I'm not sure this has anything to do with pitch, but thanks for the link anyway. As a late millennial, I was pointing this out to people around 2013-2014 as an example of how all new pop music sounded the same. The Lumineers and Of Monsters and Men (both mentioned in Metzger's piece) were bands popular with my crowd that are especially guilty of this repetitive riff.
It seems to have been dying out since then, though I'm sure pop artists will come up with something equally irritating to put in all their songs.
The name does seem a bit unfair to me. It's not a particularly millennial thing, it's just what's common in pop music right now. It also doesn't sound like a "whoop" at all to me, which makes the name doubly confusing.
Pop music has always sounded the same, commercial pressure tends to make it formulaic and apealling to the lowest common denominator.
I used to think that main stream success was a sign that the band I was listening to had either lost their originality and were no longer cool. My CD collection used to consist of a lot of 1st, 2nd and occassionally 3rd albums.
>The millennial whoop is a melodic pattern alternating between the fifth and third notes in a major scale,..
I checked out The Time's Jungle Love and Lady Gaga's Bad Romance (mentioned on that page as examples) to hear what this sounds like...and surprisingly, neither had anything alternating between the third and fifth. (Musician here) Both are in a minor key. Jungle Love has alternating flat 7th up to tonic. Both have tonic up to flat 3rd alternating..Maybe that's what they mean? But nothing like the description. (Hmm although tonic -> flat 3rd and major 3rd -> 5th are both a minor third I guess.)
Example of actual alternating 3rd and 5th in major scale: the first 8 notes of the middle section (bridge) of Somewhere Over The Rainbow - Someday, I wish upon a star..
p.s. Damn you HN! First time I ever saw a Lady Gaga video...
The Wikipedia entry cites "Bad Romance" as an example of this whoop, which is one of the lowest-sung female performances I can recall off the top of my head.
It seems to have been dying out since then, though I'm sure pop artists will come up with something equally irritating to put in all their songs.
The name does seem a bit unfair to me. It's not a particularly millennial thing, it's just what's common in pop music right now. It also doesn't sound like a "whoop" at all to me, which makes the name doubly confusing.