Happiness makes hit songs: study

Singing the blues

NEW YORK, May 16, (Agencies): A study of hundreds of thousands of popular songs over the past three decades has found a downward sonic trend in happiness and an increase in sadness, as the chirpy band Wham! gave way to the moody Sam Smith.

For the report in the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers at the University of California at Irvine looked at 500,000 songs released in the UK between 1985 and 2015, and categorized them according to their mood.

“‘Happiness’ is going down, ‘brightness’ is going down, ‘sadness’ is going up, and at the same time, the songs are becoming more ‘danceable’ and more ‘party-like,’” co-author Natalia L. Komarova told The Associated Press.

Of course, the researchers emphasize that a gradual decrease in the average “happiness” index does not mean that all successful songs in 1985 were happy and all successful songs in 2015 were sad. They were looking for average trends in the acoustic properties of the music and the moods describing the sounds.

Some songs with a low happiness index in 2014 include “Stay With Me” by Sam Smith, “Whispers” by Passenger and “Unmissable” by Gorgon City. Some from 1985 with a high happiness index include “Glory Days” by Bruce Springsteen, “Would I Lie to You?” by the Eurythmics, and “Freedom” by Wham!

“The public seems to prefer happier songs, even though more and more unhappy songs are being released each year,” the researchers wrote. They also found the most successful genres of music were dance and pop, as well as a “clear downward trend” in the success of rock, starting in the early 2000s.

The overall mood shifts in the songs’ musical features mirror other studies that have examined lyric changes over the years. They have found the use of positive emotions has declined and indicators of loneliness and social isolation have increased.

“So it looks like, while the overall mood is becoming less happy, people seem to want to forget it all and dance,” emailed Komarova, who wrote the report with Myra Interiano, Kamyar Kazemi, LijiaWang, Jienian Yang and Zhaoxia Yu.

The researchers also found that the “maleness” of songs — the frequency of male singers in popular music — has decreased over the last 30 years. “Successful songs are characterized by a larger percentage of female artists compared to all songs,” they write.

That finding comes at a time when the music industry is wrestling with the issue of gender inequality, and men overwhelmingly dominate the ranks of artists and songwriters.

Hit songs today are “happier”, more danceable and more likely to be sung by women than songs that fail to make it to the charts, a study into 30 years of musical evolution revealed Wednesday.

But also it noted a somber trend: while people clearly prefer happy music, there is less and less of it.

“More and more unhappy songs are being released each year,” a research team from the University of California Irvine reported in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

Overall, they found that “happiness” and “brightness” in music has declined, “while ‘sadness’ increased in the last 30 years or so”.

But hit tunes defy the trend, and tend to be “much” happier than unsuccessful ones — think of Pharrell Williams’ “Happy”.

The findings of the study, which analysed the “sound” characteristics

NEW YORK:

Danceable

A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday ordered the sentencing of disgraced US television icon Bill Cosby to take place on Sept 24-25 following his conviction as a sex offender.

The frail, 80-year-old — once beloved as “America’s Dad”

— faces a sentence of up to 30 years for drugging and molesting Andrea Constand at his Philadelphia mansion in January 2004.

Judge Steven O’Neill said the sentence hearing would take place across two days starting at 9:30 am (1330 GMT) in Norristown, Pennsylvania of popular tracks but not their lyrics, echoed earlier research showing that “positive emotions” in music was dwindling, the team said.

A previous study covering 1980-2007 found that music lyrics have become more self-centred, with increased use of the words “me” and “I”, fewer social words such as “we”, and more antisocial ones such as “hate” and “kill”.

This trend in lyrics are in tune with overall increases in loneliness, social isolation, and mental disorders across society.

The new study, based on a massive data trawl of 500,000 songs released in Britain between 1985 and 2015, found that as “happy” music declined, so did the popularity of songs sung by men.

“In the recent years, succesful songs are more often sung by females,” said the study.

“This is particularly interesting given a large debate about the role of women in the music industry, especially the issues of gender inequality, stereotypes and the sexualisation of female singers.”

Songs were considered successful if they made it into Top 100 charts, which less than four percent of new releases do every year.

Also rising in popularity are songs described as “relaxed” and “danceable”, possibly linked to a rise in electronic music and a converse decline in rock and heavy metal.

The research showed that classical and jazz songs were “unlikely” to be successful. Dance and pop music were the most popular genres.

The team gave examples of happy songs from 1985, including “Live is Life” by Opus, “Freedom” by Wham!, and Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days”.

WASHINGTON:

Also:

Singers, songwriters and engineers whose lifelong devotion to music has not always been adequately rewarded got a boost Tuesday when Motown icon Smokey Robinson pressed their case to Congress for greater copyright protection.

The US Senate is mulling a sweeping overhaul of music copyright law that would reform the way songwriters and musicians get compensated for their work in the digital age, as streaming services have supplanted traditional ways of buying and listening to music.

The Music Modernization Act (MMA) unanimously passed the House of Representatives last month, giving it momentum — and rare consensus in bitterly divided Washington — as it heads to the Senate.

“We need you guys to come to the rescue” of songwriters, Robinson said, many of whom are ageing, and lack the means to sue major corporations for adequate compensation.

The existing framework predates the internet. Artists now earn more from on-demand services like Spotify and Apple Music than from selling CDs.

The MMA would extend copyright royalty protections to songs recorded before 1972. The lack of such protections under current law has set off an avalanche of lawsuits from older artists upset about non-payment.

“My message is simple,” Robinson, 78, told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Musicians who recorded before February 15, 1972 deserve to be compensated the same way as those who recorded after that date.”

where a unanimous jury returned a guilty verdict on April 26.

The 12-member sequestered panel found the comedian guilty on three counts of sexual assault on April 26 for drugging and molesting the former basketball player and Temple University

employee 14 years ago.

Cosby, who is confined to his Philadelphia area mansion on a $1 million bail, has already been ordered to be fitted with a GPS monitor and to undergo a violent sexual predators’ assessment.

Prosecutors initially demanded his bail be revoked, arguing he was a flight risk — but an irritated O’Neill refused to “simply lock him up right now.” (AFP)

NEW YORK:

U2 will put on a special one-night show at New York’s historic Apollo Theater.

Howard Stern on Tuesday announced the invitation-only event for SiriusXM subscribers during his show on the satellite music service.

The company says U2 will play songs from its “Songs of Experience” album along with classics from its career.

Bono calls it a bucket-list moment and says it’s “an incredible honor” to play on the same stage in Harlem that has hosted the legends of soul.

SiriusXM subscribers can win tickets to the June 11 performance through an invitation sent by email. (AP)