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10.52pm
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20 August 2013
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The Beatles ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ is “the perfect pop song”, according to science
Very interesting article. I wonder what McCartney thinks about it.
Beatles on top again.
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11.57am
1 December 2009
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OK, in my opinion, this is some bullshit.
Aside from the silliness of using science to judge a work of art, the researchers are only gonna look at pop songs between 1958 and '91 - and only 700 total out of tens of thousands written? And then strip those songs of melody, lyrics, performers, everything but the chord changes - basically anything that makes them actual songs? And then employ an algorithm that assigns a value based on how "surprising" (to whom?) the chord changes are, ultimately coming up with a top 30 that are voted on by a whopping 39 people? And the winner is "Ob La Di, Ob La Da" (eight chords, most pretty unsurprising to my ears), really? Over "Penny Lane ", "She Loves You ", "Help !" and who-knows-how-many others, just among Beatles songs? I scoff at their findings! 
I'd be interested to know what 700 candidates they chose, and how so - sales/chart figures, collective poll results, whatever - because I think there is some scientific value in determining why people's brains tend to love certain pop music sounds more than others. But their methodology seems to rely on far too small sample sizes to justify any "BEST SONG EVER, PROVEN BY SCIENCE!" headlines. (Which I guess is probably the NME's doing.)
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Beatlebug, QuarryMan, Dark Overlord, Dark Overlord, WeepingAtlasCedarsGEORGE: In fact, The Detroit Sound. JOHN: In fact, yes. GEORGE: In fact, yeah. Tamla-Motown artists are our favorites. The Miracles. JOHN: We like Marvin Gaye. GEORGE: The Impressions, Marvin Gaye. PAUL & GEORGE: Mary Wells. GEORGE: The Exciters. RINGO: Chuck Jackson. JOHN: To name but eighty.
5.08pm
26 January 2017
Offline Trying to understand art through the lens of science is futile, in my opinion, but it's still interesting to see what they come out with.
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Beatlebug, WeepingAtlasCedars¡No pasarán!
