Are pop music becoming more sad and angry today?

Broken hearts and legitimate anger always create the most popular hits. From Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" song (later recorded by Whitney Houston) comes Adele's "Someone Like You" and Sam Smith's "Stay With Me" , many of them He knows how to turn his tears into a gold mine.

However, does music today convey deeper melancholy than past songs? That was the conclusion of two recent analyzes after examining thousands of European and American hits in the past few decades.Since the 1980s, emotions such as depression and loneliness have become increasingly popular in the lyrics. Meanwhile, the songs contained a mood of pure joy, such as the Beatles' "All You Need is Love" - hard to climb to high rankings on the charts.

So what causes these changes? Does it simply reflect the change in the way people listen to music? Or does it show the implicit emotional circuits of society today?

Since the 80s, emotions like sorrow, loneliness . are more common in the lyrics.

Tears or fear

First of all, let us look at the evidence. Lior Shamir at Lawrence Technical University collected the lyrics of 6,150 Billboard Hot 100 chart singles from 1951 to 2016 and analyzed them using algorithms. Software has been pre-programmed to identify language signs of different emotional states and personality traits - including sadness, fear, disgust, joy and extrovert. And although computers will definitely miss some nuance if the lyrics are too complicated, technology reviews tend to agree with human judgment.

For example, the computer that correctly identified the dominant emotions in Bonnie Tyler's hit song " Total Eclipse of the Heart " was a sad mood, with a score of 0.51 on 1 for this state. In contrast, the Village People song YMCA scored 0.65 points for fun, and Queen's We Will Rock You even scored a high score - 0.85 on an outward-looking scale ( This seems to be appropriate for rockers who are always in a state of euphoria.

Overall, the cheerful melody in the Billboard Hot 100 chart fell to the all-time low.(Credit: Kathleen Napier and Lior Shamir).

Then, each year, Shamir averages points and considers how they change over time. This has produced extremely impressive results. Specifically, anger and disgust in the lyrics almost doubled in the past 65 years, while fear increased by more than 50%. Most notably, modern songs sound even more violent and scary than the punk genre when they were in the heyday. One reason can be given here is that the growing influence of rap has reflected social unrest and the plight of being stripped of similar rights to punk music. Meanwhile, the melancholy mood remained stable until the 1980s, then slowly escalated until the beginning of 2010, while the joy, feelings of confidence and openness gradually declined. .

Shamir said: " We can see that the change is very consistent and clear, that the lyrics become more angry, scary, more depressing and less fun. There are many significant differences. the lyrics in the late 50s compared to the lyrics in 2015 and 2016. "

To demonstrate this phenomenon, Shamir pointed out a series of hits in the 50s with the main emotion being fun, for example, Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up" scored 0.702 points for this emotion, good. Little Richard's " Long Tall Sally" reached 0.82. In contrast, the songs showed the best anger, topping the charts that were composed in the 2000s, including Ne-Yo's " When You're " and " Busta Rhymes Tough It " ( reached 0.97 on the anger scale. Recently, " Bad Blood " was released by Taylor Swift to score very high on fear and almost no positive mood, while Miley Cyrus " Wrecking Ball " and Justin Bieber's " Sorry " have High scores of sad mood - all of them are the biggest hit songs in the last 6 years.

Dancing in negative emotions

The findings mentioned above are almost identical to that of a second independent study by Natalia Komarova, a mathematician at the University of California Irvine after she was surprised to be exposed to negativity. music of his daughter. In order to understand the process of changing the mood in the song over time, she went to the research database called AcousticBrainz . This database allows users to apply algorithms to extract sound characteristics - such as using the main chord and the tempo of songs and scoring songs by emotion, for example like sadness. After observing half a million songs released in the UK during 1985-2015, Komarova and colleagues realized that the melody of music has become less pleasant since 1985 - like the analysis results. Lior Shamir's lyrics.

Interestingly, Komarova discovered that the ability to dance - measured by the characteristics of rhythm - has also increased with a negative mood. Therefore, even if it shows a negative mood, these songs are able to make listeners unable to sit still. Typically, the hit song " Dancing on my own " sung by Robyn has a vibrant electronic sound and a rhythmic beat below the lyrics of loneliness and isolation. In terms of albums, Komarova also showed mix-tape versions (products released as CDs) like " Lemonade " performed by Beyoncé and " Pop 2 " sung by Charlie XCX are songs of dance music. Although there is dark content.

The sadness in the songs began to increase in the late 1980s, and peaked in the first decade of the 21st century. (Credit: Kathleen Napier and Lior Shamir)

There is something to be said here: these are just mainstream trends and there are exceptions, such as Pharrell Williams ' "Happy" and Rihanna's "Diamonds" . Both songs are big hits with optimistic words. But, in general, it seems that the songs have turned into darker and more angry places.

The reason for this phenomenon is still unclear and Komarova is still hesitant to come up with any specific hypothesis. However, Komarova said: " We can guess this may be related to some changes taking place in society ."

Shamir agrees with this idea, pointing out that in the 1950s, most pop music was like a form of escape - but since the 1960s, songs were more socially associated. He said: " Music has changed its role from expressing a happy mood to expressing political views ." Perhaps this may partly explain the change, but it must be said that the majority of the current songs are not antithetical songs.

Mood line

If scientists are unsure of what motivates these trends, BBC sources suggest that we should listen to the views from a person who has personally created hit songs for decades. So, David Robson - journalist on the BBC site contacted Mike Batt, the conductor, record producer and singer and songwriter who composed many hits including Art Garfunkel's " Bright Eyes ". stealing and Katie Melua's " Closest Thing to Crazy ".

Batt points out that the media player has changed a lot, particularly online music channels that currently include only songs that get into the chart. These can help us determine what kind of music is becoming popular - for example, songs for older people will be less likely to become hits because people of this age are often reluctant to play. Music online and tends to be less angry.

Batt agrees that even more negative melodies in pop music may reflect changes in society , and even when attitudes towards political events are not publicly revealed like songs. expressing resistance, they can still affect the overall mood of the song.

He continued: " Whether intentionally or not, songs tend to act as a mirror to reflect society, or at least be influenced by ongoing events around the world. Social media is now suffering from constant tensions over the day, and the explosion that is present in today's political, religious and racial views is not much bigger than it used to be, but it is more motivated and clearer to listeners, this will definitely be reflected in our songs . "

Batt speculates that this is also coupled with the fact that many songs today are written by larger groups of musicians, which often tend to write songs that match the ideology of the time. greater attention to the nuance of personal experience. He said: " Perhaps the musicians tend to express a more general view. And if the mood is generally more negative than the past, those songs will sound more sad and angry . "

For his part, Batt admits that every morning he wakes up, he feels a bit depressed when he thinks of world events, but Batt claims his songs often show his own melancholy. I - instead of anger or scorn.

And he emphasized that feeling our own sadness is healthy when saying: " Melancholy helps the world continue to spin."

So perhaps pop songs have captured the mood of both artists and listeners. The composer has immersed himself in the ideology of the times, and the result is that anger or anger becomes more appealing to our listeners when we realize our emotions in music and lyrics. , help push those songs to the top of the charts. Times are always changing and each hit is a small testament to those changes.