Researchers found that pop music has gradually become less explicit about emotion and relationships — both across generations of performers and within artists’ careers.
The study, which included 38,467 tracks by 230 artists spanning 77 years of popular music from 1947 to 2024, is the largest of its kind to analyze song lyrics.
Discographies were manually checked by a team of 30 research assistants after the initial lyric collection.
The study found that lyrics became less emotional and less socially focused over time.
Within artists’ careers, both positive and negative words declined, as did references to family and friends.
(Photo by Mick Haupt via Pexels)
By Talker
Specific shifts show that anxiety-related language increased while sadness declined in lyrics.
Study co-author Jan Brascamp says the broader historical differences were generally larger than the changes that occurred within individual artists’ careers.
Brascamp said: “A lot of previous work has asked whether music changes across decades, but much less has examined whether the same artists change across the course of their careers.
“By looking at both at once, we can begin separating changes that happen within artists from broader shifts in culture and the music industry.”
Of the 230 artists, Willie Nelson had the greatest number of songs while Miles Davis had the fewest with lyrics.
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By Talker
Brascamp, of Michigan State University (MSU), said classic soul and early rock artists, such as Marvin Gaye and the Supremes, tended to rank highly on positive emotion and social references.
However, artists from more “countercultural” genres — such as the Sex Pistols and Nine Inch Nails — often appeared at the lower ends.
Brascamp said: “Negative- and sadness-related categories are disproportionately represented by older country and blues artists, like Hank Williams and Patsy Cline.”
The researchers were surprised to find that song lyrics don’t map neatly onto ordinary psychological aging.
Study lead author Logan Gibson, an MSU research associate, said: “People often become more emotionally regulated and invest more in meaningful relationships as they age, so we might expect that lyrics become more positive or relational across an artists’ career.
“Instead, positive emotions and social references declined.
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By Talker
“That suggests song lyrics may be strongly shaped by artistic, cultural or industry-level forces.”
The researchers hope the study shows how large collections of everyday cultural products from songs, books, social media and films can be used to study how people express emotion and how relationships change over time.
“People use songs to regulate their emotions, understand themselves, develop their identities and feel connected to other people.”
He added: “That makes lyrics an interesting record of what artists — and potentially the audiences and cultures around them — are choosing to talk about.
“So, when we see large-scale declines in emotional and social language, it raises interesting questions about whether the way we express feelings and relationships has changed more broadly.”
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