Data Science Explains Why Every Hit Pop Song Sounds the Same

There's a Nirvana song that you may not have heard that, ironically, describes why you have heard another Nirvana song, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which dominated the airwaves in the early '90s and still endures today. It's called "Verse Chorus Verse" and it follows the song structure it's named for, which most pop songs, including "Teen Spirit" and recent smashes like "Old Town Road," rely on. The only weird thing, though, is that the song is about frontman Kurt Cobain's chronic stomach pain and the medications he illegally took. That title is a play on a common dig at pop songs--all of them sound the same. Now, two student researchers at the University of San Francisco have leveraged Spotify data to figure out if that's really true.