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.

“我感興趣的研究領域是進化方面，并對進化的數學模型進行描述，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，使用在線數據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，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。”

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》。)