Culture wars: ephemera vs stamina

Why do some songs get stuck in our head and we just can’t make them stop? It’s a question that gripped two Australian music researchers who, on a podcast this last weekend, examined how it’s both simple and complex. Strong opening notes, like Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, are a good start. It’s why, say Drs Jadey O’Regan and Tim Byron, the first three notes of Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time” work well, too; other honourable mentions (not included in the podcast) are Pink Floyd’s four note opening to “Shine on, you crazy diamond”, the ominous pulsing D minor which starts the overture to Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”, or even the hanging single chord that opens The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night”.

They are the "hook”, that “moment in music that stands out or stays in our head”. They get us in, but keeping us there is a different issue, and a highly subjective one, too. Being easily attracted to a song means we can just as easily be distracted from it. So, one technique widely used in modern songs is  a hook every seven seconds, because, says O’Regan, that’s about “as long as somebody listening will give it before they change the dial or skip on Spotify." Seven seconds? With such rapid need for change, perhaps it is why contemporary music can’t be sustained for more than 2½-3 minute at a time. What is this doing to our attention span, and might it make any difference to student learning?

O’Regan’s comment evokes Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus: Why you can’t pay attention. Across the ironically long 340 pages, Hari’s quest is to advocate for, and provide strategies that can help us reclaim, how “to focus deeply again” (Hari, 2022, p. 257). The hook, and its seven second lifespan, seems like one of the many contemporary distractions which might reduce students’ ability to focus on complex and sustained ideas, thus having an adverse impact on their learning progress.

Recently, I watched a review of the top 10 songs on Spotify in April, by YouTube producer/musician Rick Beato (I enjoy his analyses of “what makes this song great”, as well as his interviews of musicians and other music producers). His criticism is that too many contemporary songs throw in a hook to get listeners in, but then “there’s nothing to the song…there’s no development”. It just ambles along, and soon peters out without ever having “gone anywhere”. It’s as if it’s not bad enough that the songs are short, but that their value hangs on the efficacy of the hook, rather than being musically rich.

But is that necessarily a problem? Does length make for better music? For Spears, three notes introduce a hook-driven experience that’s over in 3 minutes and 30 seconds; in contrast, Pink Floyd take listeners on a 25-minute musical epic, Beethoven requires 35 minutes before he resolves the tension of his symphonic opening, and it is 3½ hours before Mozart’s bleak overture resolves with Don Giovanni banished to hell and those he has oppressed finally freed. That’s a big story, and demanding for musicians, actors, technicians, and audience alike.

Consider some other large scale works of music, literature, and theatre. Wagner’s Ring Cycle typically runs around 15 hours spread across its four operas (to be performed in its entirety this year in Brisbane), with Die Walküre requiring around 5 hours alone! The symbol of long stories remains Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (In search of lost time), at a monumental 3,100+ pages. Between 1985-1987, English theatre director Peter Brook oversaw performances of the 9 hour long translated Sanskrit epic, Mahābhārata. Closer to home, two recent tour-de-force theatre performances were Eryn Jean Norvill in the stunning adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (Sydney Theatre Company) and Michael Sheen as Salieri in Peter Shafer’s Amadeus; neither Norvill nor Sheen leave the stage throughout their respective play, despite both being more than two hours in length - extraordinary feats of physical and emotional virtuosity!

These seem a world away from hook-driven music which lasts less time than it takes me to make a cup of tea. And yet, there seems a paradox in our story-telling culture. The Harry Potter and Games of Thrones sagas have now eclipsed Proust for sheer length, and the Marvel/Star Wars/Fast & Furious universes seem to keep expanding faster than our own actual universe. Witness, too, the rise of bingeworthy multi-season streaming dramas.

Perhaps we’re undervaluing students’ interest in long form stories. Rather than assume they only crave hook driven, egg-timer length, characterless songs, maybe they are craving more than we give them credit. Being given Great Expectations to read in Year 12 may appear burdensome for some, especially when it tops 550 pages yet will take less time to read than it takes to devour all 39 episodes of Succession.

And what of us as teachers, leaders, parents, caregivers, friends? What are we reading?