An exploration of the relationship between melodic originality and fame in early 20th-century American popular music

Abstract

The current study examined the relationship between fame and melodic originality among the refrains of over 500 early American popular songs. The main goals were to attempt to replicate results detailed by Simonton (1994), to compare different measures of melodic originality in the context of information theory, and to utilize hierarchical linear modeling in the analyses. The following hypotheses were tested: (1) melodic originality varies across historical time; (2) melodic originality is a positive function of composer age; and (3) fame is a curvilinear function of melodic originality. Results showed that melodic originality increased from 1916 to 1960—the period covered by the current corpus—which is consistent with hypothesis 1. Hypothesis 2 was not confirmed, as results showed a negative relationship between originality and age. The test of hypothesis 3 showed that a significant amount of the variation in fame could be attributed to a non-linear relationship with originality, but that the fame–originality relationship is moderated by genre (instrumental v. vocal). Implications for further studies of the psychomusical contributions to fame are discussed.