"Blurred Lines"
"Happy"
"Uptown Funk"
Four of the biggest hits of the last couple of years, maybe even THE biggest – in fact "Uptown Funk" is already on course to be the biggest seller of 2015.
What do they all have in common, apart from Pharrell ?
(OK, he didn't actually have anything to do with "Uptown Funk", but he HAS worked with Mark Ronson recently...)
Melody ? Hooks ? Groove ?
Sure, but that's true of any pop hit, and always has been.
The less obvious answer ?
Light and shade, give and take, life and energy.
NONE of these massive hits have suffered too badly from the loudness war, unlike so many things we listen to.
And that's important, because it flies in the face of one of the myths driving the "war" in the first place - the idea that "loud records sell more copies".
It's nonsense.
I've talked about this before - there's research that proves it's not true, and I've demonstrated that it simply doesn't work, in practise - listeners don't care about loudness.
But the simple fact at the top of this post maybe trumps both those points - let me say it again.
The four biggest songs of the last two years weren't "loudness war casualties" – they had GREAT dynamics.
(Of course they all had real musicians, great performances and great production too, but let's stay on-message…)
They're not crushed, they're not horribly distorted, and they do sound fantastic.
And we love them.
And we bought them, in huge quantities.
QED.
If you love the sound of these records too and want to hear more like them in future, please help spread the word about Dynamic Range Day this year.
To find out what that is, click here.
And a great way to start is to share this post 🙂
Thanks for listening !
