that foreign music blog🌎

Recently I heard a song on a Youtube short called “Car’s Outside” by James Arthur. It’s a slow acoustic with melancholic undertones, but the lyrics and brighter shift in the chorus create an image of overcoming relationship struggles. It’s a really sweet song about how the main ‘character’ is tired of leaving his loved one behind during their business-related travels. The more I listened, the more I found myself gravitating towards the sped-up version, which Arthur himself provided on Apple Music. As a result, I started to wonder about the trend of sped-up songs and if there were any possible underlying causes. 

While Gen Z  is often blamed for this recent trend, an article from CBC mentions how this is actually nothing new. As a millennial, my earliest memory of ‘sped-up’ songs or the ‘chipmunk’ version of songs was from the Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon. Not only were they characters, but legitimate musicians with an extensive discography which you can find on Wikipedia. 

Moving into the early 2000s, the subgenre called Nightcore began bleeding into my searches for fanmade AMVs, or ‘animated videos’ that were often taken down for copyright. Nightcore is probably what you’d consider the parent to vocaloid music, as the aesthetic tends to be connected to anime,  have dark and mysterious undertones, and whirring electronica behind a high-pitched voice. Although Nightcore songs are not sung by computers like Vocaloids, it’s similar to what you’d hear now from the increasingly popular genre.

According to Wikipedia, ‘Nightcore’ was actually coined after a Norwegian duo of the same name, who released pitch-edited trance and euro-dance songs. Although ‘naturalists’ in the music world may turn up their noses at these artificial sounds, more and more artists have become fascinated by the growing capabilities of modern technology and how to manipulate their art. 

 Take the  Euphoria soundtrack for example, as it’s something I only very recently discovered. Despite the controversy surrounding the show itself, the soundtrack is creative and full of choral chimes, distorted voices, and dreamy sequences. In an interview by Genius,  the UK-based composer of the Euphoria soundtrack, Labrinth, dissects his process in making the hit song, All For Us. Among the several sounds that are layered throughout the distorted love song, Labrinth also mentions that he wanted to incorporate chipmunk sounds. 

I’m not sure what parts are the chipmunk parts versus the keyboard chords, but in the chorus, there are strange whisper-like noises layered beneath the main riff that could be the ‘chipmunk’ voices he’s talking about. It’s also possible that the chorus melody itself is being screeched by a ‘chipmunk’ choir, as it’s easy to reinterpret the sounds as voices rather than coming from an external instrument. However, I don’t want to make any sure claims that it’s one way or the other.  Regardless, I thought it was interesting he said that he liked that high-pitched effect. While it could boil down to mere preference, is this chipmunk thing just a generational thing? And if so, what does this love for non-organic sounds and tones imply? 

One way we could look at it is that it’s a result of technological development. With technology, art evolves along with it. Look at how creative artists were in the 80s with the introduction of synthesizers. Then computers progressed past their very basic ‘PC’ era in the 1970s to have the capability to write symphonies. 

I mean, the first personal computer was brought to the public just 53 years ago! I often think of our generation as not being masters of technology, but as toddlers still banging and bashing on the equipment to see what it can do. And it keeps surprising us. So musicians could be drawn to the chipmunk sound and motivated to use it simply because it’s different. 

Going back to the “Car’s Outside” example, while both versions are very good, the sped-up version gives off a completely different energy to the original. Arthur has a deep, powerful voice that tugs on your heartstrings, whereas the higher-pitched sound makes it reminiscent of a rock-pop song. I think the lyrics are more prominent in the sped-up version, while in the original, the emotion is more prominent with the slow and heavy delivery. Though musicians have always been recreating their art in unique ways, I think technology has made it much easier to do, and thus more accessible.

On the other hand, the CBC article mentions how our preference for the sped-up versions of songs ties into social media apps like TikTok, which specialize in short video content. Essentially the faster the song, the more of it that you can fit into one short video. Then, to capitalize on this, artists could be trying to release these sped-up versions themselves, rather than have content creators do it. After all, changing the pitch of songs is how creators have gotten around the copyright flag, so in a way, this trend could actually be a result of the further monetization of art. 

Now, I completely agree that musicians deserve to reclaim and make money off of their songs, but the idea of speeding up a song–not only to feed into a trend but to fit more of it in a desired frame just seems a bit….strange. I’m not a musician, but as a writer, I’m familiar with shortening content to appeal to wider audiences. However, writing concisely versus having a “concise” song—like is that a thing? Or a “concise” painting? With writing, we have specific word choices to improve our craft, but how do you do that to music? Sure, we have things like jingles, but those are still full, short songs made for short content like ads. 

With that, will more popular music be treated like ads in that they’ll be shorter or sped up to better suit short-content platforms?  Or is this an issue that musicians are already facing with labels trying to control the direction of their music? It’s the stereotype that artists always battle between following what’s popular and what they actually want to do, but speeding up content to accommodate a trend feels like a new concept entirely. And perhaps it’s not a thing at all, but it’s interesting to consider that social media platforms may change how we view music as a whole.