I disagree that key changes in popular music are a great measure of complexity. For many years a key change near the end of the song was an easy way to give the sense of a climax. The article your link is based on gives a good summary of it:
> The act of shifting a song’s key up either a half step or a whole step (i.e. one or two notes on the keyboard) near the end of the song, was the most popular key change for decades. In fact, 52 percent of key changes found in number one hits between 1958 and 1990 employ this change. You can hear it on “My Girl,” “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” and “Livin’ on a Prayer,” among many others.
To me, this just reflects one set of songwriters' cliches being replaced by another. Not necessarily better or worse.
While i do agree generally about key changes, i think the point is that it's just an example of something that sounds _interesting_. It's not just key changes, but all the little chances that an actual artist takes during creation, the things that sound good to some and bad to others are exactly what makes art, art. The change being witnessed isn't the loss of key changes, but the loss of everything that sounds different or interesting, in favor of a sound that is generally palatable to everyone precisely because it does not contain anything interesting.
How about time signature changes, then? Not too many popular songs experiment much anymore. What was the last popular hit with a really odd meter (or various meters)? I know, not everyone can be Rush, but it’s pretty vanilla today.
Thats honestly what it feels like. It feels like all music and film has regressed toward some boring mean. There's not enough range, emotion, and difference to find tracks that really stand out from the crowd.
Music especially just feels flat. Maybe that's just the style now, and I'm old and can't appreciate it.
Honestly, gaming is in a similar rut although not quite as bad thanks to VR.
Automation tools and fine grained computed metrics have rounded off the edges of emotional experiences. See Bobby Kotick about taking the fun out of games: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/bobby-kotick-wants-to-take-...
Him saying that is around the time the music compositions start becoming similar. The mentality was not constrained to games.
Nothing is allowed to be it’s own thing anymore. It has to be hypernormalized to have enough reach a billionaire CEO can profit from.
MBA-ification of reality.