Song lyrics used to capture the feelings of the era
Has the music we’ve been listening to since our teenage years become progressively sadder and angrier with every decade?
Have we gone from “See You Later, Alligator” by Bill Haley, “BeBop-A-Lula” by Gene Vincent, and “Love Me Tender” by Elvis Presley in the 1950s to “Basket Case” by Green Day, “You Oughta Know,” Alanis Morissette, and “I Don’t Give a (Expletive)” by Tupac Shakur?
A new computerized study analyzed more than 6,000 Billboard 100 songs from 1951 to 2016, finding that songs were more joyful, upbeat and positive in the 1950s, and more angry, fearful and depressing with each passing decade.
“In general, the results show a clear trend toward a more negative tone in pop music lyrics, with a more significant change around the early 1990s,” stated researchers Kathleen Napier and Lior Shamir at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan.
The study, titled “Quantitative Sentiment Analysis of Lyrics in Popular Music,” was published in the December volume of Journal of Popular Music Studies. It attracted quite a stir on social media and with media outlets, prompting both older and younger generations to defend their favorite hit songs.
My initial reaction is that music from the 1950s was more sanitized and less reflective of daily reality in America than subsequent music, especially compared with much of today’s music, which can portray our society under harsher criticism, with grittier topics and themes.
I believe this lyrical transition is a positive thing, though it can come with a chorus of negativity. Music, like art, should honestly reflect a certain time period, emotional mood or political climate, not merely a romanticized, rose-colored perception of it.
Even the 1950s’ pop songs should not have strictly portrayed a “Leave It to Beaver” viewpoint during a decade tainted by overt racism, unapologetic sexism, and other troubling social issues. Sure, some music is purely escapist by nature, but there needs to be a balance.
“Music is what we cry to ... it’s what we march to ... it’s what we react to ... it’s what we make love to,” said singer Alicia Keys at the Grammy Awards earlier this month. “It’s our shared global language, and if you really want to say something, you say it with a song.”
I thought she nailed it, so I hustled to write down her remarks during that show. But music also can alienate listeners if you don’t remain current with its evolution (or deevolution, as critics claim). A case in point: Through much of the Grammy’s, I kept asking about its singers and entertainers, “Who’s she? Who’s he? What song is this? Are they popular? What again is this band’s name?”
It was humbling. Yet, it also prompted me to learn more about today’s top musicians and their chart-topping songs. Did I enjoy most of it? No. But I don’t want to be one of those middle-aged fogies who repeatedly listens to only a certain period of music, or someone who lives in the past, captured so well by Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days.”
“Well, time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of glory days,” he sings.
While watching the Grammy’s, I was anything but bored with the live performance of 21-year-old Gabi Wilson, better known by her stage name, H.E.R. The next day, I searched for her on Spotify and listened to her rhythm and blues all day. It was refreshing.
Contrary to rock ’n’ roll legend, the music didn’t die Feb. 3, 1959, with the sudden deaths of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper in a plane crash. Music kept on flying, of course, though maybe at a lower altitude for a while. Too many musicians have died at young ages, causing temporary turbulence with their respective genre, yet another new talent always takes off to fill that air space.
We tend to forget this when we get locked into a certain time period of songs. The study explores this aspect by analyzing the sentiments within songs reflecting the preferences of pop music listeners each year.
“A pop music composition is normally made of two parts – the tune and the lyrics,” the study’s abstract states. “Here we use a digital humanities and data science approach to examine how lyrics changed between the 1950s and the more recent years, and apply quantitative analysis to measure these changes. The results show that anger, disgust, fear, sadness, and conscientiousness have increased significantly, while joy, confidence, and openness expressed in pop song lyrics have declined.”
I think of Nirvana’s complex lyrics for “Pennyroyal Tea”: “Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld, so I can sigh eternally.” Or “There, There” by Radiohead: “Just because you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there.”
Pop music became more fearful during the 1980s, more angry in the 1990s, and more sad in the 21st century, the study concludes. I don’t doubt this. Yet I have to ask, does our favorite music reflect us or do we reflect our favorite music?
My favorite lyrics are timeless, such as from “In My Life” by the Beatles: “There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better, some have gone and some remain.”
I listen to music throughout my day, every day, whether it’s through Spotify or commercial radio or the CD player in my car (yes, it’s that old). My preferences depend on my mood or my activity. Jazz, blues or R&B while I’m writing, various sounds of rock for working out or household chores.
I haven’t noticed if my musical playlist through the years echoes the study’s conclusions, with my favorite songs getting sadder or angrier. But I’m now paying more attention to what I’m listening to and why.
If you begin doing the same thing, I’ll leave you with these cyclical lyrics from Semisonic: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”