Why pop songs are shrinking as concerts get longer
Over the past 40 years pop songs have shrunk from a peak average of 5:08 minutes in 1992 to just 3:04 minutes in 2022. See why.
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Taylor Swift has entered the marathon age of her concert career with the Eras Tour.
The Midnights pop superstar crammed an epic 44 songs into her three hour and 15 minutes set when the world tour opened in Arizona in the US last weekend.
But while the post millennial concert is getting longer, pop songs are getting shorter.
The Eras Tour concert’s length puts Swift in the company of Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters and The Cure who are renowned for their staying power on stage.
It is likely more artists will be pushing their show duration beyond the average 90 minutes mark as their repertoire expands and concert tickets rise.
A longer gig is a win-win for both artist and fan. The pop star has more time to play the new stuff they are promoting on tour without sacrificing the old stuff.
And as ticket prices rise and cost of living pressures squeeze every consumer dollar, the fan feels they get value for money from a concert that runs over a couple of hours.
Swift still has a long way to go to match the endurance of Springsteen whose gigs generally run to three hours but once played for four hours and six minutes in Helsinki in 2012.
The Cure are also renowned for giving their fans an extended show. Those lucky enough to witness their legendary Reflections shows for Vivid 2011 when they reprised three albums and came back for four encores over almost four hours.
They breached the four-hour mark with another 16 minutes at a Mexico City concert in 2013 which featured a setlist of 50 songs.
And then there are the Foo Fighters marathons which kicked off with their Wasting Light promotional concert on Goat Island on Sydney Harbour.
They played the entire album before launching into a requestfest of hits – 37 songs in total – and only stopped the show at three hours and 10 minutes as they were advised the authorities were going to shut them down due to noise complaints from residents in nearby harbourside mansions.
So how does Swift fit 44 songs into 195 minutes which also includes 16 costume changes?
While her All Too Well (10 Minute Version) is an outlier in the set and those wardrobe changes steal precious seconds of on-stage time, the Midnights pop star’s setlist averages out at 4:43 minutes per song.
Foo Fighters’ Goat Island timed out at 5:14 minutes per song – and we all know Dave Grohl loves a between-song chat – The Cure’s longest gig averaged at 5:12 minutes per song and Springsteen’s longest gig gave him a whopping 6:47 minutes per track and banter.
Looking at the ARIA top 10 end-of-year singles over the last four decades reveals pop songs have shrunk from a peak average of 5:08 minutes in 1992 to 3:54 minutes in 2002, 3:36 minutes in 2012 and just 3:04 minutes in 2022.
While the 90s featured many bands releasing truly epic songs – the Guns N’ Roses rock opera November Rain ran for almost nine minutes – we’ve lost more than 30 seconds of music per song in just the last decade.
Shorter radio edits have always been a thing, with artists or stations chopping long intros or outros, a bridge or a verse to keep a track at a compact three minutes.
Nova’s Head of Music Scott Baker-Smith said pop songs started out short in the 60s, grew longer as artists embraced studio technology – and mind-altering substances in the 70s – but began to shrink again in the mid 2010s thanks to SoundCloud emo rappers including the late Lil Peep.
The turning point for shorter songs in mainstream pop came with the release of Old Town Road by Lil Nas X who blew up worldwide when the song went viral on TikTok in 2019.
“I remember us hearing that song for the first time when it was 90 seconds and thinking it was too short but the label told us not to worry because there was a remix coming with Billy Ray Cyrus which would make it over two minutes,” Baker-Smith said.
“I wouldn’t say it’s all TikTok, it’s a reflection of pop culture with attention spans getting shorter, it’s also SoundCloud and Instagram Reels and skip rates on streaming.”
Six tracks out of the ARIA top 10 singles chart last week were under three minutes long including the Pinkpantheress smash hit Boy’s A Liar (2:11 mins), Coi Leray’s Players (2:19 mins) and SZA’s Kill Bill (2:33 mins).
But where TikTok is having a weird impact on song length is the advent of the “sped-up track”. Fans started uploading their own fast-paced, high-pitched versions which then prompts artists to officially list a treatment of their single which can be anywhere between 30 to 50 per cent faster. And therefore, shorter.
“RAYE released two versions of her hit Escapism, the original version which we play, and a sped-up version purely for TikTok,” Baker-Smith said.
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