Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/22/wha-oh-wha-oh-that-thing-you.html
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I think you’ve got it and it works perfectly for your generation, too, gramps.
I’m way older than you.
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Generalize this a bit more, and this is the thing I hate most about pop from the last few years.
The key example to me is “Best Day of My Life” by American Authors, where “life” is turned into a gratingly “cheerful” eight syllable ditty.
What these people need is some black metal.
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The Millennial Whoop evokes a kind of primordial sense that everything will be alright.
It does?
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The song that first came to mind was Beyoncé’s Single Ladies. (I don’t particularly like the song, but the intro is fairly memorable).
As far as I can work out, it’s going up and down the minor third; can someone more familiar with music clarify for me if this is an actual example of what they’re talking about?
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Oh yeah, I bet there’s a lot of Millennials writing songs for the biggest music labels in the world. Too bad Pearlman just passed away, we could have asked him all about these millennials and their lyrical proclivities.
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I know I am not a millennial as when I read “Wha Oh! Wha Oh!” and song in the same topic header I think of Baltimora’s Tarzan Boy So now I have an image of millennial hipsters and blonde, augmented, clone gurls singing “Wha Oh Wha Oh” and swinging on tree vines because that’s all the real estate they can afford.
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Nothing new. The same sort of thing happened during the Doo-wop era. The only difference was that the music was better, and no one thought you could copyright a two syllable utterance.
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Be-bop-alula. She’s my baby.
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Yes.
This post reminded me of a video where a musical trio sang a medley of wordless song lyrics from the past 60 years.
I can’t find the video again, alas.
Goddam kids and their crappy Pop Music. In my day, music had soul and meaning. It took real musicians to play it. Not like the crap of today.
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Great, now I have to listen to something like this on repeat to wash out my brain.
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This has been a thing since at least the 1810s.
PRINCE GEORGE: WOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAunaccustomed as I am to public speaking"
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here it is in The Cranberries’ Zombie at 3:30
(amidoinitrite?)
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I’d say the falling intonation suggests ‘Uh-oh’ or ‘Oh, well’, an expression of apprehension or regret. ‘Everything’s going to be all right’ only in the sense of ‘Fugeddaboudit.’
The overuse of this little, uninspiring motif does help explain why most pop music is so crappy these days, but if people like it, who am I to complain?
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I wonder if terms like “Picardy third” or “Neapolitan chord” were as grating when they first found their way into the music theory canon.
I’m fine with millennials warbling between scale degrees 3 and 5 if that’s their jam, but this feels more like someone saying “huh, what can I slap the adjective ‘millennial’ on today?”
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Are we sure there isn’t a button in Auto-Tune that creates this?
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