Pop music became simpler, more aggressive and more selfish – Job

Scientists have discovered that English pop music has become less cheerful over the past 40 years. Songs became increasingly simple, more reliant on repetition, more aggressive and more about one's own ego: me, me, me.

12,000 English songs from all genres from rap to country music were studied. Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature because of his poetic skills and numerous songs, as researchers have carefully noted. It appears that this is no longer the case. In a society where everything is about comfort, music should be nice and easy too.

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

Scientists studied how emotions are expressed in words, how many difficult words are used and how often they are repeated. “All genres show a trend towards simpler songs with more repetition,” explains Zangiri. The Guardian. Rap music shows more and more repetition, but it also contains much longer lyrics than other music. Repetition is an effective way to make a song stick more easily.

The songs also show increasing self-centeredness with more “I” and “me”. He has also found that song lyrics become less cheerful and positive over the years, and instead become increasingly angry, disgusted, and sad. It is striking that rap music has become angrier than other genres.

The researchers also looked at how music fans search for song lyrics. It seems that rock fans are the only ones who look for old songs more than new ones. The explanation may be that rock as a genre is in decline and fans prefer to return to the “good old days”.

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