Wha Oh! Wha Oh! That thing you hear in everyother pop song is the Millennial Whoop

boing
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I agree with one of the article’s commenters that it’s a bugle call. 5-3-5-3… both martial and meaningless. It grabs your attention but doesn’t demand much processing power.

EDIT: (Full disclosure, I am a millenial.)

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Today I learned I’m older than @beschizza. Goddamnit.

I thought that was YOLO.

Also let’s not forget nearly all pop songs are written by the same five or so people so it’s not surprising that hooks get constantly reused.

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I had noticed this, but it struck me as a retro thing. Lots of '80s songs had whoah-ho choruses.

Prime example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbkOZTSvrHs

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I think it’s more along the lines of “we’re probably doomed and there is nothing we can do about it, but let’s smile and maybe things will work out”

I’m borderline millennial, but pop isn’t really my thing. I prefer stuff like this

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Every genre has rules like this to an extent. Kind of like the rules for the drop in dubstep vs. other genres. Though I guess now I won’t be able to listen to my recent pop music without hearing it. Thanks, BoingBoing. :laughing:

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Quite a few 60s songs too…

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Let’s All Chant is a song written by Michael Zager and Alvin Fields and performed by the Michael Zager Band. It was based on an idea originally suggested by former head of A&R Jerry Love after he visited clubs in New York and saw people endlessly chanting “Ooh-ah, Ooh-ah”. Although Zager was first embarrassed when Love asked him to write a song using these chants, he accepted the proposal and later co-wrote Let’s All Chant with Fields.

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The brilliance of Steve Allen is something Millenials, Gen X, Gen Y, and late boomers have all missed, to their great disadvantage.

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crotchety old person voice When I was a boy we didn’t have any of your fancy whooping, we only had “Whoomp There it is”… and we had to drive to the store to buy it…in the snow…uphill, etc.

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Other millennial patterns… extending a vowel with stops, rasta sty ai ai yle.

Third world colonial, where white americans (sorry, I can’t leave Brittney alone) sing like MIA.

Yelling the song out (or at least a “HEY!”) 20 ft from the microphone.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but if I hear the first one above I change stations or hit fwd.

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The worst offender of this to me is Sia, who is a Gen-X-er.

EDIT: Dr. Luke and Max Martin are also Gen-X-ers, as well as Carl Falk and Rami

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Or Klein International Blue!

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we left them the greatest music the world has ever produced, and this is our thanks?

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I seem to hear a lot of “ee ee ee” when I have the radio on pop stations. Maybe a soft-rock sampling of Eek-a-Mouse?

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I came of age in the 80’s and that’s my music, and for the first time the other day I heard a sub-genre from that time described as “cold war era”.

That really struck a chord with me, I think it hits on something that is strikingly different between current youth pop and the pop of my youth, and that is the threat of impending global nuclear annihilation.

I look for that nihilism, hopelessness and anxiety in the music I listen to, it is almost essential for me, and when I listen to pop music today it has this kind of wistful optimism.

Wistful optimism makes me vaguely homicidal.

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I always figured that was laughter, and not a broken vowel. (Likewise this doesn’t really count:


)

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You’re not the only one. I realize we all hit an age when we’re not in on the joke anymore, so can I just not parse current pop or are they just fiddling while it all burns down?

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Not true! We also had “Whoot, There It Is” at the same time.

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