Listening to music offers us a window into emotional and psychological states. A process with a certain generational factor. The lyrics of the songs somehow reflect the social changes that existed between different eras. If you pay attention to the lyrics of the songs written in the 50’s or 60’s, you will realize that the topics covered are nothing like the bullshit you might hear at a disco today. This raises interesting questions such as:

Are the lyrics of contemporary pop songs happier or sadder than in past times?

Algorithms can fully demonstrate this phenomenon. And the truth is, over time, heartbreak and anger have become more productive topics. Since the 1980s, emotions such as sadness and loneliness have become increasingly common in song lyrics, while expressions of love and joy are less likely to find themselves on the pop charts. what happened to songs like All you need is loveFrom The Beatles?

Study. Research led by the University of Cambridge analyzed pop song lyrics from 1965 to 2015 from charts such as the Billboard Hot 100 and the website musixmatch.com to see what cultural biases might explain this trend towards negativity. To do this, they classified the words according to their “positive” or “negative” content, and the results showed a decrease in the former and an increase in the latter. The use of the term “love” has halved, while the frequency of the term “hate” has increased tremendously.

Additionally, evidence was found that negative lyrics performed better on the charts, and two biases were shown: prestige bias (best-selling artists tend to be copied) and achievement bias (most popular songs tend to be copied or imitated). sold).

Why? Why? There is a hypothesis that artistic expressions can have an adaptive function, a way to simulate social interactions and create thoughts in people. According to this vision, which focuses more on literary fiction but can be generalized to other forms of expression, art presents hypothetical scenarios in which it tests and trains our cognitive and emotional responses (without risk-taking), just as we feel when watching a horror movie.

Moreover, art that expresses negative emotions may be more valuable to viewers who seek solace in knowing that others are experiencing fear and sadness as well. In fact, research has shown that people underestimate the prevalence of negative emotions in others, exacerbating loneliness and reducing life satisfaction.

Decreased joy. Another recent study set a similar task: measuring the joy of songs. In this way, he determined what the dominant emotion in success was. heart eclipse For example, Bonnie Tyler’s was “sad” with a score of 0.51 (out of 1) for this emotion. YMCA, Meanwhile, he got 0.65 points for “joy” from Village People and We will Rock You, She scored 0.85 on the “extraversion” scale from Queen.

The results of thousands of songs were just as surprising. Expressions of anger and disgust have doubled in 65 years, while fear has increased by more than 50%. So, today’s songs are more aggressive and scary, even in punk’s heyday. One plausible reason is the growing influence of rap music, like punk, which reflects social unrest and class struggle.

also toned. The findings are consistent with other studies that focus not only on the lyrics but also on the tonality, rhythm and style of the songs; such as this study by Natalia Komarova of the University of California Irvine, a mathematician shocked by the negativity of taste. by his own daughter. To learn how emotions in music change over time, he turned to the AcousticBrainz database, where users can apply an algorithm that extracts acoustic features (major or minor chords and tempo).

Remember, in music, minor keys are perceived as darker than major keys. And the study saw a similar decrease in what they describe as “happiness” and “brightness” (in chords and tonality) and a slight increase in “sadness.” That is, Billboard hits slowed down and small keys became more frequent.

Graphic: University of Cambridge