Tempo trends in music

[tall_guy1]

I have noticed a pattern in popular music where several years at a time go by with very uptempo music, followed by years (hard to decipher exactly) of mid to downtempo music being more big. It's hard to pinpoint, but just using the last few decades, you can see:

2004: Tended towards mid to downtempo music. A lot more songs that were melodic and slow than even today, even though there were some well known songs like Toxic which were huge
2014: Very uptempo. A lot of dance, and every pop song was rhythmic or rhythmic inspired.
2024: Kind of in the middle, doesn't have the kind of slow songs 2004 had, but not uptempo the way 2014 was.

These are examples. But I notice songs of certain tempos seem to come and go with time.

 

[TexasTom]

If you extend that trend further into the past, there were downtempo periods in pop music in the early sixties, early seventies, early eighties, and early nineties. I've seen articles that dub these eras "doldrums" and note that they tend to occur as a backlash to music that ended up being considered extreme. So the early sixties doldrums were a reaction to the initial explosion of rock music in the latter part of the fifties, and the early seventies doldrums were a reaction to the acid rock, hard rock, and drug-infused music of the late sixties. Continuing on, the first such cycle that I really remember is how the intense backlash to disco in 1979 led to a period where pop radio was filled with ballads and down-tempo music starting in late 1979 and continuing for a couple years -- I think we broke free of that particular set of doldrums when MTV starting shaking up pop music. And in the late eighties, the first wave of rap music triggered another backlash much like the one against disco.

So it seems like it is something that just happens roughly ever decade and that's been the case for over sixty years now.