Turn up the noise: Why distortion in music is growing in popularity

From Jimi Hendrix to Merzbow, artist-made music with distortion has become increasingly widespread over the past half-century, evolving from a niche genre to a mainstream one.

A new UCLA-led study, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, sheds light on why we are seeing this increased popularity of distortion in a variety of musical genres and what it tells us about human evolution and the formation of new social groups.

Biology and our attraction to musical distortion

According to Greg Bryant, professor and chair of communications at UCLA and author of the study, humans are attracted to sounds and music that tap into our biological responses and induce intense emotions.

"Human and nonhuman animal vocalizations produced under intense emotion have specific sound features that can induce strong effects in listeners," Bryant said.

"That kind of response is biologically adaptive, but how it affects behavior depends on the context, like making a baby stop crying or avoiding an angry person," he continued. "Music that contains similar features will attract people's attention and could end up being quite provocative."

Bryant said that music from all over the world has different kinds of so-called nonlinear features, such as instruments with buzzing metal parts, and chaotic strings and horns, but electronically produced distortion really took off in rock music, with many genres then using distortion as a key sound feature.

In the 1950s, speakers that had been damaged en route to concerts and overblown amplifiers turned up too much resulted in guitars with grittier sounds. In some cases, listeners may have reacted as if they were hearing an annoying noise, but in other cases, such as more subtle distortion effects from these malfunctions, they were compelled to hear more, Bryant said.

In the '60s and '70s, artists such as Jimi Hendrix, The Who and Black Sabbath began recreating these effects on purpose, creating fuzzy guitar tones that have become synonymous with rock music. Because of decades of experimentation with electronic production technology, distortion has also become the backbone of crushing dance beats from modern producers like Justice and SOPHIE.

Even mainstream pop stars have begun applying distortion to their songs, such as Charli xcx and even The Weeknd, in his complex vocal productions.

Musical distortion and the formation of new social groups

For musicians, the desire to have a unique identity and sound leads musicians to innovate, coordinating with like-minded individuals while also separating themselves from outsiders. While many combinations of musical techniques and styles can accomplish this, distortion's frequent abrasiveness serves as a particularly effective way of differentiating from others.

As communities of distortion-centered artists and fans have grown in size, the cultural evolution they have brought about has also accelerated. Even musicians like harsh noise pioneer Merzbow, whose music Bryant describes as "not resembling anything most people throughout history would ever consider to be musical," have found enthusiastic fans; Spotify's creation of numerous "noise" genres show that users have slowly grown capable of distinguishing between songs that casual listeners would be unable to parse.

"In other words, people get used to something and then there's pressure to make that thing a little more extreme, and people get used to that, ad infinitum," Bryant said of this phenomenon. "People develop tolerances and preferences, and artists adapt."