It’s often said that people slow down as they grow older. For musicians, this adage might be particularly true: a Finnish study claims that the songs of some of the biggest names in music tend to get slower as the years go by.
Geoff Luck and Alessandro Ansani, two researchers from the University of Jyväskylä, came to this conclusion after analysing the tempo of 15,000 songs by 207 artistes, including Pearl Jam, Dolly Parton, Kenny G, Judas Priest and Cyndi Lauper. To do this, the academics used a database containing data on 1.2 million songs available on Spotify.
They excluded tracks by artistes with a career spanning less than 20 years, or who had released fewer than three albums. Musicians born before 1955, or whose date of birth was unknown, were also excluded from the selection.
The researchers then used artificial intelligence software to determine whether there was a link between the age of the musicians and the tempo of their songs. For bands, only the age of the lead singer was taken into account.
In their paper, published on the pre-publication site bioRxiv, the academics explain that the tempo of songs varies according to the age of the musicians when they composed them. For example, the tempo of the songs studied averaged around 120 beats per minute when the artist was a teenager, rising to almost 123bpm as they headed into their 30s.
Once past this age-related milestone, song tempo dropped by around 2bpm per decade.
In separate research, Luck studied the rhythmic evolution of the repertoire of 10 successful singers, including Céline Dion, Madonna, Whitney Houston and Eminem. He found that Madonna and Elton John showed the greatest variation in tempos since the start of their careers.
Meanwhile, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and Whitney Houston followed the trend, with their songs tending to become slower over the years.
The reasons for this rhythmic evolution remain to be determined. Is the change in tempo with age linked to the singers’ physical and/or mental health? Or is it more to do with the musical genres they explore? These are questions the researchers will attempt to answer in the future.