Explains why I cry so much…
…lol just kidding…
From Detroit Free Press:
Cue up the rage anthems. And belt out that sad song in the shower.
Music lyrics are more angsty and twisted today than they’ve been in the last 60 years, according to a new study by Michigan researchers.
A scientific analysis of popular music lyrics from the 1950s through 2016 showed that song lyrics have gotten angrier and sadder. The study was conducted by a student and professor at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield — Kathleen Napier of Novi, who graduated with a master’s degree in computer science in May, and computer science professor Lior Shamir.
The pair found that song lyrics expressing disgust and fear also increased over the same timeframe, while the expression of joy has declined.
“Music fans in the more recent years prefer songs with sadder and angrier lyrics, which were much less popular in the 1950s or 1960s,” Shamir said.
The study appears in the published in the December issue of the Journal of Popular Music Studies, an academic journal published by the University of California.
The study examined more than 6,000 songs of the Billboard Hot 100 in each year from 1951 through 2016.
Napier and Shamir noted that the Billboard Hot 100 has been traditionally ranked by popularity measurements such as record sales and radio broadcasting of a song, with indicators such as streaming and social media mentions added in more recent years.
The analysis showed that the expression of anger in popular music lyrics increased over time. Anger was least expressed during the mid-1950s, and increased gradually until 2015 and 2016, which were the last two years tested in the study.
The expression of sadness, disgust and fear also increased over the years, although the increase was less significant than the increase in anger. The analysis also showed that joy was a dominant sentiment of popular music lyrics in the late 1950s, but had become much less dominant by 2016.
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