Sadness in Pop Music Vs. Popularity

Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, takes a brief look at a new study that compares music trends in song positivity

Sometimes trends don’t equal popularity.

A group of researchers at the University of California at Irvine recently published a study about trends in music popularity. Sampling 500,000 songs released between 1985 and 2015 in the UK, the study looked at what factors go into a song becoming popular and how that has changed over the last 30 years. One of their conclusions, albeit a very small one, is that popular songs have gradually lost their positivity.

In researching the different moods of songs, researchers found that over the last 30 years there has been a decline in happiness and positivity and a slight increase in sadness and negativity. This change was visible in the songwriting, in particular the acoustics of the song and its lyrical composition. Here, they cite a recent tendency among artists towards writing in the first person (a lot more use of the personal pronoun “I”) and the use of what they term more “anti-social” words (such as “kill”). The study correlates this finding with another study that found an increase in loneliness and social isolation culturally over the last couple of decades.

Previous studies have come up with a similar conclusion. Back in 2012, a study found that over the last 50 years, more songs were being written in a minor key. From the late 1960s to the late 2000s, the number of major key songs on the charts fell by nearly 50 percent. It also reported that there was an overall decrease in the average tempo of popular songs, dropping from an average of around 116 beats per minute in the 1960s to about 100 beats per minute in the 2000s. The study found this in major key songs as well, leading them to the conclusion that popular music was becoming “emotionally ambiguous.”

However, while the trend exists, it does not seem to have much effect on the popularity of a song. In actuality, the study found the opposite to be true. Positive music and songs that are more “danceable” are more popular than those that aren’t. Such could be a possible reason for the recent increase in the popularity of dance music and dance-based pop over rock, which the study found to have decreased in popularity.

Over the last three decades, research has found that music in general has grown “sadder.” Cultural shifts that impact lyrics and a shift towards minor keys and slower tempos have played a role in this change. While sadness is a growing trend though, it is not one that has equated to more popularity for songs. With the increased presence of upbeat dance music on the charts, people aren’t necessarily gravitating towards sad music. And although the study tries to predict what songs will become popular, trends don’t always equal popularity.

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