Pop music is becoming increasingly simple, aggressive and egoistic – Joop

Scientists have discovered that English-language pop music has become less and less cheerful over the past 40 years. The songs are becoming increasingly simple, rely more on repetition, are more aggressive and revolve more around one’s own ego: me, me, me.

12,000 English songs from all genres from rap to country were subjected to a study. Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature because of his poetic skills and layered songs, the researchers delicately note. That no longer seems to be the case. In a society where everything revolves around convenience, the music should also be nice and easy.

Eva Zangerle, one of the researchers from the University of Innsbruck, does not want to point the finger at individual artists and emphasizes that music can be a ‘mirror of society’ that shows how emotions, values ​​and obsessions change over time. She points out that the musical landscape has changed dramatically over the past 40 years “from how music is sold to how it is made.”

The scientists studied how emotions are expressed in the lyrics, how many difficult words are used and how often there is repetition. “All genres show a trend towards simpler songs with more repetitions,” Zangerie told The Guardian. Rap music shows more and more repetition, but also has much longer lyrics than other music. Repetition is an effective way to make a song stick more easily.

The songs also show an increasing egocentrism with more ‘me’ and ‘mine’. Furthermore, it has been found that song lyrics become less and less cheerful and positive over the years and instead anger, disgust and sadness are gaining ground. It is striking that rap has become angrier than other genres.

The researchers also looked at how music fans search for song lyrics. Rock fans appear to be the only ones who look up old songs much more often than new ones. An explanation could be that rock music as a genre is on the decline and fans prefer to look back on the ‘good old days’.

Another important change is that the skip function makes the first 10 to 15 seconds of a song decisive. Furthermore, music is increasingly being played as background noise. This also leads to a preference for simple compositions.