Why The Annoying ‘Millennial Whoop’ Is Used In Just About Every Popular Song
Once you hear it, you can never un-hear it.
A new video from Quartz points out one of the biggest crutches used by pop stars over the past half decade—the “millennial whoop.” Just watch the video above for all you’ll ever need to know about this annoyingly effective sound.
Employed by the likes of Katy Perry, Frank Ocean, Fifth Harmony and Kings of Leon for their inescapable earworms, the disturbingly potent pop trope was first described by blogger Patrick Metzger:
It’s a sequence of notes that alternates between the fifth and third notes of a major scale, typically starting on the fifth. The rhythm is usually straight 8th-notes, but it may start on the downbeat or on the upbeat in different songs. A singer usually belts these notes with an “Oh” phoneme, often in a “Wa-oh-wa-oh” pattern. And it is in so many pop songs it’s criminal.
Whether you think the “whoop” is downright trite or ingeniously effective, you’ll never be able to unhear it in just about every Top 40-friendly hit.
Good luck trying to get it out of your head.
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