Quartz: “The Millennial Whoop”: The same annoying whooping sound is showing up in every popular song.
The same exact whooping, melodic sequence has been showing up in a surprisingly high number of recent pop songs. The phenomenon was first noticed by musician and product manager Patrick Metzger. He detailed the trend, dubbing it “The Millennial Whoop,” in a post on his blog, The Patterning. Here’s how Metzger described it:
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.
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