Comments on: The ‘4Chords/4Bars’ Song Still Rules The Charts https://tonyconniff.com/the-4chords4bars-song-still-rules-the-charts/ Songwriter, Producer, and Coach, based in New York City. Fri, 19 Feb 2021 05:12:09 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Tony Conniff https://tonyconniff.com/the-4chords4bars-song-still-rules-the-charts/#comment-7658 Tue, 07 Apr 2020 23:57:47 +0000 http://tonyconniff.com/?p=4555#comment-7658 In reply to Thomas G.

Thomas,
I’m finishing up a book that gets into this in some detail, but I think it mostly has to do with the influence of rap, which has led to more active melodies and often more complex rhyming, usually done over a loop.
So the chords, at least for now, have gotten simpler, generally speaking.
Thanks for reading and writing!
Tony

]]> By: Thomas G https://tonyconniff.com/the-4chords4bars-song-still-rules-the-charts/#comment-7657 Wed, 26 Feb 2020 15:35:20 +0000 http://tonyconniff.com/?p=4555#comment-7657 Hi Tony,
Thanks for doing your column – I read and appreciate it!.
My impression is 60 years ago there was quite a bit more harmonic interest in pop songs (Beatles, Bacharach,etc) and certainly a more consistent change between verse and chorus than now. Now it seems that rhythm (in vocal melody) is emphasized as well as arrangement variation. I wonder why there isn’t more harmonic interest these days. Has the listening audience for pop just become a bit ‘lazy’? Or is it that the rhythmic vocal melodies are so complex that it would be too much to change up the harmony as well? I haven’t quite figured it out and would be interested in your thoughts.

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