This morning in the supermarket, the theme from “The Bodyguard” was playing in the background, probably re-recorded by some unknown session musicians to sound the same while avoiding paying the royalties. A group of youngsters came in, the two girls in the group howling along with the song, as loud as they were out of tune. I thought of offering to direct them to an imaginary “Autotune” selling section of the supermarket but instead tried to ignore the caterwauling.
After escaping back into the street, I find myself thinking about the similarity of the melisma in this song to the “millennial whoop”. Of course it is not the same but both involve simple changes in notes. I wrote before about the simplicity of modern popular music and the dumming down of successful music. I didn’t realise before but the theme from this film is also dummed down, simple and of course very familiar. That is why these silly kids liked it so much. They are not intellectually challenged by it, it is easy to listen to and apparently easy to try to sing along with, although it actually is not so easy to sing. Maybe the millennial whoop and popular melisma are just different manifestations of the increasingly simplistic folk melodies which people like so much these days. In the 80s and 90s who would have thought that soppy repetitive simple ballads would be so popular in the 2010s and onwards.
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