Music isn’t what it used to be. In the second half, the songs were simpler, more negative and stressful. This is not the verdict of a music critic, nor the lament of a pure music lover. This is the conclusion of an analysis that used artificial intelligence to search the texts and melodies of more than 20,000 songs in search of patrons and which publishes this Jueves magazine. Scientific reports. The authors, led by psychologist Mauricio Martins, of the University of Vienna, suggest that their rooms reflect the complex way people use music to manage stress.
The studio analyzed the lyrics of the 100 most popular songs in the United States each week between 1973 and 2023, according to the list Billboard Hot 100. The authors found that the lyrics of the 20,186 themes analyzed showed a clear temporal trend, with time to simplify further, increasing their pesimistic tone and containing more words related to stress. This trend has coincided with rising rates of depression and anxiety, leading experts to conclude that musical hits are obscuring the fears and concerns of their times.
The most surprising room soon appears zoom during periods of crisis. Both after the 11S attacks and at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers observed an attenuation – not a rejection – of these trends. Instead of seeking out music that reflected the negative emotional climate of the moment, audiences were able to turn to songs that were less stressful and more positive. The authors interpret this as a possible collective mechanism of emotional regulation. “It is obvious that in times of crisis, escape is present in music,” concedes Julio Arce, professor of musicology at the Complutense University of Madrid. “In the devastated Spain of forty years, for example, in the midst of post-war and local government, it triumphed My cow’s milk or his disenchanted music swing“.
The studio relies on a very large number of songs, but it should be noted that they all belong to general public American, he even began to exclude songs not sung in English from the studio, to facilitate the analysis of the messages. It is not possible to conclude that music today is simpler or sadder. But even if these are the canons, the themes which define an era and a place, despite the American musical field, we would find many differences between the Billboard list and the 40 list.
Music reflects the anxieties, fears or feelings of those who compose it, but when it achieves great popularity, it is because it connects in some way to the general feeling (and through mechanisms of marketing, advertising and attention). So, although this studio is limited and does not represent the immense variety of music today, it reflects themes that concern or touch the audience in some way. “The central result of the study is consistent,” says María García Rodríguez, researcher in music and arts at the International University of La Rioja, in statements on the scientific portal SMC. “The music on the field reflects the emotional climate of an era, a bell that acts as a barometer and shock absorber of collective discontent.”
Arce also highlights another idea, which is that art cannot be interpreted in a literal, depersonalized way, and that there is always an interpretive component to how a song is perceived. “Remember the case of Coque Malla and the song I can’t live without youused by Vox when Malla hizo himself in homage to his homosexual friends, or the famous song by Camilo Sesto To live like this is to die of love“, a theme of heartbreak that is celebrated as celebratory by the gay community”, señala. “The meaning of songs is not because they are literal. More and more music is analyzed quantitatively and its cultural, social and individual components are forgotten,” he explains.
New artificial intelligence tools make it possible to analyze songs in a way and manner never before possible, allowing us to investigate whether social phenomena are reflected in the lyrics. Previous studies have pointed to a decrease in mentions of romance and an increase in sexual language. Additionally, one study found an increase in anger and self-centeredness, with a greater presence of words such as “me,” “yo,” or “mío.” Finally, several studies support the current idea according to which the lexical and structural complexity of letters is decreasing. Greater repetition of structures. The reasons, according to an analysis published in Naturewe could be taught the way we listen to music.
Each time we play more background music, without paying much attention to it. The idea that we have an infinite library in our hands makes listening less profound, more secondary. We listen to the background and always have our fingers ready to move on to the next song. According to data from the Echo Nest platform, around 24% of Spotify listeners skip songs within the first five seconds, although 50% skip them before the songs end. The records that know it, the singers that know it, so that they compose the oldest, most digestible songs, so that they can be appreciated from the first listen.
Amid all these monolithic and depressing ideas, the study detects the beginning of a counterintuitive trend. The popularity of songs with more complex lyrics began to increase beginning in 2016. The authors theorize about the coincidence of this phenomenon with Trump’s first presidency, but ultimately acknowledge that more research is needed to explain this small repugnance. In any case, the change in trend poetically coincides with another event. In 2016, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan, for “having created new poetic expressions in the great tradition of American song”. It was the first time that a musician had won this award.
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