Analysis of popular music from 1946 to 2020 finds lead vocal tracks are getting quieter

Estimated lead-to-accompaniment-ratio, LAR, for songs in five genres from 1990-2020. Purple circles correspond to solo artists and green squares to bands. Credit: Kai Siedenburg

A general rule of music production involves mixing various soundtracks so the lead singer’s voice is in the foreground. But it is unclear how such track mixing—and closely related lyric intelligibility—has changed over the years.