An evolutionary analysis of pop tunes revealed that over the past 30 years songs have grown sadder—but the big hits buck that trend.

一项针对流行音乐的演变分析，发现在过去30年里歌曲风格趋向悲伤，但最火的歌却与潮流趋势相反。

撰稿：Christopher Intagliata克里斯托弗·因塔哥利亚塔

翻译：张心茹

审校：潘磊

Many parents are no doubt familiar with their teenagers' musical tastes. Very few are probably inspired enough to launch an experiment into them.

毫无疑问，很多父母很了解孩子们的音乐品味。因此他们很少有兴趣对此进行实验。

"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. 

“我听了一些大女儿听的歌。我很惊讶，这些歌和我以前听的音乐差异巨大。”加州大学欧文分校的应用数学家娜塔莉亚·卡玛洛娃说。

"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."

“自从我对普遍性进化和进化的数学阐述产生兴趣，我认为研究音乐潮流的演变是一个不错的主意。”

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. "Here's a 2014 song that has a low happiness index:" Stay with Me," by Sam Smith."

卡玛洛娃和她的团队分析了1985和2015年之间在英国发行的500万首歌。她们利用了线上数据库，可以描述歌曲的音乐特点，如节奏、情绪和舞蹈性。“例如泰勒斯威夫特2014年的一首颇受欢迎的适合跳舞的歌曲-《Shake It Off》”,“2014年萨姆·史密斯一首忧伤的《Stay With Me》”

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. 

总体上，他们发现，过去30年歌曲里开心的成分越来越少，舞蹈性越来越强，越来越放松，女性参与度越来越高。

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." 

但一些大火的歌曲部分打破了以上的趋势。“成功歌曲表现得像是截然不同的一类歌曲。它们有许多不同的特点，有它们的特质”

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 Roya

l Society Open Science. [Myra Interiano et al., Musical trends and predictability of success in contemporary songs on and off the top charts]

大火歌曲比常规歌曲更开心，似乎是一种复古潮流，更多的是由女歌手演唱。更多研究细节收录在杂志《Royal Society Open Science》

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." 

卡玛洛娃的团队能够仅仅通过75%时长中的音乐特点来预测一首歌会否成功。“对我来说这非常有意义。这意味着音乐对歌曲成功的重要性，只有钱是不够的。”

Proving that, at least when it comes to their musical tastes… the kids are alright.

由此想来，至少在音乐品味的问题上，孩子们常常是对的。