate of tempo change with age and whether tempo reflects the physical and mental health of musicians.
bioRxiv
