Multiple songs made by artists of today, such as Childish Gambino, Post Malone and Brandi Carlile, have followed the phenomena of the “loudness war” trend.
This loudness trend focuses heavily on the dynamic range of a song being significantly compressed. The writer Geoffrey Morrison from CNET, a brand of CBS Interactive, explains this in simple terms.
“The easiest way to think of dynamic range compression is making loud stuff quieter and quiet stuff louder. It’s like putting a speed limiter on a car, making sure no car can go faster than 65 mph, but no slower than 45,” said Morrison.
Instead of this 45 mph to 65 mph range of past music, modern music has compressed to 64 mph to 65 mph ranges.
Music of the past, such as “What’s Going On” (1971) from Marvin Gaye, “Black Dog” (1971) from Led Zeppelin and “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2” by Pink Floyd, does not compress music to a limited dynamic range.
“In the pre-digital era, compression required a mastering engineer,” said Greg Milner, a writer of the New York Times. As shown in a graph in Milner’s article, “What’s Going On” has a range that is six decibels greater than “This is America” throughout its song. Listening to these songs and comparing them lets the listener feel the difference in the bass.
The reason for this “loudness war” is to gain the attention of the new, young generation. It literally makes the songs sound louder, attempting to draw in listeners.
“This phenomena is only present in genres where there is a stake in gaining as much market share as possible from young consumers – pop, contemporary county, rap, etc.,” said Leslie Sabina, department chair of visual and performing arts here at St. Bonaventure. “Companies have to get the listener’s (consumer’s) attention somehow, and ‘louder than the next guy’ seems to do it. Loudness wars don’t happen in classical or jazz genres, where the listeners value dynamics and don’t buy into this trend that ‘louder is better.’”
While consumers have proven to enjoy the “louder is better” trend through immense sale records of songs, there are many current artists who break from this trend.
“I don’t listen to a lot of current genres, but I think it is well-documented that a lot of artists and their producers are tired of the ‘wall of sound’ that you get from the hyper-compression [taking away dynamic levels] that defines the loudness wars,” said Sabina.
Music from before the 90s was not excluded from this trend.
“It is well documented, especially with re-releases and new mixes of classic rock tracks, for instance,” said Sabina.
The song “You Can Do Magic” (1982) by folk rock duo America originally had a wide dynamic range, and then was compressed heavily in its remastering. Looking up online the difference between the original and remastered version shows the dramatic change.
An example comes from one of the 2019 Grammy Nominees for Record of the Year: Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s “Shallow” mimics the dynamic range of “What’s Going On” as shown on Milner’s article.
The “loudness war” is still very present today, but perhaps examples such as “Shallow” show a change towards larger dynamic ranges.
“I think the loudness wars will eventually disappear, and people will again appreciate the ebb and flow of music via loud sections contrasting with softer sections,” Sabina said.
By Catherine Fleischhut, Staff Writer
fleisccs18@bonaventure.edu
