A musicologist has identified a pattern that’s emerged in modern pop music. He’s calling it the Gen Alpha Melody and it’s everywhere.
Danish musicologist Carl E. Martin discovered an emerging pattern in popular music while he was researching for his thesis at the University of Copenhagen. The discovery had little to do with his master’s thesis on the music of Nordic movies, so it began as a side project. He calls it the Gen Alpha Melody, and you’re about to start noticing it everywhere.
Four notes are the pillars of the melody, Martin says. You can hear them across songs like Lewis Capaldi’s “Forever,” Troye Sivan’s “One of Your Girls,” and Clairo’s “Sofia.” But there’s a ton more, including Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” and even the Beatles’ “It’s Only Love.”
Martin lays out plenty of other examples, spanning genres, countries, and decades—so it’s not only a Gen Alpha concept. But the sheer number of examples Martin found within the past few years is what makes it notable.
There have been plenty of YouTube essays about the Millennial Whoop. What about that dolphin-like flute sound made popular in “Where Are Ü Now” by Jack Ü, Diplo and Skrillex’s collab project? (That turned out to be neither a flute nor a dolphin, but in fact a pitch-shifted Justin Bieber.)
So it’s Gen Alpha’s turn to have a signature style to their generation’s music. But Martin argues that the Gen Alpha Melody is more specific than that.
“If I was a musicologist in, like, a courtroom and had to compare two songs that were using the millennial whoop, I wouldn’t […] sue one song for using that. Because it’s just, like a trope […] or like a vocal technique,” Martin explained. “Whereas, if the Gen Alpha Melody only had two examples and you had to compare those two, I would say the people suing […] would win the case. Because it’s a very specific melody being copied.”
Thankfully, it’s a melody that has existed since at least the 19th century—very safely in the realm of the public domain. But even though its popularity is surging, Martin still loves hearing it.
“Every time I hear a new example, I get super excited,” he says. Don’t be surprised if you start hearing it everywhere too.
