Summary: A new study challenges the notion of the musicians’ “sophomore slump,” finding it exists only in professional critics’ reviews, not fan ratings. Critics tend to harshly critique bands’ second albums compared to their first and third, likely influenced by social conformity within their group.
In contrast, fans showed no bias against second albums, providing a broader and more consistent view of a band’s performance. This research suggests the sophomore slump might be more perception than reality, shaped by the expectations of critics rather than the actual quality of the music.
Key Facts:
- Critics give disproportionately low ratings to second albums; fans do not.
- Social conformity among critics may drive the perceived sophomore slump.
- Fans’ broader consensus offers a more reliable measure of album quality.
Source: University of Florida
After a debut hit, many bands often find their follow-up album panned: further evidence of the curse of the “sophomore slump,” critics say.
But it might just be critics saying that. That’s according to a new study that discovered that the sophomore slump effect — where a band’s second album is exceptionally bad compared to their first and third records — only crops up among professional critics, not fans.
“If every music critic has heard of a sophomore slump and everyone knows it happens, they might be convinced to over-apply it in their reviews,” said Gregory Webster, Ph.D., the R. David Thomas Endowed Professor of Psychology at the University of Florida and co-author of the new study in the journal Psychology of Music.
“We suspect it’s a kind of social conformity, which we see in a lot of social groups.”
Webster and his co-author, University of Hannover Professor of Educational Science Lysann Zander, Ph.D., analyzed thousands of albums rated by professional critics and amateur fans. Both critics and fans said that bands’ albums generally got worse over time.
But critics were exceptionally harsh with the second album, which was an outlier in this downward trajectory.
“It’s only critics that show substantial evidence of a sophomore slump bias, whereby they are giving artists’ second albums unusually low reviews compared to their first and third albums,” Webster said. “Fans show no evidence of a sophomore slump bias.”
Webster and Zander expected that fan ratings would reflect a broader consensus about a band’s true performance. Fans aren’t pressured by the same social norms as professional critics. And with ratings from thousands of fans, the researchers could average across a large group to find more reliable ratings.
The study’s origins go back to Webster’s high school days, when his friends sarcastically titled their second album “Sophomore Slump,” and introduced Webster to the supposed curse of mediocrity.
Webster and Zander — herself a semi-professional musician in addition to an academic — had to wait until the internet’s crowdsourced reviews provided a comparison against professional critics.
That doesn’t mean it was easy. Webster manually entered online review data on more than 4,000 albums. So he popped on his high-school favorite, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and got to work.
About this music and psychology research news
Author: Eric Hamilton
Source: University of Florida
Contact: Eric Hamilton – University of Florida
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Burning out, fading away, and the sophomore slump: Critics’ versus fans’ ratings of music artists’ album quality over time” by Gregory Webster et al. Psychology of Music
Abstract
Burning out, fading away, and the sophomore slump: Critics’ versus fans’ ratings of music artists’ album quality over time
Folk psychology posits that music artists’ first albums are considered their best, whereas later albums draw fewer accolades, and that artists’ second albums are considered worse than their first—a phenomenon called the “sophomore slump.”
This work is the first large-scale multi-study attempt to test changes in album quality over time and whether a sophomore slump bias exists.
Study 1 examined music critics, sampling all A, B, and C entries from The New Rolling Stone Record Guide (2,078 album reviews, 387 artists, 38 critics).
Study 2 examined music fans, sampling crowdsourced Rate Your Music ratings of artists with at least one Rolling Stone top 500 album (4,030 album reviews, 254 artists).
Using multilevel models, both studies showed significant linear declines in ratings of artists’ album quality over artists’ careers; however, the linear effects were qualified by significantly positive quadratic effects, suggesting slightly convex patterns where declines were steeper among earlier (vs later) albums.
Controlling for these trends, a significant and substantial sophomore slump bias was observed for critics’ ratings, but not for fans’ ratings.
We discuss theoretical perspectives that may contribute to the observed effects, including regression to the mean, cognitive biases and heuristics, and social psychological accounts.
